Thoughts on Creativity
I'd like to take the opportunity here to discuss the philosophy of creativity. No, I don't mean whether something classifies as art or not, but rather what constitutes the creative animal, as it were, of todays modern age. What are it's qualities? We have opened the door to new forms of creativity, creating works without use-value. The creativity of today is both against monetization, but also ascribes virulently to a lottery system of value. Large web-front companies make money of the creative labours of the masses, but what drives us to do it? Are we still driven to do it? Is it a form of slavery to put creative work into something to the benefit of someone else? Does this mean that creativity must be devoid of 'work'? I ask for your thoughts...
Comments (215)
The creative spirit doesn’t operate within the realm of ‘fear’. Ironically the creativity of anyone is consumed by many, copied, replicated, reiterated, and repeated right up to the point where this previous ‘new energy’ becomes ‘normal and bland’ - all progressive forms brought forth through creativity will inevitably end up being reiterated in dilute form so that the masses are slowly dragged towards its blinding light.
It’s the perpetual cycle of the phoenix. From the ashes of the old creations rise the new creations.
You seem to want to talk about value though. Why?
I think the creative animal of today is no different than he/she has ever been. I see a sort of Darwinian strain to creativity in the ‘creative animal’ or human, where, like evolution, the creative act throws us forward into the future. So many creative acts fall away, less still create a new paradigm.
I’m a bit unsure of your post. It seems to me that all creative acts have ‘use-value’. Otherwise it’s the act of a particular age or culture that can afford such ‘non-value’ activities.
Quoting kudos
It’s not slavery, it’s the driver of our success, it benefits millions, now and in the future.
Creative work takes great time and effort to produce for the most part. Are we to expect that for reasons of ‘pure joy of creation’ that a person should work? Surely they can expect some use value to be transferred to the art by the society as is the case everywhere. Otherwise it could with a little imagination be turned into slavery by a particularly crafty capitalist.
If I make a video I want to see my vision manifest. What others think of it will be of concern to some but not all.
I don’t view the artistic endeavor as being about an ‘art product’. I could see in your choice of wording you may not being paying attention to the process of producing art - the creative process - which is a little confusing for me. Maybe I just misunderstood the focus of your OP?
I had thought this post was not about ‘art’ but about the ‘creative animal’. Not about producing art but of acting out the creative impulse which is so instinctual to mankind and makes us who we are. Just the idea, the actual thought, of freedom is a creative act, as is equality and so on.
Are we looking to describe and discuss creativity, in humans, and maybe other animals? [This would be my main interest in this topic.]
Quoting kudos
You mean 'art'? Surely not, as art has been around for many centuries.
Quoting kudos
Or is this topic about the use to which creative individuals are put by their employers and political masters?
Quoting I like sushi
This goes for me too.
As someone who does creative work for a living, working with lots of other creative folks, and who has done that for decades, I don't really think it amounts to more than that.
You're basically rearranging things and seeing what happens when you "put this there" and "try removing this from here" etc.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I retired four years ago, but before that, I spent 37 years as a firmware designer. Not as open-endedly creative as Tracey Emin, but creative nonetheless. Perhaps we could call what I did 'constrained creativity'?
Quoting Terrapin Station
This account seems to assume that the necessary 'parts' are already available, and only their arrangement, relative to one another, remains to be done. This is much less than the creativity of taking a problem - a problem which has not previously been solved, or we'd use the existing solution - and creating a solution.
The parts are things like pitches, durations (rhythms), timbres, etc. Or colors, shapes, textures. Or characters (with parts like personality traits, etc.) and conflicts/dilemmas and locations, etc.
I don't know enough about programming to mention what would make sense as parts, but it would be something similar--some sort of cache of unique command words for the coding language in question, some cache of logical statements with particular syntax, etc.
If you're needing to solve a particular problem, yeah, that also requires that you rearrange the stuff you're rearranging in a way that it has a pretty specific result . . . which we unfortunately can't at all guarantee in the arts, so we can't focus on that in the same way, although there are some rough limits to meet more broadly-defined ends that we can apply at least. (For example, we're not going to create free jazz a la Albert Ayler for Britney Spears to sing over if we want to try to retain Britney Spears' audience, anything like her current level of success, etc.)
If you don’t see the point then you don’t understand what an artist does or why they do it. Then again, nor do they! Haha! It is a mystery, but I’m damn sure just because others benefit from the production of artwork that that isn’t the sole purpose of producing art.
I am not saying that I, or many others, wouldn’t be seduced by the possibility of admiration. I think you’d find most artists, regardless of genre, tell you that produced their best work when they were unconcerned about who or how many people would like it.
See what I mean now? I probably haven’t addressed your question in the OP fully. I don’t think I can though because it seems tangental to my perspective on art as opposed to material - I thought you were referring to the former when you asked about ‘creativity’ rather than focusing on the ‘creation’.
For me, creativity is not about use-value, but about sharing our subjective view of the universe in a form that pursues at least one of three aims: increased awareness, increased interconnectedness or increased overall achievement/capacity. These aims, I believe, are instinctive at the deepest level of existence, but it is in recognising my uniquely subjective view as valuable in itself to the unfolding universe that enables me to be creative.
Putting creative (uniquely personal) work into something for the benefit of others is precisely what drives creativity in the first place. It is a selfless act at its core. Monetization or any system of value is counterproductive to creativity - the moment a value system begins to influence creative labours, the original impetus is obscured and the creative animal is lured from creativity towards productivity.
Most creativity these days is hedged by the value systems we impose on all our interactions with the universe. Creativity in today’s modern age should be leading us beyond our value systems and increasing our awareness of a broader perspective of the universe.
Well the first thing we've learnt is that creative endeavours vary from profession to profession, to the extent that a description of one simply does not apply to the other. :smile: Your conception of program design stops after describing (part of) the very first rung of a ladder that can rise quite high, depending on the project in hand. If program 'design' is limited to the simpler aspects of coding, then your project is already in trouble. It won't seem so at first, but as time goes on.... :wink:
IME, design involves much more than rearrangement of existing building blocks. Often (usually), the building blocks themselves must be designed and implemented before they can be used in the main project.
So how can we progress from here, in our discussion of creativity, when we have discovered how different different strains of creativity can be? :chin:
What are you building the building blocks out of?
Sure. Aren't you rearranging those, then?
I love how one-sided your post is. It is always the 'big evil corporate' exploiting the small helpless proletariat.' You could easily turn this around and state that labour is exploiting/making money of big tech companies.
The objective view would be that big companies have opened new markets for creative people to do what they love, while simultaneously make money.
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Now to go deeper into the topic you addressed. One could argue that the internet promotes creativity, by sharing ideas (and remixing it) on a massive scale beyond human comprehension.
But I could also see the opposite case be made, namely that the internet, especially social media platforms, kills creativity by creating internet bubbles, echo chambers, where people just seek confirmation instead of challenges to their world view. It is psychologically more comforting to be around people who already agree with you, especially regarding political and moral views.
I am personally leaning more towards the latter.
You bring up the use of technology in process as well as consumption, which is good. To do work itself is easier, and to do large-scale work has been ever increasingly become more 'fun.' Take music for instance, who knows how many fun toy-like devices have come out to create that with, and do things that used to take hours to do with old technologies. In this way, the part of the reward, so to speak, for creative work that is the 'fun' part is greater.
The question is would it be better if there was no 'work' to the process, or not. And the creator was just purely enjoying his/her self? It it my opinion that the process of having that enjoyment is in part derived from the social value of the act itself.
I’m not convinced that the two are separate entities, though there may be someone out there who could clear it up in a paragraph. The act of starting fire by rubbing sticks or using flints: is that instinct or a creative act? How did it begin? A Chimpanzee using sticks to get at ants for eating, what’s that?
Is it right for us to arbitrarily call one thing ‘instinct’ and another ‘creative’? When a bird uses a rock to break open an egg, what’s that? If it’s instinct then starting a fire is instinct. But the concept of starting a fire has to come from somewhere So creativity is a tool. Therefore Chimpanzees are creative.
But about starting a metaphor? Is that instinct?
Would you expect chimp 1 to give away his stick that he worked for, simply for love of creating sticks? Even if he really loved making them surely he’d realize that was liable to cause him problems.
He wouldn’t have to consider giving it away. The.creative act itself inspires others: they imitate it. One day another Chimp might be inspired to take it a step further. My feeling is that all creative acts have ‘use-value’. In a world of survival no ‘use-value’ means death.
The creative act of people today stems from this. The cave paintings in Lascaux are far removed from artwork today but they’re connected. But today we are far removed from many of our origins. Art today, in relation to its roots is just ‘baubles’. So the use-value’ in art today is largely dependent on style, or trends. Which is not to say that the instinct to create is dead and that people will create purely for the pleasure of it,though that may not be the best word to use.
I disagree with this. You would need to read my posts to see where I’m coming from, but creativity is a totally selfish act.
Creative activity can be motivated externally by a specific problem of survival, but the creative process can also arise from an inherent drive to increase awareness, interconnectedness and overall capacity/achievement. The former does not preclude the latter, and while the former can be totally selfish, the latter is not.
Quoting Brett
There is a difference, in my opinion, between a creative act/work and the process of creativity. A creative act without use-value doesn’t sustain - but that’s not to say it cannot exist and have value (without use) within the creative process.
Creative work is ultimately constrained in some way, whether by the materials/parts available or by the discourse or value systems in which they are often required to operate. The creative animal is acutely aware of these constraints and strives to explore just beyond them, to challenge them in the creative process.
The creative process, in my view, is an open-ended interaction with these constraints of subjective experience. This is how we discover new ways of seeing the world, new ways to relate to the world and relate elements of the world to each other, and new capacities or ways to achieve. The creative animal refuses to accept slavery and finds value in pursuing creative acts or works that have no useful end product - even those that mean death, as you say.
All value systems are subjectively imposed except for the potentially infinite diversity of the unfolding universe - and it is here that the creative process operates. That your work demonstrates a different perspective of any aspect of the universe is creative, and therefore has value in that it forms part of the creative process - like any novel rearrangement of parts (which I agree, @Terrapin Station, is pretty much all creative work), and including those temporary creative acts/works that have no use-value at all.
Potential Originality and Effectiveness: The Dynamic Definition of Creativity
I’d be interested to see some proof of that statement.
Quoting Possibility
This is the same subjectivity that the post on art and elitism got bogged down in.
‘... a different perspective of any aspect of the universe.’ What exactly does that mean in terms of being creative?
What you’re saying is that a different perspective of the universe forms part of the creative process because what you’re doing is creative. That doesn’t explain anything. It’s an endless loop.
Modern man romanticises these pointless acts as having some mystical meaning, trying to breathe some purpose into them. They exist because modern society no longer needs purpose to its acts, life and death are no longer attached to these acts, they’re frivolous, they survive because they’re supported by vested interests, otherwise they would die through lack of oxygen.
Man must constantly reinvent himself. The creative act does this, but art does not. It’s an illusion to think that art can do this for man. Feeling good about yourself, or others, creates nothing but another frivolous act, which in the end is not even an action.
