I browse the internet occasionally for ideas. Who doesn’t? I’m looking for new ways to frame or present photos, new Photoshop techniques (old ones work just as well, if I’ve never seen them before), perhaps new photographic techniques with film and digital capture, and inspirations that take me into new techniques nobody’s seen yet. The other day, it dawned on me that the internet is a great place to learn about new stuff, but it is also very good at eliminating what I’ll call “Creative Exclusivity”.
What I mean by Creative Exclusivity is the process of say, an artist, in particular a photographer, developing a new way to capture or process digital images, something that has never been seen or done before. They spend time to perfect their technique, make some pieces, show them perhaps in galleries. They’re proud of their work. Because they are the only one doing that type of work, and nobody else knows how it is done, they have Creative Exclusivity to that technique or method. That artist has ownership of their ceation.
Prior to internet access, Creative Exclusivity was a relatively long-lasting phenomenon. Modes of communication were slow and somewhat cumbersome. Access to the creator/artist was limited to appearances at exhibitions or workshops. Home and studio addresses and phone numbers were unknown outside of the local community, except in cases where the artist was known nationally or internationally. Artists, unlike scientists, are not known to publish their methods in journals for peer review and confirmation of the repeatability methodology and results. Once an artist developed something new, it took a while for it to seep through the existing fabric of the current trends. There might end up to be a handful of other artists that could reverse engineer a technique and copy it, each adding their own spin, but the original artist owned the Creative Exclusivity and the origin was known.
Once the internet opened up communication to the world, it became more difficult for an individual to maintain Creative Exclusivity because news travels in an instant in cyberspace. A person develops something new, then they tell (email) someone how it’s done. Or they tell thousands of someones. Early in the formative internet days, email was the only effective electronic communication, and even then was limited to text only. When simple graphics were able to be sent as attachments, people could see what was being described. The population of internet users was much larger than the local or regional population the artist typically associated with; their audience was expanding rapidly. Tell one person at an art show and they might tell a friend or two, but it might stop there. Tell one person on the internet and the reach was greater. It wouldn’t be too long before another artist (or 2 or 10 or 100) across the country or across the world, was duplicating and/or refining what was once the exclusive domain of one artist. In the spread of the idea in cyberspace, the identity of the originator is often lost or attributed to someone else, especially if the artist hasn’t taken steps to protect their creation (copyright, trademark, branding, etc.).
We humans like to show off our creativity and intelligence, we love to play the “I can do it better” game, and we really enjoy passing on what we’ve learned to others, especially if it’s really cool. We enjoy the adulations, congratulations and publicity that comes from announcing something new, and being the person responsible for its creation. The artist is able to exploit their new creative endeavor however they wish, though initially I’m speaking from a fairly selfish point of view, which isn’t a bad place to start from. If a person found a way to lose weight without exercising that actually worked, I think they would keep it a secret until they’d worked out how to maximize its distribution and protect it from being sold or exploited by others. Why shouldn’t an artist do the same? At least until they recoup the time and effort they spent developing their new technique. Perhaps their new technique can be integrated into existing software or created stand-alone, taught in workshops, or sold commercially in some way as a product.
Now we have Flickr, YouTube, and others. Outlets open 24/7 for creative people to show off their works, their Creatively Exclusive developments that are instantly distributed worldwide, available to millions (billions even) of people to see and try for themselves. It’s the Dante’s Inferno equivalent of telling something you don’t want anyone else to know to that one person in the office that always tells everyone.
I’m not suggesting that we all keep our mouths shut and never give up our secrets. There are advantages to the current (and future) state of mass instantaneous communication. When a great artistic method hits cyberspace, many more people become aware of it than if it was kept to a localized area. People also crave new experiences and love to learn new things. A new artistic technique provides a different means of expression and experiencing the world around us. It energizes us and inspires us to try new things, develop our own ideas, and be creative.
Creative Exclusivity is a good thing. It comes from within each of us. It belongs to us. It is us. It’s a means for us to rise above the masses, even if for a short period of time. In a world of instantaneous communication and global competition, it’s something we can control. We should cherish it and exploit it for as long as possible before we give up that ownership to the world.
