Publié en ligne: 21 juin 2014
Pages: 68 - 82
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/csci.64
© 2014 Wen Wen, Henry Siling Li, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This paper is about the ‘creative industries’, an unloved yet fiercely debated concept that originated in the UK, developed in Australia, and has been taken up in China and other emerging markets around the world. Countering the notion that the creative industries are becoming a spent force, we argue that, reimagined on an entirely bigger scale, shifting our focus of enquiry away from industries themselves and back on creativity, on where it comes from, how it connects people and what it is used for, the idea of creative industries – or more accurately the creative See Ian Hargreaves’s article in this issue of
Tracing the origin and evolution of the creative industries idea, we find a widely accepted version reads as follows:
This is the definition used by DCMS (1998), and is still used as an official formula by the Australian Federal Government. DCMS (1998; revised 2001)
Adopting a systems approach, we find alternative answers to the sources and uses of creativity, and cast new light on the idea of creative economy. We regard creativity as a group-made common resource, belonging to whole populations: to
How can you understand the creative industries this way? The fundamental answer is that we see creativity in terms of
Our model of creativity, then, is organised around communication in this mode. It operates at all three levels of Dopfer, Foster & Potts’s (2004) ‘MMM’ or Micro-Meso-Macro conceptualisation of how economies work:
If as we discussed creativity is generated in communication, then what is involved in the process? We believe that the emergence of creativity is the process of cultural production, that is, the making and negotiation of meaningfulness, identity and relationships. From this perspective, creativity is first and foremost a cultural phenomenon.
In what follows we discuss with two case studies how identity and culture, and thus creativity, are generated, and with what economic implications.
‘Jiaoshou’ is a civil engineer by the name of Yi Zhenxing. He works as a project manager at a construction company in a second-tier city of Hunan Province, Central China. The online character ‘Jiaoshou’ used to be It should be noted that “shouting beast” was used as a derogatory term to refer to university teachers on the Internet long before it was adopted by Jiaoshou as a user ID. The popularity of the term online is an indication of the damaged reputation of the whole university sector, not least because of academic and moral corruption.
Jiaoshou is famous not only for his videos, but also for the signature mask he wears whenever he is shown online. The mask is also a co-creation. In my interview with him, Jiaoshou acknowledged that he had drawn upon a funny comic series by Ludougao (literally Green Bean Cake) for the mask. The series, known as ‘face paralysis’, attracted a large following and became a fad among Internet users in early 2007. Ludougao has a blog (
Figure 1
Jiaoshou’s mask and his avatar online
The character on the mask is ‘beast’ and the line reads: I can’t even be bothered to tell you off
The online Jiaoshou has double identities. He is at once a popular video creator and a persona in the videos he creates. By this Jiaoshou has become an avatar, a ‘performed character’ not limited to a fixed corporeal self (Goffman 1971). He can be one or both at the same time, speaking to and connecting with users across age, educational and cultural boundaries, though users rarely make distinctions between those two identities. To a certain extent, the double identities have afforded a ‘third space’ (Winnicott, 1971) for Jiaoshou and his fan-users, a space where reality is intermingled with fantasy, making possible multiple modes of interaction.
In what follows we will discuss how Jiaoshou has negotiated these identities, and maintained the balance between the online and offline, private and public aspects of these identities through his interaction with his users.
As Lawler observes, it is an old and widespread theme in storytelling that we need to wear a mask to show our true selves (2008). Jiaoshou wears two masks: the facial mask he uses as part of his online avatar; and the other, invisible mask which he – as well as anybody else – wears to project a favourable self-image. According to Erving Goffman, that mask or, rather, masquerade, is what makes us as we are. In
Theresa M. Senft has conceptualized identity formation in the Internet space in a Goffmanian fashion. She proposes to approach it through the lens of ‘micro-celebrity’, which she defines as a style of performance that ‘involves people “amping up” their popularity over the Web using techniques like video, blogs, and social networking sites’ (Senft, 2008). Thus, in the online setting, as the offline world, identity performance is a collaborative, interactive and continual process, constantly co-creating and re-creating at the same time. It is conducted on multiple platforms (SNS, blogs, BBS, etc.), and by various means (textual, visual, audio, etc.). Its success depends on strategic choices of one’s multiple identities in response to changes in context, technology and audience.
