You Are A Mashup Of What You Let Into Your Life

from the so-true dept

Thu, Sep 29th 2011 11:03pm — Mike Masnick

Aaron DeOliveira alerts us to a wonderful presentation by writer/artist/poet Austin Kleon called Steal Like an Artist. It's a little less than 8 minutes, but worth watching:

There's a lot in there that will sound familiar if you're a regular reader, but it goes over the simple fact that content creators always build on the works of those they come across, whether on purpose or not. There were two lines that really caught my attention. The first was this one:

You are a mashup of what you let into your life.

We keep hearing from people who seem to think that the only "real" art is art that is wholly original. And, yet, they can't point out anything that really is original. All art builds on the works of others. There's simply no getting around that. The second line that caught my attention:

Imitation is not flattery. It's transformation that is flattery.

I'm not sure I agree with that statement, but it made me think. I actually believe imitation may very much be a form of flattery, and furthermore that imitation very often is what leads to transformation. In many cases the first step of transformation is, in fact, imitation. But I fear the situations where we make it illegal to imitate in large part because without being able to imitate, we often lose the ability to transform and build and create something special.

I'd never heard of Kleon before, but it appears that this presentation is a short version of a longer talk that he's actually turning into a book. Should be an interesting one to watch out for.

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Filed Under: austin kleon, culture, mashups

21 Comments

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Strawbear (profile), 29 Sep 2011 @ 11:13pm

Once we stood on the shoulders of giants,

Now we roll around in the filthy like dirty, dirty midgets.
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Greevar (profile), 29 Sep 2011 @ 11:28pm

"I actually believe imitation may very much be a form of flattery, and furthermore that imitation very often is what leads to transformation."

Imitation isn't really the right word, I think. It's actually emulation. When we idolize or admire what others do, we emulate that and try to be like them. So the phrase should actually be "Emulation is the most sincere form of flattery".
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Liz (profile), 29 Sep 2011 @ 11:40pm

"We stand on the shoulders of giants..."

The Greek myth of Orion and the Dwarf leads to a quote by Isaac Newton. We continue to build upon that which came before us. Imitation isn't just a lead to creativity, but a key process in learning.

If people can't imitate, then they end up reinventing the wheel anyway. Then those people who are truly innovative end getting penalized for copying the older ideas, even if they hadn't. Progress stagnates and everyone loses out.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Sep 2011 @ 12:04am

Mashup? I'll rearrange your face!
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DOlz (profile), 30 Sep 2011 @ 12:46am

Interesting
Interesting guy. It was nice to hear his talk before the RIAA and MPAA have him shipped off to Gitmo.
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The eejit (profile), 30 Sep 2011 @ 1:59am

Re:
And yet we're painted as the violent ones. :)
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Sep 2011 @ 3:45am

Re: Re:
I take it that's "we' in the royal sense?
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Fickelbra (profile), 30 Sep 2011 @ 5:01am

I think a great example of transformation is just in the entire video game market. Games can generally "copy" gameplay features from each other, and no one makes a stink. Take a look at first person shooters and the fact that after Halo 2 did the recharging health, virtually every shooter after that used it (much to my disdain but I digress). I've never seen Bungie whine about it, and really they shouldn't.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Sep 2011 @ 5:51am

inB4 'broadbrush', 'pirate mike' & 'sycophants'
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Kaden (profile), 30 Sep 2011 @ 6:01am

Re:
Good to see you've expanded your repertoire beyond that ball kicking fetish you were stuck on for so long.

Not quite innovation, but it's a step up from being a one-trick pony.

Congratulations.
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MrWilson, 30 Sep 2011 @ 7:04am

Re:
You forgot 'freetard.'
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Sep 2011 @ 7:21am

Way to paint the whole arts community with a broad-brush pirate Mike you are such a sycophant. All you freetards can stop stealing from us content creators because you are too retarded to come up with your own content.

:P
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Sep 2011 @ 7:24am

Re:
I forgot to point out what a strawman argument this is.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Sep 2011 @ 7:53am

This reminded me of fantasy author David Eddings. He never reads books within the genre that he writes, because he doesn't want to contaminate his stories with the ideas of other people. Instead what happens is he writes the exact same characters and plotlines with slight differences.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Sep 2011 @ 8:18am

Re:
"We stand on the shoulders of giants..."

Yeah, but we don't steal the shoulders and claim them as our own.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Sep 2011 @ 8:28am

http://chronicle.com/article/Uncreative-Writing/128908/

In it, students are penalized for showing any shred of originality and creativity. Instead they are rewarded for plagiarism, identity theft, repurposing papers, patchwriting, sampling, plundering, and stealing. Not surprisingly, they thrive. Suddenly what they've surreptitiously become expert at is brought out into the open and explored in a safe environment, reframed in terms of responsibility instead of recklessness. ...

After a semester of my forcibly suppressing a student's "creativity" by making her plagiarize and transcribe, she will tell me how disappointed she was because, in fact, what we had accomplished was not uncreative at all; by not being "creative," she had produced the most creative body of work in her life. By taking an opposite approach to creativity�the most trite, overused, and ill-defined concept in a writer's training�she had emerged renewed and rejuvenated, on fire and in love again with writing.
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DH's Love Child (profile), 30 Sep 2011 @ 9:56am

This reminds me of a quote
From Leonard Bernstein's last interview (which happened to be with Rolling Stone), where he said, "A composer is the sum total of his listening"
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Chosen Reject (profile), 30 Sep 2011 @ 11:30am

Re: Re:
Well, some do anyway.
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jupiterkansas (profile), 30 Sep 2011 @ 12:12pm

Re:
The truth is culture isn't created by everybody doing something new and original, it's created by everybody doing something very similar. Once enough artists all start doing the same kind of thing, it becomes a movement and that can cause a cultural shift. Very often, one person is singled out as inspiring or leading the change with their originality, but often they were just one of many doing the same thing. Yes, everyone does their thing a little different, but collectively they're working on the same idea. It's a million variations on one idea. That's what makes it art and what makes art part of culture.

Otherwise the world would only have one painting, one statue, one song, one movie, and one novel, because to create a second would just be imitation.

Honestly, if you listen to baroque music and you're not a fan, it all sounds like the same piece of music. What's the real difference in all of Bach's cantatas or Scarlatti's sonatas? I love classical music, but even those works all sound the same to me.

Art benefits from repetition, emulation, imitation, reiteration - that's the process of what art is all about. It's a great conversation.
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ltlw0lf (profile), 30 Sep 2011 @ 12:58pm

Re: Re:
Yeah, but we don't steal the shoulders and claim them as our own.

No, Bob Dylan, we don't.

The only folks who do tend to be the copyright maximalists themselves...because, gosh darn it, when they steal the shoulders and claim them as their own, they should be the only ones. Comes with the massive sense of entitlement they seem to all have.
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Jose_X, 4 Oct 2011 @ 11:10am

Re: Re:
>> Yeah, but we don't steal the shoulders and claim them as our own.

Yes, a lot of people value attribution and dislike being fooled (as fans) or not given credit (as artists).

Although, if you look at one of Nina's copyright memes, she points out that trying to take credit likely leads you to looking foolish or dishonest eventually. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110627/17393014876/is-copyright-needed-to-stop-plagiarism.shtml
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