Creating Passionate Users: Build something cool in 24 hours
This is a cool idea!
Kathy Sierra, one of the inspirations (and authors) behind the Head First series of books posted an article on her blog entitled Build something cool in 24 hours. The whole idea is that you get a group of people—developers, artists, musicians, etc—together for a set period of time and have them produce something.
The key is the process–a process that forces you to supress the “inner judges” that stifle creativity, and gives you not just permission but an order to create as much as possible, as fast as possible… even if what you end up with is 97% crap.
I have been in an environment similar to this when I was in photography school. There we had a small group of students (20 in my final year) that all worked in this little area. This meant that we had to share studios, darkrooms, and computers. However, this sharing and the small space resulted in an incredibly creative environment. Everyone is creating, everyone is challenging each to produce the best artwork that they can and it forces everyone to produce—both the competition and the energy. It is something that I have always missed since leaving school.
I think, once I am back at school, that this is something I am going to try for a few of my assignments (well, at least the group assignments). I will get my group together well before the deadline and we will see what we can produce in 24 hours.
an interesting prospective, however, i feel that a more open environment spawns ‘creative’ plagiarism. i am a photograhy teacher for niwot high school, and like you, have run into ‘creativness’ in an open darkroom setting. i do find your hypothesis stunning and promising, if it weren’t for the lack of moral fiber in student diet. If you have some black majic around human inefficiency, please, dont hesitate to comment.
*black magic
I have actually not experienced ‘creative’ plagiarism in any creative/artistic environment in which I have worked. I took art classes all through high school, have studied graphic design and photography and have never witnessed students cheating. I think it has to do with the creative aspects of the work. Even if I pick the same content or subject as someone else, I am going to inherintly capture and communicate that subject in a different way. Thus, cancelling out the affect of copying the same subject.
In a photography setting, the only way I could see outright cheating taking place is either two students handed in photos from the same negative or took shots of the same subject from the same studio using the same setup. But were is the fun in that?
However, with that being said, I have been out of photography school for 7 years now, so things may have changed since then. I have always found that the students that take art classes are usually the ones that want to be there and, therefore, cheating is the last thing on their mind.