PAUL SELING

ON THE JAPANESE MODERN TECH-NEXUS.

There is a lot of wicked and twisted debate nowadays, and in different places of the world, around the idea of copying – at least I became aware of it when entering eyes open the new creative field of architecture.I think it was the new flood with sleek, inovative, twisted, complex content that happened to me in a new medium ( academic ),a flood that made me visit, for instance, modern japanese design; design that made me question some rather tough and widespread ideas on copying.

Being 19-20, and an avid researcher for originality ever since my first…years in school ( somehow somebody is always copying you out there in the…dark, for a variety of reasons ), I started to question the recent devellopement of japanese modern culture, that used to grow for a while on copying the american/european ones ( more than 3-4 decades, I guess ).

I think I was amused to find out that, for a long period of time, japanese designers were receiving some really bad-ass ugly prize from the modern western culture, for the worst or the most f**ed up and in your face copies of industrial design, copies made during that particular year.But seeing the way this whole culture and social/popular mindframe has „trancended” its new…origins, and made it into the new open/ or into the creative „Now!”, made me re-think all these processes.

NOTE : why I personally call that „a creative nexus” is somehow related to some…unsure data I could obtain about some relations between post-war Japan and the US / Europe. Of course I will never know how does it feel for a whole society to exist and progress over „copied content”.I cannot even imagine it, maybe because I am and was so much into finding an original view on everything I was putting my hands on.But the image of a whole factory, from designer to manager and quality surveyor, being content over the procent of the original that has been covered/obtained is…well…puzzling :)).

Of course most of the recent japanese „stuff” is, for me, mindblowing ,so I guess the memory of the `50s, `60s, might be somehow repressed in some ways.And that`s why I call all of this „a nexus” : the memory of such a hystory/progress cannot be easily erased / transformed or…with the help of some alchemy…turned into other stuff. So I sometimes think of how they managed to justify everything into the „Now!”, but it rarely seems they are doing this.So how it is actually handled, remains a mistery for me.Is „copying” or „evolving around copying” something they used to justify with somesort of a „vengeance” feel, or success, I thought so for a while.Or is the short memory of consumers justifying this rapid progress and then I thought all that phase might have been regarded as a simple, well, transition, no much harm done ( of course, still, I guess originality has to suffer in some other places of the world, how is that balanced, well, again, I cannot imagine ).

CREATIVITY AROUND FIXED FORMS.

Again, coming from music school, you are faced with endless years of forced reproduction of classical pieces ( very strict and detailed ones).These reproductions are usually focused more on nuance, interpretation, a personal view on the original ( at young ages this becomes, again ,subject to teaching – isn`t that weird and unnatural ? ).No modification of the original is ever permited.I think that, after years and years of practising on these…”fixed forms”,  for music school students, the idea of „inventing” something on your own becomes somesort of a forgotten, hidden, repressed dream ( or at least a guilty one ).

NOTE : I also think there is a big difference between cultures that emphasize on the idea of creativity, versus those that were more or less lacking in the last 50 years this educational aspect ( former comunist countries, more or less ).I can guess that, in creativity-based societies, institutionalised „cultural behaviour” comes somehow naturally and is well handled by some..well..general feel of well-being and common sense.While in oppresive societies, these tools for the „creation-of-fun-and-recreational-moments” can become rather…paradoxal in almost all aspects ( well, I can testify for it ).

RELATING TO OTHER CREATIVES.

So growing up in the new digital century made me reconsider all these ideas, and through creative devellopement I started to be more and more flexible when it came to …some forms of copying.I think no creative process can actually start and grow without a certain quantity of „copies” being made, more or less complete, understandable, visible, etc , mostly because we always grow in relation to someone ; someone „big” , „someone that impressed us”, that we looked up to, etc.

In fact, we usually start by wanting to copy, then, by almost all means, a certain „witness” inside of us makes us realize it is still, something unnatural. Depending on our standards ( from „everything” to „ourselves” ), we continue doing it, or just transforming it into something that is more and more personal. Can the „filiation” ever be erased , I don`t actually think so. A whole complicated web of relations can be created around all this process.

NOTE : I also thought that the balance of „personal content / feel / touch ” and „marketing issues / calculations / etc ” in some product`s composition is, well, kind of unique.So every copy must feel actually like something bad, some kind of a malware, or even an instalation of destruction.

I was personally never into copying, and if I was questioning somebody else`s „creation / form”, it was because I used to have a genuine interrest in people, ( and their … psychological profiles ). Somehow copying someone`s „stuff” with your own forces makes you understand the „creative”.Somehow. Because no matter what, the „entity” that is creating the object of your admiration / desire is…well…someone else.

Of course copying someone you like(d) in order to evolve is a risky business. You will always grow in relation to another „psychological profile(s)” (…worlds within…themselves ), and then your work will always contain somesort of a refference to it / them. And knowing more or less about yourself makes you understand a complexity of relations between you and the ‘creative” you are … copying / quoting. The more mature and exposed to information you are, the more you can actually understand complicated relations between other complex „stuff” involved , like the differences between creative mediums ( yours and…theirs ), technology, public, marketing, society, political systems, etc.

( the big issues of technology / social / economical / political divides that we are being faced with in these post-comunist transitions are, I think, so complicated, that can rarely be understood fully, and surely they never will  )

So back to „just” the musical mediums, most musical kids that enter the modern music „paradigms” are somehow enlightened or illuminated at some point by a form or other of entertainment that raises a lot of questions, maybe / or mostly under the form a of a sensation.I cannot evaluate the whole array of conditions under wich a young person feels the need to start doing „something like that” or „something different”, or „something even better”, but I think it always comes from a mix of ambitions related to social integration, disponibility, personal energies, cultural backround, not to mention technical options and the devellopement of the actual „creative medium(s) / submedium(s)”.

SPECULATIVE MADNESS.

But of course, music is not all that is being „copied” out there .Nevertheless, if we talk about movies, graphix, technology, all that is worth copying seems to be a carrier of a vast and complex array of relations between the creative(s) and medium(s), culture(s), public, etc. First of all everything that sparks some interrest in speculative minds is somehow out of the ordinary, and the „speculative” seems to find here an easy way of ..well…stealing, and of using that in his favour.I personally have a long history of playing with stuff that goes „under the radar” of stupid mediocre minds, just for the fun of it. Sadly, what is elated , elegant, intelligent , etc, in human devellopement remains…that, no matter what. So a certain risk becomes obvious when playing out of mediocrity, normal boundries, and into these ranges, and of course, if your … disponibility permits, the other way around.(?!)

I also read some stuff about creative content as it is/was connected to human history and devellopement , and it seems it was always present in areas / times of comfort. I`m now talking about ancient history of mankind, when the time for resting was scarce, so finding some energy for „making beautiful stuff” must have been a luxury.

I guessed that nowadays institutionalised „art-making” became something of a paradox. ( well, what isn`t, actually ? ).How or why has making of beautiful stuff become a subject to repetition, torment of kids ( how many of them are killing themselves at the age of 8 ? ), snobbery, institutionalised boredom, etc ? It might be that, again, all these secondary efx are more present in rigid political and social regimes. I guess the more educated a society is around the idea of creativity, the more these energies are collected, grown, channeled and used for the sake of some constructive result.

The more a society is corrupt, the more creativity becomes just a complicated, unusual, time and money consuming…matter of …well…even the state (?).Creatives become cartoonish, caricatural, not to mention creative mediums become torn apart by somesort of a complicated collective self image that is twisted and challenged by an infinity of idiosyncrasies.