Just as remnants of man’s survival instincts sometimes manifest themselves today, so too do these original creative acts manifest themselves as contemporary art.
It’s this purposeless of art that makes it so difficult to define good from bad, and makes it so subjective and difficult to define.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Quoting Terrapin Station
I'm not sure. During design, I'm arranging the compositional elements until they fit as I need them to. My organic analogy (bones) was a bad idea. Firmware design has more in common with designing (for example) cars.
Cars are built using components, built into larger and larger sub-assemblies until the car is complete.
Designing a car involves identifying some existing components/assemblies and creating others. They aren't really arranged, because they don't fit together like Lego. They aren't re-arranged because they haven't been arranged before, and because there's only one place they fit. The steering wheel can't be rearranged onto an axle.... :wink:
In the sense that I mean it, the design of a car has little to do with its colour or shape, and a lot more to do with fitting a 2 litre engine into a space that is too small for previously-designed engines of that capacity and power output. And that endeavour is surprisingly creative, if not only creative.
I agree with most of this, but my own (former) vocation was very much involved in production, as an end result. It's easy to miss the creativity in firmware design, or car/bridge/etc design. The customer specifies what is required, and the designer has to come up with the how. This involves lots of thinking, checking and engineering ... and a surprising amount of creativity.
Perhaps a bit like writing haiku, the constraints that apply to a firmware design seem to sharpen creativity. I can't design a program to do just anything. It has to do what the customer asks for, to an unreasonably small budget, on a hardware platform that is often barely up to the task, to meet exacting size and performance constraints. The whole thing is a novel solution to a problem that has never been solved before. To achieve that, creativity is essential ... along with quite a few other skills. :smile:
Yes, that seems to capture the sort of creativity I'm describing. :up: I did it because I loved doing it (and also because it paid the mortgage! :smile: ). I am proud of my best efforts; I regret some of my less successful ones. :wink: I am proud that I spent my career learning, and getting better at it.
From the social value, yes, but also from the personal satisfaction of creating something that didn't exist before. To neglect the personal aspect is a mistake, I think. It's a strong motivator; perhaps the only motivator, in some cases? [Yes, the practical aspects of needing to earn a living also impinge.]
Yes, this is what creativity is about, in all its guises. And not everyone is, or can be, creative. Some people are intelligent, others strong or dextrous, and some are creative. Creativity is a way of thinking, that not everyone can do. It requires flexibility of thought, and sometimes a willingness to suspend disbelief, as we do when we read a story. It requires imagination too, and curiosity (could it work better if we did it this way...?).
I am happy and proud that I was able to be creative as a firmware designer, but pure art is beyond me. I don't know what I lack, but I do know I don't have what I would need to run with Emin or Banksy. Creativity takes many forms. :smile:
I was trying to think of how what you’ve said relates to my own thoughts so far, because it threw me for a bit, that is the creative act in a business orientated environment, and it seems to me that that’s the only place creativity can take place today because there is purpose, a demand, and result, as has always been required in the creative act (according to my thoughts).
A different perspective - a different way of looking at things - is a very powerful aid to design. I once solved a particularly intractable design problem purely by finding a new perspective. The way forward then became obvious. To designers, at least, perspective is a central part of the creative process. I dare say this applies to other creative practitioners too.
Sure, but a different perspective of the universe?
Well yes, sort of. :wink: But sometimes the purpose is a personal one. Some creative people feel compelled to do what they do, for their own satisfaction and fulfilment. Sometimes, art simply carries a social message. The artistic rendition amplifies the message, makes it more memorable and more accessible.
Of some aspect of the universe, yes. Not normally the whole universe, but maybe...? :chin: :wink:
What I mean by "rearranging" is that with the car, for example, you're taking some metal and plastic and rubber and electronics, etc. that already exist and you're putting them into different relationships with each other to make something different.
I don't know enough about software to describe it in these terms, but that's all we're doing when we create musical things, and visual art things, and fictional things (films, novels, etc.) and cars and so on.
That applies to the components that do already exist, and can be reused in the new design. But what about the components that are custom-built for the new design? Nuts and bolts are universal, but body panels aren't. Nor are new, less eco-unfriendly, engines (although they contain nuts and bolts).
We can say that all cars are assembled from similar parts, but each new design is ... new; novel. If it's just a rearrangement, the creativity is minimised, surely? If it's just a rearrangement, why are we bothering? What we end up with won't (can't!) be significantly different from what we already have. Sometimes, with cars, a simple facelift seems to be what is required. A new look to a product that remains substantially unchanged. But this is almost the trivial case of design, whose most significant and useful purpose is to create something genuinely new, at least in some respects.
This "rearranging" you describe is odd to me. We could say that a new painting reuses and rearranges existing things like lines and curves, paint and canvas. Just as a new program reuses bytes and RAM to produce a new executable. But such a description is so misleading, in some ways, that it misleads and mis-describes (is that a word?). Microsoft's Word is a collection of bytes. Bytes that have been used many times in the past. Does that make Word derivative and unoriginal? No, it doesn't.
Music reuses and rearranges notes and timbres, but the end product can still be new and fresh. It is a betrayal (of the artistes) to describe this as rearrangement, I think. It demeans and trivialises their work. Of course not all compositions are as ... successful as others, but all of them are new, just as they are also partly derivative in their composition. Creativity produces novelty.
It's not meant as a value judgment, or as something with value connotations, although it is meant to "demystify" or "demythologize" the process to an extent. When you create something, you're simply taking pre-existing materials and putting them into some different relationship, one step at a time. That's all there is to it, really.
It's not saying that works are unoriginal or anything like that. We make originality judgments based on (a notion of) whether the creator was trying to emulate someone else's work in some large-scale way. (Smaller-scale or limited-aspect emulation is given a pass, and often lauded, as "influence").
No, I'd never say anything like that. I'm the guy rather diametrically opposed to any judgmental normatives like that.
This path leads to the conclusion that nothing is truly creative except the first one. The first song, or the first painting. All others are derivative, using as they do the same components that the original used. I don't find this a useful description of creativity. It dismisses all creativity that is not wholly unique, doesn't it?
The first song and first painting would be no different. You're taking materials at hand and arranging them into something different.
Again, this is not at all a judgment about anything. I don't know how I can stress that to successfully get it across.
This is what creativity is. It's what we're actually doing when we're doing creative things.
Quoting Terrapin Station
No it isn't. Everything you say is true, but it doesn't describe what creative people do. I.e. it doesn't describe the part of what they do that is creative.
If the goal is to create a catalogue of all we know about creativity, it would be clearer to eliminate the supposition of the self and determining free will from your definition and just say, 'It is the re-arrangement of matter/materials into a new form' rather than 'you take materials and rearrange them...' etc.
One thing we know about creativity is that it involves the creation of something that is somehow, in some way, new and different. To describe creativity in a way that emphasises its non-creative aspects, and doesn't even mention creation, is very odd to me. Why deny (by omission) the central attribute of creativity?
I acknowledge and accept your intention. But when you concentrate exclusively on the non-creative aspects of the creative process, how can that not be dismissive (of creativity)?
I'd argue that it being new and different is a property of originality rather than creativity. The quality of the work being not like other works is unmistakably a common motivation in creativity, but not involved in the definition thereof. If it were, then something could be both creative and non-creative between two different times, and in two places where something that was considered new and different is now no longer the case. Then once it were forgotten or distorted about which event came first, one could say that anything that was later copied by others was no longer new and thus not creative, where the original act was, in fact, a creative act.
So what do you think that I'm doing as a creative person other than what I'm describing?
No. What I’m saying is that an act or product that demonstrates a different perspective of the universe is creative because it forms part of the creative process.
By ‘different perspective of any aspect of the universe’ I mean a novel arrangement of parts: whether those parts are words, code, plastics, metal, pixels, etc. We’re not creating something from nothing - it only seems that way - we’re only seeing potentiality where others cannot, and then actualising that potentiality. That’s the essence of creativity.
Quoting Brett
No - a different perspective of an aspect of the universe. I’m speaking as broadly as I can about creativity here. I’ve personally worked in a range of creative industries, from fine arts to website design, from advertising and marketing to playwriting and directing.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
I agree with your first statement, but your perspective of exactly what constitutes ‘new and different’ implies ‘something from nothing’ that unnecessarily mystifies the process. I don’t think @Terrapin Station is denying the central attribute of creativity at all - ‘new and different’ relates essentially to awareness and perspective, not to actuality.
The position I’m developing in relation to this op is that the creative act, in its pure form, is (ironically) objective driven towards ‘use-value’.
The fields you worked in have different objectives. Website design, advertising, marketing, they’re driven by pure ‘use-value’, a monetary value and measures of success. There’s very little subjectivity here, it’s all market driven, measured against costs and returns. Fine arts, theatre, they reside in pure subjectivity, there’s no real value to a painting or a play except that attributed to it by those who like it.
My feeling, which is a surprise to me, is that creativity exists today only in a ‘value- use’ environment, because it contributes to our development as people, as it always has, as its purpose always was. Creativity was and is a tool of some sort.
I’m beginning to think that what you and others are talking about is not creativity itself but is instead just playing with creativity, like a child playing with blocks.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to here, what are the new forms of creativity that work against monetisation?
The objectives are different, but the creative process is essentially the same. As I said before, creativity is always constrained in some way, whether by the materials and discourse or the value systems and measures of success. This is the difference between them. Subjectivity drives the creative process in both.
In website design, advertising and marketing, there are many more scientifically generated constraints but in my opinion they can present more of a creative challenge than a painting or a play where you’re choosing many of your own constraints as part of the creative process. The capacity to produce something ‘new and different’ - to have a broad vision of the potentiality - in such a narrow scope demands a high level of creativity: a more flexible subjective view, if you will.
Fine arts and theatre, on the other hand, demand the ability to constrain your own creative process according to the changing social climate - parameters that are much more difficult to pinpoint, and rely on having a subjective ‘feel’ for what resonates with your audience. It can be a lot more hit and miss, and there are many more poor artists and writers than there are poor website designers. The music industry, I imagine, makes use of both market data and that ‘talent’ for connecting with a given market (the ‘it’ factor), to constrain the creative process of artists and produce creative work that has ‘real’ value. Artists who have the flexibility to shift their own constraints on creativity according to changing markets have a longer career (eg. Madonna).
Quoting kudos
This is partly what I’m trying to address, today’s creative animal. And this:
Quoting kudos
This statement seems untrue to me. My point is that creativity is about ‘use-value’ and always has been. If it’s not then it’s something that exists in a rarefied, artificial atmosphere.
Picasso’s creative act was in painting, or sculpture, he was playing with ideas about painting and sculpture, looking at how far he could push it. The idea of painting, its actual creation, had already happened on the walls of Lascaux (perhaps).
