FOFC OT Discussion: Is creativity a finite resource (is there "peak creativity")

[cartman]

Here is a topic for discussion. Is creativity something that can run out? I was thinking about this the other day, and music seems to be the best example. In the vast majority of instances, a band or musician has a few years of greatness, then after that it is hit or miss. Here's some examples:

The Beatles: 6 years of recording some of the greatest music in history. Towards the end they had many more misses that early on, but finished with Abbey Road. Then in their solo careers there were occasional gems, but nothing like their early prolific output.

U2: Started a bit slow, but hit their peak with The Joshua Tree to Achtung Baby. Since then their releases have been pretty uneven.

R.E.M.: Like U2 they had a bit of a slow start before hitting their stride from Document to Automatic for the People. Since then, not a lot of consistency.

Innumerable one-hit wonders: Seem to use up everything for one great song.

Other examples are welcomed. This is a discussion, after all. I'm interested in hearing the thoughts of others on this topic.

[Noop]

No. What happens is their fans would not accept them stepping outside their comfort zone and do something different.

[cartman]

I don't mean to limit the topic to just musicians, just those were the first to come to mind.

There are also plenty of examples of writers that produce a few books, and then nothing more of note.

[lordscarlet]

Originally Posted by Noop

No. What happens is their fans would not accept them stepping outside their comfort zone and do something different.

Yeah, I think music is tough to use as your example. There is a huge financial/cultural acceptance factor that skews any discussion. You need to look at scientists, inventors, painters, etc.

[lordscarlet]

Originally Posted by cartman

I don't mean to limit the topic to just musicians, just those were the first to come to mind.

There are also plenty of examples of writers that produce a few books, and then nothing more of note.

I think the flaw in your logic is that creativity equals some sort of measurable success.

[Noop]

Anything that requires using your creativity to make money is subject to your fans not accepting you stepping outside your comfort zone.

[JediKooter]

I think with the Beatles, you had 4 people that worked really well off of each other and when they were separated, the competition just wasn't there any longer. I think had they stayed together, there would have been a few more good albums because they would have weeded out all the 'filler' songs on their solo albums.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by lordscarlet

I think the flaw in your logic is that creativity equals some sort of measurable success.

Why do you think it is a flaw? I agree that there isn't a quantitative measure on creative output. But there is definitely a difference in levels of creative output. A 5 year old banging on a Fisher Price xylophone is being creative, and there is definitely a difference between that and Beethoven's 5th. Someone buying some paint and a canvas then doing a painting is creative, but that is definitely different than the result of Da Vinci painting the Last Supper.

[Mustang]

Originally Posted by lordscarlet

I think the flaw in your logic is that creativity equals some sort of measurable success.

This.


Just because someone isn't successful doesn't mean they are any more or less creative. Alot of what appeals to the masses really isn't creative, its just something repackaged to generate money because it is a type of comfort food.

[johnnyshaka]

Originally Posted by cartman

Why do you think it is a flaw? I agree that there isn't a quantitative measure on creative output. But there is definitely a difference in levels of creative output. A 5 year old banging on a Fisher Price xylophone is being creative, and there is definitely a difference between that and Beethoven's 5th. Someone buying some paint and a canvas then doing a painting is creative, but that is definitely different than the result of Da Vinci painting the Last Supper.

Just because we haven't heard anything as good as the 5th or seen a painting as brilliant the Last Supper doesn't mean it doesn't exist...right?

Like somebody already mentioned, it seems that "success" in a creative sense seems to be very cultural and I think that is an important point. For example, Rap and Hip Hop were non-existent 40 years ago and now they are front and center among today's popular genres of music. Are today's rappers any more creative than the first ones on the scene? Hardly.

[Autumn]

Aside from the fact that we can't call success and creativity equal, would people agree that most creative types have a limited period of peak creativity? I think that's the question OP is getting at here. Or would you argue that many/most great artists have sustained their creativity over their careers simply to varying amounts of acceptance?

I'm trying to remember the person who studied this, had a book out. They had found that there were two typical trajectories of creativity, those who created a lot early in their careers and flamed out, basically, and those who produced their masterworks later in their career after a more humble beginning. I don't know how that person measured "genius" however.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by Autumn

Aside from the fact that we can't call success and creativity equal, would people agree that most creative types have a limited period of peak creativity? I think that's the question OP is getting at here.

Yep, that's the point. Thanks for putting it in clearer terms than I did.

[Drake]

Originally Posted by cartman

Why do you think it is a flaw? I agree that there isn't a quantitative measure on creative output. But there is definitely a difference in levels of creative output. A 5 year old banging on a Fisher Price xylophone is being creative, and there is definitely a difference between that and Beethoven's 5th. Someone buying some paint and a canvas then doing a painting is creative, but that is definitely different than the result of Da Vinci painting the Last Supper.

