When The Process Becomes The Story: On Open Source & Creativity
7th April 10
Posted in creativity, crowdsourcing, data
Posted by Zach Blank, Creative Technologist, BBH New York
We are so consumed by the communities that Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare (and our local knitting website) foster that we often forget to take a step back and think about the lessons to be learned from these communities. Within each of these online ecosystems, participants, aware of it or not, share some of their most intimate secrets with the world. Conversations about relationships, ridicule for certain social behavior from the night before, bragging about their new iPad, and most importantly simply being open all seem commonplace.
Coders admirably follow the same model however on a significantly different level. Most, I believe, have taken this notion of community and have truly found the value in it for what they do, and there is much we can learn from that. Coders who have affectionately adopted the open source mantra are out there sharing their code, encouraging others to take it and well pretty much do whatever they want. The idea is that by making the work available to be built upon and expanded, it will be built upon and expanded into something better and exponentially more worth sharing.
A piece of work created this way, where the sum of the parts is less meaningful than the work in its entirety, or gestalt, becomes very powerful when considered in the context of the open source philosophy. Projects made up of libraries, code blocks, classes, and ideas whose authors individually poured hours into creating are incomparably more notable than their preceding work which undoubtably made it possible. This is the key most important value in open source. And it is that value that can be translated to other media and have the same result.
Open source technology has given birth to a large array of projects, from everyday utilities to intricate and involved interactive art installations. Each has a narrative behind it that has an impact on its own.
Firefox and jQuery are wonderful examples of utility-based projects driven by the ideals of open source. Firefox, one of the leading web browsers, has a powerful community behind it, thousands-strong, and constantly pushing it forward. The source code and SDK are available to anyone who either wants to tinker with the core of the browser, or develop add-ons to be distributed throughout. jQuery is an example of a company whose purpose has made anyone using the Internet happier, conscience of it or otherwise. It is a Javascript framework which now has hundreds, if not thousands, of plugins creating rich Internet experiences for us all. It started with John Resig’s idea and has been progressed exponentially by the community that has organically grown around it.
The story of these projects are most relevant to us in understanding how to use the ideas of open source. The two projects below carry strong narratives of how they evolved, lending a learning experience on a much different level than the end product. Thinking about the path that these projects took and the backstories behind their creation is an exploration of the creative process that went into them; therein lies the most powerful ideas.
http://www.random-international.com/you-fade-to-light-philips-lum/
You Fade To Light is a beautiful project by rAndom International (with software created by Chris O’Shea), existing in large part because of people who understand the power of sharing their work and encouraging growth. This project was born out of projects before it, borrowing code, leveraging libraries and frameworks to bring it to life. Audience, a separate project also by rAndom International (in collaboration with Chris O’Shea) adds to the narrative and creates its own. Have a look at that here.
http://iwantyoutowantme.org/process.html; A wonderful exploration of the process of creating 'I Want You To Want Me' from start to finish
I Want You to Want Me (IWYTWM) by Jonathan Harris (http://number27.org) and Sep Kamvar (http://kamvar.org/) for the 2008 exhibit ‘Design and the Elastic Mind‘ at MoMA in NYC was created using OpenFrameworks, an open source framework in C++ for artists, interaction designers and creative coders. This beautiful work is in debt to all the work before it. Fortunately the IWYTWM team documented their process, their narrative. It is a prime example of the power that the evolution of these projects exemplify and the value in sharing them.
So, how can we leverage this power of sharing creativity in our business when we hold our ideas in such high regard and guard them so jealously? There is so much buzz around crowdsourcing at the moment because the ‘power of many’ has been proven. That is simply my argument. We need to adopt this powerful idea and understand how to make it relevant and practical for our work. How does the story behind the larger collaborative efforts fit into our business and make our work better?
The easy answer is it doesn’t. But it could.
We can open our ideas and leverage larger collaborative efforts. We need to start with sharing honest explorations of the process behind an idea. Again, IWYTWM illustrates this beautifully, and if we can embrace this idea and run with it we will come out with a whole new level of creative work – perhaps a new breed of creativity altogether.
We’d love to see more examples like the ones above. And we’re always keen to hear what you think.
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Hmm – The Power of Many… I like the sound of that.
Brilliant first post Zach. On a slightly different note, we have found it useful to share the inner workings of our work processes whenever possible. A good recent example is http://going-global.info/ – a project we’re working on with the UK government’s Technology Industry support agency.
Look forward to reading more.
Nice article and really gratifying to know that other agencies have people pushing the open source agenda.
This is becoming in more relevant, especially as advertising now morphs into the creation of software. The sooner agencies and clients understand the open source ethos, the sooner everyone benefits.
I recently worked on a project where collaboration was at the heart of the idea. To complete the community ethos of the concept, we decided to open source the entire project to encourage further discussion, educate and hopefully see some wonderful new additions/re-renderings of the whole concept.
Have a play ->
http://code.google.com/p/onedotzero-ident/
ello!
indeed – i’m more interested in ‘processes’ than ‘products’
i talk about that kind of thing here:
http://farisyakob.typepad.com/blog/2009/07/kickstart-an-album-creativity-is-a-process.html
and here in relation to ads and that
http://www.slideshare.net/farisyakob/converged-communications-new-ideas-of-influence-alternate-ending
ps I love that onedotzero piece sermad!
Nice post. From the way you put it, it would be easy to see how to apply open source thinking to an agency – creating a place/mechanism for every one to add on to an idea or provide a different perspective.
But that may not be the biggest challenge in agencies., The reward structure is so focused on individual talent across agencies that it discourages collaboration. Its not enough for one or two agencies e.g. Mother, to not put creatives names on an ad – every agency has to do it for individual credit to not be a criteria.
What’s interesting about the advertising industry today is the shift in Loyalty. Employees are increasingly less loyal to an agency and more loyal to a network of like minds. These micro-networks share ideas, vendors, best practices with each other but their is currently no way to reward those activities and the people who don’t have a network don’t know what they don’t know. I think micro-payment systems like Flattr (http://flattr.com) are close to providing compensation models for sharing ideas. I think people that work in advertising and related functions will join together to use systems like Flattr to reward collaborative thinking.
Perhaps we need to copy the financial industry and function around the idea of creative shares. We all tend to operate under the “all-or-nothing” project mindset and ultimately the final product may suffer because the best craftsmen of “open-source nuance x” weren’t there to contribute. If we only care about maximizing the value of our shares, we will want to do the very best work within our specific chunk of the total pie and desire for expertise beyond our own to cover the portions we are weaker in.
[...] When The Process Becomes The Story: On Open Source & Creativity Published: April 7, 2010 Source: BBH Labs Posted by Zach Blank, Creative Technologist, BBH New York We are so consumed by the communities that Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare (and our local knitting website) foster that we often forget to take a step bac… [...]
Hi Ben
You Fade to Light was not by me, it was created by rAndom International and I did the software for them.
Audience, was a project by rAndom International with me collaborating with them.
I’d be grateful if you could update your post.
Thanks
Hi Chris
Apologies for the mis-attribution. Changes now made.
Ben
A great read Ben
I think its interesting that we are recognising that creativity can make an equal contribution to society that intellectual pursuits do. When Jimmy Wales released Wikipedia to the world it was in the spirit of collaboration, not consumerism. Every one of the ten million hits day wiki gets is a tribute to the trust that world community puts in each other, it is this sprit of community that creativity is yet to fully grasp. I hope for a world where the same trust is put in a creativity community, where ideas are shared and the contingent outcome is celebrated not condemned.
here’s hoping.