Jiaoshou knows very well the importance of connecting with his users. He has tried to build a sense of ‘ambient affiliation’ LeisaReichelt uses a similar term, ‘ambient intimacy’, to refer to this type of bonding. She explains, ‘Ambient intimacy being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible’ See: The video of his speech is available at Tudou.com at
Jiaoshou doesn’t only make videos
As his connection with his users and his identity performance are enacted and reinforced through co-creative storytelling, Jiaoshou has consciously and conscientiously chosen the right format to tell the right stories. As he says:
Jiaoshou is connected with users on multiple platforms. He calls himself ‘Pope of Vulsar’ (猥琐教主, literally ‘Pope of the Religion of the Vulgar’), a group with a membership of about 30,000 on mop.com. ‘Vulsar’ sounds similar to the Chinese word for ‘vulgar’. It is common on the net in China to playfully call a group, a belief, or a pattern of behavior a ‘religion’ (教). For example, Li Yuchun, winner of the 2005 See: See: See: See:
As instant messaging tools couldn’t accommodate group talks among big teams, Jiaoshou turned to ‘web chat’ (版聊) to communicate simultaneously with large groups of fan-users. He used the commenting function of blogs and BBS to conducts these group talks irregularly at the request of users. A chat might last about 2 hours and generated hundreds of posts at the blog, and many of these were relayed to the Baidu forum simultaneously by interested users.
These posts, though mostly casual talk and gossip, serve an important social function by reinforcing connections and social bonds, as Li Shubo(2010) observes, they ‘play an important role in building up trust and a shared common sense within online communities.
The multiplicity of Jiaoshou’s identity has made it possible for him to become independent of the corporeal self and become a symbol and character. Two markers of this independence are the fan journal featuring Jiaoshou and the commodification of his facial mask. In May 2009, an ad was posted for the sale of Jiaoshou facial mask in a BBS of Jiaxing, a city in the highly successful commercial province of Zhejiang. The ad reads, ‘Facial mask of Cyber-celebrity Jiaoshou for sale, professionally made.’ The seller quoted ¥5 RMB per mask and provided delivery service for local customers. See the ad at: See:
Figure 2
Cover Pages of The three issues of
In the journal, Jiaoshou becomes a comic character born out of an egg, an omnipotent manga icon that spices his talk with profanity, fights all evils and ignores all established social norms. In issue three, it even fights See: Li, H.S (2012) ‘The platform of spoof videos: The case of Tudou.com.’
Although short-lived, the journal as a cultural creation is significant. If the activities of Jiaoshou the spoof creator connect him to ‘personal branding’ (Marwick &boyd, 2010) and ‘micro-celebrity’ promotion (Senft, 2008), where social media are employed to assure immediate and proximate access to personal information, private thought, mundane routines as well as spectacular activities of the would-be celebrity, then the creation of Jiaoshou as a comic character by his fan-users, while it confirms the effectiveness of Jiaoshou’s strategy, is a process of negotiation and co-ownership, and an initiative of active participation, appropriation and re-creation. It is act of
As we stated earlier our proposition is that creativity come out of communication in communities. The case of Jiaoshou shows that the spoofing culture is a co-creation of technology and culture, users and fans, an engagement with videos as well as each other, imbedded in and enabled by user networks and communities. The collaborative process doesn’t not only generate funny videos, it also creates and negotiates collective identities, shared experiences and a dynamic and creative subculture emerging around spoof videos. The point we aim to make is not how a great hero Jiaoshou is. Rather, it shows the creative potential of ordinary people when they are enabled by ICT to engage with each other around a shared purpose or interest.
