Competency vs. Creativity

[Darryl Baird]

Which is why any musician who is still playing his music exactly the same 20 years later has all the creativity left of a record player.

good one, immediate LOL

yet music fans tend to be cranky when a performance doesn't sound like the record, ...damned of you do, damned if you don't

[poco]

for my next project i'm giving myself permission to fail, and to fail spectacularly. this is scary to me, because it goes against a lot of what i used to care about (competency??). which might explain why i've been procrastinating.

You may also be procrastinating because consequences of failure over an entire project could be pretty devastating. I don't think I'd like to deal with that, so what I do instead is save one sheet of film every outing to try something totally different. It's a very conscious thing for me and I literally say to myself, "okay, now crawl out of your skin and try something else." And even with only one exposure it's a very difficult thing to do because it entails risk not only in the taking of the shot, but also in the editing process later.

[paulr]

Joni Mitchell struggled most of her career with fans who didn't support her creative process. not just ones who wanted her to play the song like the version of the record, but ones who liked joni circa 1973 and wanted her to stay that way forever.

but she wouldn't ... she had a solid folk music career in the '70s, but chose to follow her passions even if it meant abandoning her loyal fans.

she went through several incarnations of jazz, rock, and experimental songwriting, picking up and losing fans along the way. she did a lot of experiments, and had some dramatic failures--not just commercial, but artistic as well. i admire her for being so genuinely dedicated to her vision, to the point where losing an audience or even making an embarrassing record were risks she was willing to take.

and ... you could say most of the same things about miles davis.

[Darryl Baird]

Joni Mitchell struggled most of her career with fans who didn't support her creative process. not just ones who wanted her to play the song like the version of the record, but ones who liked joni circa 1973 and wanted her to stay that way forever.

Just weird Paul, Joni was exactly who I was thinking of when I wrote that

[Struan Gray]

these ideas we carry around of success or failure, what makes a good picture or good body of work, etc, are almost always other people's ideas. and we're not aware of it, so we find ourselves striving to meet someone else's expectations, to succeed or fail based on someone else's standards, without even knowing it.

9 out of 10 people i hear say 'i just do my own work, i don't care what anyone thinks' are doing the most derivative, unimaginative, paint-by-numbers work imaginable. they haven't even questioned why they point their camera where they do. if they thought about it for a minute they'd realize they're just aping other pictures they've seen ... probably ones so old and familiar that they just assume 'this is what good pictures must look like.'

I used to complain that I could never find good photographs of the things that interested me and, simultaneously, worry that my own photographs were stuck in other people's ruts. The answer was simple enough, but it took an effort of will to see it.

I am still puzzling over the fact that those contemporary photographers I have since discovered with whom I feel the strongest affinity are almost all, like me, expatriate Brits. I suspect that subconscious culture goes much deeper than I care to admit, and although the rationalist in me revolts at the idea, my childhood is still exerting a large influence over my adult tastes. That may be fodder for a new project.

I disagree though with the too-close linking of innovation and creativity. Just as good composition explicitly considers the frame, creativity can flourish within tight bounds. There are many good examples of creativity within a tradition. The C20th century re-discovery of baroque forms - thought too restrictive by the romantics - led to the writing of a lot of my favourite music, and as a sucker for triple time I can listen to almost any walz with pleasure, whether it comes from a linden grove or a cypress swamp. A photographic equivalent would be some of the re-photographic surveys, or much scientific and technical photography, where the goals and definitions of success are not purely artistic, or rather, not purely driven by the romantic notion of self expression.

I have been editing a project I did three-to-four years ago. It has been surprising to see so many of my images with a relatively cold eye: the influences are much clearer, but it is also heartening to watch myself making decisions that I am now sure were right. Of course, I bask in the twin luxuries of amateurism and inconsequence: a pro would starve at such a slow work rate. But that may be why so many innovations come from the margins.

