The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: Twenty-three - The Search for Unique Viewpoints

by NDK Creative Artist

What makes up a viewpoint? And where do you find a unique viewpoint? Even more importantly, how can you generate unique viewpoints that set you apart as one who offers fresh insight to topics that may be as ancient as humankind?

To be unique in your art you should constantly search for fresh viewpoints. This can be a new way of looking at an old topic, or a brand new perspective altogether. Whichever it is, both should provide illumination or clarity and thereby increase understanding.

The fastest way to find a new viewpoint is to take the opposite view of one that is stated. Once you’ve identified that viewpoint, then you can start to shift the perspective into other zones and explore shades of gray, mauve and other parts of the spectrum of perspective.

Having wide open communication lines, talking with others about topics, asking them to send you information on those topics you’re interesting in, all of these things help to broaden your perspective and give you, as a creator, a plethora of information to draw upon. Then you know something important: you know what everybody else knows on a subject. The questions that leads directly to fresh perspectives are then: what don’t they know? What haven’t they thought of? And that most important of all creative questions: What if it was like ___________?

Assume the Viewpoint

The best way to tackle this particular role is to assume a viewpoint that is not yours. One can practice at assuming viewpoints and it is an extremely worthwhile activity to engage in. Actors do this by going and spending time with people in a particular profession. They go practice the ability to be. They immerse themselves in that particular culture or subculture and learn the inside things that make a group unique.

Some people are not particularly suited to this, they are inflexible in their viewpoints and have bought too heavily into ideas and notions and patterns of behavior and this can curtail the ability to be.

Having a flexibility to be anything is therefore important to creativity and there is I believe a lot to know about this subject that Shakespeare touched on so brilliantly and which in fact has such broad application to anything one would give existence.

Grok

The last part of this particular code point is to do with providing illumination and clarity. This means that one must actually consider what it is one is creating and truly know it on more than just an instinctive level. One must grok, and to grok involves observation and consideration at length in most cases. This is not to say that intuitive creation is not a part of what you’re doing, sometimes our minds work so fast that we, as creators of a work, do not realize the full import of what it is we have created until much later.

When you grok the work it is easier to answer questions and engage in meaningful dialog about it with others to whom what you have done is not always self-evident and who often, need some confirmation of the understanding and clarity you have brought to the subjects you have chosen to create around.

Intellectual work creates intellectual property.

If anybody has any questions or comments about this I’ll be happy to respond.

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If you'd rather we did all the hard work, you're in luck. Here's a list of articles that are related to this one:

• The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: Twenty-five - From where to communicate?
• The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: Seventeen - The Viewpoints of Others
• The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: Twenty-four - You are not the viewpoint
• The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: Zero - There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to creativity
• Editing Craft 1: First Read and Highlight