Pattern-Chaser: “We can say that all cars are assembled from similar parts, but each new design is ... new; novel. If it's just a rearrangement, the creativity is minimised, surely? If it's just a rearrangement, why are we bothering? What we end up with won't (can't!) be significantly different from what we already have. Sometimes, with cars, a simple facelift seems to be what is required. A new look to a product that remains substantially unchanged. But this is almost the trivial case of design, whose most significant and useful purpose is to create something genuinely new, at least in some respects.”
But in the end it’s still a car, already invented. The designer is just pushing the idea of a car, modifying it.
Once man learned to create fire it was always fire, after that it was for different ‘value-use’.
But these ‘sub categories’ of creation still work to serve us or to benefit us. Over time style is added to them, styles which come and go every year, which just confirms their pointless existence and confirms how non ‘value-use’ creativity dies by its own hand.
This ‘non-value’ use is what ‘art’ is today: a contrived, artificial environment, kept alive by oxygen fed through superficial desires and elitism.
So yes, the creative act today is monetised, and it’s value is concrete, but it’s always been concrete, it’s always served a purpose. It’s success in the world contributes to its creator’s chances of survival, and those associated with the creator. Once it was the person who could make fire, now it’s a corporation that can own a market.
The creative act is amoral, and pure only in its intent.
This is not true. The creative process in advertising, marketing etc., is driven by a) a brief, b) budget, c) market research, d) a deadline, e) the medium. None of this is subjective on your part. You don’t decide what the client needs, the client does.
Fine arts, it’s true, you can do whatever you feel like.
Quoting kudos
For the purposes of this discussion, it seems easier to assume that creativity achieves its aims, even though we know it might not.
Quoting kudos
This doesn't really matter, does it? As part of a successful creative process, something is created, something new and different. If this wasn't the case, then the thing 'created' would not be new, it would be derivative, and we could not reasonably describe it as anything other than a reproduction.
I'd love to know, but you haven't told me. I know only that you work with 'creative' people, and that it has something to do with music.
So being "creative" doesn't necessarily involve actually creating something?
Agreed. There is little subjectivity here ... but there is creativity (and actual creation).
Quoting Possibility
Yes, that's what I mean. :up:
“New and different”. I don’t think different can be part of originality. If it’s different then it suggests something already existing to compare it to. New must be a property of creativity.
Yes, and in modifying it, part of what the designer does as she follows the creative process is creative. The modifications are new. The car itself is not, of course. Not any more.
Yes, absolutely. And it has, or is, ‘value-use’. So the creative act, and the creative animal today, works with ‘value-use’, as the creative act always has, otherwise it dies in a vacuum.
Yes, that's what design is about. My client specifies what, but my job is to discover how it can be achieved, within the specification. That's where the creativity is.
:chin:
There is some creativity in the creation of the specification by the client...
What I’m trying to say (i think) is that the only true creative act today is one that has ‘value-use’, because creating is an instinct for survival. It has to have a purpose that benefits survival or movement forward, otherwise it’s indulgence.
I wonder if you're giving this more attention than it deserves? Everything any human has ever done has value - to them, if no-one else - and some sort of use or purpose (again, to them if no-one else). This doesn't just apply to the creative process, it's universal. What you're saying is not specific to creativity.
I’m meaning a value that goes beyond personal. I think it’s a huge part of mankind’s evolution. Just as a Chimpanzee using a stick to get to ants is evolution, movement forward. The creation of tools is pretty big.
Value is a personal thing. Something widely accepted as valuable is merely valued by a large number of persons. How can a wholly-subjective thing like value go beyond the personal? Are you touting objective value here? :chin:
Apologies if this leaves out many people's experience who were involved in the pre-2000 creative environment, but this was supposed to refer to the 'YouTube,' 'BandCamp,' Kickstarter,' media. These forms are now causing some friction against the traditional creative structures. By working against monetization, I mean that the majority of the individuals participating, at the same time as competing with industry pros, they are also setting out with not even the slightest intention of making money, or appealing to others for their appetites, but rather has greater emphasis on the appetites of the creator, and the pleasure it brings them to take on a social identity, feel wanted, etc. The question I was trying to reveal is, 'what constitutes this pleasure and these appetites?' But obviously describing the creative process itself if important to gain an concept of it.
So by this you are saying that small time YouTubers are in a sense setting out in the lottery of being discovered among 1.8 billion users, in order to turn this into a survival mechanism. Or it has some survival purpose beyond social use, such as helping them think more creatively when picking up women, and increase their chances of sexual selection. What would be some examples of the survival purpose of this?
I've made a living as a musician, composer and arranger since the early 80s. I've done a lot of film work, but not only. I've done some film work outside of a musical context, too. I also do some visual art, and I've written fiction, including some scripts.
No, it doesn’t. But being creative does necessarily involve creating new and different ways of interacting with the world. This can mean rearranging elements in such a way that it changes our perspective of something. But it need not be a new product or an actual, physical thing that is new.
Creativity has value apart from use - that’s my argument. You don’t agree. You seem to see the creative act as producing something ‘objectively’ useful, but this often only occurs at the end of an industrial creative process. The rest of the creative process looks like playing to you, because you don’t recognise the usefulness of open-ended play in creativity. A child playing with blocks is still being creative - creating new and different (from the child’s perspective) ways of interacting with their world.
Quoting Brett
I get that you have a problem with the apparent ‘indulgence’ of Art. But I disagree that creating is purely for survival or moving forward. In order to move forward, we must have the capacity to see a way forward that no-one else sees before we take a step, or we must be prepared to take a step ina direction that no-one else has taken - to play with new ways of interacting with our world. This is the creative process, and it cannot be an instinct for survival because it often runs counter to survival. It’s hard to be truly creative when we’re focused on survival or productivity. A work environment that genuinely inspires creativity, therefore, must be one that values and trusts the creative process: where not all time, effort, thought or research is evident in the end product.
Exactly. Creativity involves creation. :up:
Your thesis is that your song-writing involves nothing but rearrangement of existing 'components'.
First, I accept and agree that songs comprise melody and tempo, and that songs which precede them also comprise melody and tempo. So your new song uses only pre-existing components. Most people would agree that this is pedantically true, but also trivial and useless.
Then we might consider what happens if I take a song of yours, and change/add one note. I have produced something new and different. Most people would agree that, pedantically, I have created something. They might also continue by observing that what I did wasn't creative enough to count. And I would agree with them. My song is literally a new creation, but doesn't really justify that description.
But RL songs are not like mine. They use words that have been used before, and notes that have been used before, but it is still reasonable to describe them as new and different. Something has been created, not just rearranged. The song is not wholly unique, rearranging certain components, as you observe. It is not created from scratch. But it does contain new and different things; something more than mere rearrangement has occurred here, or this could not be so. This is the common-sense version, and I think most people would agree. You don't agree, but for the life of me, I can't see why. :chin:
This is interesting, so someone who arranges a photograph with an AI program and another with their eye. Though to the viewer there is no conscious difference these are nevertheless not equivalent.
Early on, I wrote: "What I mean by 'rearranging' is that with the car, for example, you're taking some metal and plastic and rubber and electronics, etc. that already exist and you're putting them into different relationships with each other to make something different."
Quoting Pattern-chaser
I'm describing "creation" as a rearrangement. I'm not saying that something hasn't been created.
Sometimes I work in a work-for-hire/journeyman capacity. Sometimes I work in more or less democratic or partnership capacities. Sometimes I'm the contractor and I have others working for me in a work-for-hire/journeyman capacity. Sometimes it's a combo of two or all three of these.
Quoting kudos
It would be very difficult to exhaustively list "the characteristics of the social exchange."
Quoting kudos
I'm not sure I understand the latter part of that. I get satisfaction out of doing what I consider good, creative work under the set of limitations at hand. (And there are always limitations, even if you're the boss and you're self-imposing them.)
I have no idea what that is saying, really.
Aren't you coming from something of a continental background? My confusion would be because of that. A lot of continental stuff makes very little sense to me.
For example: "The context of the work within a discourse." I have no idea what that's saying.
Re "Does not create pleasure"--for whom? For me? The work creates pleasure for me, sure.
"Creating meaning out of pure survival"? Again, I don't know what the idea would be there.
At any rate, I would say that "creating meaning catalysts" is one motivation, though certainly not the only one. In my view, re my ontology, it's not possible to literally project/display meaning, but one can project/display something that catalyzes meaning creation in other individuals' minds.
You’re correct there. I’ve been holding on to the term ‘value-use’ kudos used in the op. What I mean is a tangible benefit that enables a group, tribe, culture to move successfully forward in its development and to create the grounds for the next step. In the Darwinian sense only successful, beneficial creative acts survive because of what they offer to those who created it.
Somehow the arts have taken ownership of the word ‘creative’. My thoughts are that the creative act is a human instinct for survival. Whether it’s an instinct I’m not sure. But today these instincts (if that’s the right word) are really a watered down version of their origins and appear as acts of modification, like your car design. (It’s possible that this watered down version, like a fiddling at the edges, is responsible for the stagnation in our growth). They still have tangible benefits in that they contribute to our welfare and survival.
The ‘arts’ do not exist like this at all. They offer no tangible benefits. It can be argued that they contribute to something we need, but there’s never any hard evidence apart from some idea of “increased awareness, increased interconnectedness or increased overall achievement/capacity“.
“Some friction”. What is that, how effective, what change is evident? You’re either competing against industry pros in their territory or you’re just playing at competing. What are they actually achieving, serving their own appetites? You’re placing them in the same area as ‘artists’ and talking about ideas of feeling wanted, etc.
If I read you right then the answer to your question: “ ... what constitutes the creative animal, as it were, of todays modern age”, is nothing.
There’s no survival purpose in this at all. I fact there’s no reason for doing it at all.
A child playing with blocks is developing creativity.
Focusing on survival or productivity is being creative, it’s not counter to it. You seem to be intent in seeing survival and productivity as some evil aspect of capitalism and not basic to human nature.
I can’t say the explanation that it is that skill whereby animals came to use their brains to find new ways to survive is not incorrect but doesnt encompass it totally, this includes virtually any behaviour that favours selection. Then craftiness, betrayal, even murder are all creativity. What isn’t creativity then?
That’s not my view, but I do see survival and productivity as externally influencing and constraining an inherent creativity that underlies what you see as basic to human nature.
Also someone who adjusts the settings on a camera and waits for just the right combination of subject matter and lighting before taking a photograph to enhance certain elements and someone who digitally adjusts the lighting, colour and subject matter on an existing photograph are both being creative - and to most viewers of the two final products, there appears to be little value difference. The first one, however, is more valuable - not because it has a higher use-value, but because the creative process is more demanding and time-consuming, and much of the creative act that produces this one photograph never makes it to the production stage.
There must be more because stopping here we’d be in danger then of claiming that a work that took weeks by Salieri took more creativity than a work that only took one hour for Mozart. Even though Mozart was trained from childhood and it maybe took him less effort.
I certainly do agree that there’s a vast difference. Perhaps we are guilty of looking at what is, and not whats striven to be. The two works appear the same to the viewer. That when the viewer entered into the social contract to view and the creator to create they engaged in a sort of common undefined notion of the creation. Even if that contract fails the notion still has a magnitude of creativity in it, don’t you think?
