Eight Track Wonders of the Ancient World
  • Aaron(swifteye)
    April 3, 2009

    Creativity or greed. It’s one or the other. Personally me, its creativity but for others such as maybe a certain magical kingdom its all about the mighty dollar.

  • Adam
    April 3, 2009

    I’d love to comment, but I have to rush to work and sell my creativity. Sorry – did I say sell? I meant “whore.”

    Or – in xkcdese – “Get out of my head, Dorothy”

  • David Thomsen
    April 3, 2009

    There needs to be a compromise.

    Create without earning and you’ll soon need to work at a grocery store to earn a living, so you won’t be able to communicate anything.

    Create with the intent of earning money and all you’re ever communicating is what the buyer wants to hear, which means all you’re producing is a magic mirror that tells everyone exactly what they want to hear.

    Ergo: compromise.

    Also, there’s the need to perpetually evolve away from your audience. Write a satirical episode of the Simpsons and you’ll get someone to think about something in a new way. Write the same satirical episode eleven seasons later and that same person will gain a self-satisfaction about the cleverness they learned from the previous episode. Self-satisfied intelligence is the same thing as ignorance in my experience.

  • Jan
    April 3, 2009

    Hugh McLeod may be on to something in suggesting to do both types of work side by side instead of giving up creativity for cash or vice versa. Have a job that pays the bills AND a sexy creative one. If you work hard, then one day the creative one may pay your bills, but until then…
    http://www.changethis.com/6.HowToBeCreative
    http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000876.html

  • Jonathan
    April 3, 2009

    You have all typed words. Here is a dollar.

  • Oliver
    April 3, 2009

    All hail the proud citizens of Compromise!

    Now excuse me while I think about new ways to whore out my creativity. Nothing shameful about it. Art is art, and the artist’s work is to create art, and work is supposed to get food on the table. The good thing is that you, every now and then, may actually bring about something that is in itself priceless. Now if your work is void of meaning and context but still sells — good for you. It might still be art for its sheer beauty, it might already be on the brink to mere decoration or utility. It still fills your belly. It is all good.

  • Brian
    April 3, 2009

    Mayhaps I am misreading this. All of the comments so far seem to be looking at a conflict of “create for your own sake” vs. “create for profit”. Although a tried-and-true debate, I think the comic is pointing out something else.

    One can create with only oneself in mind (with OR without consideration for creativity). Here is the juxtaposition of creating to communicate something meaningful to an audience versus creating selfishly. Moreover, we’re looking at selfish creation being profitable. Turning that original argument on its ear. Maybe *ignoring* your consumers may make what you have to say more striking — and more profitable.

  • Les
    April 3, 2009

    This comic is absolutely brilliant. It should be hanging in the studios of every music department in the world.

  • EggyToast
    April 3, 2009

    Brian, another twist is that even if you create selfishly, with the intent to not communicate, by creating a product it can be sold and therefore communicate something. And one of the common complaints artists have against critics is the assignment of meaning to a work that was not intended.

    Arguably the only sort of creative work that could avoid this situation is something ephemeral, such as playing music. But then it couldn’t be recorded, or else the illusion is broken.

  • Nny
    April 3, 2009

    “If you arent’t creating to communicate, whats the point?” is such an annoyingly definitive statement. You can create for more than one reason. heres the thought process for the building of the great pyramids “Pharoah’s dead”
    “crap man, what are we gonna do with all his slaves? that Ramses guy really hates em all…”
    “kill em and bury em with him”
    “sounds good but where are we gonna put the bodies? it is the desert after all, the sand can just blow off of em”
    “well if we make a little pyramid we can stack em all with the king on top”
    “ok, but where are we gonna get people to build it?”
    “your right, its gonna be akward having the pharoahs slaves build their own tomb huh? hey! what about all them Semites in Goshen? we’ll make them do it!”

    2 weeks later:
    “Jesus, thats a lotta jews!”
    “I know right? They all made bricks and now instead of a little pyramid they made a huge one and it looks like their starting another.”
    “oh ok. well dont want it to go to waste. do still got that heiroglyphics to that painter chick you dated a couple years ago? you think she’ll want to make a couple of extra horses painting a tomb?”
    and bam! before Heston comes and rescues em, the egyptians got a bunch of pyramids.

    a friend of mine learned to paint cuz he broke his legs and couldnt really leave the house. we burned em when he healed up (it was symbolic- thats how we roll) anyways id tell the stuff he painted but id lose my point huh?

  • Khozy
    April 3, 2009

    I think this poem best summarizes the balance between creativity communication and earning a living.

    Constantly risking absurdity
    by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
    Constantly risking absurdity
    and death
    whenever he performs
    above the heads
    of his audience
    the poet like an acrobat
    climbs on rime
    to a high wire of his own making
    and balancing on eyebeams
    above a sea of faces
    paces his way
    to the other side of the day
    performing entrechats
    and sleight-of-foot tricks
    and other high theatrics
    and all without mistaking
    any thing
    for what it may not be
    For he’s the super realist
    who must perforce perceive
    taut truth
    before the taking of each stance or step
    in his supposed advance
    toward that still higher perch
    where Beauty stands and waits
    with gravity
    to start her death-defying leap
    And he
    a little charleychaplin man
    who may or may not catch
    her fair eternal form
    spreadeagled in the empty air
    of existence

  • Chris L
    April 3, 2009

    Not to get all dorky, but I really like this quote by Walter Benjamin, which I think is relevant: “Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books they could buy but do not like.”

