Creative Culture

CREATIVE CULTURE
Breandán Knowlton – @bfk
Europeana Foundation
European Network of Living Labs Summer School 2013 - Creative Ring Session
29 Aug 2013
Thanks for having me here in Manchester. My name is Breandán, and I’m the Chief Product
Officer of the Europeana Foundation.
I’m going to take about 15 minutes to ask three questions about reuse and creativity. But I’m
really trying to answer one of the themes of this session: what sort of connections should the
Creative Ring foster?

@bfk | ENoLL Summer School | 29 August 2013
ONLY THOSE WITH NO
MEMORY INSIST ON THEIR
ORIGINALITY.
— ATTRIBUTED TO COCO CHANEL
I start with a quote attributed to Coco Chanel: Only those with no memory insist on their
originality.
Ironically, the quote is attributed because we don’t remember who said it ﬁrst.
But it does raise the question:

Where do we
keep our
memories?
Where do we keep our memories? One place has always been:

1810
Our brains. They’ve been with us since the beginning, and do a pretty good job. You put stuff
in, you take stuff out, just like in this 1810 illustration from a medical textbook.
But when you have groups of people collaborating (which we call culture), you need:

1847
a place to put everything. To remember. And institutions are born so that these Victorians
could visit the Egypt Room of the British Museum in 1847 to learn and be inspired by cultures
far away from their own. When we put enough of our memories together,

1860
We can start to put them on shelves, or even move them around like this perambulating
library of a guild of mechanics in 1860. You can move the memories of how to do something
directly to where the people are doing it. But when you look at the world,

1596
That’s a lot of potential stores of memory and culture. Even in this map from 1596 the wide
extent of the world was pretty well known, and each group of people have their own
memories to keep. How do we keep and share them now?

1969
Now we can use computers. Like this IBM 360 mainframe in 1969, we can put our memories
into databanks, and retrieve them anywhere. So we ﬁnally have a tool to help us with the
question.

Where do we
keep our
memories?
In a distributed
network of
computers.
Where do we keep our memories? Now, we keep them in a distributed network of computers.
So now these millions of outside sources exist – what does that have to do with the way we
think today?

ALL IDEAS ARE SECONDHAND,
CONSCIOUSLY AND
UNCONSCIOUSLY DRAWN FROM
A MILLION OUTSIDE SOURCES.
– MARK TWAIN
As Mark Twain said, “All ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a
million outside sources.” So our very thoughts are shaped by these memories, coming from
outside ourselves. But that raises the second question:

Do we reuse
… or remix?
Do we simply reuse these ideas, or do we remix, recycle, transform them into completely new
shapes? I think you can see where I’m going with this.

1860
This clothing ad from 1860 shows the height of leading fashion for men. While moustaches
have now come back, some of the other shapes and fabrics seem strange ….

1962
But is it really so far from those high collars and straight lines to this fashionable overcoat
from Hywel Jones, a Welsh fashion designer, in 1962? I’m sure he didn’t spend his time
poring through Victorian catalogues. But the idea, the memory persists as a kind of reuse. In
1940,

1940
The Empire theatre in Scotland advertised their bands of the week. They use careful
woodblock typography, a clear grid, the same condensed gothic type that’s back in fashion
today. But 50 years later,

1990
a Jane’s Addiction concert poster in Amsterdam seems to reject the idea of machine-set type,
even as the form of the letters still echoes the woodblock printing of a previous generation.
Re-use becomes a conscious Rejection, but still with Reference.

900
This illustration of an eyeball from an Islamic medical text in the year 900 might have been
echoed a thousand years later,

1870
in the textbooks for this graduating class of surgeons and doctors in 1870, established by
the British to bring precious technical knowledge to the subcontinent of India. Not direct
reuse, but remembering what is important. So to answer our question,

Do we reuse
… or remix?
We build on what
has gone before.
do we reuse or remix, the answer is obvious: we build on what has gone before. Not literally,
perhaps, but in the ﬂow of memory and culture and creativity. The creative industries of
fashion, graphic design and even medicine all depend on this constant process of
remembering and transforming. So creativity isn’t really the same thing as originality.

AUTHENTICITY IS INVALUABLE;
ORIGINALITY IS NON-EXISTENT.
– JIM JARMUSCH
Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch said that “Authenticity is invaluable, but originality is non-existent.”
If we reject the idea of isolated, unique originality, what we’re left with is a striving for the
authentic, the real. Raising my third question,

How do we
capture
authenticity?
How do we capture this authenticity? How do we move beyond imitation and create a true
sense of the real? One way is to look at the memories of an age.

2006
This Danish ﬁlm poster from 2006 certainly tells us something about our attitude toward
teenagers, their habits, their ﬁerce desire for independence. But just as much,

1980
This ad for an Amsterdam leather shop in 1980 tells us something about that era just as
strongly. (Unfortunately, you won’t be able to un-see that image.). Moving back,

1975
this migrant-rights poster from 1975 certainly tells us something about how The Netherlands
perceived foreigners. And if we want to really know nostalgia,

1950
a poster for the Communist Youth movement in Hungary in 1950 captures perfectly that
sense of rural nostalgic euphoria, combined with the modern progressivism imagined by
central party planners. The memories of any age are strangely compelling to revisit,

1180
like this cartoon from the year 1180 showing this poor peasant who just wants to burn the
bristles off a boar so he can have some dinner. Almost a thousand years later, can’t we tell
exactly what he’s thinking?

