Mar 7, 2010
Distributed Creativity (Luther and Diakopoulos, 2007)
Distributed Creativity (Luther and Diakopoulos, 2007)
Introduction:
In online collaborative creation, creative acts are distributed across a range of users in various points in the creative process. Existing models of creativity do not adequately address this.
All individuals are creative (psychological creativity), but in what ways does social creativity promote synergies which transcend traditional division of labour models?
It is posited that individuals can shift freely between evolutionary and impromptu creativity more easily in online remixing communities. It is also posited that the stages in the creative process (see below) can be conceptualized as being distributed across all individual members of the community; with members being able to fluidly move between, and contribute to stages.
So, support for impromptu creativity is needed when thinking about passive and active interaction with online creative media.
Models:
Genex Model (Shneiderman, 2000, cited in text)
Creativity is a set of four non-linear, cyclical and iterative phases.
- Collect (learning from previous materials),
- Relate (discussion with peers and mentors at all stages of the project),
- Create (explore, compose, evaluate solutions),
- Donate (disseminate product to knowledge base).
Fish Scale (Fischer et al., 2005, cited in text)
Division of labour is not a sufficient description of social creativity, which involves the building of shared meanings through synergistic interaction; i.e. it is more than the sum of its parts. Such synergies occur at the overlaps between the knowledge/skills/domains of individuals and groups in the community.
Inspirationalist and Situationalist Perspectives on Creativity (Shneiderman, 2000, cited in text):
Inspirationalist – Importance of the ‘eureka’ moment. Hard work and preparation is a neccessary foundation for this. Creativity enabling techniques such as brainstorming and free association are used for ideation – experimentation, non-linearity and flat structures are important.
Situationalist – Creativity is social construct embedded in communities of practice (contexts or settings), which each have their own subjective ideas about what is creative. In such communities, recognition, reputation and influence are key motivators and shapers of creativity. Ideas are emergent, reliant on interaction and communication.
Creative Roles in Cultural Production:
‘Reader-response theory’ (the reader as first class meaning-creator) (e.g. Satre, post-structuralist semioticians) has parallels in ‘Web 2.0′ type dialogue concerning editing and commenting (as opposed to passive consumption) by consumers. Further, even passive consumption on the web influences the environment (due to the ability to precisely measure consumption – viewing statistics etc).
Members of online communities can engage in a variety of forms of cultural production relatively easily – add or edit content, annotate, comment, add metadata, reappropriate, fundamentally alter, disseminate. In such highly iterative environment, the idea of the sole creator is blurred.
Free-association of ideas is, then, a key concept in understanding online collaborative communities.
Three Broad Categories of (Fluid) Creative Roles:
- Synthesizers – The traditional ‘creator’. Assembles media from various sources within and without the community and publishes it. Relatively infrequent.
- Analyzers – Annotate, tag (see also, folksonomies), rate, comment, feedback. Provide an associative resource for other roles, and a source of motivation for synthesizers.
- Viewers – The bulk of the online community. Provide the social context for the creative process. Express their opinions through their viewing statistics (passive metrics).
Environmental factors (legal, economic, social, cultural, architectural) also play their roles.
Example: Jumpcut (an online video remixing community).
Methodology – Qualitative (observation, interviews, content analysis, critical analysis)
Main Themes of Example – Importance of free association (synthesis as search, browse, collect, relate, create). Search function as key to facilitation of creativity (keyword association). The power of content availability. Do anaylzers who become synthesizers upset the feeling of closure of the original creator? How does this relate to ownership, authorship, recognition and reputation? Examples of remixing, the power of analyzer commentary.
