Am I Creative.. Rather, Who is?

I have always had a problem with creativity. Especially when I have tried.

Wiki's definition for creativity goes like this :

"Creativity is the ability to generate innovative ideas and manifest them from thought into reality"

Fair enough!! But everyone has ideas. Some big, some small and mostly uninspiring. But there are a select few, which make the small guy in the back of your head go "Now, why couldn't you think of that. :( " . Well, not the emoticon, but anyway. Simple and brilliant, some of these ideas leave me wagging my tongue for more. Of course, that is pretty rare :) .

Also who is the creative guy? The guy who presents this idea to you? Or the guy from whom he copied this. And an idea, refers to any sort of work of art, some smart lines, anything innovative.

I have always noticed double standards when it comes to judging if somebody is creative. People are mostly opinionated and biased when it comes to such choices; A popular example being that of musicians like Harris Jayaraj or Pritam. Few websites even list the songs which have been lift-offs. Well, have to agree that lots of these tunes do sound similar. But they also do sound good. The chances of me hearing the original tune was very minimal anyway. So why should I or anyone apart from the original composer cringe. Both make (or copy/derive inspiration) from good music and that is to be appreciated. What goes to say that Rahman hasn't heard something similar to what he composes before (My ears are shut tight, don't bother booing :P. No one shall doubt the Mozart of Madras, for he is the pride of the country. It doesn't matter whether he won the Oscars for one of his worst albums.) So despite making good music which most of us hum, Pritam and Harris Jayaraj will forever be bundled with the tag of plagiarism and will never be able to reach the levels of Rahman. Just because they had good ears for music, just because they thought they could bring such music to the masses "without people noticing". Like always, there are two sides to the story. While I want such musicians to be appreciated, the "without people noticing" does irk me. An attempt to take credit for something thats not entirely your own is downright cheap. As long as you don't get caught, even entire copies aren't going to matter. One mistake and people will doubt you for the rest of you life. I am all for "inspired" stuff, be it movies, music and the rest. Just, Disguise it better.

An alternative is to accept that it has been "inspired". Of course, it will then be subject to either copyright litigations or criticism ,depending on whether it is a copy and not an inspiration. An upcoming hindi movie "We are Family" is being promoted as a remake of the original Hollywood movie.

Another thought about creativity which keeps brewing in my head is regarding skill. Especially when it comes to painting. You can see the two "Mona Lisa" above. Can you tell which one is the original. Obviously, both have been painted beautifully and by painters with great skill. But the fake painting is of no value. If the original is valued highly just for the signature of Da Vinci, it is fair. But as a work of art, I don't notice any difference between the two. So the skill that goes behind the fake Mona Lisa is worthless? In case of digital art, It is just a case of Ctrl+X,Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.Hardly any skill needed. But otherwise, some credit should be given to the imposter.

Search Konrad Kujau for some interesting info on one such imposter :) ..

Movies and advertisements!! Yet another creative stream. Yet another hive for "inspired work". Especially Indian cinema. The record breaking blockbuster, 3 Idiots, a movie I didn't appreciate though most people did. Firstly, it is openly inspired from an awesome book by Chetan Bhagat. The film producers bought the rights from the author to adapt the book into a movie. However the story isn't credited to him. When Bhagat came out and mentioned this, the film producers ticked him of as publicity hungry. There must have been some sort of settlement later as no noise was heard later. Secondly, the movie is nowhere as good as the book. Aamir Khan as a college student just doesn't cut it. IMHO the film is decent, but not worthy of the hype and mass adulation. And those film guys aren't as creative as you think. Remember a scene like this. Unlike the poor musicians above, no website seems to list such aberrations in the movies, especially the popular ones. So all those people who criticize Harris Jayaraj/Pritam ( I know lots of them).. What have you to say about 3 idiots??

Photography is another stream I have recently taken some interest in. I am in a dilemma regarding Photoshop. If I am to be a good photographer, am I allowed to use Photoshop. After all it is a method to manipulate images. A good user of Photoshop should be easily able to manipulate his ordinary images into something spectacular. Both a good photographer and the image manipulator (not to be read in a negative tone) are being creative because both are bringing their vision onto the picture. So whats the difference. Well, it all boils down to whether someone's small guy in the back of their head goes "Why didn't you think of that first" :) . When I achieve something like that, I shall consider myself to be creative.

PS: Despite trying and trying and trying a lot, I have come to realize that I ain't creative, at least in the conventional sense. I rather modify stuff rather than create my own (which i agree is the tough part). I intend to appreciate things which I like whether they are original or copies. I hope everyone does too.

Flash'd

Flash, the greatest thing to happen to the Internet.

