Thinking about audience interactivity and ideas of audience consumption and creation has got me thinking, when have I engaged with media, to create something new? These are the things I could think of:

  • My Art Blog: On my art blog I often find imagery online, or my own imagery, that was not initially intended as ‘art’ or to be read a certain way. But through posting it to my blog, I  recontextualise that image, contrasting and comparing it to the surrounding imagery, often create new interpretations and ways of reading and being inspired by images.
  • My Music: The music that I create is distinctly mine in that I write it about my life, my experiences, my perspective, my environment etc. but like all media it is influenced by the countless amounts of media that have come before it. The main inspirations for my work are slick neo-soul, R&B, funk, electronic and old school african grooves, without this former media mine would not exist, or atlas certainly not be the same. Our consumption of other media is filtered into our own creations, often subconsciously, but this is still fitting within this model of audience interactivity.
  • My Photography: Photography has been a slowly developing hobby of mine. Honing my work has required years and years of googling ‘how to take good artist photos in dim light’ and comparing my images to the images of my influences, taking note of differences, and assessing where I can improve. I also keep a folder of imagery that I use for inspiration and guidance, a vibes folder through which I can re-create or be re-inspired by the imagery that gives me life.

Creativity as a mindset is sometimes hard to maintain, for some it’s forever there, for others you can feel creatively dead, or creatively drained at points throughout your life. This is why consumption of others work, art, media etc. has always and will always be a thing. As humans we have forever taken inspiration, created and re-created, building for hundreds of thousands of years upon the work of the humans coming before us, or even the animals around us, or the earth around us.

New technology is a catalyst for mass re-creation, mass re-contextualisation and mass-inspiration.  It is this opportunity that has led viewers, to become creators, enabling humans to evolve further along our own timeline of creativity, further pushing the boundaries, further enhancing ‘the human experience’ and further documenting it, through deeper and deeper layers of meaning and reference.

Catch you later,

Louise Alice Wilson