Why is the Web uncreative?
This is something that I've always wondered. Not that there is no creativity on the web (there is) but rather why it only arrives up into the public consciousness in fits and starts. Is there something about the internet's structure that somehow makes it harder for creative work to shine? This is an anecdotal analysis at best, but bear with me.
There's a lot of media hosting and aggregation going on out there, from blogs and uploaded videos through MP3s and news. Most of it comes in one of a few forms:
- news/gossip
- education/information
- riffs of existing ideas
- comedy moments/funny clips
This stands in direct contradiction to the supposed "You" year that Time Magazine made such a brouhaha about a few months back. In the age of mass, free tools, information spreading and so on, we are supposed to be seeing the rise of the homebrew artist. Is the material not out there? I think it is, but I think much of it is not being seen and the results are discouraging to would-be creatives.
For example, last year I made a short film with some friends. It's ok, a student film. It's on Youtube, it's on Google Video. There's plenty wrong with it, some right, but the thing that mystifies me is why, in the 8 months that it's been up on both, it's managed to garner a grand total of 600 views between both sites (at least 10% of which are me checking to see they're still up there, or reminiscing, and 5% are my aunt who was googling my name for some reason).
Looking further into it, I think maybe it's how the film is named or billeted. It's a mockumentary short film about some failed auditionees. Hard to sell? Definitely. Regardless of whether it's good or terrible, my little film goes unwatched, where tens of thousands of fart joke clips draw in thousands of viewers.
And yet the thing is that the Web should not make it harder to sell a strange idea, it should make it easier. It should be a discovery medium, but it can only do so on the basis of what people search for. This is why I think it has an unintentional wall up against creative ideas. Outside of a relatively narrow set of criteria, people simply don't seem inclined to search for "crazy short films about Shakespeare plays made in community halls."
Where do you even begin to get the notion to search for that? Well actually I have an idea about that and it starts with a label: nou.
The idea is simple: If the problem of getting new and difficult-to-express ideas is one of naming, search terms and people being at a loss to describe something that they may not even know exists, then they need a helping hand. We're falling over ourselves to define new words for media, technology and so on all the time, and that strategy works. So why not take it one step further and adopt a very small label that says "This is new, fresh from the web."
It can apply to podcasts, flickr photos, videos, indie games, fiction blogs, anything that is web created. You stick "nou" in the meta-tag, tag cloud and whatever other search assistants that you can find out there and it means that people can find it. Since it's short, it's simple for people to remember. Since it sounds like "new", it's conceptually in the right area. Since it looks like "you" it's not aggressive. It's just nou.
Hey you.
What's nou?
Well...?
4 comments:
Okay; I like the article, but I'm going to through some criticism your way... In fact when I have time later today I'm going to start my own blog, collate all the content from my other blogs, and post a response to yours there. So there :P
Regarding the tag idea; I'm gonna be critical on two fronts.
Technical; who maintains this tag? If I tag an object that I'm particularly pleased with as 'nou'; it will remain tagged three years from new when it's 'nouness' has long since passed by.
Have a look at Lessig's idea for a h2m tag and follow through on the comments against it technically... I'm very skeptical of tags working as a form of web filtration.
Secondly; I'm unsure of your idea in terms of content. What exactly is "web created"? I have three blogs and a Flickr account. On my blogs I talk about food, films, and my goals in life. My Flickr account (being a photo site) is obviously a series of photographs of real-world or offline content. My blogs are all drawn from offline inspirations. Does this mean that they are not be tagged 'nou'? What should? Applying a harsh rendering we might be left only with Second Life and the odd Flash movie as being 'web-created'... And I wouldn't be too happy with that. :) I wonder if you would consider painting that reference other media objects to be in some way not-painterly, in the same way that a web object that references a movie is not a really web-created?
I've got a broader issue as well; you seem to pretty much ignore the audience in your thesis. It seems to imply that the web is producing all this mashup content that is largely without value and that the audience is out there seeking this original art. Many users seek short thirty second fart-jokes because their experience of the web is mediated by their office environment. They are actively waiting to for these short breaks from their work to be delivered to them via chain-emails (ooh, there's a buzzword waiting to be born there in that phrase) and, if they're really on the ball, rss. The users who are out there seeking and producing new work aren't doing as poorly as you imply. Flickr's doing well and regularly produces professional-level work. Second Life (much as I hate it) is filling in the need for 3D artists and games designers to try out something new (once you push past the porn). There are many blogs that hold the web itself as their theme and inspiration.
Might it be the case that your specific interests: movies and fiction are under-represented rather than the web as a whole lacking originality or the tools to locate it?
D'oh, sorry I forgot to include the link to lessig's idea via Josie Fraser's blog.
http://fraser.typepad.com/socialtech/2007/03/post.html
Sorry it took so long to reply. Anywho:
1. I don't mean tag in the sense of an HTML tag. Tag is probably the wrong term to use. I simply mean a search term or label. For example, when you upload a video onto Youtube, you are invited to ascribe a set of labels to the video to aid as search terms. One of those terms could be "nou"
It's entirely at the user's discretion what they choose to label as nou or not, and for how long. I prefer to not get into the notion of policing a label, instead just letting the word filter out there are either stand or fall.
2. The difference is whether the work is fictional or not. Simply put, magazine-style diaries and articles already have web names, i.e. blogs, and are not fictional. In the case of your blogs and most of mine they are effectively reportage. So are 99.9% of blogs out there, and if you do a search for blogs, you'll find reportage by the mile.
"American Hate", on the other hand, is fictional. Short-lived fiction, it would appear but fiction nonetheless. I found, when trying to promote the idea and get some readers that there was no language phrase that conveyed that fiction vs reportage difference to browsers. It simply isn't in the language.
The same applies to videos, photos and so on. There should be a simple label that distinguishes reportage from art and makes it easier to find art of all stripes.
3. As for the audience question. Art can be bite-sized if it needs to be. Ask Scott Adams and Dilbert, or one of a number of webcomics lie Penny Arcade.
Bite-size isn't the sum total of the web though. From crap like Loose Change to the long informative articles from Wikipedia, there's ample proof that the web is not all about quick photos and five minutes of rss. There's plenty of attention given to both longer-form and shorter-form material.
What's missing is the mental concept of creative entertainment as a convention, of doing it regularly. I think that that is wrapped up literally in a lack of a word to form the thought. Hence my idea.
1. I knew what you meant by tag (I'm well used to them in Flickr and such) but the same problems still exists; that a tag used to label new/original content will very quickly (should it prove successful) render itself redundant through overuse.
Imagine the reverse; a tag used to label all content what you're referring to as "reportage". You'd just be narrowing your search down by 5% of the web.
2. Does art have to be fictional? Really?
3. That wasn't quite my point. A lot of what you seem to be criticizing about the web exists because people want it. A lot of people are perfectly happy with movie reviews, gossip, keeping up with what their mates are doing in social networking sites, and thirty second fart jokes. I don't think they're doing this because they can't find a search tool to locate succinct art for their lunch breaks. I think, much like in the real world, not a lot of space is set aside for galleries and such.
My second point on audience was that, in my perception, those that are seeking art are doing perfectly well; expecting in your personal choice of media (video and text-based fiction). Which is a point I don't think you quite addressed?
...
Oh, have a look at this btw: http://qmulinsl.wordpress.com/ It's a bit tangential... but not entirely.
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