Personally, I don’t see creativity as restricted to the arts at all. It’s a large part of theoretical physics, for instance - but they don’t call it creativity. The work of theoretical physicists is valued not for the actual product, but for the demands of the creative process - as much for their failures and ‘nearly there’ moments as their potential for success.
When we reduce all human nature to our welfare and survival, we constrain that underlying creative process. It is this constraint that I believe is responsible for the stagnation in our growth. The creative act is instinctual (for want of a better word), but in my opinion it runs deeper than survival, and is actually constrained by our focus on the values of survival, productivity and physical existence, rather than enhanced by it.
It is when we ignore these values or are set free from their constraints that our true creative capacity is unleashed, for better or worse. The creative animal is most creative when they’re in a position where they’re not fighting for survival (financial, career, life, etc), not under pressure to produce, and not worrying about physical evidence of their creative act. That doesn’t mean they can’t be creative under pressure, but it’s really only random chance that produces success under these conditions, not creativity as such.
So when you argue that the arts offer no tangible benefits, no hard evidence of contribution, etc, you’re contributing to the stagnation you lament. For those of us who are creative, who see the universe in terms of potentiality, it is the value placed on the creative process over the tangible benefits in the arts that reassure us that what we do has value when those around us demand results.
+1
It’s deceptive, like ‘love,’ that is all fashionable to call just another word, but always seems lacking in definition as such.
I’m not using evolution theory to describe creativity. I’m suggesting it’s an evolutionary mechanism.
“How does something come to be an effect of natural selection?” By the process of natural selection.
“ ... this includes virtually any behaviour that favours selection”. Behaviour doesn’t favour selection, selection favours behaviour. This maybe an error in your sentence or it may mean a misunderstanding of evolution. If it’s a misunderstanding then, naturally, you won’t understand what I’m getting at.
Your hubris is showing here. By this you seems to be saying that myself and others, as opposed to ‘us’, you, are not creative, otherwise we would understand your point
First of all you have no idea who I am, and secondly someone is only creative according to your terms, otherwise you would not exclude me from being creative.
Quoting Possibility
To say that the work of a theoretical theorist is not valued for the actual product, i.e. a result, is ridiculous. Neither he nor his employer would believe that.
What would run deeper than survival?
You’re right - creativity is not measured in effort or time (despite the structure of industries such as graphic design). It’s the intangible creative process - the playing with new ways of interacting with the world, the exploring past the constraints of rules and conventions, the ability to work in that potentiality space between nothing and something - that has value. How do you measure that?
In my opinion there are two aspects to creativity. One is an awareness of or familiarity with the materials and constraints of a particular creative space that tends towards intuitive. The more intuitive, the more creative. Much of this, I think, has to do with brain structure and development. The period between 0-5 years can be crucial in developing a brain structure that is more creative in a particular aspect. My son, for instance, has developed an intuitive grasp of music and mathematics, whereas my daughter has developed a more intuitive grasp of language and emotion.
The other aspect is the capacity to interact with the highest potentiality of that creative space - to approach that aspect of the universe and all of its subsequent relation to the universe in terms of what it could be, rather than what it is. The difference I see here I can best describe in terms of quantum theory: some people see only the particle, while others see varying degrees of potentiality - a lack of collapse in the ‘wave’ that enables them to interact with it in unusual ways, and to explore its capacity to interact with everything else in the universe in ways others cannot see until it’s happening right in front of them.
When you combine these two aspects, you get an ability to confidently play with the constraints and conventions, to break rules and push the boundaries of a particular creative space.
The second aspect at its highest enables a creative person to navigate a variety of creative spaces, but they also work best with narrower constraints. The first aspect at its highest is seen as a prodigious gift or talent, but is dependent on the second for its flexibility in terms of a long-term or broadly ‘successful’ creative career. Those with high levels in both aspects are both highly creative and highly volatile - like a burst of pure energy.
Our true creative capacity is unleashed. To do what? What is the result? Is it personal or universal?
I apologise - that was presumptuous of me. I was trying to present how I see the arts as valuable, reassuring in their lack of use-value. I actually think everyone has the capacity to be more creative, but most people actively resist it because of the way they believe the world is or must be.
“To say that the work of a theoretical theorist is not valued for the actual product, i.e. a result, is ridiculous. Neither he nor his employer would believe that.”
I should modify this statement a little. For the artist or physicist there is obviously pleasure in the process, it’s what they love. But the idea that it’s not done for a result doesn’t work.
That depends on where one believes ‘personal’ ends and ‘universal’ begins. The atomic bombs on Japan are an example of creative capacity unleashed to interact with a part of the universe beyond what was valued, but this result was neither for personal nor universal benefit, but somewhere in between.
This I agree with. It’s probably reassuring to a lot of people. But it also strikes me as being the luxury of a society that can afford such things, which is why I sometimes use the word ‘indulgence’.
I think art once had an essential part to play in communities, which I’ve discussed in another post, but, like creativity, it’s become a watered down version of its origins.
I should have said not valued just for the actual product. The artist or physicist derives personal pleasure from the process, but what pleasure is that? What does it mean to ‘love’ a process? I guess it depends on what they believe.
There are many artists and physicists whose pleasure comes from the belief that their part in a process that extends well beyond their own physical contribution is valuable in itself. The ‘result’ they may be seeking is often non-descript and exists well beyond their lifetime, and their contribution may only serve to suggest a direction rather than produce anything actual. Theoretical papers or saleable artwork are products that satisfy the need for tangible benefits or evidence of productivity within the industries and justifies their salary or position - but this can be more of a task than a pleasure.
So your view is essentially the same as Brett’s, that it goes no further than a problem-solution relationship. Inventiveness. In this case, creativity for someone else's benefit would be work, in the sense that most cultures find this type of activity to be so. And to create only to the benefit of industrialists would be a type of mild slavery.
This suggests that I think creation is problem solving, that someone perceives a problem and uses creativity to solve it. This is not accurate.
My feeling is that the creative act was (emphasis) a spontaneous and random act. Call it discovery, maybe even invention, though I would (warily) favour discovery? Some of those acts benefited the tribe or community in a big way, others fell away because of their irrelevance at the time and may even have been forgotten about.
As I have said, we are most creative when things like survival, productivity and physical existence are not threatened - so, in a way, creativity that goes beyond these constraints can be seen as ‘indulgent’ from the point of view of someone who believes these to be our top priority.
Personally, I believe our human capacity goes way beyond these constraints, and the arts are an important avenue to communicate that, and challenge us to see the universe as valuable to us beyond our own survival, existence or physical capacity. The arts industries, on the other hand, attempts to justify themselves to a world that is focused on survival, productivity and physical existence, on measurable data as evidence of use-value. In this way they constrain creativity in ways that stagnate our growth.
I can see why some might see art as the last bastion against this state of things. But it’s not, it’s just the same.
I hate be contrary, but I would argue that’s when we are most creative. History would probably back me up.
What you seem to be referring to is some state of mind, some higher existence that can be achieved through art.
You really do load these sentences: industrialists, slavery.
It’s an agreed transaction between two entities. There’s a contract, payment, agreement. Designers are hardly victims in the workplace, they can expect reasonable remuneration if employed and if self employed set their fee against their value. Hardly even mild slavery.
Creativity must necessarily be constrained eventually by interaction with the world, otherwise it is only potential. In that way I agree to some extent with @Brett - there are no slaves here, and creativity must ultimately be productive. But the ‘agreement’ must be open-ended to some extent in order for creativity to occur, and the more open-ended it is, the more creativity can occur.
This society does value creativity to an extent - we just struggle to measure that value, so we reduce it to a problem-solution relationship. But in reality this isn’t a classical, straight-line relationship - it’s like the path of a photon between measurable points.
Quoting Brett
There seems to be some continued confusion between being creative and being productive. You seem to think that when the chips are down our creativity increases, but this isn’t the case. When the chips are down, we are compelled to force any ongoing, relevant creative process towards activity or production. History can only provide production as evidence, not creativity - that’s why it appears to back you up.
I don’t see it as a higher existence or state of mind as such. I think those terms suggest a ‘mystical’ quality to creativity that prevents people from seeing their own potential for it. I think it requires an open mind and a certain amount of courage (or perhaps a sense of security) to consider the possibility that what your mind actually sees is not what is but a version of what it could be, and it only takes you seeing it differently and interacting with it as such to change that. But most people haven’t considered what their creative ability is apart from what others tell them it is, so this probably won’t make much sense.
Creating something is an act, an action. In its most basic form it might be described as producing something that did not exist before that point. Someone might create an idea in their head and let it remain there, so there would be no evidence of it existing, but nor would it have any effect on the world. So there cannot be a creative act without the result, what it produces.
Maybe your using the term productive in the sense that a factory is productive.
This strikes me as being incredibly subjective. Change it to what, something you think should be?
Edit: Unless of course you mean to make change only in your own life?
But there can be creativity without the result. This is the point I’m trying to make. The fact that you have to write ‘creative act’, ‘creating something’ points to creativity as not necessarily productive (as in producing any result), despite your assumptions. I’ve already mentioned that I agree creativity must eventually have a result in order to have any effect on the world. But it need not have any effect on the world in order to be creativity.
Quoting Brett
It is subjective - necessarily so. The creative process is highly subjective - it will always derive from your subjective view, regardless of the supposedly ‘objective’ constraints. It is your view of the malleability of these constraints - their subjective nature - that allow you to play with them, to be creative.
I’ve always loved the story behind the piece of marble that became the famous statue of David. This block of marble was supposedly rejected by some of the most celebrated sculptors for 70 years before Michelangelo, a young upstart of 21, took on the challenge. The stone was marred by weaknesses that prevented any hope of successfully producing a traditional product. And the idea of producing a statue of David (according to convention) from this block was considered impossible. Yet what Michelangelo produced surpassed all expectations and challenged the conventions of sculpture at the time, as well as demonstrating an intuitive grasp of the creative space and a view of humanity and potential that continues to challenge conventional perspectives even now.
Convention and objective knowledge of this block of marble limited its potential - it takes a subjective view to unlock a potential that no-one else thought was there. So it’s not so much what it should be, but what it could be that you change in the minds of others who interact with it, by changing how they interact with it.
Youtubers and people on patreon can make a good amount of money - something they would’ve been unable to do just a few years ago. This means artists have more freedom - don’t have to worry so much about starving to death. Has this helped art or not? I guess it is a case of in some cases it has and in others it hasn’t (everyone thrives under different circumstances).
To return to the purpose of production for the artist. I have invested countless hours into my own creation - I never set out to make my creation/s public and it is only due to the thought that someone else may get something from it (in an unselfish manner) that brings me to want to expose it. At the end of the day the partial completion of any task within my personal project, where there is some ‘product’, is for my observation. Meaning I create to see how my vision manifests and what is missing from the ‘product’ - it may turn out that what I considered pivotal to my project will be nothing more than a meaningless distraction; this can only be revealed once I interact with the vision as a material object. Much like an architect would draft a building design that in reality wouldn’t stand up fro more than a day; this knowledge may only make itself known upon, or during, creation and then lead to adjustments and alterations to render the best approximation of the original image, and/or alter the original image beyond recognition as the creators approach becomes more refined and in a ‘flow’.
