Creativity- a clash of the opposites, a chance at the new
A personal log
The idea that innovation stems from the collision of seemingly disparate ideas or concepts is not a novel one, in any sense.
Henry David Thoreau illustrated said dichotomy in a journal entry as far back as 1851 when he argued that “every poet has trembled on the edge of science” while Coleridge spoke of attending chemistry lectures in order to enhance his “stock of metaphors”- the creative potential inherent to ideas apparently in disjunction with each other has more recently been defined by Abraham and Perkin in their 2017 publication “Building the Agile Business through Digital Transformation” as the “agile innovation process”(Perkins and Abraham, 2017,p.95) .
It´s a concept we were uniformly introduced to as a better alternative to brainstorming within the parameters of a particular session of the “Ideas and Concepts in Digital and Interactive Storytelling” module, yet for me personally has come to define the creative process that has informed my work within this term.
Said process for me personally entails learning from disparate disciplines such as art, advertising, literature and photography .Within this piece, I draw inspiration from slow editing techniques in certain classic films in order to arrive at an alternative form of reflective and immersive (print) journalism.
As such, I was influenced by the works of Andrei Tarkovsky and Alfred Hitchcock, whose tendency specifically to hold a frame for a longer period of time in order to render a film more contemplative struck me as something worth emulating.
I do not refer to actual films produced by me within the class, including a prototype for a promo highlighting the perks of studying “Digital and Interactive Storytelling LAB”, a short piece on the canals and maritime wildlife of London as well as an interview conducted with the creator of the interactive project “Quipu”as I consider my output as too miscellaneous both in form and content to effectively showcase my intention to adopt and explore this “novel” form of journalism.
First attempts to do so were undertaken by me in a purely photographic format, explored in my photo story titled “Autumn Blues”. In order to convey a tranquil, contemplative mode I chose mundane subjects such as traffic lights or a viewfinder looking out on the River Thames and played around with aperture values.
One major achievement I credit to the exploration of this topic is the increased knowledge I gained in certain technicalities of photography, especially with regards to the use of alternative lenses such as a telephoto macro as well as the difference a good prime lens can make in capturing a low light scene when compared to a zoom. Learning to work with the limitations of certain fixed focal lengths (ex. 35mm, 85mm or 10mm) taught me more about composition and the importance of moving in close to your subject while providing me with a greater sense of control when angling for a specific shot.
As such, I made the discovery that in many cases it is the constraints which have the potential to render certain forms of photographic output exemplary.
It is also within the course of shooting images and attempting to arrange them into a montage of sorts in the course of my studies that I grew interested in non-linear forms of storytelling-more specifically, creating dramatic tension by not following a predictable order.
A scenario in which I was able to explore this concept more extensively was while drafting and creating a pre-shoot script for a prototype commercial.
The advert produced in conjunction with my DisLAB peers for digital wills company “Safe4” required me to create a script that follows a logical sequence of events yet also contains powerful stand-alone scenes that are sound and coherent in themselves, a factor which was essential in order to ensure the continuity of the plot. In order to achieve that, I found myself writing the end of the script first, then the second act before finally describing the establishing shots.
A s someone accustomed to writing a piece in the inverted pyramid style, starting from a strong lead petering down to less and less important information, I learned to craft a story in an alternate form, always considering what the viewer is “seeing, hearing, feeling and expecting” at any given moment.
Creating characters that are inherently relatable without being overly scripted constituted a specific challenge for me as I tried to establish the mannerisms of a careless, rich girl without being too prescriptive or obvious about it. As such, the writing at times needed to cut to the chase quickly as a short article would do yet allow a casual reader to make sense of a character´s depth.
My creative treatment (“Bureaucrazy 2.0”), detailing the plan for an interactive project exposing and highlighting the role various bureaucrats (ex. case workers/ immigration lawyers) play when processing asylum claims equally highlights the aspects of my creative journey I wish to further explore- namely, discovering implicit meanings as well as designing a non-linear, immersive experience for the viewer.
I grew to realise, however, that my idea needed fleshing out as I could not source enough original source material, either by way of interviews with stakeholders or secondary research as to why this project is worth considering- as I could not resolve this issue in an adequate manner and realised “Bureaucrazy 2.0” was still only in its planning stage, I moved towards creating an immersive experience that was feasible in the time span given to me, utilising the medium I know best, namely print, in order to produce a form of self-reflective journalism exposing hidden meanings on a limited number of subjects where I could claim to have some form of experience.
