CON Artists

Illustration by Ayo Arogunmati

A result of the current global pandemic outside of boredom, isolation, distance, and xenophobia is the ubiquity of content created by the users across all social media platforms. There is no doubt that the growth in content creation during this quarantine period is because of boredom, isolation, distance, and xenophobia, however, holding these factors constant there is a tendency by the viewing public to confuse novelty for creativity and originality for creativity.

Individuals create billions of content daily, content that is monetized by advertising platforms pretending to be social connection platforms. In 2014, the amount of user-generated content was north of 4 billion across all platforms, thus, perhaps, the pandemic will cause additional growth in content creation. 

Creativity involves the creation of an idea, design, product or service, but the act of creation does not mean the idea, design, product or service is creative. Likewise, doing new or original things is not creativity, as these actions involve doing something different from creativity.

We regard creativity, originality, and novelty as good things and they are, but we should agree on a definition of these words. The flaw in our culture, inclusive of the quarantine period, is that we are indifferent in our understanding of these actions. We can call an artist that is new and original creative, but that is not true without a proper definition. Therefore, we need a definition of what creativity to define artists properly in our culture. The importance of defining things allows us to separate the good from bad and transient from permanent.       

Through his lectures, Richard Hamming proposes definitions for creativity, originality, and novelty and stops short of stating that his definitions are the most comprehensive for these abstract ideas. Hamming describes originality using an anecdotal story of a friend who said he would like to do something original. Hamming promptly replied and said to the friend why don’t you “take a random 10 decimal digit number and multiply it by another random 10 digit number”.  Hamming’s joke did not amuse the friend as the friend would have preferred to solve something more difficult like the largest prime number ever discovered. Hamming concluded from the friend’s reaction that originality must involve one of two things, which is a great deal of effort or is a remarkable coincidence.   

If something did not exist before now, then it is new. Hamming focuses his attention on “modern art”, stating that the museum directors and artists offer these public artworks that are novel and new, but the average person, after getting over the initial awe and shock, stops responding to these images. He concludes that the act of creating something new should not be described as a “creative work of art”.

If we extend his definition beyond the visual arts and apply it to recorded music. All artists were new at a point in time, but tagging the artist as a creative was reserved for only the great ones. An individual can book a studio, record, master and distribute their music on digital platforms, however, we would reserve the right to call them creative. Clearly, creativity means something specific and needs its own independent definition.       

According to Hamming, creativity must embody value. The value of this creative act can be for a small group of people, for example, Jacob Banks creates value for his devoted followers who appreciate the music he records, distributes and performs, so we can conclude that the masses need not support an artist for the work to be creative.

Creativity does not always receive appreciation during the artists’ lifetime, which many artists have complained about like Wale. However, just because Wale can complain about his lack of appreciation does not mean that another artist who is unappreciated should conclude that he or she is a great artist. It could just mean you suck.

Assuming creativity means you, the artist, are likely to be original and new, what else can we infer about the process. Originality involves doing work that is difficult or with a remarkable coincidence, and new is something that has not been done before. Assuming we can follow the logic, then creativity need not be difficult.

The difficulty in the act of creativity is not what we value but the ability of an artist to “usefully put things together,” as stated by Hamming. Things that were not perceived to be connected. When we think about our favorite artists or producers with recorded music, it is their ability to put things together well, which causes us to call them creative. Fela combined political discourse with sounds infused with jazz, funk, highlife, and rock. His ability to make us hear the connection in these sounds is why we call him creative.

As Hamming states in his conclusion to the definition, creativity may be the initial psychological distance between different ideas, sounds, and cultures that counts the most.

NOTES

[1] The Art of Doing Science and Engineering - Richard W. Hamming

[2] The definitions are not meant to be absolute but to act as a starting point for defining the abstract ideas we call new, original and creative.