Astronauts work in a vacuum. Most artists don’t. We are always surrounded and influenced by the media and feedback from our peers. Of course, it is possible to exist as a hermit, pursuing a singular creative journey that springs purely from within. But even then, is such creativity truly without influence? Surely, the hermit in the woods is influenced by the very woods in which he finds himself. Anyway, the point is moot—most of us are fully entrenched in society and so we are constantly bombarded by the creative output of others.
Creative input is like food. We all have to eat. but what exactly we eat is our choice. With the right diet your body will be healthy. The same can be said about the content that you consume on a regular basis. I’m not here to preach limiting content consumption for the sake of it. Much like with food, it’s not only the amount that matters, but also its specific nutritional value. Likewise, with food for creativity, it’s less about the quantity and much more about the quality, the source, and the medium.
A pretty stereotypical photo of a street in Tokyo. So much for avoiding feedback loops…
Copying myself. And yet, this could be the seed of a project.
Algorithms and Feedback Loops
Variety and diversity are important when it comes to content for creativity. Feedback loops can be dangerous and limiting, but more on that later. For now, let’s focus on getting a healthy dose of variety: do not fall prey to the algorithm! Most platforms for sharing our creative output come with ‘algorithms’ as they have come to be known. Essentially, the platform (Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and so on) follows you around and tries to understand what you like. Generally, we feed it this information ourselves by clicking ‘like’ on things and subscribing to certain users and channels. The algorithm also pays attention to more subtle things, like how long we spend looking at certain content. What matters is not how these things function, but why they do it. What are they trying to achieve?
At first, it appears that the goal of media platforms is to be to provide you with content that you like. Simple enough, but that’s not really it. The real goal is to keep you on the site as long as possible, because the longer you are on the site, the more ads you might see. Everything is about money. And that’s okay! I’m not here to proselytize about the pitfalls of capitalism. It is what it is. My problem with this is that the platforms rarely show us something fresh, something challenging, something healthy for creative development. Just as with food, diversity is often a good thing when it comes to creative input!
So, what’s the solution? Well, diversification, of course! For one I prefer platforms that allow you to curate your feed and don’t hide anything from you. One such platform is DeviantArt. Everyone you follow is chronologically represented in your feed. When I check the recent posts in my feed about once a day, there are usually about 50-100 new works (illustrations, photos, etc.). And it is up to me to sort through them and pick out the things I like. Another thing is to follow human-curated sites like blogs. The point is to avoid looking at a single, algorithm-curated source all day. It will just feed you what you know already. Challenge your artistic taste!
Taking elements from Saul Leiter and using them in my own way.
Seek a Mentor
A great source of creative input is a mentor—someone who is already farther along and can offer wisdom and feedback. The problem is that for most of us these days, it seems like having a solid mentor is not realistic. Maybe I’m just disillusioned, as in the 10+ years I’ve been at it I’ve never had someone who I felt was a mentor for my creative work. But that’s okay! I’m not complaining because I can be own mentor, and so can you!
In the book Mastery by Robert Greene, he explains that we can take on a mentor even if they are not actually present with us. It’s matter of studying that person’s work, values, and sensibilities and then attempting to look through that lens when doing your own work. Of course, this may not beat the real thing (not that I would know) but it certainly works. So, find a ‘master’ (or a few) whose work you admire and expose yourself to it on a regular basis. This could be through digital media, but also through books and exhibitions. For me, one of these mentors is Saul Leiter. I’m a big fan, but more so a student.
However, there is a catch: my subject matter, my working methods, and ultimately my creative output is vastly different from his. And that’s the rub—we can’t just go out and copy the mentor. We have to take what worked and apply it to our own unique reality in time and space. It’s important not to get stuck in copying and go beyond the master. Which brings me to my final point.
Inspired by the visual style found in scifi films and games like Homeworld.
Not quite the same, but vaguely reminiscent of the architecture in The Fifth Element.
Escaping the Loop
Eventually, we have to grow past the stuff that’s out there, both from the masters and from peers, and do our own thing. I find that some work fascinates me and instills new ideas that are compatible with what I am doing. However, seeing certain other work demotivates me, in particular when it betrays artistic values that are at odds with my own. A simple example would be the amount of photoshopping that went into an image. To me, there is a line where eventually the work is not a photograph. Seeing work that is similar to my own, but heavily worked in photoshop, kind of ‘offends’ my values, as stupid as that sounds. Honestly, it shouldn’t but that aversion is just there within me, and so I find it simpler to just avoid certain work altogether. For me, this is most true regarding work that is too similar to my own.
An ode to the vaporwave music genre.
Look Beyond Your Genre
One way to remedy the feedback loop conundrum is to look for inspiration outside your medium or genre. Of course, I look at lots of photography, but I also try to cultivate interests in music, film, literature, and games that inspire my own creative work. Of course, most people like those aforementioned types of art—that’s nothing special. But when I find things that help me further my approach to seeing and creating my work, I try to take something from them in the same way as I would from a mentor as I already described.
It should be apparent that I take much influence from visual cyberpunk works, including films such as Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell, but also games like Deus Ex, and of course many novels such as Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and the one that started it all: Neuromancer by William Gibson. But I don’t consider myself a ‘cyberpunk’ photographer. It just so happens that I enjoy those media and I live in a city that has long been associated with that genre. As I already mentioned, I try to branch out not only from my medium, but also from the genre in which I happen to find myself. When it comes to films, other visual and narrative inspirations include In the Mood for Love for its great use of color, space, and time; The Third Man, with its dynamic and narrative composition; Taxi Driver, which in some scene echoes the same abstract fields of melting color that I see in Saul Leiter’s photographs, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, with its crisp sharpness and hyper-realism.
Urban grit—a color take on film noir.
Film is a medium that is close to photography, but video games are also a great teacher of composition and storytelling through visual elements. The Witness is a game with no narrative and minimal dialog. Yet it teaches so much about color and perspective. I found it to be a training ground for street photography. Hyper Light Drifter is an example of a game that uses a flat 2-dimensional art style to convey depth, both in its geometry and in its world building. Photography is all about taking 3-dimensional reality and projecting it into a 2-dimensional simulacrum, so once again the game was instructive.
I also enjoy the odd atmosphere of the YouTube channel called u m a m i, which is the brainchild of Justin Tomchuk, also known as Hexsystem. Both the visuals and the music are fascinating. Speaking of music, it also has an influence on my work, in particular vaporwave. The genre evokes an odd sense of nostalgia for a world that seems to have never fully come into reality, existing only in our memories of the recent past. This music, by artist such as Hong Kong Express, Telepath, and w u s o 命 inspired my series titled Vaporized Memories.
And that is just a short, but varied selection that is not at all exhaustive. I encourage you to learn from a diverse selection of artistic works from all genres and media, making for a healthy diet of creative input.