SC - creations and creativity

[Robyn Probert]

This is an interresting and pertinant topic...

Avelina wrote...
>In my world (for whatever it is worth), you cannot be 'creative' and
'authentic'.  You can be creative and do something in the 'style' of a
certain book of hours, but it will not be an 'authentic' reproduction.  

It would not be a period reproduction of that page, but if the book of hours
contained many pages and you could analyse the style thoroughly and then
create another page in the same style, so that it looked like it belonged, I
think this could be authentic in terms of style, materials, design, etc and
creative. It also requires and demonstrates a much greater understanding of
the whole subject than just copying an existing page.

It's like forgery. If someone has reproduced a specific style of painting,
which is so true to the original that it confuses many experts, what does
this mean? It is not "authentic" and not a reproduction, but it certainly
demonstrates a mastery of the subject!

and Margaret wrote
>But with cooking, that's not always the case.  As this list has
demonstrated, you can have N people reconstruct the same recipe, and
come up with N+ different results.  The creativity is in the working
with what you've got, not in the substituting.  

Absolutely! I think cooking already requires so much interpretation, there
is enough work in the corpus to keep us busy for generations.

I judge a lot of competitions and have always found the authenticity v
creativity a difficult issue (we have the same categories in Lochac - maybe
they are endemic).  I think that sometimes one or other is just not
relevant! I have solved this by discussing the issue with the other judges
at the time. 

I think it depends on the nature of the comp. If the requirement is to
reproduce a page from a book of hours redact a given recipie, then
authenticity is the key. Any creativity comes perhaps from overcoming
problems.  If the competition is to produce an Award of Arms scroll in an
authentic style, or to cook a meal from a given set of ingredients, then the
creativity comes in adapting the illumination style or the recipies you have
researched to the limits you have been given. Authenticity is still critical
but is now judged in terms of style and well supported arguments for the
choices made.

I think part of the problem is that A&S comps have to satisfy the needs of
several groups of people in the SCA, not just those of us who are focussed
on authenticity in everything. They are also there to show people what can
be done and to encourage people who are only just starting to discover the
joys of research and making things.

Rowan
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Robyn Probert				
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