Help me out.

Following the PermissionToSuck.com post from Jan. 4 about Jaron Lanier, I’ve had regular conversations, both online and off, about sources of creative artistic brilliance.  I’ve put hours of thought into it; hundreds even.  Here’s a quote I pulled from a 2010 post that I tweet regularly mostly to defensive responses:

Can a “10,000 hour” creative professional compete with 1,000 “100 hour” creative amateurs?

The real questions being, now that we live web 2.0 – with its many collaborative tools – what is happening to creative virtuosity? Why haven’t we seen a virtual avalanche of great literature and song writing? Shouldn’t the music industry explode beyond its traditional business model as promised? Is it because we have yet to fully embrace the tools?  Do we still need the Match.com of creativity?

I’ll confess that PermissionToSuck.com isn’t the most well researched blog out there, but then, blogs in general aren’t all that well researched; think “brain droppings”.  The best of the best are blogs from authors about their well researched subjects; think primary and secondary research data supported hypotheses.

Still, I do my share of listening, reading and surfing without finding evidence of artistic brilliance that originated online beyond the usual cleverness or somewhat unique mash-ups.  Musicians pass half finished ProTool files via the web, saving gas money and travel time, but is that really helping improve virtuosity?

We see youtubes of brilliant creativity that was recorded posthumously.  We see short films distributed via Vimeo or Vimeo-ish channels that would have existed without web-tools. Where is the promised land? Why do we continue to marvel about the success of Apple and speculate that Open Source is going to kick its butt? Waiting.

Side note on the Apple thing:  I have a friend who’s a staunch believer in open source. You know, “Android is going to kick iPhone’s ass – remember Microsoft v. Apple – same thing”.  But … what phone did my friend buy when he needed one that worked?  Yup, an iPhone.  Furthermore, which stock would you rather be gifted right now? Apple or Microsoft?  I digress.

Here’s a great example of “social net” collaborative creativity; Clever, yet nearly un-listenable.

[via B Flat website]

“In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls, and developed with contributions from users.”

The In B Flat Project

The Johnny Cash Project is by far the best I’ve seen. It’s a mash-up of illustrations that create a music video that would otherwise not have existed if it weren’t for internet collaboration. I’d rate it Excellent but I want more; I expect more. Furthermore, as outstanding as it is, the Johnny Cash Project is build around a music icon from the 1960′s. Does anyone else find it odd that excitement for online collaboration needs an established “analog” artist?

I’m beginning to think true creative brilliance comes from a closed system – but I’m still open. Waiting.

The Johnny Cash Project

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why bother investing more – money, time, energy – on projects than it takes to consume them? Instead, search the collective for marginally unfamiliar mediocre creativity that will conform by meeting salable expectations. Furthermore, it’s easy to conform because the crowd is on your side when no risks are taken.

It was the mid nineteenth century when Ralph Waldo Emerson lectured about creativity being part influence, part interpretation. What happens when the parts aren’t equal? What if influence devastates interpretation?

We’re getting to the answer. Likewise, around this time – mid/late 1800’s – we find the idea of a meme [understandably a concept returning to the dialogue in this century]. The meme is – more or less – a societal component; a style or concept widely deemed worthy of replication.

The 19th and 20th century memes as influencers evolved much like a childhood game of telephone. Remember? Classmates’ whispers yielded a surprising result of imitation and interpretation. This is a creative model, perhaps a thoughtless one but creative none the less.

One very key creative element is the passing of information in a way that keeps it free for interpretation. It may be as simple as an analogy or an imitation of a meme. Yet, concepts and styles that jump from individual to individual, as if crossing a gap, are naturally interpreted, i.e. Emerson finds his balance, and imitation isn’t duplication.

Don’t underestimate the importance of the gap; it’s a creative gap. The individual owns that interpretive space. Influence is the whisper and senses are interpreters escorted by introspective thoughts and emotions.

The internet has thrown Emerson’s balance out of whack. The creative gap is diminishing as analogy loses to duplication; imitation swaps with cloning, analog becomes digital. On occasion the creative gap literally shortens to Ctrl>C:Ctrl>V; no time for interpretation. Generally yet more precisely, the time of creation comes treacherously close to the duration of consumption.

As if performing on a stage, open on-line culture thrives on recognition. In real life, we tell a good joke and it becomes ours. A reasonably obscure joke has no attribution requirements, i.e. we’re the comedian. Netiquette (on-line etiquette) requires more attribution but only one or two levels back. With independent discovery, you get “finder’s credit” as though the creator is your alter ego; you’re a curator of good taste but deserve byline credit.