My first encounters with flash were those awesome stick fighting games. Of course, this was long before the advent of affordable broadband in India. So watching flash videos on www.youtube.com wasn't practical, neither was downloading games via torrents. In short, I had to make do with flash games apart from the odd couple of duplicate-cd games which I could muster to buy. And they were worthy companions, providing for countless hours of fun. But that was mainly because it was a new experience. The original Diner Dash game was so much fun just because I hadn't played anything like it before. Well, I had :( . But this was something new, something free and the flash games tend to be so light on the MB's. So it made for a good couple of hours of timepass.

As the years went on, flash games were more elaborately created. Sadly, most of them were neither charming nor innovative enough to sit for more than a couple of minutes. Diner Dash 2, Diner Dash 3 and probably countless rehashes and ripoffs had found their way onto the internet. Looked different and came along with fancy names, but alas, it was a case of the same candy in different covers. And the sad part is some of these games weren't free. Not sure how their sales went though :) . However I did manage to find a couple of good games.

For an old style read and click adventure, check out http://www.choiceofgames.com/about.html . It isn't a flash game but I can't categorize it as anything else.The site boasts of two games at present, both having good stories and quite a few alternative endings. I really do feel that the read and click adventure model hasn't been exploited enough. Visual novels of this kind would be downright awesome. Backed by a storyline, such a game/novel would give the gamer/reader a lot of control over what they would do if they were in that situation. Lets face it , not everyone is interested in fighting thugs and more powerful bosses. If fighting is so important, then a Mortal Kombat or a Street Fighter would be a better choice. For an adventure game, I rather decide how I want events to pan out. I hope some great authors decide some day to write a story for such a game with numerous alternate outcomes where every decision matters.

In case you don't remember the great xiao xiao , check out stickpage. However I must warn you, the stick games now are superficial instead of being simple and creative like the ones which came out earlier. Stickpage is full of crappy games, but the stick videos and stick humor are really good. I have never been a fan of miniclip because to find one game that you might remotely like, you will have to try out a hundred. The internet is so vast ; It is easily possible that I haven't seen most of the great flash games out there. But most of what I have seen is rubbish.

Adobe apparently claims that 99% of all internet users have flash installed on their computers. Youtube should be the primary reason why people would have installed flash. Which brings me back to my original point. Is flash, the best thing to happen to the internet. Or is Youtube, the best thing to happen to Flash (I hope Meemaw tries answering this :P ) . I wonder...

On another note, I happened to notice something really brilliant a couple of days back. Check this out !!

PS : In college a game called Bubble Trouble (Finally I remembered the name) was wildly popular only next to CS, FIFA and DOTA. It was a flash game. It was more of an exercise than fun. Challenging yes, but not fun. Good for killing time but not for timepass. Most of the flash games nowadays seem to be like that. Thank God for torrents and broadband.

A Question that I must ask, yet an answer I already know.

( A friend of mine started a blog recently. Strictly about his opinions, it is a pretty good blog dealing with serious issues. I mockingly told him the other day, that in case he continues writing only serious stuff, his blog may not have many followers. He didn't care, his logic being that he wrote just to express his opinion. Well, now that I have decided to write, It makes some sense. )

My sole purpose in starting this blog is to ask this one question. Yes , I could have asked it on Facebook or Twitter. I don't have a twitter account and I don't intend starting one. I have no interest in sharing what i do all the time. And I have a notion that most of my friends on facebook may ridicule me if i ask this question there. Lots of people might have discussed this. Lots of people should have discussed it. But I just want to know if anything has been done about it.

How are our politicians so rich? It makes me sick. I tend to support many of them over poor performance and corruption. But how are they so rich?

A prime example being the "Honorable 80 year old" CM of TN. (and any other CM of TN is no different) His movies weren't exactly blockbusters that could be the reason for his wealth. He didn't start an enterprise which made money for him. His Children, well they are using his political legacy; His grandchildren are all film producers (at least those whom i know), his nephews are billionaires and what his wives own nobody will know. Take the case of Sun TV. They got all contracts from the TN govt when the grand old man was in power. Exclusive footage of him getting dragged down his house would have helped lift the TRPs undoubtedly. It was a monopoly. The govt. just needed to pay more money than they might have paid in case there was a tender system. No wonder all political parties in TN have their own channels. By any chance they come to power, a windfall is awaiting them. Now Kalainger TV isn't the official channel of the state. Why were they chosen to broadcast the Tamil conference? The govt. of TN must have paid a lot of money to them to broadcast the conference for sure. No two ways about it. STEALING IN THE OPEN. I didn't bother finding out but, something in the back of my head tells me that the companies/company that constructed buildings, roads and other infrastructure for the World Tamil Conference have got to be related to the grand old man in some way or the other.

I can't take the trouble of filing a litigation regarding this. I just hope someone can. I just pray that someone will.

PS: This ain't a hate campaign. I still believe that there are a lot of good politicians out there. Neither is this targeted at MK. I just didn't know as much about any other politician.

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I love expressing my opinion. After months of contemplation, I decided an hour back that having a blog is an imperative now. So here I am, another opinionated person ready to claim his share of the WWW. And I forgot to mention, I love arguing.