If you were to ask me about the most basic requirements of creativity, I may suggest that observation and awareness of the universe are about as fundamental of a skill as there is.
We are in the middle of a weird space and time in the timeline of creative pursuit. At no other point in history has the average person been able to have access to so much inspiration, feedback and educational content. Simultaneously, society has fostered these massive generative content engines we often call artificial intelligence and are using them to churn all of that into an output that ranges from the curious and interesting to the negligent and slop-laden.
I doubt that there has been a time in history that equals this for the opening of eyes and ears to the complexity of what it means to create.
And yet I also think that there is very little new—and where new does squeak through the cracks of Xeroxed regurgitation of commercialization and generative language models and social media influence it squeaks through when a person notices something interesting the piques the ineffable nuances of our brains. We observe and think and churn and ponder. And what comes out the other end may be interesting and beautiful. It may be creative.
At the heart of all those other things is knowing that what the ghost in the machine can accomplish is now no longer distinguishable from human skill, but that seeing and listening and feeling are a core skill yet uncaptured by an algorithm.
Under the category of Eyes & Ears, I’lll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.