The Death of Originality

 Is there anything left to be original about? Artists the world over seek out the holy grail that is originality in the belief that their particular vision will usurp anything that has gone before them. Yes you may argue that is a foolish thought in the beginning but it certainly doesn’t stop us. What has changed so drastically in recent history is that the ideas and inspirations that this wonderful world throws up have been distilled and packaged perfectly for us all to consume.

The WWW has effectively cut out all the long winded, laborious ways that we gather our information. People open up their hearts and their minds online  for us all to pick over. Is nothing sacred? Is there anything left out there that is unknown, intangible and so fantastically complicated that cannot be understood in the time it takes to press a button on your keyboard? Where are the small unformed ideas that generate the big ideas? Do they really exist anymore in this super-fast imagery laden culture of ours?

I started this train of thought after an idea I had ended up on the wall in my office. Coincidentally within a few days of pinning it up I came across an image created by Yes Studio and photographer Dan Holdsworth. It made me stop and wonder. I had never seen their finished concept before and the two of them were strikingly similar although theirs was created a couple of years ago. 

Image by Dan Holdsworth and Yes Studio

Ed Sykes image

Had I actually never seen that before or was it that in the massive deluge of images I view daily that it seeped into my sub-concious? The brain can only cope with so much in its conciousness and the rest gets stored away in the picture library in the mind. When as artists do we become saturated and overladen? Surely this is the extreme opposite of the work of isolated artists who die unknown after working theirr whole lives on one or two concepts only to be feted as the greatest years after their deaths?

Copying fashion, copying lifestyle, in fact copying anything has become big business and in our own ways we have become sucked into it - following trends, concepts and what has gone before us. If you want to be original do you have to unplug, disconnect and drop out? Leave the noise behind and create like a hermit? It seems to be successful I am going to have to buy a cave to work from. The problem is there aren’t any caves left in London. I could check online though…