Uncreative Writing (From The Daily Dish):
Kenneth Goldsmith teaches a class at the University of Pennsylvania called "Uncreative Writing":
In it, students are penalized for showing any shred of originality and creativity. Instead they are rewarded for plagiarism, identity theft, repurposing papers, patchwriting, sampling, plundering, and stealing. Not surprisingly, they thrive. Suddenly what they've surreptitiously become expert at is brought out into the open and explored in a safe environment, reframed in terms of responsibility instead of recklessness. ...
"After a semester of my forcibly suppressing a student's "creativity" by making her plagiarize and transcribe, she will tell me how disappointed she was because, in fact, what we had accomplished was not uncreative at all; by not being "creative," she had produced the most creative body of work in her life. By taking an opposite approach to creativity—the most trite, overused, and ill-defined concept in a writer's training—she had emerged renewed and rejuvenated, on fire and in love again with writing."
Goldsmith is the founder of Ubuweb.com, a collection of sounds, texts and videos that has been called the WikiLeaks of the avant-garde. As he told Tank Magazine:
"Everyone is frightened of copyright. Ubuweb simply acts like copyright doesn’t exist: we just ignore it. Everything on Ubu is free. We don’t touch money. The site is run by students and volunteers, and our server space and bandwidth is donated by universities. Ubu has discovered an economic gray zone by hosting out-of-print and hard-to-find items that aren’t valuable, economically speaking. It’s mostly artists’ ephemera and although it might not be worth a lot of money, intellectually and historically it’s priceless."
Kenneth Goldsmith teaches a class at the University of Pennsylvania called "Uncreative Writing":
In it, students are penalized for showing any shred of originality and creativity. Instead they are rewarded for plagiarism, identity theft, repurposing papers, patchwriting, sampling, plundering, and stealing. Not surprisingly, they thrive. Suddenly what they've surreptitiously become expert at is brought out into the open and explored in a safe environment, reframed in terms of responsibility instead of recklessness. ...
"After a semester of my forcibly suppressing a student's "creativity" by making her plagiarize and transcribe, she will tell me how disappointed she was because, in fact, what we had accomplished was not uncreative at all; by not being "creative," she had produced the most creative body of work in her life. By taking an opposite approach to creativity—the most trite, overused, and ill-defined concept in a writer's training—she had emerged renewed and rejuvenated, on fire and in love again with writing."
Goldsmith is the founder of Ubuweb.com, a collection of sounds, texts and videos that has been called the WikiLeaks of the avant-garde. As he told Tank Magazine:
"Everyone is frightened of copyright. Ubuweb simply acts like copyright doesn’t exist: we just ignore it. Everything on Ubu is free. We don’t touch money. The site is run by students and volunteers, and our server space and bandwidth is donated by universities. Ubu has discovered an economic gray zone by hosting out-of-print and hard-to-find items that aren’t valuable, economically speaking. It’s mostly artists’ ephemera and although it might not be worth a lot of money, intellectually and historically it’s priceless."
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