I started taking pictures of padlocks. As a matter of fact I copied the idea from someone else. Here’s a short exchange on my photostream
lizjones112 Pro User says:
Nice shot, I’m glad I’m not the only one who takes pictures of padlocks!on-the-run Pro User says:
Actually it’s contagious. I thought your’s were so good that I suddenly found myself copying!!lizjones112 Pro User says:
Thank you, glad to know I can inspire others to take interesting pictures
I wrote about this on my own blog, referring to visual memes, but all the time I was thinking about copying and the whole ambiguity of that culturally located concept of copying. I guess we are first socialised into the complexities and nuances of copying in school. We learn for example that:
- close imitation is good in certain contexts (such as letter formation, lining up, singing, turning somersaults, using technical vocabulary)
- imitation is bad, when we make fun of how people walk, speak and so on…that is as long as they are not legitimate targets (and of course what constitutes a legitimate target varies from situation to situation)
- imitation is good in creative tasks, particularly in the broad sweep of things such as kinds of representation, writing genres and so on
- imitation is bad in creative tasks when it shows a lack of originality and when it is a straightforward (literal) copy
In a nutshell, we learn by copying and we learn not to copy. Our academic life is shot through with similar notions about copying. Plagiarism is bad, summarising someone else’s ideas and acknowledging them is good. Doing a similar thing to someone else locates you in a particular discipline or field. Doing exactly the same thing is unoriginal etc etc. Underlying all this there seem to be some cultural constructs about individuality, originality, authority and authorship that are related to the way that knowledge and learning are conceived of and policed in the dominant Western paradigm. These are all concepts that new media and new technologies challenge. Yet, we still prize the originality of our blogs even if we riff off the posts of others; we celebrate the uniqueness of the images in our photostream even when we are inspired by others. Cut/paste, capture/remix, and rip/burn technologies suggest how we can make new knowledge or art out of the work of others. Originality and creativity is perhaps re-defined in terms of the juxtapositions we make, the new links we establish. What we do then is less like orchestrating new comments more like deejaying, seguing one idea track into another whilst still keeping our audience on the dance floor. Maybe copies our OK (after all they serve DJs well), we are distinctive in the versions we have and the combinations and sequences we make and, of course, the spaces in which we produce them. After all that’s where we perform our identity and develop our reputation.
