100 Things Number 3: Creativity and Originality

[dreamflower]

Creativity and Originality

This post I think will be more questions than answers: how important is the concept of originality to creativity, and what actually constitutes originality?

We live in a world already made. We use the colors we see, the sounds we hear, the words we read, the foods we taste, the textures we feel, and we recombine them in order to make the things we make. In this sense, all art is a re-mix.

And yet we come up with so many different and new combinations.

I'm going to pose some scenarios:

You take a walk, and you see a beautiful scene in front of you-- a lake, a blue sky, a mountain in the background, and some trees in the foreground lush with blazing fall foliage. You are so inspired by the beauty of this scene that you want to create something to remind you of your awe.

So you take a photograph. Is the photo creative? Is it more creative if you take the time to get the perfect angle and shot than if you hold the camera up and snap?

Or you take the photograph home and use it to make a painting of the scene. Is the painting more creative than the photo? If you make the painting as close a representation of the real scene as possible, is that less creative than if you decide to put an extra tree on one side of the foreground and a couple less on the other side?

Or what if you are not a painter, so instead of painting the scene, you write a poem about it? Is that more or less creative than painting a picture that looks like what you actually saw?

What if you did not see it yourself? What if, instead, you take a class on painting, and this is a scene the teacher saw and painted, and now in order to learn, you are to copy her painting using the techniques she is teaching you-- is that less creative than painting the picture from your own experience?

There are other students in the class. All of you are trying to paint exactly what she painted, but you notice at the end of the class that none of the other students' paintings look exactly like it, nor do they look like yours. There are all sorts of subtle differences between each and every painting, even though they are all of the exact same scene. Do the differences constitute originality?

What if you see the painting in a book that gives you step by step directions for reproducing it yourself. If you paint it exactly as the directions say, is it less creative than if you decide to substitute some other colors for the ones given in the instructions?

What if you see an oil painting of the scene, and you decide to paint the same scene in watercolors or acrylic? Is that more or less original than copying the painting in oils?

What if you see a painting of this scene that someone else did, and you decide to use that painting as the basis for making something else, such as a quilt incorporating that scene-- is that more creative than simply copying the painting with another painting?

If you happened to be a musician, and the scene inspires you to write a song about it, is the song more creative if you are singing about a scene you saw personally? Is it less creative if you only see it in a picture someone else made?

What if you read a poem someone else wrote about the scene, and you decide to write a story using that scene as a setting for your story? Is that more or less creative than the poem?

Let's take it another step further-- the person who saw the scene took a photo, which inspired someone else to do a painting. The painting inspired someone else to write a song about it. The song inspired another person to write a story. You are then inspired to write a fanfiction of the story. Is any person in any step along the way less creative than the person before? Is any one of them more or less original than the others?

What is original? What does it mean to do something no one else has ever done? If no two people ever make something exactly alike, is that originality? Or does there have to be intent to be original?

I see "creativity" as the act of "making". To me, all of the possibilities above are describing someone who is involved in the act of creating something. The impulse to create is not necessarily tied to making something "original", that is to say, something new.

How do you feel about the importance of originality?