I'd argue that the failure you're describing is about execution, knowledge or technique. Skill rather than creativity itself.

Something can be enormously creative, but have a flawed execution.

And that said, I think this actually answers part of the question. Something that truly is wildly creative and new frequently requires the acquisition of new skill sets, new ways of thinking. In early stages, the execution is often enormously flawed, and it takes some time to learn how to marry the creativity with the right execution effectively and reliably.

And that's a huge hill to climb over and over again. After awhile, especially if you're dependent on your creative output for income or lifestyle enhancements, it becomes a cost/benefit analysis to do variations on what you've already been successful at vs. investing the massive energies necessary to step outside of that box...and risk having the brand new thing absolutely fail for lack of audience.

[DaddyTorgo]

As someone who used to write great poetry and decent short stories, I can definitvely say yes.

[Autumn]

This is obviously too big a topic to figure out on a message board. Part of the question is what is creative? But if we take one definition, the idea of inventing a new way of doing things, whether changing the world of painting or music, creating an invention, etc., that very concept limits itself. Most people are not likely to create a number of innovations in the same field - once they've invented a new form of music they're more likely to continue tinkering with that style. As someone said before, it requires building up these skill sets to support the new creation, and so at that point they're kind of invested in this new way of doing things. They become the old guard instead of the new guard.

However, we can still say an artist or creator is creative, even if they're not shattering walls, so that's not a complete answer.

[AENeuman]

It seems there are two different types of creativity. One that can happen with little education and experience (more emotional) and one that comes from lots of knowledge and experience (more intellectual).

One side i see Salinger and Cobain. both practically overwhelmed by their own demons and using art to express it. this one tends to dry up and have devastating consequences (star wars 1-3)

On the other side are the authors and movie directors, etc who talk about how they had to write or direct lots to get to their masterpiece. tarantino literally says this in the end of "bastards"

[Autumn]

Originally Posted by SteveBollea

The thing with music is that a musician's first album has his or her entire life of ups and downs, childhood, adolesence, crappy jobs, etc. to work off of. That said musician's second album? His or her last two or three years which has mainly just been touring or promoting. t shouldn't be shocking there's a drop off.

Yeah in music in particular that's a funny effect of our culture. Their inspiration must just dry up with the way their life changes. Some of those eventually find new sources of inspiration for their art, but since musicians are expected to put out stuff regularly there's often a good deal of duds between. And then they're often not accepted in their new form if it's not what the fans have come to expect from them.

[Autumn]

Another interesting aspect of this is that a lot of new research indicates that creativity is much less of an individual effort than our cultural myth suggests. Most creative things come out of a collaboration, both of people, and also a result of cultural movement.

[CU Tiger]

by definition finite means a set number....there are a finite nukbr of letters in the language, and finite number of words that can be fomed from those letters and by default a finite number of combinatons of words or groups of words that can be used to form a complete thought. In that sense the number of possible thoughts are already out there, yourrs may be more or less common but it is not unique

[Young Drachma]

I think people are motivated differently and thus, their creativity gets manifested in different ways. So yeah, it's finite because it'll eventually run out one way or another...but as for the ways it's demonstrated, we have artists whose work gets discovered well after they are dead and we realize how brilliant they are, etc.

As it relates to music, it's really dependent on people's tastes. It's not really just about their brilliance alone. People's tastes change and trying to sustain that without trying to be like a pop chameleon, is really not what a lot of artists are about once they've made enough money to get out of the cycle if they want.

[Marc Vaughan]

To me creativity is boundless HOWEVER its when a persons creativity matches that of their 'fans' which is when they're considered to be most creative/successful ....

Often a creative persons direction and interests diverges from their initial fan base and that might be the 'end' of them as a successful act or in some instances they might move onto a different and sometimes larger fan base.

(its also worth noting that early on in a bands career they're most interested in pleasing their fans and thus more likely to stick to creativity which their fans will like ... if they become multi-millionaires they'll probably be more inclined to indulge their own creative whims more ... as with U2, Robbie Williams, The Beatles etc.)

[Sgran]

Creativity is like genetics. You can give birth to a multitude of variations within certain boundaries. Once in a great while there is a mutation that breaks through a genre, creating a new species. But most of the time creative people are just creating a variation that we haven't seen yet, just like how all children are unique.
Creativity is work. Although someone can occasionally catch lightning in a bottle, most of the time you need to know your craft inside and out so that you can recognize a unique idea when it comes to you. Having worked in a creative capacity, I can tell you that the real skill is to be able to be creative on demand. Just try to come up with a new, catchy slogan for a Christmas card with a gun to your head and the clock ticking.

