If SL freed your creativity...

... why was it locked up in the first place?

Actually, I find my creativity waiting for SL to catch up. OR at least for LL to fix the grid enough so I can use the tools there to do more creative things.

~Jessy

My creative talent would be very expensive in RL, building full scale replicas of ancient temples...

*resisting urge to claim my creativity is being held without trial at Guantanamo for crimes against humanity*

I guess the obvious answer is that different people are inspired by different creative media. For some people, the various aspects of SL -- creating, interacting with creations as if they were real, sharing creations with others, socializing with and learning from other creators, and even selling the creations and making real money -- trigger their imagination in ways other media do not.

It didn't need to be freed.

It's just that I can do different things with it in SL than I can do anywhere else.

Heh I'm pretty reative RL too, but one thing I've always wanted to do was draw and I'm just so mediocre at it. But in SL I've been able to create things that I've wanted to draw for so long. I AM good at 3d modeling and testure making and putting sets togeather and soundscaping and I've done some really nice things that I could only do in SL (And then live in them!)

I suppose if I was a billionaire like Larry Ellison then I COULD make myself a 100 arcre fantasy house too but... :/

Every time I tried to rez a modifyable light ball in RL I would burst a blood vessel.

So Raymond and Raynor both say that SL has created entirely new creative arts, which they prefer to traditional ones.

Pratyeka says SL allows her to express an existing art (sculpture/3D modelling) in a way that's not possible IRL. But that sounds more like you discovered the art in question once you were in SL (since I tend to guess you weren't, prior to finding SL, walking around in RL thinking to yourself "I really want to build a full-size ancient temple but I just can't get the land!" ) - is that true? What advantage does SL give you over, say, building the temple in 3DS Max?

Farallon, you say that you were bad at drawing in RL. How did you then get into texturing in SL? Had you tried 3D modelling before with RL tools, or even tried sculpture?

Ava, your answer was very interesting, because sharing art with others, socialising with other artists, and making money from your art are things which people can do in real life, too. Why do you think they triggered your imagination in SL, but not in RL?

I guess, as others have said, a lot of it is cost and convenience. If one wanted to make a moving sculpture in RL, one would have to wire up a bunch of servos and make sure the structure withstands that pesky gravity problem. In SL, just a little scripting is needed. It's a whole lot easier and cheaper to figure out quaternions than to provision that kind of RL equipment.

Probably the extreme example of this is architecture: It's a whole lot quicker and cheaper to "build your vision" with some prims than to make it with bricks and mortar... and much less messy to change your design later.

There are plenty of other programs where one can simulate stuff, but unless the result is visible on the grid, it would be a pretty solitary form of artistic "expression."

For creating without a license.

My RL employer has me under a non-compete clause.

And then there's gravity.

Well... I had not the resources in RL to create complex stuffs. I destroyed several radios and a couple umbrellas trying to create the ET communication device when I was a boy but that was my resouces limit....

SL has freed my imagination becose once I was able to design an old recurrent idea, new ideas came knowing the new possibilities.

I have a background in both 2D and some 3D design with machinery. In SL I fell in love with scripting, instead of which I had zero expirience. Why do we become creative here? From personal experience it would be several different factors(These pertain to scripting but should apply to most cases):

Curiosity:
Particles look cool, what happens if I change this one value?

"OMG that is so coooooooooooooool!!!!!!! Oooooooo let me try changing something else!!!!!

Necessity:
I couldn't fly up to my girlfriends sky house in the beginning. At first I was given a feather. It kind of sucked because it was slow and not accurate and I still wanted to go higher. A flight ring came next and that sufficed for months but eventually I decided to make my own. Mine is basically the best I have seen in SL and I have tried them all. Simple, easy to use, incredibly fast (I can fly up to 50,000 meters in a blink) and I can set a target elevation. For example, if I type /99 4090, I immediately fly up or down to 4,090 meters and hover there. This one example applies to both curiosity and Self Worth also.


Immediate Feedback:

See the Curiosity heading above but even before the particle experiment I tweaked the "Hello World" script first. I think I changed it to something asinine like saying "You dumbass" first. Yeah I know silly but for a 50 year old with no coding xp it was like I saw a glimpse of nirvana. I literally danced around the basement, giddy with delight!!!! (Me dancing around, giddy with delight is not a pretty sight! My daughter goes running out of the basement in embarasement whenever I do that!)

Increased Feeling of Self Worth:

Doesn't matter virtual or real world, to see yourself do something you couldn't have imagined doing before and slowly getting better at it makes you feel good. To see yourself progress and get to the point where you can make something better then most of what you see around you makes you proud. To get to the point where you can actually start helping other new people learn and solve thier problems in the forums gives a tremendous feeling of self pride.

AAAAAGGGHHH speak for yourself!!! If hell freezes over I still won't understand quaterwhatevers. but give me a steppermoter and a chunk of metal and in no time flat you'll have a working 3dprinter.
: )

I'm just ONE person in SECOND life, playing with THREE-d to break the FOURTH wall while drinking a FIFTH of vodka, hoping my SIXTH sense will kick in so I can make it to SEVENTH heaven, erm.. what was the question again?

What if the result is visible on the grid but nobody chooses to look at it?

It doesn't matter if anyone else looks or not. The creator knows it's there

I had no reason, prior to SL, to think about any form of 3D building.

The words (which I am not wasting here) were always there, free flowing ... but if you want to know about that kind of creativity that requires getting to know me.

/me refers to many things which only exist in memory and photographs made by many people ...

It doesn't matter. They existed.

As an architect, it is easier and less expensive to build 3D models of buildings and objects here in SL then it is in RL. A 3D model in SL is easier then a cardboard and balsa wood model in RL, and you can easily photograph it, make a movie of it, or walk/fly a client thru it via your computer.

A SL model also takes up less room on my desktop.

My first degree was in Fine Arts. I can easily model sculptures here in SL and try out different ideas and materials on an object without having to make molds, cast bronze or chistle stone.

No one and nothing can "free" your creativity as is can not be bound. SL and others can empower you by providing tools to express your creativity in ways you may not have been able to before.

What is it that creates the difference between being able to use them in SL and not being able to use corresponding ones in RL? Is it to do with the tools, or is it to do with the social atmosphere, or is it something else?

Hrm. I'm thinking it might be slightly more difficult to begin a NeoVictorian country with an eye on colonising the world, in our day-to-day existence.




But you know what? I'm beginning to think you are right - not much of a difference!


*loads Google Earth in search of appropriate island*

*ebay: "doomsday weapon"*

*ebay: "spandex uniforms"*

*google: "offshore banking"*

*google: "devon rex cat"*

I had no idea that The Gimp existed. I had no idea that playing with graphics programs can be so much fun (hello, AutoCad, anyone? YAWN) I had no idea that stuff that I make or do could be appreciated by other people. Pretty simple as to "why," actually.

Who can really tell? Why is it that a child may take piano lessons for years and hate music yet pick up a guitar and suddenly fall in love with it? The tools, the environment, a cosmic alignment, when things are right a persons inner creativity will blossom. For some the conditions in SL are what will let what they have inside express itself.