  • nae
    April 4, 2009

    Man. Y’all corrupt the word selfish like no other. The suffix -ish means having the qualities or characteristics of. Therefore, to be selfish is to be like one’s self. To not have a self is to compromise your integrity to be more like others. Indeed, there is importance in communication, but communication without identity? vox et praeteria nihil.

    Sure. We gauge ourselves when our actions bounce off others. There is no mirror of introspect into the soul without the social aspect of man.

    And look at how many interpretations there are of artists mark rothko and salvador dali… who can really say what the artist meant? The artist creates. He does so for himself. We interpret. We find our own meanings no matter what the true meaning is. Therefore, art is an end in itself and never a scientific form of communication.

  • ThisisJustMe
    April 4, 2009

    Hahahahaa, if I could create things that made me happy to have created and make money, I would not be working at my crappy job. Why is there any debate about it? People who cry about “selling out” have not found anyone to buy their stuff.

  • Jonathan
    April 4, 2009

    Brian, I got the impression that the comic was saying that material success as an artist is not influenced by the intentions of the artist — the guy gave Grrrl a buck because he failed to recognize what she did as art. He simply wanted that record. While it might be possible to predict what (other than plagiarisms) will be commercially viable, a good sociologist has a better chance to do so than an artist (of any caliber). “Selling out” might or might not be evil, but planning it in advance is nonsense — one sells out AFTER one has a certain level of success, when one signs that contract with the toy company. The debates are “tried-and-true” not because they have validity, but because artists need a distraction from the horrifying activity of actually creating art.

  • Nny
    April 4, 2009

    I don’t know who Walter Benjamin is but im glad Chris L does, i like that quote. It’s the reason i play guitar

    NAE, “vox et praeteria nihil”, what does that mean? i really like your argument btw, i had a complaint and even typed out a ridiculously long response, but then read ur comment again and realized how stupid i sounded…it was about that last line: “Therefore, art is an end in itself and never a scientific form of communication.” i was ready to jump on the word “never” but then i thought “that seems right” and made a different ridiculously long comment

  • nae
    April 4, 2009

    voice that prattles nothing or something to that effect. it just comes out better in latin.

  • Songles
    April 24, 2009

    This comic means a lot to me. It’s a nice succinct illustration of how the influences of a capitalist society are inescapable when making art. You can try and debate aesthetics outside of an economic context, as the two characters do in the first eight frames; but eventually modern creativity comes down the pervasive influence, subtle and obvious, of the dollar.

    I don’t see the last couple frames as a statement about choices — i.e. greed vs. communication vs. come other creative motivation. To me it’s illustrating that final inescapable influence of capitalism and post-modernism that can never be fully escaped.

  • mammal
    April 28, 2009

    Well… I think Dorothy has found at least a half-decent compromise. I mean, I pay her for her stuff every once in a while, and apparently others do as well. You’re not pandering to us, are you, Dorothy? (Mr. Chen obviously is a TOTAL artistic whore, but that’s a separate issue.)

  • Dorothy
    April 29, 2009

    I am ideologically opposed to all of my money-making ventures.

  • gus andrews
    April 29, 2009

    Man, I think about this *all the time*, it haunts the crap out of me. And this is why I have Cat and Girl comics plastered all over the desk where I make this, http://www.youtube.com/user/themediashow , with an audience of about 30 people a week, most of whom are friends. Thanks for thinking aloud about this stuff, Dorothy; it helps a little to realize I’m not the only person thinking these thoughts.

    I think we’re only going to feel more and more uneasy about creative pursuits as media distribution and production structures we’ve been used to for the past 80 years or so continue to crumble… We’ll have to fight harder to be heard, as the amount of information produced continues to outpace the amount of human attention available by factors of thousands; the reward is not ever going to be the kind of widespread fame which was maybe available to previous generations (albeit on a win-the-lottery-like basis).

    The up side, I think, is that “selling out” will be less of an issue, as there won’t be mass markets to sell out to. We’ll find our audiences. We’ll just have to expend a pretty insane amount of energy to do it.

  • Norm
    April 30, 2009

    The struggle between creating for yourself and creating to communicate is a false dichotomy. You can do both. When you write a good song, you can write it about what you want to write about, and use the medium to say whats on your mind. Then you can have people hear it – but they don’t have to like it. You can make whatever you like without compromise, and as long as it’s honest, it will communicate something to somebody.They may not like what you have to say, and they may not agree with you, but all in all, art cannot tell you what to think, only what to think about.

  • historyman68
    August 17, 2009

    My take is that there is a difference between communication and commerce. Grrl creates from her heart, Girl argues that it’s with intent to communicate, but the object of her communication buys her art with almost no interaction, thus making their argument completely academic. He respects neither her ego nor communication, substituting both for a common currency.

  • Offendi
    January 28, 2010

    The point of creation is to find the most perfect possible form of a good idea. I guess the creation aspect could be restricted only to the conception of the idea, and the rest of art, the careful manipulation of words/paint/sounds, is what I just mentioned. You’re doing service to an idea, which is more perfect and constant than people will ever be.

    I mean, if it isn’t for communication or profit.

  • christina
    July 24, 2010

    Art communicates by itself, despite the artist’s best efforts.

  • The other Jack
    November 14, 2010

    This one made me feel guilty that I’m reading CnG comics for free. Maybe I will buy a t-shirt.

  • Tozz
    December 18, 2011

    Welp, you guys could always quit being artsy and go to graduate school like I did. You’ll be poor AND miserable. And all the things you do – no matter how good – will be paid for by nobody. No compromise about it.

    Be authentic! Be miserable!

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