THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What are your views on the future of communication and how technology is changing the way we communicate, read, interact with the world and our imaginations?

MARTIN EVE

Technology seems to me to change both everything and nothing. It suggests to us new ways for communication in which we might reach wide, diverse audiences and ensure the broadest proliferation of ideas. For the first time in human history, the way that we disseminate ideas can finally match the nature of ideas and thought itself (i.e. ideas are not lost when transmitted, as are digital copies). However, the expectation that such material can be monetarily “free” online does not change the fact that professional publishing requires a great deal of labour, which must still be remunerated. Typesetting, copyediting, proofreading, digital preservation, identifier assignment, plagiarism detection, platform maintenance, legal and financial support, marketing, and many other labour functions do not disappear in the digital world. We often, I think, underestimate the price of free.I also note that there are many studies showing that we read differently when using backlit screens, in an F shape according to eye tracking. This indicates to me that even when we might extend access through digital technologies to anybody who wants to read, we still may need print copies; at least with current display screens. In other words, the immediate future is a hybrid world of print and digital, especially when we are talking about long-form publications such as academic books.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What are your views on the importance of creativity and the humanities?

MARTIN EVE

Here’s the funny thing about creativity: people assume that it is the preserve of arts and the humanities; that creativity means producing the next great masterpiece of culture. Certainly, we should not neglect such work. But creativity is found in all spheres of interpretation. The physicist confronted with designing an experiment must imagine the different ways in which the results can be interpreted so as to avoid assigning causality with correlation. This requires imaginative thinking.The same is true when we read and interpret cultural artefacts. Meaning is not locked within artworks, but is socially and historically contingent, changing from reader to reader and from time to time. Artworks are situated within interpretative frames that require knowledge but also creative thinking. One can know all there is to know and still be an unimaginative reader who cannot produce a coherent response to an aesthetic object. And one can know very little and still be moved by art.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.