In order to attempt to resolve this issue in a favourable manner, I chose to write a selection of Medium articles which are as follows:
Rather than writing these longform pieces on drag and drop sites such as Weebly or Wix or more popular blogging platform alternatives such as Wordpress or Tumblr, I chose to publish my work on Medium primarily because articles trending on said site usually go over the 400 word limit which went well with my intention to explore my chosen subjects at a greater depth. The in built audience said blogging platform offers to users was an added bonus, since it makes the possibility of content going viral more likely.
An issue I struggled with initially when conceptualising my idea of creating a more contemplative, insightful form of journalism was the fact that my writing style appeared inconsistent. While the piece I wrote on advertising reads more like a traditional article, my article on the nature of homelessness reads like literary journalism while another piece, focusing on the role of moral policing in Kerala, partially adopts the tone of a memoir.
Personally, I believe this is due to the fact that I was influenced by various people and movements at the time of writing, ranging from Rob Orchard, the founder of independent magazine “Delayed Gratification” and a proponent of the Slow Journalism movement which aims to provide readers with stories outside of the breaking news cycle to French playwright Alfred Jarry who maintained the stance that no single issue is of greater importance than the other, regardless whether it pertains to political matters or something as mundane as street signs (Dubbelboer, 2012, p.69).
Yet in the course of grappling with stylistic elements of my writing, I realised that I also needed to focus on presentation of my work in an aesthetic sense.The fact that Medium as such is fairly simplistic with regards to customization options meant that I needed to learn to accommodate for this.
The juxtaposition of strong, original images with pull out quotes may seem like an easy enough tool to master yet when those are the only way of providing variation in a block of text, the arrangement of both has to be considered so that piece does not end up looking generic.
Making use of tools such as CoSchedule in order to arrive at shareable headlines was something I engaged with for the first time within this term. It was an interesting yet challenging experience as it forced me to consider whether it is worth considering dropping a clever pun from a headline and subsituting it for a swearword, for instance, in order to arrive at a larger amount of views.The practice itself allowed me to grow more aware of the interests and needs of a potential audience looking to read an article rather than just following my own inclinations.
It is on this note that I would like to conclude my reflections on what I have attempted to achieve over the past months and what I have learned over the course of that time by coming back to the concept of creative dichotomy I introduced at the onset of this essay- the realisation that my ambition to create a slower and more introspective form of journalism that purports to be different to what is produced by a 24 hour news cycle is nonetheless set off by employing the same rules of SEO and layouting chosen by mainstream media.
Bibliography
Bell, M. (1998) The journalism of attachment In: M. Kieran (eds.) Media Ethics. London: Routledge. 15–23
Dubbelboer, M.(2012) The Subversive Poetics of Alfred Jarry: Ubusing Culture in the Almanachs du Père Ubu. New York: LEGENDA Available from https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vTYrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA69&lpg=PA69&dq=alfre+jarry+speculative+journalism&source=bl&ots=I66csITVW2&sig=Rqu814ewLXIBzO49MhLqzfbPe3c&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjfvaD52orYAhUIKOwKHQH-C50Q6AEIMjAB#v=onepage&q&f=false [Accessed 10 December 2017]
Perkin, N. and Abraham, P. (2017) Building the Agile Business through Digital Transformation. London: Kogan Page Limited. Available from https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tUqFDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA95&lpg=PA95&dq=creativity+and+innovation+is+often+considered+to+be+driven+by+the+recombination+of+previously+disparate&source=bl&ots=JeZ8qVKinN&sig=FYMBF3QEMVF5A9BdHEhn5ikvO5w&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiG1v61oM_YAhWJB8AKHce9BNAQ6AEILTAA#v=onepage&q=creativity%20and%20innovation%20is%20often%20considered%20to%20be%20driven%20by%20the%20recombination%20of%20previously%20disparate&f=false [accessed 10 December 2017]
Thoreau, H. D.(2013) Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau. Hastings: Delphi Classics. Available from https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0XgbAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT2308&lpg=PT2308&dq=every+poet+has+trembled+on+the+edge+of+science&source=bl&ots=r__VkKX28B&sig=lx_aTyX63EOtRzRLE8TYNIAfGdw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjpg4Xi49HYAhVpAsAKHeSUA1sQ6AEIKjAB#v=onepage&q=every%20poet%20has%20trembled%20on%20the%20edge%20of%20science&f=false [accessed 10 December]
