"Everything's A Knockoff"

I was working a meeting of a very interesting group yesterday when someone told a story about a presenter he'd recently seen.  "This speaker did something really cool," the guy said.  "He had a roll of plastic on an overhead projector and wrote and drew on it while he was talking.  He was illustrating his presentation as he gave it."

I had a recall flash and said, "I saw Edward DeBono do that once."  "Whoa," the guy reported, "DeBono was this guy's hero!"

Then he gave me the money line: "I can't believe it; everything's a knockoff!"

And, he's right.  Everything is a knockoff.

At least according to John Maeda:

In the past I tended to equate creativity with originality. I think I still definitely appreciate something original more than something that is just creative. Yet I realize now that in life if you expect yourself to be entirely original, and you refuse to do something just because you know that someone else has done it ... you really should just stay in bed for the rest of your life. Because everything has been done already.

"Everything has been done already."  For years, any time I had an idea, this realization blocked me like a stick in front of an ox.  "Well, let's see if somebody's written about this before," I'd think.  They I'd go off and find that somebody had.  "It won't be creative if somebody's already done it. Game over; stay in bed."

Not today.  I know I have a perspective that's different from others on whatever I write about.  And that's why I write: to discover and describe that perspective.  Derivative?  Yup.  Mine?  Yup.  Original?  Well, since there's only one of me, that makes my perspective original by definition. 

And, remember, "original" assumes no valence.  Could be great; could be awful. 

Like all knockoffs.

I saw many examples of this the other day at the Chanel show at the Metropolitan.  The show makes plain the meaning of two important ideas: style and variation.  Here is Harold Koda from the Introduction to the exhibition's catalogue:

Chanel created a stylistic signature of such authority that its referencing risked the danger of predictability; but Lagerfeld, like Chanel herself had once done, injected the life of the times into his system of signs.  Acknowledging both the icons and iconography of the house, Langerfeld animates them with nover transfigurations, thereby avoiding the academicism of an overly reverential methodology.  In many instances Lagerfeld has expanded the boundaries of the Chanel style by incorporating elements from unlikely cultural phenomena.  Seemingly transgressive and incongruous, Lagerfeld's provocations are, invariably, allustions to the historical narratives of the house.

Listen carefully: "stylistic signature"; "referencing [risking] the danger of predictability"; "overly reverential methodology"; "expanding the boundaries"; "transgressive...incongruous...provocations"; "allusions." 

Everything's been done before; everything's a knockoff.

And yet...

Comments

[Tom Asacker]

Great post! Thanks.

[Tom]

Thank you, Tom. I had coffee with Evelyn Rodriguez recently and she had lots of very nice things to say about you. I just ordered your book and look forward to reading it.

[violette]

Thanks Tom. I think that ultimately creativity could be defined by application and timing.

Nothing is new,not since the discovery of fire and the wheel! What becomes new is recylcing an idea, a design, anything, and applying it in an unexpected way, giving it a twist. That's the product of creative vision and insight. The timing of the creative action determines its success.

In addition to many things we typically think of as creative design/styling/products (tangibles) comedy is an example of (intangible) creativity that is dependent upon those factors. It's an unexpected slant on a typical situation that relies on timing to be funny.

violette