The Good: Crowd accelerated innovation. TED’s Chris Anderson presents a notable case in his talk about what the internet has done for creativity.

The Bad: An elevation of mediocrity and low expectations. Consumption is massive and fast with low interpretation and high influence that’s homogenizing creativity.

Following our move from analogy into duplication, we structure our creativity to avoid criticism and receive acclaim deserved or not. It has the effect of homogenizing outcome. The courage it takes to introduce disruptive forms comes with too much risk of ridicule. There is more equity in conformity than rebellion.

To meet the requirements of the “mob mentality” [as defined by Jaron Lanier - American computer scientist, musician, composer, visual artist, and author of  “You Are Not A Gadget”] consuming becomes more important than producing. When culture is completely open, creativity is lost.

The individual matters. The individual makes structure out of mush. Jaron Lanier calls it encapsulation: don’t publish until you’re ready. We are the definers; we have an inner life.

As proof, connectivity has created fame without talent; people who are famous for being famous. In turn, mediocrity (and the occasional garbage) lives an implausibly elevated status because mob members fear the consequence of truth; the massively naked emperor. This is a continual theme in today’s politics.

Consider Wikileaks: here we find – counter intuitively -  mob censorship of individual thought. Give me your honest opinion, and it had better not be controversial or disagreeable. Honesty through transparency, but at what cost? Complete openness destroys individuality; individuality is creativity.

Lanier marks a strong difference between the internet and open culture. In this Jaron Lanier talks about the failure of Web2.0 with Aleks Krotoski of The Guardian.

Crowdsourcing is tainted so let’s gift it to corporations for their Power Point presentations.  It belongs to those who use the millennium’s broad bandwidth of human connection to capture creative innovation for personal or corporate profit.  It’s Jargon. Crowdsourcing is using the innovation of a crowd with similar interests to further a cause. Ultimately, in most cases, this means financial profit.

It’s not evil, but let’s get real, crowdsourcing isn’t innovation as much as novelty. Structuring a business around crowdsourcing is doing little more than upping your pool of freelance talent in order to put downward pressure on price and upward pressure on uniqueness. The former almost always happens, the latter is much tougher to achieve. [see iStockPhoto]

The tendency is to focus on what something triggers; what it can do to us (fear) and for us (profit). Where will it take our business? What can I do to harness the new thing? Conduct a SWOT analysis. Crowdsourcing models are an answer for what we can do to take advantage of motivated people through technology and its broad reach. It does little to answer how our interconnectiveness (is that a word?) will change creativity or its landscape.

Chris Anderson

TED conference curator Chris Andersen’s characterization, “Crowd Accelerated Innovation”, is the foundation for why we are in a creative awakening.  Finding the best and learning from a larger pool is why we pay heed. The pool is really a stream filled with potential geniuses who are showing passion, knowledge and skill while screaming, “look at me”. We look, learn and long for the spotlight to shine our direction.

The crowdsource model is a plan to capture innovation for a purpose.  Crowd Accelerated Innovation however, is driving the ideas, skills and dreams of creative individuals. The spotlight is on; everyone is on stage in a global “Gong Show”. Crowdsourcing is a funnel while Crowd Accelerated Innovation is a megaphone.

What seems to be easy to forget is that people are doing it for themselves; answering, “what’s in it for me?” Equally easy to forget is that money clouds passion by focusing on an end game that rarely has anything to do with passion’s origin. For the creative, “what’s in it for me” is not a plan to make money; money is an attractive by-product not a root creative passion.

In this TED presentation, watch what Chris Anderson has to show us about Crowd Accelerated Innovation:

Clay Shirky, author of “Here Comes Everybody” is one of everyone’s favorite TED speakers.  Here are a few of the points I took from his most recent on Cognitive Surplus – a title shared by his latest book.

Our new found connectivity is changing what we do in out free time.  A significant portion of our intrinsic motivations are not economic; As a society, we are discovering that we like to create and share. We like to create value for our civilization.

Through the sharing, we witness a host of stupid creations (he uses LOLcats as an example: cute cat photos with dumb captions) but the importance that shouldn’t be missed is that the gap between creating nothing and creating something is narrowing.  Stupid creativity is still creativity that can, and probably will, improve.

Taking that initial step is like going to the gym; the first step out the door is the toughest. After that first step fitness comes easier as does creativity.  The first step in the creative process is the hardest: doing.

The next step in the use of our free time is in creativing value for society which Shirky calls Cognitive surplus.  His talk is worth view.