[SportsDino]

Well, first I think the topic title is off from the point, it seems the interest is more in debating whether a creator has a peak and diminishing returns (or burnout)... creativity as a finite resource is not really the topic because we are assuming another young guy can come along and they have plenty of room to create again.

At least, that is where it looks like the convo is going, if you want to consider macro-creativity as a finite resource we can use music as an example. Music is essentially sounds (various frequencies and volume levels) and timing. You can actually calculate the 'creativity range' for any collection of instruments as the permutation of all possible sounds over all possible timings for any length of time you would consider a song. This is a massively huge number, although admitably the fraction that are novel, sound like something other than noise, and pleasing to the ear in some fashion is much smaller (yet still huge).

So you can say there is a point where all songs less than 5 minutes in length have been exhausted. You can take an information theory approach to calculating when that would happen, but I assure you it will be quite far away.

Really you need to look at what a person considers creativity, something new. Applying it to music, early work is likely to be more experimental, as an artist gets more success they are to a degree programmed to be less unique. The same algorithms they applied to past success push them down paths where the outputs seem less unique and therefore often less interesting to the novelty seeking minds of the average human (there is cognitive science that shows the brain is very receptive to novel data and perhaps even evolved to that end for survival/success reasons).

So to avoid creativity running out is essentially the ability to unprogram your own personal assumptions, often they may even be subconcious and so much a part of you that you do not even know you are applying them. I'd say this is not impossible, although I believe for many people it is not easy and they are not really motivated (or need) to do this. The brain is also built to learn and anticipate, and if you are doing well enough with one strategy there often is no need to take the risk to look for an unproven one.

I'd say predicting a particular person's peak or whether they will ever attain another one is somewhat pointless. There will be an average statistic, and that may suggest that the trend is for many to have a productive burst and taper off, and you can show why the artist and the audience are primed for that to happen, but that is not a proof that it must happen.

[cartman]

Read this article that reminded me of this thread.

At What Age Are People The Most Creative? | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by cartman

Here is a topic for discussion. Is creativity something that can run out? I was thinking about this the other day, and music seems to be the best example. In the vast majority of instances, a band or musician has a few years of greatness, then after that it is hit or miss. Here's some examples:

The Beatles: 6 years of recording some of the greatest music in history. Towards the end they had many more misses that early on, but finished with Abbey Road. Then in their solo careers there were occasional gems, but nothing like their early prolific output.

U2: Started a bit slow, but hit their peak with The Joshua Tree to Achtung Baby. Since then their releases have been pretty uneven.

R.E.M.: Like U2 they had a bit of a slow start before hitting their stride from Document to Automatic for the People. Since then, not a lot of consistency.

Innumerable one-hit wonders: Seem to use up everything for one great song.

Other examples are welcomed. This is a discussion, after all. I'm interested in hearing the thoughts of others on this topic.

Yes. I know this personally. I used to write and be all creative. Then my creativity quite literally...ran out.

LMAO - I said the same thing up there 4 years ago.

[Julio Riddols]

To me it seems that there are two ways to go about maintaining creativity as a band or artist. One is going with what you know and sticking with it and just being consistent (Think Deftones), the other is having the ability to hear the good in other people's creativity and continue to evolve as an artist. You've got to be willing to be a harsh critic on yourself and make music that YOU think is good, but complacency and laziness tend to set in over time.

Take a guy like David Byrne. With the Talking Heads, he was a GREAT lead singer. He has a uniqueness and an energy that really pops in their best work. If you listen to an original song of theirs and a version recorded more recently, you notice immediately that his energy and uniqueness has been refined to the point of almost being boring now. Sure he is still a very creative and unique talent, but I think once you lose that edge of borderline craziness that the best lead singers have, you lose the impact and the passion and everything becomes just muscle memory. Alanis Morrisette is another good example. Her big hit album featured her going flat out nuts on a lot of tracks, then over time she became kind of homogenized into a typical lilith fair pop singer. The energy died.

I think creativity and passion are heavily tied together, and when you're doing it for love it is a lot more fulfilling than when you're doing it for money. A band like Silverchair, who alienated as many fans as they made with each successive album, seemed to be a lot like the artist in my second example - They changed constantly throughout their career, and as a result every one of their albums remains fresh to me.

I feel like if I were forced (say by a recording contract) to make music or art on a set schedule, I would start producing sub par work real quick. I have to work when inspired or I feel like I am just going through the motions. Sometimes that inspiration comes in floods, sometimes it is only once or twice in a month that I get the urge to make music. When I go back and listen to the stuff I have made, it is easy to tell the difference between my most inspired work and the stuff that is more like a ripple resulting from the splash rather than the rock that made the splash.

