Creativity

In general, new media gives us new ways of doing things, whatever that thing may be. Therefore, creativity is an inherent characteristic of new media just because of the fact that it is new and we do not have many documented ways of doing things. New Media is quite dynamic so even if there is documented ways of doing things, we are often able to bypass them or do something different. From blogs to computer applications, users are constantly needing to provide creative solutions to problems that arise or just providing creativity for the fun of it. In the case of blogs or web pages, users can be creative with the layout and aesthetics of the page while someone like a programmer may have to be creative with the coding of the website to solve a certain logistical problem. Even before our era of technology, emerging technology has always provided a new medium or platform by which users or workers are supposed to work from. In the case of music, new media has changed the way we listen, but also create music. We used to use acoustic instruments and record them with a microphone, doing little to no post-production. A lot of the creative thought was put into the music that was being played before it was recorded. Today, new media allows us to also be creative on the post-production side. In the Article “1+1+1=1, The new math of mashups”, Sasha Frere-Jones shows how music is able to be taken from previously recorded songs and be put together to form a completely new song. Though the creator of the new song did not create the original songs or melodies, he has to be creative enough to think of putting the right songs together, showing that new media breeds a whole new type of creative process in music-making.