I am not sure if it was Nietzsche, Aristotle or another who mentioned a famous Greek artist who created ‘plays’ to be performed. This person stated, very clearly, that he make the ‘play’ so he could see his own thoughts, his own vision. For him HE was the audience not public. Once he’d viewed his creation he’d assess it and try to create something better - or maybe readjust the current creation.
In the modern age, especially in the film industry, the ‘art’ has been pushed toward commercialism. In this sense, I think this may be your point (?), the ease with which someone of reasonable talent can produce a piece of art that is liked across cultural gaps and generations is perhaps to dilute the import of the more prestigious talents? That said, no matter what we do it seems that those on the fringes are generally less recognised in their time and ‘suffer’ for their art rather than being sucked into the need for public recognition.
Has anything changed?
In more broadly defined terms of ‘creativity’ - be it in art, crafts, maths or scientific investigation - the term ‘genius’ comes into play. The root of the word ‘genius’ is in genesis, a beginning. Once some genius comes along everyone resists their meaning and then many fall prey to its seduction. The initial ‘genius’ of this person then loses its novelty over time and generations (no-one is particularly in awe of calculus, but when you think about the huge shift in understanding and knowledge this gave humanity it is jaw dropping - but not so at the time as no one fully understood where it would lead).
There has to be lulls and shifts in creativity - be it more prominent in one field of interest and dulled in another. What I find interesting is how a lack of creativity any particular field - which produces poor quality - helps to magnify previous geniuses and glorification of other ages of creativity. This, again, is not simply a matter of an ‘artistic’ endeavor and can be seen in politics with a craving for some preconceived Golden Age of humanity, some distant and magnificent Renaissance made to look bright and colourful in our times due to our bland assessment of human life in modernity.
Vibrancy exists out there. Vibrancy exists within us. The structured we require to organise our lives also inhibit us. The bold, the brazen and the brave step outside their comfort zones more than others and some gain something for humanity and other, probably many more others, fall short. Contrarily I mean something different by ‘brave’ or ‘brazen’ in that to embrace ‘fear’ and to ‘run away’ can lead to a necessary breakthrough (hence my previous comment about ‘freedom’ and ‘suffering’). Really I am talking about being, as cliche as it sounds, ‘true to oneself’ regardless of personal circumstances.
I’m wasn’t referring to the creative process when I mentioned subjective.
What I was viewing as subjective was your idea of results. But now I’m not sure of what exactly I was getting at there.
There seems to be the suggestion here that ‘the creative animal of today’ is the person who creates purely for the act of creating, without purpose except for the pleasure, and who is against monetisation and slavery. Yes?
I can relate to this. In some of my creative pursuits I have less of an intuitive grasp of the materials and how they interact than others, so it helps to produce ‘something’ earlier in the process with which I can interact (and perhaps also others can interact) before I’m able to see where it needs adjustment, or where it will ultimately fail. What is produced in these instances is often never meant to be a ‘product’ as such, and its use-value is only to help move the overall creative process forward, to demonstrate (only for me) whether or not I’m onto something, if I need to refine things, or if I should scrap a section of the project and start again on a different tack.
In this way, an artist can produce something that helps their audience to see where our broader projects such as life, being or society may need adjustment, where what we considered pivotal to these projects is nothing more than meaningless distraction - but can only be revealed once we interact with this perspective reflected back to us as a material object.
Now I realise that the word I was looking for was not subjectivity but hubris.
“ .. an artist can produce something that helps their audience to see where our broader projects such as life, being or society may need adjustment ...”
An artist has to earn a living though so the refinement of their craft - or that of any ‘non-artistic’ endeavor - rarely goes hand-in-hand with public appeal; arguably it must refuse to seek public appeal to be of any dynamic force (there are obvious counter arguments to this, I’m speaking in generalities).
Hubris: The idea that the artist can steer people towards seeing where adjustments need to be made in life, being or society. What adjustments, whose adjustments, for what purpose?
But I wasn’t referring to you, unless you made that comment elsewhere.
OK, fair enough. But why? Why describe creativity - an everyday concept centrally associated with ... creating something - as something else? Why distract attention from its prime feature? Why take away from its prime feature, and focus instead on something that communicates a much lesser act than creation? What does your perspective gain us, in this discussion of creativity? :chin:
There was no supposition that something was wrong intended, it just seems like lots and lots of work is being produced and received by the public and there isn’t really any clear modern concept of why anyone is really doing it.
Your position seems in line with Brett. You both believe the creator and the receiver to be clearly defined separate entities, that the creative has a set of clearly defined properties that isn’t affected substantially by environmental factors. I do agree that this is a virtue, but by no means defines an ideal way of being. If all that mattered was the creator, the work is all a sort of collective self-gratification. To be realistic the artisit doesnt have reason to exist in a vacuum.
Again, I wouldn't say I'm describing it as something else, something that's not creativity, something that's different than creativity, and I wouldn't say that I'm describing it as something less than creativity. I'm describing creativity.
I agree with this. This is why I ascribe so little value to it, and why I look on it as the remains of something that had reason to exist and was born from the strongest of instincts, that being creation, and why what is produced today is the ghost of this instinct, as opposed to acts of creation that actually have an effect on us and our world, even though, as I’ve said, they seem to be only modifications. And also, as I said, these acts of creation are now owned by professionals, so that the ordinary person views acts of creation as an act of a specific group: medicine, research, science, infrastructure, virtually everything about our societies. So these creative acts that thrived in these fields in the past are now being slowly strangled through corporate objectives.
But the paragraph you’ve quoted here reflects societal (and my own personal) response to the creative work of others over time, not my own ability. When we see aspects of our lives or society reflected back to us in a certain way, it can wake us up to the futility or ridiculousness of it, or to its beauty and grace, in a way we don’t always see from our place in it.
As @I like sushi explained, this kind of work is being ‘true to oneself’ - that it becomes public is often guided by the unselfish thought that someone else might get something from it. And that it sells is because someone else does get something from it.
If you think this is hubris, so be it. I’m past the point of apologising for seeing the world differently or pretending to agree with the ‘objective’ stance on how the world works just because I can’t prove otherwise. I will interact with the universe as I see it just like everyone else, make my unique contribution to it, and perhaps time will prove me crazy or visionary - I’m ok with either.
I gathered that. :smile: But the way you're describing it is misleading and obscure, to me. So I'm wondering what you think your perspective gains us? How does it help?
So you seek evidence for the benefits that creativity, and maybe art, offers? I think a scientific analysis might be misplaced here. Some creativity is done for its own sake, perhaps because the artist has something to say to their fellow humans. I practised creativity in my work because I loved to do it (and also for the wage :wink: ).
Don't artists share in the 'ownership' of creativity? I agree that there is creativity in all of the disciplines you mention, but it is generally denied, even by the very practitioners that are doing it. But science is advanced only by creativity, whether it be seeing a vision of a benzene ring in the flames of a fire, or something else. Inspiration. Imagination. Novelty. Fantasy. Creativity.
It tells us what we're actually doing when it comes to creativity.
So you think it's helpful to describe Picasso's Guernica (falling back to that example) as a rearrangement? In this example, we presumably view the work as a painting, that rearranges existing canvas and paints (or colour and lines)? Isn't that a trivial observation that takes away from whatever meaning and import the artist managed to incorporate into the work, not forgetting the meaning received and understood by the viewer (which might not be the meaning the artist intended, but that's art for you!!).
People usually create artworks because they're enough of a fan of the medium that they want to learn how to perform that medium themselves. Most people wind up having desires (fantasies?) of being able to do the medium in a manner that can earn them a couple extra bucks (sometimes as well as earn the attraction of their preferred gender for romantic partners), if not make a living for them, so typically people create stuff that's some combo of:
(a) what they'd like to experience as a fan--where people figure there are bonus points for having relatively unusual tastes so that they're creating stuff that's relative unique,
balanced with
(b) what they believe might attract at least a niche/cult following.
So in short, usually the aim is to produce stuff that's partially designed to please oneself and others with more or less the same tastes, and partially designed to be able to attract (or maintain if one has already attracted) a currently viable audience.
Meaning can't be literally "embedded" into anything. What especially artists realize is that one is producing stuff that works as a "meaning catalyst"--for the majority of folks who like to focus on reading meaning into things (as opposed to folks who approach works more on a formalist level), but everyone is going to apply their own meaning, so usually it's to your benefit to keep things a bit more ambiguous/vague, because that aids everyone reading their most significant-to-them interpretations into the work.
The way you do this, though, is by arranging formal elements into structures--by approaching the work on more of a formalist level yourself.
Yes I also see things the same way, but I get the feeling that it’s like playing ping pong in a tennis court. I don’t see how with such a mass of semi-aimless creators for them not to be horribly taken advantage of by capitalists and as before I used the slave hyperbole but it’s not that far off.
If our notion of creativity extends beyond this it would probably give the creators more power.
And why does there need to be? It is like me asking you why you like this or that colour and then demanding a ‘reason’ for this. I write and draw things because I get something from it. What I get from it is not really something I can explain anymore than I can explain the intricacies of the process (if there is such a thing?)
Art, and ‘creativity’ generally speaking, is a mysterious phenomenon. There are obvious subjective benefits and in some cases these things can be empirically measured in part (although such items of measure are vague - music is roughly discerned through harmonics and such).
It seems we'll have clear up our terms before we make much progress in this conversation. What you've said so far confuses me. Here's a first pass:
For starters, what is your conception of "creativity"? What's the difference between "creative" labor and other sorts of labor, in your view? It sounds as though you have in mind the sort of thing that has often been called "art", the sort of practice and labor that culminates in products sometimes called "artworks".
I see no reason to suppose that "creative animals" are "constituted" any differently today than at other times.
How shall we distinguish "forms of creativity" from each other? Of course we design new sorts of technology; and corresponding modes of production, distribution, and consumption; and corresponding media, techniques, and outlets for "creative" work... Computer graphics provide novel means of visual (re-)presentation that were not available to da Vinci or Picasso, for instance. Nevertheless, at a generic level, works of visual art created by various techniques in various media may be said to have a common "form", the form of visual presentation. Arguably in this respect, if our classification becomes more specific, it matters more whether the object is in 2 or 3 or 4 dimensions, than what particular materials and techniques produced it. Considerations along these lines direct us to the origins of our word "aesthetic".
Aristotle claimed that artwork has no utility, and if he was right in his age, then it seems this is not a recent development. But I'd reject that Aristotelian claim, at least in the way it's typically characterized. If anyone uses or would use an artwork, then it has use-value; art in general has many uses in human society; and an artwork always has some utility to the art-worker who produces it, as the production of the work is an exercise in the practice of the craft that produces such works.
