Originality
Monday, October 19, 2009 by Maria
Thinking back on last weeks lecture, a thought struck my mind upon the idea of today's originality and how Prosumer participation impacts this originality. For example if you take a character from The Simpson's and a character from South Park and fuse the two into one storyline, (even if the storyline is your own original idea) the characters are not and always remain the ideas of someone else (e.g. Matt Groening - creator of The Simpsons). Therefore a Prosumer's work of such is never fully authentic seeing how they are often reluctant to borrow a part of the initial original in order to produce their own version of what has already been done.
Therefore, this might mean that rather than increasing the consumer's creativity, arguably for some this may be doing just the opposite. Originality becomes a lot more frail when it is reused on numerous occasions, limiting the chances for those using it to create something completely of there own. Originality may keep decreasing as fusions and parodies of a wide range of diverse work keep being made with the time and effort which could have gone into the creation of authentic personal production.
Moreover, a work of authenticity is a lot harder to create than that of a mere mashed-up reproduction. Therefore, seemingly to our advantage the creative process is made far easier for the Prosumer through its simplified chance to use parts which have already been provided for us. A picture colouring book serves as a good symbolic example for today's Prosumer society; the colouring book being the media, web etc, and the child being the Prosumer. Whilst the child learns how to colour in accordance to their own views of how the picture should or could look like, they are actually not developing their own imagination in terms of drawing their own picture seeing how it has already been provided for them.
Hence, what so kindly enables us to create a personalized version of someone else's work also limits our own creative process in truly making something of our own. Because we choose to lean on the work of other's, we ourselves become more creatively infantile as we let this work carry a large portion of our ideas.
Therefore, this might mean that rather than increasing the consumer's creativity, arguably for some this may be doing just the opposite. Originality becomes a lot more frail when it is reused on numerous occasions, limiting the chances for those using it to create something completely of there own. Originality may keep decreasing as fusions and parodies of a wide range of diverse work keep being made with the time and effort which could have gone into the creation of authentic personal production.
Moreover, a work of authenticity is a lot harder to create than that of a mere mashed-up reproduction. Therefore, seemingly to our advantage the creative process is made far easier for the Prosumer through its simplified chance to use parts which have already been provided for us. A picture colouring book serves as a good symbolic example for today's Prosumer society; the colouring book being the media, web etc, and the child being the Prosumer. Whilst the child learns how to colour in accordance to their own views of how the picture should or could look like, they are actually not developing their own imagination in terms of drawing their own picture seeing how it has already been provided for them.
Hence, what so kindly enables us to create a personalized version of someone else's work also limits our own creative process in truly making something of our own. Because we choose to lean on the work of other's, we ourselves become more creatively infantile as we let this work carry a large portion of our ideas.