[paulr]

I disagree though with the too-close linking of innovation and creativity. Just as good composition explicitly considers the frame, creativity can flourish within tight bounds. There are many good examples of creativity within a tradition

I think we probably agree on this. I don't think something needs to pretend to be new in every way to be a creative work. Shakespeare's poetry was remarkably creative (and you could make a case that it was so in an innovative way) even though he only worked within the sonnet, which was already an old form. Weston used available materials and worked within an 8x10 frame for most of his career ... etc. etc.

Some people find traditional forms that are perfectly suited to their vision, even if that vision is unique. Others don't, and have to invent new forms to accomodate them.

There are wonderful things about working within tight constraints. They can challenge you to find innovative ways to work within them. The strict rules of a sonnet might force you to find a phrase that's much more vivid and surprising than the one that first popped into your head. And a familiar form can free up your imagination--if you know you're going to be making 8x10 contact prints on black and white paper, you've crossed a lot of things off your list and can focus more on what you want to explore.

There are also drawbacks to tradition. Familiarity with the work that's been done in a tradition can cloud your own vision. The limits of what others have done within it can seem to you like the limits of what's possible.

[paulr]

something that occurred to me ... a trick people sometimes use to help inspire creativity is to work with a medium that they're NOT competent in. for years ornette coleman has performed pieces on violin, an instrument he doesn't know how to play. i don't much care for these performances (and haven't heard from too many who do) but they seem to work for ornette. he's been doing it for so long without encouragement that i can only assume it helps his creative process.

i tried a much less bold version of this while ago when i started working with color for the first time, using an unfamiliar camera and format and shooting style. it was a great experience, and i ended up liking a lot of the work that came out of it.

[Robert Hughes]

...Which is why any musician who is still playing his music exactly the same 20 years later has all the creativity left of a record player...good one, immediate LOL

yet music fans tend to be cranky when a performance doesn't sound like the record, ...damned of you do, damned if you don't

Interesting side thread. One of the critiques of classical music of the past century is that conductors and performers learned their technique from recordings rather than live performance, listening to "best of breed" virtuosos. As a result, the tempo of much orchestral music has accelerated dramatically, and the "pulse", or inner tempo of the piece is lost. Listen to a 1940's Furtwangler recording of, say, Beethoven's 5th Symphony, and compare it to a modern recording such as found in Fantasia 2000. The notes are the same, but the music is entirely different; faster, sharper, more "in your face". Appropriate for hip-hop, but symphonic work?

[tim atherton]

Interesting side thread. One of the critiques of classical music of the past century is that conductors and performers learned their technique from recordings rather than live performance, listening to "best of breed" virtuosos. As a result, the tempo of much orchestral music has accelerated dramatically, and the "pulse", or inner tempo of the piece is lost. Listen to a 1940's Furtwangler recording of, say, Beethoven's 5th Symphony, and compare it to a modern recording such as found in Fantasia 2000. The notes are the same, but the music is entirely different; faster, sharper, more "in your face". Appropriate for hip-hop, but symphonic work?

culture and society and innovation always effect such things in one way or another.

I was read a fascinating essay on bow technique in strings, especially violins.

In former times gravity held a much greater sway in how the violin was played with a greater emphasis on the downstroke.

It wasn't until man began to break the bounds of gravity with flight - especially balloons as they became all the craze across Europe that "coincidentally" (?) bowing technique became much freer and less ensnared by gravity - it was essentially a mental thing

I don't remember where I read it, but it was a very convincing argument (this was just one example - flight introduced a paradigm shift of consciousness in society which effected all sorts of things that had nothing directly to do with it)

[paulr]

also, with continuing emphasis on technical perfection, improvisation got dropped from the classical tradition. classical musicians used to know how to jam! and keyboard players used to improvise during cadenzas. but now most classical musicians look like they'll have a heart attach if you ask them to make something up. they've become specialists at playing written notes perfectly.