We saw a Dogme movie today (Natasha Arthy’s Se til venstre, der er en Svensker) and I thought about how formats can stimulate creativity and productivity. I hope that someone will analyze the first ten years of Dogme moviemaking to see what impact it has had.
The set of Dogme rules was perhaps not intended to define a genre, and maybe it hasn’t, but the rules remind me of the constraints imposed by genres on works of art.
As I thought about this I came to think of Konfabulator – a runtime environment for small desktop widgets – a format that immediately spawned an avalanche of productivity. I’m not sure it’s relevant here, though, it just popped up in my consciousness. And the fact that it is so easy to modify and release variations, combinations, etc, is an important factor as well.
But it seems likely that there are bursts of productivity whenever new genres arise. Are there any books about this? Please let me know if you know.