In Defense of Nothing is Original

I agree with Austin Kleon that the idea that nothing is original fills me with hope. It saves me the trauma of thinking that my idea is too similar to another idea that someone came up with before and thus I can't use it. I love how he explains that we take our different sources to create a new thing. Our "originality" comes from using different doses of different influences. My example to demonstrate this is Duchamp mentioned in Kleon's book- Duchamp definitely looked at art with a different perspective than the rest of the world, but what he really did was take a perspective he learned elsewhere and applied it to his art.

The ancestry that I am currently researching is the Sherlock BBC television series. I have attributed the writing predominately to Steven Moffat, but I am doing my research to find the other brains behind the genius.  In so doing I discovered this video from Ben Stephenson and it is coincidentally on this topic. I love it because he discusses how they took the traditional crime show and added a unique feel to it to make it something more. I completely agree that the result was amazing.

I have not managed to successfully embed the video, but I will post the link. Please enjoy!

www.bbcamerica.com/sherlock/videos/head-of-bbc-drama-takes-us-behind-the-lens-of-sherlock/