Originality in the Arts

[Jezebel]

Do you think originality in the arts is important? This can be in visual art, music, entertainment, writing, etc.

Some people automatically disregard and put down those who heavily borrow from the ideas and styles of others to incorporate it into their own work. It never bothered me much. I care more about the end product than how much originality the creator was displaying. Sometimes the new work has been modified slightly and fits my tastes even better, sometimes I want more variations of the original, and sometimes there just needs to be more of something for whatever reason.

One argument could be that if everyone copied everyone else, then we wouldn't move forward with new ideas. I don't think that is important, as I don't think there is much out there that is truly original. It's all about degrees. Besides, it's often more efficient to start off with someone else's idea than to start from scratch. Then those ideas can continuously be improved upon by different sources to make the original even better.

What are your perspectives on originality?

[rwyatt365]

Is there really any originality? After a half-million years of "humanity", is there really anything new any more? Isn't it all just variations on a theme? I would concede that there are, perhaps, "original variations" and unique usages – and to that I would say, "Yes, originality and uniqueness are important". To make an exact copy of another's art seems to me to be pointless. Doing that might be technically challenging and can serve as a learning experience, but once done is it "art"?

I'm not so much into art, but with music I always appreciate a different artist interpreting someone else's music. In fact, years ago I would avidly seek out different interpretations of various songs just to see how "A" plays it as opposed to "B". I found the variations to be intriguing – sort of like a mirror into the artists thoughts. And even when a piece was "original" I could generally hear hints of other influences in the work. When Billy Cobham went solo, I could hear John McLaughlin in the background. When Stan Clarke played, I could hear Chick Corea or George Duke in the riffs. To me, that kind of thing was like watching a bloodline progress through a family tree.

[Rohsiph]

Originality is important . . . but pure originality is rare.

When it does happen, however, it is very important--particularly when it catches on.

Example in my mind right now is the shift from poetry based on classical ideas/sources/forms to poetry based largely on feelings that happened in the late 18th/early 19th century in England. The originality of, particularly, poets like Wordsworth and Keats opened up an entirely new method for looking at, experiencing, and writing poetry in English. (This is particularly vivid as I'm in a class studying this period/these poets right now).

It's how arts move forward--and it does happen, but not every day. I think one can see a good number of examples looking at the last twenty years of video games: from the orignal Nintendo to the Playstation 3, from designs focused on simplistic elements to designs that incorporate theatre, film, literature, etc. There have been a number of shifts in music, too, but those can be harder to see--the important shifts, in my experience, can only be seen as they happen by a very small population that's, in some way, close to the source.

One who focuses primarily on mass-market media might substantially disagree with my claims, but I would encourage such a person to try, for an hour or two, poking around the "underground" cultures--the subcultures, the counter-cultures . . . lots of them are meaningless, but a few are precisely where the developments that will shape art in twenty years are happening right now.

[OneBadMother]

I do think originality is important in the arts, or at least relative originality. I don't mean something new altogether, so much as taking something and putting an entirely new spin on it. Too much "art" nowadays takes old and tired spins without even trying to find a new one first.

[The Many]

If it is good, it is good. If it is bad, it is bad. Most unoriginal things tend to be quite boring since you have already seen them before, but on the other hand many original things are quite bad/uninteresting too. Nothing is necessarily good due to how it can be categorized; what really shows quality - to me, at least - is that I enjoy the piece. The important thing is that it is seen in itself (to a degree that is as high as possible, at least), rather than in its explanations - if it is original or unoriginal doesn't really matter, in the end.

[qwerty]

When I think about this topic I think of the Futurama episode where aliens attacked earth to demand closure to a TV episode they saw 1000 years ago.

The solution to the problem is to recreate the show. When leila take the reigns and tries to improvise the aliens get angry and threaten to destroy earth anyway. In order to make them happy Fry uses known and trusted plot lines to wrap up the show.

The point was that new and original is scary.