The Bird House and “The Cabbie”

The Bird House:

Bird House

On a weekend walk my wife and I came across our community’s annual Bird House Design Contest; apparently a local favorite unbeknownst to me.  There were nearly 100 bird homes in 6 or more categories – who knew it was that involved?  Excited, my wife ran through the designs doing a preliminary judging then a final run through as I waited having completed my vote.  Turns out, she is a much more thorough bird house judge.

Walking away from the event she said, “How fun was that”?  I said, “Well, that’s 30 minutes I’ll never get back.”  Wait, I suddenly feel like a bird house snob pronouncing only one or two barely worthy of my standards, yet I knew nothing of bird housing.

Every one of them looked like a bird house; that hole for the bird is a dead giveaway.  Is there some invariant form of bird home that birds comprehend; one that we’d dare not reject without risking vacancy?  What if I wanted to use design thinking to create a new bird house, where do I go to gain bird empathy or am I fated to derivative designs, i.e. where do I put the hole?

Maybe I’ll crowdsource this. Throw out a bird house challenge: describe the problem (new bird house design), set a price, get solutions from the crowd (via 99designs.com perhaps?), vet solutions, reward the winner, take ownership of the design, and retire on the sales profits.  I’ll send one to the design winner as a gift to be nice.

What do you suppose is a “fair” price for an innovative bird house design?  I want quality; I’m casting my net for brilliance; I want true innovation not some left over design sitting in someone’s closet.

Wait – how do I know who wins?  I know nothing but what looks good; I’m a visual guy – sure – but what if it looks great but functions like crap or is a huge bird disappointment?  I need an expert or better yet, I’ll bone up on all things bird.  Assuming I’ll never know bird “want”, I’ll immerse myself in bird “need”. Birds don’t really know what they want but sometimes they get what they need. It’ll have to be good enough.

The Cabbie:

Original still on which "The Cabbie" was based

Vincent Laforet is an LA based photographer and director.  He was asked by Canon to kick off The Story Beyond The Still. The story continues when the last frame of the previous video is used by the next artist to continue the story with their video creation – and so it goes.

It’s improv technique applied to video storytelling. The story is created by the artists, we get a cool story, and Canon gets publicity – everyone wins.

[via: The Story Beyond The Still]

It’s the first ever user-generated HD Video Contest where photographers become filmmakers, and we all see beyond the still. Last month Josh Thacker was chosen as the very first winner for his film “Job Security,” based on his interpretation of a still photograph at the end of the previous chapter, “The Cabbie,” shot by Vincent Laforet on a Canon EOS 7D. Josh’s film was the second chapter of seven, ending with a still photograph of its own for the Vimeo community to interpret. After a flurry of entries, Keegan Uhl’s “The Beach” was chosen as the winner for Chapter 3, and now, once again the question is posed to you, what do you see beyond this still?

"Alan Guitar Hero" directed by David Shane

Of one thing I am sure, the folks listed below created a funny sophisticated ad for the Doritos King of Ads contest.

Does anyone else find something Deliciously ironic about hiring the best in the business to produce a spot that will invite the production of a bunch of borderline Cheesy spots?

How far will user content extend the value of professional content?

Agency: AMV BBDO, London

Client: Doritos

Director: David Shane

Production Company: MJZ

Copywriter: Paul Knott

Art Director: Tim Vance

Agency Planner: Tom White

Agency Planner: Nicola Davies

TV Producer: Suzy MacGregor

Media Agency: OMD

Media Planner: James Campbell

Production Company: MJZ

Post Production Company: The Lab

There’s no faulting authentic cause marketing.   Doing the right thing by committing funds is inspiring.  A perfect example is the Ronald McDonald House supporting families of hospitalized children.  It represents everything we’d like a corporation to do with their profits: give some back to the community that buys the product.  All positive public relations are genuinely well deserved.

Pepsi Refresh feels similar.  The soft drink company uses the internet to field ideas and award favorites monthly with large sums of cash to finance a cause.  Excellent.  Spread the love and the goodness of a brand.  The Publicity is good; the causes are great and they used new social networking techniques to make it even more powerful – awesome.  Much better than a one run Superbowl networks 30 sec. spot.

Let’s take a moment to sincerely thank them for this approach.  Honest – no sarcasm intended but it’s hard to write this stuff without it sounding that way.

