Wednesday 20 February 2008

We are running out of excuses

For many years i have hidden behind the excuse that my specific education and training did not enable me to create the sort of stuff that i considered to be truly creative.
I had an engineering upbringing during the 80's when engineers were taught machine coding like COBOL and FORTRAN. I was educated in a time when main-frame computers were the size of a car and you waited your turn to use the ticker-tape machine - I cant believe now that they actually taught us how to use one of those. In those days if you used a computer, you were a computer scientist / programmer - you were an integral part of making it work.
Of course much has changed in the 20 or 30 years since those clunky days of computing, and we have all become computer "users", but still I regarded people who could create digital music, video productions, animations, graphics etc as having a special technical skill that excluded me from being creative in the same way as them. I hadn't been trained in the software products that enabled this creative output and so i simply couldnt be creative in that way.

Ive bought an Apple MacBook. And now I feel exposed. I am vulnerable with no more excuses to hide behind. I dont want to make this a hallelujah for Apple, my point goes beyond Apple, but it took this transition for me to realise that software programmes are now so intuitive, seamlessly integrated and feature packed that actually, technical software skills are no longer the barrier to creating amazing digital outputs - I am simply limited now by my own imagination and determination - and that scares me a little.

And this lead me on to think about one of the models used to describe the creative person. Amabile T.M (1996) describes 3 characteristics that can be found in creative individuals - 1) Creative thinking skills, 2) Motivation, and 3) Domain relevant skills. Her theory is well described on line and in many of her books and publications, but for the moment Ive been thinking about "Domain Relevant Skills". Amabile says that a knowledge of the field (or subject) in which the individual intends to be creative is essential to a valuable creative outcome - which in the case of say rocket-science, I'd agree.
However, Im starting to wonder now if in the field of say digital animation or video art, that domain-relevant skills are really that essential. Computers, software and user interface are now so enabling, it could be said that any novice could create a creative (and valuable) output without any knowledge of the field or market.
I wonder if there is a place now for a model of creativity that identifies a creative individual as having 1) Creative thinking skills, 2) Motivation, and 3) "Dream"? or "Vision"? or "Tenacity"?

So, no more excuses!