URBAN COMMUNICATION | SIGNS AND SIGNALS | STADTGESPRÄCHE

Innovation and creativity as cultural contradictions of Capitalism

 

Out of the ideas and practices of former counter and subcultures a general requirement has grown: You have to live a creative and independent life. Today we have to be creative, whether we like it or not. The new is preferred over the usual. The main aim is not to improve something. The goal is to arouse feelings such as vitality and meaning. We should be original and unique. Consequently, the importance of activities concerned with the production of new, original and surprising signs and symbols increases. Considerable areas of our activities do not serve immediate purposes, but should allow self-realization and self-creation. The people in the modern age have set the target to grow beyond themselves.

 

Innovation gives a chain of events a different direction. The fast changing fashions give the impression of a varied and exciting life.

Lifestyle – The novelty as an aesthetic event

 

"Commercial culture depends on the theft of intellectual property for its livelihood. Mass marketers steal ideas from visionaries, alter them slightly if at all, then reissue them to the public as new products. In the process what was once insurgent becomes commodity, and what was once the shock of the new becomes the shlock of the novel. Invariably, early expressions of sub- or alternative cultures are the most fertile sampling grounds, as their publications or zines are the first to be pilfered. Invariably, pioneers of radical form become wellsprings for appropriation. Rebellion of any kind breeds followers, and many followers become a demographic." Seteve Heller

 

What seems to be modern today, may look old-fashioned tomorrow. These changes open up the possibility to assign formal expressions to certain periods of time. Out of the game of references to stereotypes, that we bring in correlation with certain associations, emerge powerful visual languages.