OK – that said, let me risk more by sounding overly cynical and ask about statistics regarding ROI for cause marketing.  It must be impossible to measure.  Maybe it’s not necessary to measure.  Building a brand by making members of a cause and their benefactors love it, how can that fail?  Pay it forward, right? Everyone will love Pepsi and buy their product because they’re doing the right thing. [Well, that’s a little sarcastic]

While Pepsi’s approach was inspired, it feels like a dead end and outside the brand to me.  Each cause is individually separate and disconnected from anything to do with Pepsi as a refreshment maker other than cash outlay, a brand mark, and a slogan.

I think about those times my parents gave me money for college.  I am eternally grateful but that’s not why I love them.  I also received a partial scholarship from someone but I’d have to go back and dig through papers to find out whom… I forget.  In fact, attach strings to payments and recipients may get resentful: a girlfriend’s Dad once offered $1000 to her for quitting cigarettes – you can guess how that turned out.

A better approach would be to create a product that inspired it’s own cause and its own marketing.  Let’s pretend Pepsi Co. created a delicious tablet that, when dropped in water would give a day’s worth of nutrition in a thirst quenching drink while simultaneously clearing foul water of harmful bacteria.

• The tablet tasted better than sports drinks of the wealthiest fit minded communities.
• The tablets are so effective that it could be distributed to earthquake victims in Haiti and Chile to help solve drinking water shortages.
• Pepsi would be marketing the same tablet everywhere; one which would give 50% profits to groups dedicated to quench the thirst of the world.  [Insert Pepsi Refresh cause marketing here].
• Track profits from areas of the globe and where they go through online mapping – create a competition between shopping segments – who can generate more thirst quenching for drought stricken areas.
• Perhaps a live video feeds from the areas being helped or of people buying the product that will be shipped to the truly thirsty.

These thoughts are incomplete and raw but I think you get the idea.  Everything from the product to the financing to the cause and the outcome are all Pepsi.  The product is the marketing and everything to do with it perpetuates the brand and its thirst quenching essence.  It offers consumers something genuinely healthy to purchase and one that did good tangible things across the globe as well as an opportunity to pick up another Pepsi products sold next to the tablet while at the store.

I know, I know,  the tablet may be a technological fantasy but something isn’t that would fit the scheme.  I’m just sayin’ – Pepsi is doing good stuff but I think they missed an opportunity on this one.

I live for the thrill – a captivating moment in the creative process when engagement turns exciting.  Nothing else matters but refining how it sounds, looks, reads, feels.  My concentration is off the immersion chart.  Volume is past 11 on the engagement control.

The route to vibrant creativeness may be tough to find and even harder to finish; putting pencil to paper and drawing the first line or writing that first sentence, it’s classically agonizing.  Similarly, slogging through an ultimate final edit for the 10^th time is plainly mundanely dutiful.  Yet, those moments in the darkroom chasing a fine b+w print for the first time, photographing an expressively electric target rich scene or expressing a new idea with elegant phrasing makes the process compelling beyond any accomplished artifact.

It feels as though we – the artist – are in a frantic improvisation inside ourselves when “yes …. And” can’t come fast enough, yet it does.  It’s a feeling of comparatively little effort and high output.  He’s on fire; she’s in the zone; I’m in profound flow.

On stage improv is fundamentally an additive process that rides flow like a snowboarder.  The Grateful Dead meandered aimlessly in sloppy hunt for improvisational synergy that – once found – inspired a loyal horde.  It’s nothing like drilling for oil – more like sharing demonstrative dreams at 20 – 20,000 MHz.

This is what can happen in well orchestrated collaboration: open source projects, teamwork in progressive companies or creative agencies, and productions with unusually talented performers. The outcome is inevitable – the project concludes – but creative performers push it to surprising places.

As Maria Schneider says in this clip, “When it works at the end of a performance, the performance belongs to all of us. … There is a meeting place that makes something rich if it’s done right.”  To paraphrase further: In the end, the music is where you and I meet rather than waiting for a perfection that never conforms to my vision.

Maria Schneider’s Biography [Via Wikipedia]:

Schneider was born in Windom, Minnesota. She moved to New York City in 1985 after attending college at the University of Minnesota, the University of Miami and the Eastman School of Music. She studied under Bob Brookmeyer and Gil Evans, working on various projects with Evans, including the film The Color of Money and Absolute Beginners. Her works share many characteristics with other jazz composers influenced by Gil Evans, including Lou Marini, and Grammy Award winning composer Bob Belden.

Schneider formed The Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra in 1993, appearing weekly at Visiones in Greenwich Village for five years. Her orchestra performed at many jazz festivals and toured Europe.

