creative labor

Creativity and Creative Labor, A Brief Explainer

Creativity is a hard concept to pin down – one of those know-it-when-you-see-it things – but creativity is also something that is understood based on who we are, where we are from, and where we live. In my research, I explore creativity in a social computing context through a discussion of the creative work people consider that they do. This could be anything from making a TikTok video to painting a picture – what matters is how people consider this work to be creative, what it takes to create this work in the chosen medium, or translating that creative work from one medium to another.

Creative labor is the work doing this creative work, in any context, but in my case, an online one. It is the building, managing and maintaining an audience, as well as the work that goes into ensuring that a creative product is translatable to the chosen platform where it is shared. In addition this, creative labor is the energy that doing this creative work requires. The planning, production, and presentation of an art project to an audience that then consumes said piece of art is vital to the creative process, for without it there could be no creative work in the first place. Cultural, Media Studies, and HCI Scholars tend to focus on the first of these definitions - around translatability of creative work and creating and maintaining an audience (self-presentation) - whereas my research explores the routine aspect of doing creative labor, and what happens when creative labor and platform, performer, or audience expectations are in alignment.

This research informs my dissertation work.