soufflés, trees and contexts
"Suppose you draw a picture alone in your room, or make a soufflé or write a song. Is this still creative? Only potentially."
This quote has amused me since I first read it a couple of days ago. It's from Keith Negus and Micheal Pickering's Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value. They try to explain how creativity is only realised when it is achieved within some social encounter (page 23). Humans do not create ex nihilo/from nothing and creative practices are part of a societal context, but I think I might answer their question with a yes: you can bake a soufflé alone at home, and it will be a creative practice. Or at least you would respond to your own creative act. Alter/Ego.
The quote is of course reminiscent to "if a tree falls down in the woods and no one is around to hear it- does it make a sound?"
Update: Negus and Pickering make no reference to Luhmann, but their argument is strongly similar to his idea of communication. To Luhmann communication is only factual as far as Ego, a receiver, creates an understanding from a communicated utterance (The Reality of the Mass Media).
Labels: communication, creativity, thesis
1 Comments:
Nice quotation. If you split yourself in ego and alter (self observation?) you can observe your own creativity and by doing this, according to Negus and Pickering's be creative for yourself. Anyway you're not producing communication nor in Luhmann's or in any more common theory. According to Luhmann communication is the perception of a difference. The difference between what is said and how is said. And that's a perception that (as always) requires and observer to exist. But when Luhmann speaks about communication he speaks about something that is merely related to the social system. In other words maybe Luhmann wouldn't deny the possibily of speaking by yourself alone in one room, it would probably say that that is not communication.
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