What do you mean when you say "[t]he creativity of today is both against monetization, but also ascribes virulently to a lottery system of value", and on what grounds do you make this claim? It seems to me an awful lot of stuff -- more than ever? -- that passes for "artwork" is monetized, and an awful lot of artists whose work is not monetized are scrambling to get it monetized. Moreover, it seems this has often been the case in the past, wherever perhaps distribution of surplus has been sufficient to keep starving artists from starving outright.
What has driven people to "make art" in all ages, regardless of whether they could exchange their works for money or for other strictly economic goods?
Somewhere in the course of a life, a craft-worker is drawn to a craft. How this comes to pass remains something of a mystery for us, like the formation of taste, though each of us who observes the transition may have a view on the matter. Surely the psychological incentives that seem to lure a craft-worker to a craft need not include any special concern for equipment, distribution, or economic compensation. For many craft-workers, the practice is the reward. If further incentive is required to offset some tolerable opportunity cost, there is the satisfaction in the works produced by the practice, and in the sharing of the craft and the craft-works in a community united by love of the craft, love of the works, love of the workers, and love of the whole community thus devoted.
There is no question we are drawn to it, by a sort of natural and fundamentally wholesome impulse as inherently cultural animals.
If we agree that exploitation of labor is a sort of "slavery", does it matter whether the labor is "creative" or not-creative, whatever that's said to mean? Consider: Is it worse to choose to exchange your "creative" labor for pay, to purchase another's "creative" labor, or to coerce billions of workers to work against their will without "creativity"?
What could it possibly mean for "creativity" to be "devoid of work"?
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wilde/oscar/dorian/preface.html
Well, first, lots of artists have been taken advantage of by managers, agents, record companies/studios/dealers/gallery owners etc. You don't have to be in the biz to be aware of that--bios/autobios of artists are replete with these stories. Part of the issue there is that a lot of artists (there are exceptions, of course) don't really have a "business personality." They especially don't want to have to make as big of a time commitment to business issues, being business-minded, as is necessary. I'm one of them, by the way, (And I lucked into having a wife who is business/economics-oriented as a career.)
I wouldn't call what I described "semi-aimless." Wanting to create work that is a combo of self-pleasing and that can gain enough of an audience that one can earn at least part of one's living from what one is doing is a "complete," worthwhile aim in my view. And the latter part of it--gaining enough of an audience to earn at least part of one's living from what one is doing--is not at all easy to do. It's not easy to connect with enough people to the extent needed for that, or at least to get any momentum going--it's a very momentum-oriented thing, in the sense of people tending to react a bit sheep-like. You need to be able to build a "wave" of social response--the difficult thing is trying to get that going, at least in a particular niche, and then lots of people will follow along with the wave (though keep in mind that after you've built a wave, momentum/waves can work negatively just as well).
But even aside from that, there are far more people who desire to make a living with arts & entertainment than can be practically supported. The vast, vast majority of people who try to do it are not going to really get anywhere, because there's just way too much competition for the available opportunities (for making any significant money with it). So that's part of the motivation for at least doing work that pleases oneself. At least that's some reward to it . . . but of course most either give up and don't bother at all after awhile, or it gets pushed way to the side as a hobby akin to fishing or something--you do it a bit when you've got enough free time for it, but "just for fun." Almost everyone has to do something for a living, and that, plus family commitments, etc., get in the way.
That may be your observation but you must admit there have been some changes. I can only appeal to common experience here.
I’ve mentioned all this already so don’t understand what your counter position is? Today there is arguably more ‘bland’ art out there due to the market being flooded and any slightly ‘new’ fashion/trend will seem greater than it actually is due to the superficial spectator I’d imagine whilst the real ground breakers will generally pop up from more ‘underground’ movements.
There's an interest in keeping the machine going the way it was going, which is why P2P file-sharing was fought against so much, for example.
This sounds about right to me.
Perhaps we can define a "free worker" in terms of freedom from the socioeconomic need to exchange one's own labor for other economic goods and services. I suppose one who may reasonably expect access to an adequate supply of economic goods for the remainder of his or her lifetime, without any formal obligation to exchange labor in return, is not subject to the same forces of coercion by economic means.
I'm not sure I follow. What does it mean to say the receiver is blindsided?
How deep does this contract go? Isn't it only a contract for the seller to supply to the buyer a product for which there is some demand?
The contract itself does not specify the socioeconomic conditions in which this transaction takes place.
It could be one loves nothing better than the cottage manufacture of fine artisanal widgets. Now if I'm making them anyway, and people want to pay me for as many widgets as I see fit to part with, at prices I see fit to accept.... Doesn't this have the markings of a happy bargain?
So far as I can see, the problem is not with the generic logic of the transaction, but with the socioeconomic conditions in which the exchange is embedded.
Could be I'm sick of widgets, but don't see what other option I have, short of watching my family starve on the streets.
Sorry at this point if it sounds disorganized. But I’m referring to the contract not at the social level but at the individual. It is the disassociated relation where the creator and receiver depend on one another symbolically without real physical dependence. I suppose a sort of cultural contract would be better fit to describe it. That for my experience as a viewer going to, say, an art gallery expecting to find certain works of a certain type I maintain that expectation with another type, and this goes for whether or not the work is ‘received.’
I’m sorry if this sounds muddled. I’m trying to be clear.
I visit a music festival and purchase a vinyl disc. This musician might take this as a symbol that this type of music has pleased me, and produce more like it, where in reality it was the cultural act of buying the record itself that was of value for me the receiver, and wasn’t dependent on my buying his record or even any record at all. These two perspectives fall out of alignment.
You mean that you might buy an album of an artist you saw at a festival despite not liking the music you heard?
Just curious why you'd do that.
I'm curious why people do things. I'm just curious why you might buy an album of music you don't like.
Someone mentioned my anthropological view. I’d go along with that. The creative act is a human instinct: to fiddle with things, mix them up, try different fits, stuff we all do. It’s also observed in the form of tool making in some animals, more commonly in apes. This has nothing to do with art. Art is something made visible by using the creative act as a tool, it’s not just the creative act. Art is a metaphor. First there’s the idea, then the visible metaphor. The creative act gives form to the metaphor.
Art for mankind runs along different lines than does the creative act. Evolutionary the creative act has made us what we are, it’s our great advantage. Once there were great acts, radical and life changing for everyone who new of it. Today those acts are far removed from their origins. As I said, today they appears as modifications. Modern society seems to get by on this, but getting by may not be good enough in the long term. So the ‘creative animal’ still exists, but only like an animal in the zoo.
Somehow the art world took ownership of the word creativity and gave it some purified, priestly meaning: us and them. Art equally is now like an animal in the zoo. Once, in a village, a boy may have been frightened walking past a carving of some animal or part human form attached to a tree. Maybe he thought some spirit lived in that mask, or the mask was the spirit. The person who made that mask was the artist and he wasn’t painting flowers.
Today, most, artists pretend to be this man. They try to make art have some sociological meaning, but it’s not really there unless they say so. No one’s scared of a sculpture anymore. And of course today it’s importance is valued in dollars. Artists try to imbue their work with some spirit, but it doesn’t work in our world like that anymore. Like everything else ‘the creative animal and ‘the art animal’ serve Mammon. That’s just where we are on the evolutionary curve. The creative act and the art act don’t die, they can’t, but they remain with us, a bit like the human appendix. Maybe they’re just sleeping, waiting for their moment.
What cycle of despair? What unsuccessful people? If you take a job at the beginning of a career your wage is low, as you develop more skills your income improves. The quality of your skills moves you into a higher income.
If someone takes a design job to support himself while he works on his own art form then that’s his choice. He could if he wants, if it defiles him that much, work in a factory.
My experience is that people in design get much better wages than those who work in factories, or an office, or drive a taxi.
Once, when we were very young children, everything was a great event: radical and life changing. Today most events appear as only modifications on previous events. We’re no longer particularly surprised by life.
So is it the events that have become objectively less ‘great’, or that the novelty - the amount of new information - is gained from each event in a smaller proportion than when we were children? Does this mean there is objectively less new information available for us in the universe now, or only in our perspective of it?
The more we do the same things, the less we learn, and the less capacity we believe we have.
An interesting point. I’m going to think about it. Maybe it’s also possible we don’t like contemporary big ideas and ignore them, or purposely reduce them in importance, make them go away, so to speak.
You said you might buy an album after hearing the music (live) and not liking it. I was curious why you might do that.
You said: "I visit a music festival and purchase a vinyl disc. This musician might take this as a symbol that this type of music has pleased me, and produce more like it, where in reality it was the cultural act of buying the record itself that was of value for me the receiver,"
So we have:
(a) you visited the music festival, after which
(b) you purchased an album from one of the artists at the festival, and
(c) the musician might take this as a symbol that the music pleased you, BUT you point out that
(d) in reality, this isn't why you purchased the album.
Which implies that the music didn't please you. Yet you purchased the album after hearing the music.
Because we know that for example, some people could have bought it on a whim, or because they heard of us and they're taking a chance on it, but then it turns out that they don't like it.
Or, for example, someone who likes it bought a copy to try to interest someone else in it. But maybe the gift-receiver turns out to not like it.
Etc--although this sort of thing was more of a factor prior to the last 10-15 years. The Internet and streaming have changed things a lot. The number of people who buy albums on a whim without ever sampling any of the music is pretty negligible at this point.
At any rate, if we're selling 500k copies of a relase, we can be pretty sure that some of the people who bought it liked it, but we don't know just how many, just what percentage, we don't know just how much they like it aside from what people might say in reviews we might see, how they feel about it compared to other albums we released (ditto the last parenthetical), whether they'd rather we did more similar music or not, etc.
To a large extent it's always a shot in the dark. You know that there's some correlation to the gigs you're doing, the media mentions and airplay you're getting, the advertising you're doing, stylistic development you're undergoing, the amount of appreciation you're getting from fans, etc. and sales, but it's very difficult to ever directly attribute sales shifts to particular things, or to common opinions of the music--unless, for the latter, there's a major consensus about something considered monumentally good or horrible, so that everyone is talking about it. And at any rate, if you have the degree of fame required to know the latter, you can keep sales/a career going pretty indefinitely no matter what you're releasing, because you're popular enough, and had at least past work considered significant enough, that you can just keep riding the coattails of that.
Did the creator make it something, or the receiver? Should we start accrediting our work to others? I dont believe so. But it seems clear that creativity is somehow engaged with this power even before the creative act takes place. So thereby when the creator says ‘I upload my paintings to photobucket because I love to paint and to have someone view it,’ and the receiver says ‘I love to view paintings in this form please make more.’ This doesn’t imply we have a closed conservative system where one entity simply transfers creative energy to a product that is then received and transferred back in the form of demand.
It seems like your answer is right but the reasoning of your arguement isn’t totally firm. It goes a) fiddling, mixing, fitting are behaviours observed in animals and thus likely instinctually derived. b) Creativity involves these. c) Therefore creativity must be instinctually derived.
The issue is that it can be applied like this: a) running and jumping involve mostly legwork b) basketball involves running and jumping. c) therefore basketball must be mostly legwork.