While the case of Jiaoshou has illustrated the kind of creativity disseminated mostly in cyberspace, with media work as its main output, applying the same internet intelligence to the physical world can also become a phenomenon – welcome to the Maker Movement. Like Jiaoshou and his followers, whose creations were made mostly ‘for fun’, the Maker Movement may have started for fun, but is now gaining attention because of its potential in technological innovation and even in heralding a new industrial revolution (Anderson, 2012). Anderson’s claim is not so far-fetched, if Joel Mokyr’s analysis of the Industrial Revolution is accurate. Mokyr argues that the reason why that process took off rapidly in England, before other countries, was because of the widespread presence of myriad anonymous craftsmen, engineers and artisans, who tweaked and tinkered with the headline inventions (steam power etc.), finding innovative uses for them. In short, the Industrial Revolution itself was essentially a ‘maker movement’. See: Mokyr, J. (2009)
The contemporary Maker Movement can be traced back to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who built a little blue box for making free calls after reading an article about a device that could crack phone networks. The ethos became widespread among US West Coast garages – legendary homes of the start-up tech company. It was captured by See:
Dale Dougherty, one of the founders of Maker Faire, claimed at the launch of first Maker Faire in Norway in January, that ‘2014 is the Year of the Maker’. See:
Source:
So, who are the makers? According to Anderson (2012), makers are groups of people using the Internet and the newest industrial technology to make individual manufacturing products. Sometimes they are referred to as tinkers, hobbyists, enthusiasts, and amateurs. They engage in ‘microproductivity’, producing highly customised outputs in boutique quantities for a highly localised market – but using internet connectivity in such a way that a successful line can be scaled up to global quantities very quickly, or a technique not available locally (say, 3-D printing in a precious metal) can be realised using assets that may be on the other side of the world.
Makers are not all inventors. Instead of inventing new things, makers often focus more on spreading existing technology and encouraging new applications. Therefore, the mission of the maker movement is to promote a wider participation in innovation.
Though, nowadays, people are more and more dependent on (or ‘addicted to’) online socialnetworking, they still need a physical place to meet and work together.
More than 1000 active ‘makerspaces’ or ‘hackerspaces’ are recognized all over the world. Many of them are organized in gym-style. For instance, in Tech Shop,
Some other makerspaces are in forms of incubators and accelerators. HAXLR8R
In addition, crowdsourcing plays a key role in the maker movement. Platforms like Kickstarter and Pozible not only help to raise funds, but also to raise attention by meeting the consumers in the first place or, to use a professional term, for marketing.
Somehow Shenzhen, the first Special Economic Zone of China and the central city of the Pearl Delta Region, has become a centre of maker culture, as it is ‘the beating heart of the world’s electronic supply chain’. See:
However, this nirvana cannot escapeits relation to
This relates, of course, to the controversy between the open source and copyright models of innovation. Lobato (2010: 337) in his study on Nollywood argues that informal markets have played a significant role in creating an ‘efficient and economically sustainable’ media market in Nigeria. His work with Thomas (2012) also argues that piracy has important generative features and opens up great opportunities outside the formal media industries. Witnessing an informal economy around the globe, journalist Robert Neuwirth believes that the people who work in the informal economy are entrepreneurs who provide essential services and crucial employment, especially in developing economies.
The long tail theory is applied here, indicating that the innovation advanced by makers is as important as the innovation from the heavily invested public or private R&D labs. It is a step forward from ‘selling less for more’ to ‘making more by using less’. This is also reflected in the idea of Jugaad Innovation, from India, which means to improvise and find ways around prohibitive rules and institutions (Radjou, N. et al., 2012). There is also Charles Leadbeater’s latest book,
Hereby, institutions like Ford Motor Company, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and AutoDesketc establish partnership with Tech Shop.
