Everything is a Remix

[ChaoticMarin]

So, while I was surfing Youtube I discovered a rather interesting set of videos.

http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/

The main topic of these videos seem to be originality, creativity, and how they relate to the modern world. It's four videos long, each one actually being pretty short, but only three of them are currently out. The fourth is expected to be out this fall. They cover music, movies, and the history of the personal computer so far.

This is the part where you're supposed to watch the videos. ;o




Moving on.

The act of creation is surrounded by a fog of myths
Myths that creativity comes via inspiration
That original creations break the mold that they’re the products of geniuses and appear as quickly as electricity can heat a filament
But creativity isn’t magic
It happens by applying ordinary tools of thought to existing materials
And the soil from which we grow our creations is something we scorn and misunderstand even though it gives us so much and that’s copying
Put simply copying is how we learn
We can’t introduce anything new until we’re fluent in the language of our domain, and we do that through emulation

The Mac is a demonstration of the explosive potential of combinations
The Star and the Alto on the other hand are the products of years of elite research and development
They’re a testament to the slow power of transformation
But of course they too contain the work of others
The Alto and the Star are evolutionary branches that lead back to the NLS System which introduced windows and the mouse
to Sketchpad the first interactive drawing application and even back to the Memex
a concept resembling the modern PC decades before it was possible
The interdependence of our creativity has been obscured by powerful cultural ideas
but technology is now exposing this connectedness
We’re struggling legally ethically and artistically to deal with these implications

The videos contain numerous examples and is very informative, but those are some excerpts to start off with.

Now, despite the fact that these videos do not specifically touch roleplaying in any way. (They briefly touch books, however.) I would like to bring up the discussion of how this relates to roleplaying. It's an open-ended discussion with no specific questions and no specific goal other than to learn something or get a better understanding of something. What can we infer from this on originality and creativity in the context of roleplay?

I'm going to wait for a while before introducing my own thoughts on the topic.

[LawOfTheLand]

I think it's a Bible quote that Ylanne brought up: "there is nothing new under the sun." Let's face it, there's no room in the brain or the market for a completely original idea. Throw in Jungian archetypes, and you find that it's literally impossible to use something nobody else has used before.

Thus, the best people can do these days is take a number of archetypes that they know other people like, then mash them together in a way they find pleasing and hopefully unique. (This is where we get all the vampire high schools from, though, so please be careful.) To take a modest example: The popular trend among RPs that prominently feature Pokemon is to make the series darker and edgier to appeal to an older audience. Marin and I have taken that and decided to amplify the scale on which the battles take place in Down With The Crown. Errant attacks do go somewhere, and if Pokemon can take those attacks and go down with one shot, imagine what they'll do if human lives and property were at stake. Imagine then the potential for destruction if these incredible combat powers were turned directly against humans in a misguided grab for power.

Thus, "originality" isn't dead as long as one takes care to define their terms. Creativity is totally alive and well because people have to take archetypes and string them together in new and unexpected ways to draw in players. /mytwocents

[Shanatos]

The good thing about being human is that a lot of us are predisposed to liking more of the same.

That said... there is a lot to be done in the realm of remixing.

No story is exactly the same. Yes, the archetypes will be the same... there are lots of people in this world that fit into one category or another, but no one is the exact same.

The devil is in the details. Once one can stop worrying about illusions like "originality" in making new toy bricks, one can focus on the combinations you can make with those bricks. And who knows... maybe some time you really WILL make something no one's ever seen before. Or at least that no one remembers seeing before.