Top | Newest First | Oldest First
Well the way I see it you don't really create, it's more like you pick apart stuff and then you put them together to make new stuff. To me that is what "stealing" is, because if you say, for example, imitate or copy a quote you just use the same thing again but if you steal it you pick it apart and then you look at the essence of the quote as you interpreted it and maybe you ask yourself, how would I say this? Or you might not remember it very clearly word by word but you remember the meaning and the ring to it and since you are too lazy to google it you just give it your best shot and hope noone will notice :P And then you rewrite a quote with similar meaning but with your own words, effectively stealing it and making it your own.
Also you might decide to "create" a joke, you know what you think is funny so you play around with words until they are funny, in a way all the jokes you ever heard and all of the experiences you had that were funny are picked apart in your head and then you give it a good shake and sample the results until something is satisfying.
I think this is how we create and I also think this is how we learn. But when we learn I think we pick our brains for parts that we can use together to fit what we are observing - it's how we make concepts out of memes (the meme as the most reduced part of a concept). This might be why language and experience are both so important when it comes to learning new things.
Also you might decide to "create" a joke, you know what you think is funny so you play around with words until they are funny, in a way all the jokes you ever heard and all of the experiences you had that were funny are picked apart in your head and then you give it a good shake and sample the results until something is satisfying.
I think this is how we create and I also think this is how we learn. But when we learn I think we pick our brains for parts that we can use together to fit what we are observing - it's how we make concepts out of memes (the meme as the most reduced part of a concept). This might be why language and experience are both so important when it comes to learning new things.
Ok let's explore this scenario then. If you write a poem you could imitate, in this scenario I think imitation would be writing a bad poem or a practice poem. Do you agree that a part of the process of getting better at writing is to just write a lot of stuff to test out different options, even though much of it can be of pretty poor quality?
The equivalent of stealing in this scenario is when you have enough experience writing that you can use your own words to write a great poem. In this sense a great poem is something that is unique to you. It might be similar to other poetry or it might be different, but you managed to make a familiar concept your own or you came up with a new concept.
And the concepts you break down need not be other poems. It can be something entirely different. Like some people make poems with mythological themes or it can be something from your emotional experience or it could be something in nature. In all these cases there is some kind of source, what you are doing when you are writing is just breaking down input of sources and creating a new output, but the new output is sort of like a frankensteins monster, right?
The equivalent of stealing in this scenario is when you have enough experience writing that you can use your own words to write a great poem. In this sense a great poem is something that is unique to you. It might be similar to other poetry or it might be different, but you managed to make a familiar concept your own or you came up with a new concept.
And the concepts you break down need not be other poems. It can be something entirely different. Like some people make poems with mythological themes or it can be something from your emotional experience or it could be something in nature. In all these cases there is some kind of source, what you are doing when you are writing is just breaking down input of sources and creating a new output, but the new output is sort of like a frankensteins monster, right?
SW-User
There is language and there are experiences and there are emotions that go into any kind of creativity or imitation. And of course observation takes a large role in how we interpret and convey emotions or experience, using language that as vast as it is can be limited.
So yes, in one way its all a cycle, churned out in different ways.
Yet, when someone is writing say poetry, they're expressing their unique emotion. So, is it really imitation then if they happen to borrow a phrase they've read? I write poetry, and it doesn't feel like imitation it feels like creation, because its unique to me. A 3rd person might find parallels to different works, and at times I might not even have come across those other works before I wrote what I did. Maybe there are just limited ways of expression. I am just thinking aloud right now. I am not sure what it is but to me creativity does exist.
So yes, in one way its all a cycle, churned out in different ways.
Yet, when someone is writing say poetry, they're expressing their unique emotion. So, is it really imitation then if they happen to borrow a phrase they've read? I write poetry, and it doesn't feel like imitation it feels like creation, because its unique to me. A 3rd person might find parallels to different works, and at times I might not even have come across those other works before I wrote what I did. Maybe there are just limited ways of expression. I am just thinking aloud right now. I am not sure what it is but to me creativity does exist.
SW-User
Hmm. Lets agree to disagree.
Whereas there might be imitators and I am excluding them from this discussion, I believe creativity still exists because we all experience things, they may be the same kind of things but we experience it uniquely and that is what comes out in any new piece of writing.
We may be limited by words and phrases and language and even concepts and those might repeat. And this is where our perception would matter. We see things from our perspective. Not the writers. For example, 2 poems of love, written by 2 different people will be interpreted in a similar way by an onlooker but if you were to dig deeper behind for the meaning, each one would give you a different spin to it.
Whereas there might be imitators and I am excluding them from this discussion, I believe creativity still exists because we all experience things, they may be the same kind of things but we experience it uniquely and that is what comes out in any new piece of writing.
We may be limited by words and phrases and language and even concepts and those might repeat. And this is where our perception would matter. We see things from our perspective. Not the writers. For example, 2 poems of love, written by 2 different people will be interpreted in a similar way by an onlooker but if you were to dig deeper behind for the meaning, each one would give you a different spin to it.
Well sure we can do that, but actually I agree with a lot of what you are saying, to me it all just comes down to that I am not really sure if you mean you think creation as you talk about it is willing something into existence out of nothing as opposed to using parts from different places to create a whole with a sum greater than that of all its parts which I think is what art is all about.
SW-User
Onddruid. Creation in my opinion can't be willed out of thin air. Creation is our spin on what we are given to work with. Emotions/ language and such. When we add our unique emotion/ passion into a work of art we give it a different kind of life, and that to me is creation not imitation. Because no one else could have produced that, and those who imitate it, can't imitate it effectively because they'd lack the passion.
I don't really agree here. Can you maybe give me an example of a work of art that is not reducible to components or bits of information that the artist has retrieved from somewhere else? To me it just looks like imagination is about restructuring information or maybe sharing new information, but that information is always based on observation.
SW-User