Boundaries between consumers, makers and producers are further blurred. Therefore, the Maker Movement can be seen as the Adrianne Jeffries. ‘At Maker Faire New York, the DIY movement pushes into the mainstream’:
Maker Faires and makerspaces, as well as Hackathons Hackathons nowadays often focus more on a social or an educational issue by creating useful software.
Scenes, which originally mean the settings of paintings, are not confined to paintings on the wall, but have extended to scenes in galleries, with opening nights, gatherings of art communities and public shows for all. It is the same for scenes in theatres, which is not just about the act, but also about drinks before the show or visiting a pub or coffee shop afterwards to discuss the stories. The ‘music scene’, ‘London theatre scene’, ‘poetry scene’ and ‘Goth scene’have all been captured by journalists since 1940s, and researchers have investigated the clubbing scene (see Malbon, B., 1999), reggae, punk and death metal music scenes (see Baulch, E., 2007), etc., from the angle of geography, identity, sociality, and media globalization.
The economic significance of scenes is also explored, as the importance of the ‘night-time economy’ has been recognised for many cities. According to Bennett & Peterson (2004), scenes and industrial ways of making music today rely on each other: a scene is the origin of authenticity and new forms of musical expression, while the music industry provides technology, from the CD to the internet, to that scene for expanding its impact and realising its economic value. Based on a case study of electronic music club in Berlin, Lange and Bürkner (2012) have also concluded that value-creation in production scenes has shifted from large-scale producer-induced media to consumer-induced live performance and interactive soundtrack.
In Will Straw’s description, webs of microeconomic activity, that foster sociality and link this to the city’s ongoing self-reproduction, are a sixth form of scenes, after these prior steps:
the recurring congregation of people at a particular place;
the movement of these people between this place and other spaces of congregation;
the streets/strips along which this movement takes place;
all the places and activities that surround and nourish a particular cultural preference;
the broader and more geographically dispersed phenomena of which this movement or these preferences are local examples (Straw, 2001, p. 249).
This is similar to Currid’s (2007) formation of ‘creative scenes’, which follows the path: Formal and informal institutions and social events as consumption sites
nodes of creative exchange
social production system
creative scenes form in diverse, open, amenity rich neighbourhood
cultural economy (symbiosis).
Both of the paths for creating a scene have been
In addition, ‘scenes’ are an epitome of
Hereby we can answer the question of ‘what See Hutter M. et al (2010). Newness, as distinct from novelty, is another word for innovation. The difference between novelty and newness is this: novelty is, as it were, a ‘conjecture’ or ‘experiment’, which will not survive unless it is taken up and used; ‘newness’ is the acceptance by others and social implementation of new ideas (see Potts 2011). Newness is thus the
In terms of geography, we intend to consider USA and UK as well as emergent economies like China. Whatever model of the creative industries is adopted, it needs to take account of the ‘creative destruction’ that may imminently be wrought on the global economic and cultural scene by the BRICKS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, Korea, South Africa ... and one may add MINT, i.e. Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey (and many others).
In all, this paper is about the creative economy as an emergent phenomenon, not a spent force. We are interested in its future, which is uncertain, of course, but may be much more significant than its past, if properly conceptualised, observed and nurtured.
Hereby, the system that generates creativity is culture – not technology or the economy directly, and not individuals by themselves. However, it is in the economic and tech sectors that the term ‘creativity’ has attracted most attention over recent years. This is because creativity has become associated with innovation in the business environment. Thus, creative innovation is a much sought-after quality that is said to drive contemporary post-industrial economic performance. However, creativity is also the stock in trade of the humanities and the creative arts, which (at least according to one way of thinking) are strange bedfellows for economics and technology. This is however the reason for taking an interest in culture, communication, creativity, the arts and humanities, with all their critical and often antibusiness ideological baggage, when trying to understand an economic phenomenon like the creative economy.