I’m not saying that you’re wrong, in fact there is a lot of truth to this, but it seems something is being held back that is crucial to the connection you’re making between creativity and instinct.
That’s not quite what said.
This what I said:
“The creative act is a human instinct: to fiddle with things, mix them up, try different fits, stuff we all do. It’s also observed in the form of tool making in some animals, more commonly in apes.”
I believe it’s a human instinct. I’m happy to hear any theories you might have about it’s origins.
And I said our fiddling and mixing of things is evidence of the creative drive in us.
Then I said (because I’m not sure if it’s a human activity only) that apes may also do it, which seemed relevant because of our evolutionary connection,
Nothing is being held back except the serious work required to prove or support my theory.
The creative acts today and the ‘creative animal’ no longer resemble what they were in the past. It does suggest there are no longer free agents, because everything is tied into the economic society. So in that sense our personal creative acts are so small and without effect that they may as well not exist. Art may offer a sense of achievement, an outlet, but really it’s an act without true meaning, a re-enactment, a relic of the past.
The desire to act creatively, a basic human instinct, still exists but in a tamed form, because it’s only in the economic society that the ‘creative animal’ can act.
Originally the creative act created advantages to survival, if it was the right act then there was a payoff. The product of the successful creative act is a benefit. The only benefit of any value today is in money. If a creative act produces nothing tangible it dies.
The economic society owns all creative acts because it owns the benefits on offer. As a consequence all other ‘useless’ (having no economic value) creative acts fall away
My theory is that its origins run much deeper than instinct. Human creativity comes from a gradually developed capacity for awareness, enabling us to integrate new information, but I believe the drive to seek new information in the first place is inherent in all matter - and is limited by our evolutionary focus on productivity and survival, not enhanced by it.
For most animals this limitation is unconscious - the majority of physiological systems are necessarily limited in focus towards productivity and survival, so most of each organism’s energy is applied towards these aims. For these animals, the organism IS the infinite universe.
But then there are those of us who develop awareness of the organism as an ‘entity’ operating in a broader infinite ‘universe’. We develop the capacity to attribute abstract value and meaning (as additional dimension) to all interactions, and so we rationalise this application of energy to mean a priority for the organism, even as we recognise that other entities have different priorities, and that a broader ‘value’ system (objectivity) operates within the universe.
The development of the human creative animal began with this initial awareness of ‘self’, which opened up our capacity and unlocked an inherent desire to interact with an infinite universe on a new level, and see it as not just consisting of stimuli in time and space, but of entities, value and meaning. Acutely aware now of our physical vulnerability, those who survived found sufficient safety to “fiddle with things, mix them up, try different fits”, determining a network of relationships between these entities, values and meanings with which we must inevitably interact. For us, the physical world then became the ‘infinite’ universe. Meanwhile, for other animals, their capacity to grasp abstract concepts of value and meaning has been limited by their inability (or refusal) to recognise the organism as a ‘subject’ within a broader universe rather than the ‘objective’ universe itself.
Our current area of human creativity, then, is in developing awareness of the myriad of alternate value systems and how they interrelate within the broader universe, including an understanding of the ‘cosmos’ as a finite physical entity within an infinite ‘universal’ concept. But much of this current work lacks the courage to step outside the systems of ‘value’ or ‘meaning’ as a subjective dimension in how we interact. We try to conceptually relate an ‘objective’ physical universe to ‘the infinite’ without first acknowledging the subjectivity of the ‘physical’ world itself - just as we had to recognise the subjectivity of the ‘self’ before we could fully grasp the concept of an ‘infinite’ physical universe.
But I disagree that creative acts today are either tamed or stillborn - it’s only that most aren’t valued or meaningful within what we consider to be the ‘real world’. If you want to find genuine creative acts today, I suggest you look at those moments where a ‘creative genius’ seems to ‘lose touch’ with their audience (or with ‘reality’) and pursue a more ‘personal’ project, or take a look at what they started to produce as they went ‘off the rails’. The creativity will be in what they’re attempting (and probably failing) to actualise here, not in the quality or value of the work as determined by the industry, genre or medium, or in our ability to find meaning in it. Likewise, our creativity continues to develop and advance through interaction with any and all ‘failed’ attempts to produce valuable or meaningful works - from STEM and philosophy to art and politics.
But to see the attempt in the failure, one must understand it as creative process, not as a single act - just as we’re beginning to understand the universe and everything in it as an unfolding of interrelated processes rather than entities.
Quoting Possibility
What is this ‘awareness’? You seem to be saying that in the beginning was awareness, then came creativity.
Your quote states that “Human creativity comes from a gradually developed capacity for awareness”.
What does this gradual development stem from?
And without tools for survival how would the organism, us, survive, enough to develop awareness?
I have no idea how it happened but somehow man learned to make a fire, create fire from nothing. That must have come before awareness, otherwise he would have died and with it awareness.
And how is awareness passed on?
This is the source you mean? Awareness and seeking the source are the same, and its inherent?
But why did we, and not other life forms, not have a “focus towards productivity and survival”?
What was the break? What was behind it?
Edit: your posts seems to have the influence of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin about them.
Fire existed as a process in the environment before humans had the skill to ‘create’ it. A human learns from interacting with fire, developing awareness of it as part of his environment (including its benefits) before developing the skills to create it himself.
What I mean by awareness is receiving new information. We don’t so much pass on awareness as develop it through interaction. In my opinion, our capacity to receive, integrate and transmit new information is a physical process that has developed alongside natural selection, not as a matter of productivity or survival necessity itself. The evolution of the human being demonstrates an abandoning of survival features in favour of developing the capacity for increasing awareness, interconnectedness and collaborative achievement: from the brain and sensory organs to child-rearing, communicative ability and social structure.
IMHO Human creativity derives from a particular level of awareness, but general creativity (as a process of integrating new information) derives from an inherent drive that could be traced back to the origin of life and formation of the cosmos. My descriptions of this ‘drive’ are my own understanding of it, not a definition as such - which I’m not sure is possible.
I would find it difficult to view these as anything but survival features.
Of course. I understand that. I'm testing my own thoughts here.
Quoting Brett
Yes, that seems right. But, although creativity and art are, in some ways, distinct, we should remember that art is creative. Creation is at the heart of art; art cannot exist without it.
I agree - it does require a paradigm shift. We’ve learned to view traits as beneficial from either a survival perspective or a reproductive perspective, and this now comes as natural to us as apologetics to a fundamentalist. But in terms of evolution I wonder, for instance, how we determine that the live birth of a child, who is then completely dependent on an interactive parent for several years, is a survival feature. Do you get the feeling that we’re forcing some features and behaviour to fit the theory because there’s no alternative reasoning and it appears to work for everything else?
Human behaviour along the lines of altruism or love seem to suggest that we have the capacity to override our survival instinct - or is it perhaps to undermine it? This is not an exclusively human capacity, after all. Many animals ignore their instinct to survive and give their lives to a greater ‘cause’. Many religious traditions also suggest that we’ve lost our way, and are trying to regain some position we once had through these acts of unconditional love and altruism, selflessness and martyrdom - that there is a greater calling to connect with and help others that inspires us to ignore our survival instinct in the process. Traditional thought has been that this calling comes from some extraneous ‘being’ - I believe there is no evidence to support this, but I can’t ignore evidence that we can be inspired to risk our life and even give it up for love, creativity or the pursuit of new information.
Religious hocus pocus aside, I think we can either twist altruism, love, creativity, etc into survival traits of some kind, or we can consider the possibility that there is something we haven’t quite grasped yet about what drives us. I understand your preference for the former and I might be completely misguided in this, but to me it feels a bit like squeezing a round peg through a square hole.
Totally agree.
Edit: what I meant was that the creative act is not always artistic.
Yes, I do sometimes consider that possibility. The birth of a child is not something I think a man and woman sat down and considered and decided that a child added to their chances of survival. But eventually it’s possible they saw having male children as beneficial to their survival when they have grown. It doesn’t take much thinking for a male to impregnate a female. Nature seems to have sided with rape here.
There’s a lot in your post I don’t agree with, but then it becomes a conversation about evolution, which I’m happy to have, but it’s for another conversation, unless everyone wants to go that way here. Though I have to say I don’t go for ‘the selfish gene’ idea.
* - I claim only that creation is at the heart of the creative process. Important to state there is more to the creative process than creation, though. :up:
I understand the confusion. The suffix ‘-ive’ turns a verb into a tendency, inclination, character or quality. This, for me, suggests that the potential is known to exist, but doesn’t require completion of the act in order to be true. Someone doubting this tendency, though, will obviously require a completed act as evidence.
But in my view a specific completed creation (particularly a successful one) need not be part of a process that tends towards creation in general.
Any specific completed creation is surely the result of a creative process?
It can only be an anticipated result while the process is occurring. Because a process is still creative even if a result is not yet specified. For it to be purely creative, the process should be sufficiently open-ended so that, while some kind of result may be anticipated, no specific result/creation is expected to be completed within a certain timeframe - otherwise the creative process is limited.
Most creative process, particularly in industry, is necessarily limited because a result is expected in within a timeframe. These observable or measurable limitations provide evidence of the process - they are not the process.
We book-end the creative process with a nothing and a something because we can’t measure or define the process itself. But in my experience, creative process begins with nothing more than awareness of potential that arguably was always there, and ends only when awareness ends.
When I ‘finish’ a creative work as part of my job, it’s only according to the specifications of the job that I can refer to it as ‘complete’. The process in my experience is ongoing because I am still aware of potential in the work. I can theoretically repurpose all of its components to meet alternative specifications if required.
Consider an early human who must continually be aware of and then run from wild animals outside of his cave in order to find food and water to survive. A human who runs from an animal towards a bushfire will escape the animal but perish in the fire, producing a null result in terms of evolution.
But a creative human not in immediate danger who observes this situation can recognise the potential of fire to deter wild animals. By integrating this new information with:
- what he knows from interacting with fire in situations when he isn’t trying to survive a wild animal but instead trying to survive a fire, and
- what he knows from interacting with fire when he isn’t threatened by either the fire or wild animals,
the creative human can then determine a way to harness the potential of fire in deterring wild animals, thereby increasing awareness of his own capacity - in this instance for survival.
I see human creativity as an additional dimension of awareness that enables us to integrate information from both stimulus-response and memory to increase our awareness of potential. As described in my previous post, this potential is not necessarily limited to survival - rather it is our focus on survival that limits it by requiring a specific result.
This is not the same is creating fire with a flint or rubbing a sharp stick against wood to create heat and then a flame.
Would you agree?
Though your fire story could be regarded as a creative act, or thought, that has a beneficial result. I really don’t know how to classify that.
Of course there’s the possibility that it may never have happened.
The result is purely chance. Early man was not seeking a specific result. You cannot say I’m going to invent a specific thing, because you must already be aware of aspects of that thing. Once the original thing is made real then it can be applied in different ways. This is the advantage that ‘creating’ gives to man, the instinct or desire for ‘fiddling’ throws his genes forward.