[nol]

I would add that creativity isn't a one-way street - there's a societal aspect of it too. Raw creative ability is likely a very skewed distribution, and the vast majority of people have a very marginal amount of it.

Some of those eventually create one-hit wonders due to the blind luck of their type of work aligning with what is regarded as novel AND valuable in society at the time. On the other hand, you have people who weren't seen as especially creative during their lifetimes but end up regarded as ahead-of-their time geniuses.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. For the R.E.M. and U2 examples, it's easy to see how "hitting a creative peak" could also be a function of 1) the bands getting better from playing together more often and 2) New Wave and hair metal becoming somewhat saturated by the mid '80s and audiences wanting something different.

So to some extent, creativity exists as some kind of finite neurological resource that may run out as time progresses, but things like motivation, access to resources, and zeitgeist factors tend to overshadow it in the long run.

[Izulde]

Speaking from my own vantage point, the peak for writers tends to be middle age - there's a certain amount of life experience and technical honing necessary to reach full potency, no matter how great the reservoir of talent.

Poetry, on the other hand, is a complete wildcard. As an Irish poet I spoke to once said, "You can write the greatest poem of your life when you're 16, and it's all downhill from there, or you can write it when you're 90. You just never know."

[cartman]

Interestingly for painters, a study showed they hit peak creativity when they reached the "Golden Ratio" (ping: QS) point of their average lifespan.

When do great artists hit peak creativity? - Salon.com

[Marc Vaughan]

A quote I sincerely agree with is that creativity is 90% perspiration, 10% inspiration ... I know for my games coming up with features, designs etc. involves a heck of a lot of dead ends, playing other games, immersing myself in the sport etc. .... inspiration hits at the strangest of times and I try to keep a notepad close at most times so I can scribble inanely as required

I don't think creativity is a 'finite resource' at all - but I DO believe that sometimes someones creativity comes in sync with a mass-market vogue or someone elses interests .... and that is seen as their most creative period because of that, for instance REM are seen as 'best' during their most commercially successful phase, that doesn't mean they were more or less creative at that point ... just that they sold lots of records

[INDalltheway]

I've been thinking about my very own creativity a lot in the past few months. I blame my lack of creativity to not being able to get into any video games for an extended period of time. I'm not sure if that is a exactly true, but I certainly think it is playing a large part. Any ways you guys suggest getting out of this rut of sorts?

[Super Ugly]

Originally Posted by INDalltheway

I've been thinking about my very own creativity a lot in the past few months. I blame my lack of creativity to not being able to get into any video games for an extended period of time. I'm not sure if that is a exactly true, but I certainly think it is playing a large part. Any ways you guys suggest getting out of this rut of sorts?

Try something completely different - music, painting, a new sport. It works.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

I don't think creativity is a 'finite resource' at all - but I DO believe that sometimes someones creativity comes in sync with a mass-market vogue or someone elses interests ....

This kinda fits into what I was thinking when this thread got necromanced.

"Creativity", or how it's perceived, seems to be significantly influenced by the tastes & preferences of the moment when the creation is unveiled.

Fits into a separate discussion I've had today about how some classic bands would have had an entirely different place in the world if they had appeared at a different time. (My example was how Sabbath would have likely been a footnote at most if they were 20 years later, presumably someone else would have become "Sabbath-esque" in their place)

[Chief Rum]

One of the writing forums I go to mentioned that an apparently well-published author (not someone I knew, but that doesn't really mean much) would get over his creativity issues by writing "200 crappy words", as he put it. That he could be feeling totally blah and not want to write a word, but as long as he could force himself to just sit down and start typing out 200 words, by the end of it, he could get himself re-engaged and start going again.

I haven't put that one to the test yet, but it does certainly fit with the "just do it" mentality I am trying work more into my life. Maybe that will work for others here, too, INDalltheway, DT, whoever.

[Chief Rum]

By the way, the 200 words didn't have to be anything and usually were thrown away or tossed aside immediately. Stream of consciousness, nothing to see here, pointless drivel, etc. So he wouldn't have some concept of what to write. He would just start writing whatever.

[SportsDino]

I'd agree with the 200 words concept. I had massive mental blocks in the past, but I've adopted a sort of 'keep the legs churning' approach when I hit a 'tackle'. Usually just continuing to push even when it is not going somewhere and letting my mind wander or change tasks I keep moving and getting something profitable done (or nothing profitable, but at least rule out some bad roads), and then I glance back at the barrier before and it has either fallen apart (smashed through it through brute force), is no longer relevant, or just looks different and less imposing than at the first encounter.

Or you just build up small successes in another area and when you come back you just have a morale boost.

Or you go through 200 words and get all the jumble out of your RAM and one thread comes back into focus.