Creativity

In an IT-configured society, information flows quickly, easily, and in a variety of directions. New media serve as platforms for individuals to communicate their information/ideas to the public almost seamlessly. We live in a copy-cat world. It’s very difficult to come up with a great creative idea/invention from scratch. Instead, people see something that has already found success, and they piggyback off of it in an effort to make it better. New media fosters creativity in this interconnected world by allowing content of all kinds to be viewed, modified, compounded upon, and shared with the world. “Mashups” are an example of using new media to put a creative new spin on already-established ideas. Mashups are generally recordings created by combining and synchronizing two or more songs. Characteristics of each individual song are still meant to be kept the same, but the idea is that when put together, the end product has a completely new look and new feel. Sasha Frere-Jones, in her article, “1+1+1=1,” talked about some popular mashups. DJ Reset, as Frere-Jones explained, successfully took elements of Beck’s song “Debra,” and combined it with parts of Jay-Z’s “Frontin’,” to create “Frontin’ on Debra,” a mashup which he posted on his own site and was eventually made available on iTunes. Frere-Jones sums mashups up, explaining “mashups find new uses for current digital technology, a new iteration of the cause-and-effect relationship behind almost every change in pop-music aesthetics: the gear changes, and then the music does.” Mashups are just one of the many ways through which media encourages creativity.