Similarities: Because It’s All Been Done
What Einstein has to do with copyright, where indie bands get their concert posters, and why there’s no such thing as creativity.
“Everything’s been done.”
Or so goes the adage drilled into every budding art director from the start. Now, we have proof, thanks to Similarities — a Flickr set that pits pairs of similar images against each other, exposing their striking aesthetic and conceptual similarity.
Substantiating Einstein’s bold contention that “the secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources,” Similarities takes pairs of cultural artifacts, often separated by decades, and exposes anything from well-meaning homages to blatant rip-offs to the unfortunate overlaps of equally twisted minds.
The thing to keep in mind, though, is that Similarities isn’t out to point the finger at the potential (and often clear) theft of ideas — rather, it’s there to shed light on the creative process, to illustrate something we very much believe here at Brain Pickings: That creativity is simply the sum total of your mental resources, the catalog of ideas you’ve accumulated over the years by being alive and alert and attentive to the outside world.
So when you explore Similarities, challenge yourself to question the subconscious influences and stealthy inspiration that creep into your own creative output. What you find may surprise you.
- A Metaphor for Creativity: 5 Shapes, 3520 Artworks Why ideas are like pieces of leather and what sneakers have to do with your capacity for creativity....
- Animation Spotlight: “We Got Time” What a French invention from 1877 has to do with superb modern animation – the making of Moray McLaren's "We Got Time."...
- Pick One: Hipsters Take on Culture, By Way of Helvetica Start Trek vs. Russia, the 1970's vs. Christmas, or why death is better than Uggs – part social experiment, part art project, part brilliant head-scratcher...
- Street Art: From All Sides & Five Continents The urban anthropology of creativity, or why copyright law is swimming against the cultural current....
I always have this weird feeling where I don’t know if I am creating something in my mind or if I am just remembering it.
I want to be original and I usually work an idea so much that my final designs are something really different from my initial drafts. But somehow, I still have that feeling and I don’t like it. It makes me really insecure in my work.
Danae:
Well, think of it this way — everything is a memory, including your own skills. Creativity is simply the ability to pull the right resources from memory at the right time (be they your own skills or the inspiration for your work), that’s all there is. So don’t be too hard on yourself.
Isn’t saying “Everything is a memory” a little strong? Don’t truly new thoughts/ideas/images get created in our heads from a fusion/association of existing memories–allowing us to think of new things beyond the sum of the memories that are there?
Allen:
I suppose, to the extend that “memory” is a literal interpretation of events past. But I was referring to a broader concept that encompasses everything — experiential memory, sure, but also emotional memory, the pool of fleeting thoughts that once crossed your mind too quick to congeal into ideas and now come back to fully evolve and ripen.
It’s semantics, really, but yes, I do agree that the novelty of thought does exist.
This is only depressing if you still cling to the idea that creating something absolutely unique and original is somehow possible. The moment you let go of that… you will feel better. Besides, even if two things are similar, doesn’t mean they’re not different. Also, all art is meant to communicate something, either for a purpose or because the creator feels the urge to express something. That is a good enough reason to do something, so originality is irrelevant if you focus on the purpose.
Spoken like a true creator. Right on.
Maria – I am a huge fan of your work!
On Creativity – I wonder if cognitive neuroscience will someday confirm what Eastern Mystics have believed – that all that is known and will be known is a stream of consciousness that we become aware of at various times in the continuum of Life. It is certainly a seductive hypothesis that explains Newton and Laplace arriving at Calculus independently for example with no one questioning the integrity of either. Maybe in a Bergsonian sense (Henri Bergson) the brain acts as a valve regulating the access to such a flow of creative consciousness! Just speculating
Vasant:
Very interesting. I’ve always been a science-grounded cynic, but over the past few months, I’ve gone into Matthieu Ricard’s (French scientist turned Buddhist monk) research – and it’s fascinating. I think the whole theory of consciousness may be the missing link between art and science, bridging causality and creativity – that which causes us to create one thing and not another, see this as beautiful and that as ugly – so you may be on to something.
Besides, isn’t speculation the fundamental backbone of innovation?