Schneider was one of the first artists to use ArtistShare to produce an album. Her 2004 album, Concert in the Garden, became the first Grammy Award-winning recording sold exclusively via the Internet. It was named Jazz Album of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, which also named Schneider Composer of the Year and Arranger of the Year and named her group Large Jazz Ensemble of the Year.

Schneider’s ensemble is now titled “The Maria Schneider Orchestra”. Their new album, Sky Blue, was released in July 2007, also via ArtistShare. Schneider’s composition “Cerulean Skies,” from Sky Blue, won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition in 2008. Schneider is an avid birdwatcher and enlisted band members to contribute bird calls on “Cerulean Skies.”

“The committee is usually wrong; yet the crowd is commonly right and incredibly dull. If you’re part of the crowd you’ll be sourced and forgotten.”

I’ve Tweeted this statement a few times to gauge response.  My aim is to demonstrate that creativity has an individual source.  Whether we talk about the wisdom of crowds, group think or committee decisions, true brilliance comes from an individual, were,  in contrast, group worth is measured in evaluation, validation, and exploration.

Within each committee is a devil’s advocate – in this case not the anti-Christ but the anti-creative.  Creative teams are highly successful (if kept nimble) but I challenge anyone to find a good creative team staffed with devil’s advocates or those with outside agendas or unruly egos.

By far, the best (or worst) example of committee is most recently the U.S. Congress.  Ignoring its tragedy, there is comedy it the way a group can come up with a product absolutely no one finds entirely attractive.

Source a crowd and what do you find?  If you’re lucky, one individual with a great idea ready to be diluted by the committee or – much better – open it up to be altered to fit by another individual or creative team.  Either way, you get my drift.  Crowds are dull – it’s up to you to find the brilliance through open sources or create it yourself .

Ji Lee demonstrated the value of open creativity with The Bubble Project.  It didn’t involve a committee. It sources a crowd. It highlights the brilliance of individuals.  Yet, he was the catalyst for the disruptive idea.  He found the brilliance.

More on Ji Lee

Ji Lee Biography via 99%

Born in Seoul, Korea, and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Ji Lee studied design at Parsons School of Design. He currently works as the Creative Director at Google Creative Lab in New York and teaches design at School of Visual Arts. In the past, Lee has worked as the branding director at Droga5 and art director at Saatchi & Saatchi.

Ji Lee is the founder of the widely publicized Bubble Project and the author of two books: Talk Back: The Bubble Project and Univers Revolved: a 3-Dimensional Alphabet.

Lee has given numerous lectures, including Harvard University, MIT and MoMA. Lee’s work has appeared in ABC World News, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Guardian, WIRED among others.

When turning pleasurable pursuits into a profession there needs to be barriers to entry or exceptional value that adds economic scarcity; conceivably risk, distinctive talent or financial investment.  This is permanently true.   Your value-add – if not unique – requires higher risk, or supplementary resources, or less pleasure if your unwilling to settle for lower (or no) compensation.

In the 80 / 20 hay day [the 80% worth consuming is produced by 20% of the talent], creative professionals would rely on institutions like the recording industry, art galleries or advertising agencies to organize creative output.  Our institutions filtered talent, packaged product, controlled access and provided distribution.  Groups were organized, consumers and producers kept separate, and chaos avoided.

Lately, creative professionals are suffering the heartbreak of  fading uniqueness and coping with pressures to add value in other ways.  Clay Shirky gave his first TED talk in 2005.  His institution v. collaboration presentation must have appeared abstract to more listeners then than now, nevertheless, Clay’s talk hasn’t faded in value for those of us trying to recover our bearings in a once familiar profession.

The chaos of coordinated groups without institutional control is just beginning.  Creative professionals are faced with a massive increase in expressive capability beyond that of the printing press, telephone, recorded media (photos, sound) or broadcast (TV, Radio).  Consider this a call to discover new uses for the new connective media; acceptance is an imperative.

Photographers will find Clay Shirky’s example of Flickr particularly familiar. You can find Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody here.

(via Wikipedia)

Clay Shirky (born 1964^[1]) is an American writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. He teaches New Media as an adjunct professor at New York University‘s (NYU) graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). His courses address, among other things, the interrelated effects of the topology of social networks and technological networks, how our networks shape culture and vice-versa.^[2]

He has written and been interviewed extensively about the Internet since 1996. His columns and writings have appeared in Business 2.0, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review and Wired.

Shirky divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. His consulting practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, web services, and wireless networks that provide alternatives to the wired client-server infrastructure that characterizes the World Wide Web. Current clients include Nokia, GBN, the U.S. Library of Congress, the Highlands Forum, the Markle Foundation and the BBC.