Technology and creativity

The rapid evolution of audio-visual technology has seen the demise of some of our most closely held principles. What, for example, constitutes an ‘original’ work of art in our age of digital media, where every ‘copy’ is an exact replica of the original? And what are we to make of photography, long believed to document ‘reality’?

With the incredible – and seamless – manipulative capabilities of today’s technology, we have seen how the camera can lie. (Perhaps, in the same way that photography freed painting from the confines of representation, digital technology will allow photography to chart an exciting new course.)

For many decades, producing a film or television show required the collaboration of a large team of highly skilled artists and technicians. This led to a division of labor, along with boundaries (some of them arbitrary and counterproductive) dividing ‘artist’ from ‘technician.’ But now, the walls are crumbling.

Sooner than you may realize, the ‘collaboration’ will take place inside computers, which make no distinction between whether the user is an artist or a technician. Using a computer paint program, for instance, doesn’t magically turn someone into a painter. It does, however, allow them to explore a powerful artistic realm that they may not have access to normally.

It is through this process of discovery that many so-called technicians have become gifted artists as well. At the same time, artists who have embraced new technology have often discovered (to their delight) that they’ve become technicians too.

Thanks to the advent of powerful yet easy-to-use technology, we are seeing the emergence of an exciting new type of media worker: the ‘techno-artist.’

New technology will also have a major impact on the current work force involved in the production of film and television. Sets, to use but one example, will still need to be designed, built, and dressed, but all of this can now happen inside a computer; the real thing may not need to be constructed.

Production designers and art directors should be able to make the transition (or translation) with ease. Carpenters, painters and set dressers, however, will need to develop new skill sets in order to remain in demand.

We’ve finally reached the stage where anything that can be imagined can be realized by digital technology, at least in the two-dimensional worlds of film and tv. Sure, this is great news, except that the hardware has developed faster than the ‘software’ in our heads. (If only upgrading creative skills was as easy as inserting a floppy disk!)

Strive to unleash your imagination from the constraints imposed by older, analog technology. New technologies require new ways of thinking. Don’t get caught up worrying if or how your vision can be realized – just concentrate on the vision itself.

At the same time, learn as much as you can about new technology. It doesn’t have to be a formal process; try just hanging out with some computer graphic or digital video fanatics. They (and the technology) are not the enemy – stubbornness is.

Bill Sweetman is the senior producer of on-air promotions for ytv and a freelance multimedia consultant through his own Toronto company, Electric Eye Productions. He’s skipping this year’s Toronto International Film Festival to elope to the Caribbean with his fiancee.