Recycling Content: Building on Top of the Already Established

Creation of novel content is, as every content creator knows, very hard. The creation of a completely novel content may, in fact, be impossible since the way a conscious mind works is through analysis and reconfiguration of the already existing content. As the consumers of the content only understand it through its connection to the already established, even if a completely original idea appeared, it would be intangible and impossible to understand.

On the opposite side of the completely original, we have the complete rip-off: A work so devoid of creativity that it becomes predictable, cliche, and ultimately meaningless. It is easy for the audience to consume such content since they do not need to venture out of the familiar territory. The downside is that, by doing so, they discover nothing of value.

Somewhere between these two extremes, there is the recycling of content whose tools include: Adaptation, which gets its content from a work in another medium; remediation, which is the conquering of the old media by the new ones; transmediality, which is the continuation of the same content in another medium.

It is my observation that through many iterations of recycling of content, the content itself becomes more and more refined. If sufficient number of iterations is reached, this process can result in a content that reflects aspects of archetypical patterns.

An interesting case for this is the Batman: Batman has started off as a comic book and went through many iterations in a multitude of media such as animated cartoons and movies. In each of these iterations, the character of batman assumed widely different forms ranging from a psychopatic adrenaline junkie to a benevolent protector of the city. In each reimagining of this character, the media through which the story was told no doubt played a chief role.

The point is that content of each iteration was recycled and remained in tangent to the previous iteration. With each new form of the same content, the audience ventured a little farther into the territory of unknown and collected new ideas along the way.

It is my belief that the discovery of the same content in different mediums contributes to the audience’s maturity of valuation process.

-Deniz Aydemir