Running with Scissors: Cut-Ups, Boundary Friction and Creative Reuse

Abstract

Our experience of past problems can offer valuable insights into the solution of current problems, though since novel problems are not merely re-occurrences of those we have seen before, their solutions require us to integrate multiple sources of inspiration into a single, composite whole. The degree to which the seams of these patchwork solutions are evident to an end-user offers an inverse measure of the practical success of the reuse process: the less visible its joins, the more natural a solution is likely to seem. However, since creativity is neither an objective nor an intrinsic property of a solution, but a subjective label ascribed by a community, the more perceptible the tensions between parts, and the more evident the wit that one must employ to ameliorate these tensions, then the more likely we are to label a solution as creative. We explore here the conceit that creative reuse is more than practical problem-solving: it is reuse that draws attention to itself, by reveling in boundary friction.