It’s the need to classify it that complicates our understanding of it. It’s not like humans ‘creating fire’ can be mapped out or clearly defined as a single, linear process with a start and finish. It’s a complex, multi-dimensional process of integrating information across a wide variety of experiences. To suggest that someone happened to be idly rubbing a sharp stick against wood and accidentally ‘created’ fire, then looked for different ways to apply it, is ignorant of the wide variety of ways we receive, process and integrate information.
I’m not suggesting that early man intended to invent fire. Early man intended to not be killed - this is a specific result. He had to already know that fire existed, and that it could be ‘created’ under certain conditions, before he could determine how he could create it when required for the specific purpose of survival.
Chance is observing (and remembering) the spark that occurs when a flint rock happens to fall on another. Chance is happening upon a fire in its infancy and observing a spark turn into a flame. A combination of chance encounters with fire over time, as well as deliberate interactions (fiddle with things, mix them up, try different fits) both with and without requiring specific results - all of these subjective experiences (including internal thought processes) were integral to a ‘completed’ act that first demonstrated ‘man creating fire’.
But the entire creative process on which this ‘completed’ act depends can’t be described as creating fire or surviving without distorting our view of it - reducing it to less than the complex web of its necessary contributions. Hence a specific result, anticipated or otherwise, cannot be used to accurately describe the creative process. If we’re hoping to understand creativity and what it means to be creative - to possess a tendency or inclination to create - I think we have to get past this focus on a completed creation.
It’s hard for me to make clear, and I maybe missing something myself, that without a creative act that contributes towards survival there will be no second act. And as a consequence, only those who can manipulate that creative act will survive. The focus on survival doesn’t limit potential because of, as you say, requiring a result. It’s only the result, and a specific beneficial result, that enables that potential to live on. In the past any creative act without a tangible result, without contributing towards wellbeing, results in atrophy. Of course no one can know which act is going to be beneficial, natural selection sorts that out. Only the most beneficial acts survive because they travel with the creator who survives and thrives because of the benefits of the creative act.
I may or may not be making sense. I’m open to others who might be able to clarify what I’m saying, or prove me wrong.
Quoting Brett
It seems like you’re referring to a particular survival situation as an entity: those who can create fire will survive, while those who don’t have sufficient experiences to make a correlation between the flint, wood and their own hand movements will... freeze to death? I’m not sure what specific situation or pending threat you have in mind that is averted by being able to create fire. In a certain life-and-death situation, yes - only those who can make fire will survive. But to me, the creative act incorporates the integration of all the necessary information/experience in order to recognise one’s own capacity to use making fire as a tool for survival, and act on that awareness when the situation arises. Of course that recognition may only occur in the moment, but the information must already be a part of the system.
I’m trying to offer a different perspective here, because I get the impression that you are attempting to describe a creative act from the outside. Have you ever tried to describe it from within the act? As a participant - not as an observer or even a creator at the completion of the act, but as someone being creative right now?
When you see another human ‘creating’ something, what you can observe or deduce from them about the process is taken to be the creative act in itself. But what about when it is you being creative? Do you recognise the difference between the question ‘how am I being creative?’, and ‘how does it appear that I am being creative?’
This is what happens after the creative act. The creative act of starting a fire is followed by the use of it, being able to ‘recognise one’s own capacity to use making fire as a tool for survival’.
Quoting Possibility
I would think that fire contributed to our development in more ways than just keeping warm.
The creative act is as random as that. Not all creations are good or moral. Even if the creative process is long and drawn out, taking and using, thinking and adjusting, even if it takes years for the realisation of an idea, nothing of it will survive if there is no beneficial result. The moment the animal (man) finally struck with the flint and made the connection he could repeat it, that’s the result. Without that you may still call it the creative process, which it is, but it’s still a mechanism, if you like, that contributes to survival.
Admittedly there were many previous little creative acts that went nowhere and appear to be done for the sake of being creative, but if there’s no result then what can it affect. If there was only the creative act, the process, and that was enough, would we be here? How long can this process go on without effect? To live like that is an indulgence, the threat to survival is not real if pointless acts are carried out and there are no consequences. No animal I know of can live and survive like that, except the domesticated dog or an animal in the zoo.
Of course the creative act opens us up to other potentials, but it can’t keep opening up potentials endlessly, forever. A potential is exactly that, the capacity to develop into something. What is a potential that never develops into something?
The act, participating, creating, being creative right now is the description from inside.
I agree that mixing things up is a factor in the creative process. I disagree that this ‘desire for fiddling’ encapsulates creativity. It is how we process and integrate information as we ‘fiddle’ or generally experience the universe that gives us our creative advantage. We can fiddle all we want, but if we couldn’t recognise and correlate between entities, value and meaning, then we wouldn’t be where we are now.
I agree that the creative process contributes to survival. I disagree that it must contribute to survival in order to exist. I understand that this is difficult to follow - unless you can relate to the experience of being aware of partially formed or continually evolving ideas.
I agree and have already stated that the creative process alone is not enough. Something needs to be produced from it, otherwise we lose track of it - but to call it a ‘result’ in terms of a ‘completed’ act is false, because the creative process is ongoing. I can produce something that attempts to demonstrate where I am in the process right now, but by the time the paint is dry on a tangible result, I could begin another to demonstrate how much the process has already evolved. An example of this is the evolution of iPhone technology.
And I disagree that there are pointless creative acts, because all acts have the potential to advance the creative process - just as the man who escapes a wild animal only to perish in the fire can provide vital new information for another man observing that may not be immediately apparent. The more we are aware of these creations that ‘failed’ or disappeared with their creator, the more information we have at our disposal. It pays to be aware, to interconnect and to enable others to achieve, even as we fail.
Quoting Brett
Are you sure about that?
Quoting Brett
A potential isn’t exactly anything - it’s more open-ended than you might think. Potential is the capacity to develop. I don’t see specific potentials, therefore, but rather ‘potential’ as a source to draw from.
Integrating information from a long series of failed experiences, even across several generations, can increase our chance of success. Likewise, pursuing information from anomalies and atypical data that might otherwise have been discarded by scientific process helps to advance our understanding of the universe. This is how the creative process operates alongside natural selection and rational thought, to increase overall achievement.
The word ‘fiddling may have become a bit too literal. By ‘fiddling’ I do mean how we “correlate between entities, value and meaning“. That is being creative, maybe being conscious and being creative are the same thing: “how we process and integrate information”.
Quoting Possibility
I can’t see it any other way.
Quoting Possibility
Call it a step, then.
Quoting Possibility
The creative process and rational thought work together, natural selection has the final say.
Quoting Possibility
Yes:
Quoting Pattern-chaser
This is what I mean by examining the creative process from within the process - it exists for the creator long before it contributes to survival, and has the potential to continue existing even as his creations fail to contribute to survival (whether he falls back on another survival method or perishes). All it takes is for someone to be aware of it.
Quoting Brett
Not the way I see it. ‘Final’ say on what, exactly? The creative process is such that there is no finality except what we make of it. Every step in the process has the potential to be a dead end or a step forward, depending on how we look at it and interact with it.
Quoting Brett
This is how we’ve been creative in the past, but I don’t think it’s how we’re being creative now. I will try to explain what I mean by this, because the way I see it, to be creative now requires us to be conscious in a further dimension. Instead of interacting with an objective self as universe (like most animals), humans developed the capacity to view the previously ‘universal’ self as a finite entity within an infinite physical universe, where we interacted with everything not as stimuli but as other entities from specific positions within space and time, to which we attributed objective values and meaning.
But we’re now developing our capacity to view the previously ‘universal’ physical cosmos as a complex web of finite processes within an infinitely unfolding universe. Here, we interact not as entities, but as interconnected processes on complex trajectories across spacetime, value systems and networks of meaning.
While I agree that a specific creation can result from the creative process, I disagree that a creative process ‘surely’ results in a specific completed creation. I hope you follow the distinction.
From the creator’s perspective, a pure result of the creative process is always a work in progress, never a ‘completed’ creation. It is ‘completed’ only in terms of the limitations of product specifications, contractual agreements, value systems, etc. To anticipate a specific result in the creative process is to limit the process. It is not a requirement of the creative process to ‘complete’ a creation, let alone a specific one.
I suppose that's one way to put it. Would you say this "symbolic dependence" involves something like an intention, promise, obligation... of the parties to the contract?
Quoting kudos
No need to apologize. I'm here to exercise my power of speech, to sort out my own muddled thinking, to practice interpreting the sayings of others. One of the best reasons to engage in philosophical conversation, if you ask me.
Now if I catch your drift, it sounds like you have in mind something like the expectations or preconceptions with which a consumer engages an artwork, perhaps including expectations of skill-level, medium, genre, style, theme and subtext, even the cultural "identity" of the artist... Is that the right ballpark?
In what sense shall we think of such expectations along the lines of a "contract"? Interesting suggestion.
Quoting kudos
Yes, it sounds like this musician has jumped to conclusions.
What if 300,000 units are sold this year? Then I suppose it's reasonable for the musician to infer that the music has something to do with it. Though of course many "extramusical" factors are often involved in the consumption of musical works.
It’s in the right ball park. Unfortunately, in my view there are always challenges to discussing these sorts of things because the language used infers a sort of linear relation that if x happens you always get y, and this sort of talk seems to cause misconceptions at such a microscopic level.
For artists or general public it makes complete sense to view the whole creative process as a type of game where they’re the player. But when we bring up the ideas of creator/receiver for serious introspection, I think it makes sense to include the ways in which those ideas are somehow artificial. Artificial in the sense of being both man-made and of an artifice or external appearance that seems to distract inquiry from their nature. In this way I’m trying to establish the contract that those involved in the creative process adhere to that is foreign to their own perspectives.
Because technologically we’ve reached a level where the cultural conceptions of the creator and the receiver can work almost solely independent and unaffected, we now have more need I think, when considering the process intellectually, to consider them. When I draw a picture on my personal notepad, To me I’m drawing from my experience and spending some time to get better, but when we evaluate the true value such an act has, we can also consider it’s importance as, say, a cultural act of keeping the notion of the drawing or subject alive, and other such mechanisms. I think a large portion of modern creativity is taken up by these mechanisms that we only have knowledge of theoretically. Thus we can’t build such massive structures of thought on simple premises as we’d prefer to.
a) White rappers influence the kids to wear baggy pants, talk slang and change rap music
b) People start wearing baggy pants, talking slang and rap music underwent change, which influenced the production of white rappers
c) All of the above
d) None of the above
e) From certain perspectives a/b/c/d can be both all true and all false
All we can say for sure is that the act of producing white rap had some significance to reality. So when we're talking about creativity, in my opinion we're speaking about these sorts of processes, where we can substitute the white rapper for the creator. Philosophy then needs to be extra careful about the use of language and internal logic that it employs in order to explain these faculties. But at the same time, the white rappers of the world and the baggy pants wearers may still need to retain their freedoms and liberties to do what they do without being encumbered by all this. However, when it comes to a full philosophical examination, that would bring with it a feeling of inadequacy and misdirection to ignore it.