How do we
capture
authenticity?
We use
trustworthy
sources.
So we’ve answered part of the question. How do we capture authenticity in the absence of
unconnected originality? We use the trustworthy sources of each age and culture. Our
memories feed our sense of the authentic.

IT’S NOT WHERE YOU TAKE
THINGS FROM–IT’S WHERE
YOU TAKE THEM TO.
— ATTRIBUTED TO JEAN-LUC GODARD
But as Jean-Luc Godard (probably) said, “It’s not about where you take things from – it’s
where you take them to.” And in these days with our memories housed in computer systems
around the world, we need new tools. I work on one of them,

europeana.eu
called Europeana (where I sourced all of the images for this talk). It’s a website and data
service that connects some of these dots, where

europeana.eu
2,200 memory organisations
29 million digital objects
1 access point
5 years old
< 1% complete
More than 2,000 of these memory institutions, museums, archives, galleries, libraries,
audiovisual collections in 30 countries can share 29 million digital objects to create one
access point across countries and cultures. The project is about ﬁve years old, but is far, far
less than 1% complete.

1985
Just as the railroads created new connections and economies, our mission is to be a catalyst
for change in the world of cultural heritage, and our network creates new ways for people to
engage with their creative and cultural history, for work, learning or pleasure. We also believe
that openly accessible heritage contributes to a thriving knowledge economy.

1936
But we need to ﬁnd new ways of connecting the dots. Like the intermodal “Railway Air
Services” of 1936 we need to connect individuals, SMEs, cities and technology partners to the
cultural institutions we represent, to enable this process of authentic and creative remix.

1930
We think that we have the beginning of a solution, though we’re at the beginning and very far
from a cure-all. As part of a project called “Europeana Creative”, we’re starting a network of
Living Labs where we can prototype creative industry partnerships and applications along
with end users. These labs can be nexus points to engage creative industries, commercial
players and academics with cultural heritage in new ways.

In Helsinki, Brussels, Paris, Barcelona and Palma we’re all ready to get going with new pilot
projects in design, history and science education, cultural tourism and social networks. Next
year we’ll begin public challenges in London, Amsterdam and Berlin to select projects that we
can help incubate.

1920
But this is very new for us, and we need advice, resources and connections. Lack of
knowledge can be a dangerous thing, just like for the Russians at risk of cholera in this public
health campaign. But if you can help us to avoid the dangers and risks of this approach, it
really leaves only one question:

What do you
want to
make?
Once you have immediate access to the science and culture of centuries, what do you want to
make?

So, let’s connect!
b @ breandan.orgeuropeana.eu
So, let’s connect our creative cultures. Thank you very much for your very kind attention.

IMAGE CREDITS (ALL SOURCED VIA EUROPEANA.EU)
http://l.breandan.org/10h8nnV - wall seller
http://l.breandan.org/XjVL3g - isaac clothing
http://l.breandan.org/XjXmG3 - person's weekly
http://l.breandan.org/11Rvv2x - intercity
http://l.breandan.org/10h9UKv - cholera
http://l.breandan.org/15ZRKjN - kalzana
http://l.breandan.org/WZ5URp - religious emergency
http://l.breandan.org/14r3SOg - glasgow empire
http://l.breandan.org/YhUb1f - blood could save
http://l.breandan.org/13B2IRc - nixon/hitler
http://l.breandan.org/YGEYq6 - leather pants
http://l.breandan.org/10VekdV - jane's addiction
http://l.breandan.org/YIQynB - geen pasjewset
http://l.breandan.org/Zrquqd - refugee poster
http://l.breandan.org/YhVz3P - rezone film
http://l.breandan.org/ZrqTc6 - communist youth
http://l.breandan.org/10d0OQD - more lazarus
http://l.breandan.org/Xk8faV - mary conceiving christ
http://l.breandan.org/YIWNHS - raising lazarus
http://l.breandan.org/ZrrZVm - slaughtering pig
http://l.breandan.org/Zrs3Em - corset
http://l.breandan.org/ZryUO8 - medical school
http://l.breandan.org/11TM3TV - brain
http://l.breandan.org/XKlcqn - British Museum
http://l.breandan.org/YH84Wq - Perambulating Library
http://l.breandan.org/Xlb8Z2 - Laurel & Hardy
http://l.breandan.org/10dOLSY - Overcoat
http://l.breandan.org/WZLszU - World Map
http://l.breandan.org/YWIMzA - Computer
http://l.breandan.org/XfByMG - Air Service
http://l.breandan.org/YWLgxU - Droitwich Spa
http://l.breandan.org/YHgvRB - Ghent railway
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