Final Essay - Collaborative Authorship

Caitlin Lewis

English 303

Collaborative Authorship

Authorship and authorship rights are very gray area subjects with a number of different ideas behind them. An author is a person who gives existence to thoughts in the form of words or gives existence to anything in art or writing. Authorship is defined as what determines the responsibility for what is created and by who. While both seem so easy to define, there are a number of different ways people view authorship and what it means to them. Delving further into this subject of authorship, I have chosen to look deeper into the special form of authorship, collaborative authorship, and anonymity.

The act of co-creating something while consulting with a group of people to create the project can easily define what collaborative authorship is and how easily it works together. What first came to mind when discussing collaborative authorship was the past and present New York Time’s best selling community art project, Post Secret. The Post Secret community art project can be defined within authorship as creative collaboration from millions of different people that submit their own personal secrets, anonymously on a postcard.

Frank Warren, the collaborator, created the Post Secret project in 2005. The idea for this project was very simple; for numerous people to embellish a post secret while portraying a secret of their own that had never before been revealed. Frank Warren handed out hundreds of blank self-addressed post cards to his home in Maryland to strangers in the Washington D.C. area; there were no restrictions made regarding the content of the secret but that it must have never been spoken before. As the project soon received local, national, and international media coverage the project grew bigger. The secrets were compiled by becoming books, websites, and series of events hosted by Frank Warren himself. Frank Warren is the creator of this community art project that has brought up many points between his project, Post Secret, and collaborative authorship.

In just four years, Frank Warren has released five different Post Secret books that have all been available worldwide. The first book, PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives, was released on December 1, 2005. TIME Magazine reviewed this book as, "Humanity at its finest... and because of it I am falling in love with the world again." (www.amazon.com) In the next four years, four other Post Secret books have been published and all have been noted as New York Times best sellers. Frank Warren took the project to the next level in 2006, creating the Post Secret blog that is updated weekly for fans who just can't seem to get enough of these anonymous confessions. Yet the question many still ponder, if Frank Waren's name appears on the cover of all books is he being credited as the author or as the collaborator of Post Secret?

The Fair Use Doctrine allows the limited use of copyrighted material without receiving permission from the rights holder. The Fair Use Doctrine also stems from the United States First Amendment, free speech. This doctrine helps to prove the point that Frank Warren is not in anyway stealing the work of the millions that send their artwork to Post Secret each week but he is sharing their artwork, anonymously, with the rest of the world in a number of different medias. (copyright.gov)

The collaboration in Post Secret is so interesting and enticing to readers as it comes from strangers from all across the world, all of these collaborators are interested in inserting themselves into the Post Secret community, anonymously. Self-insertion is a literary device where an author appears within the work of fiction but in disguise. In this case, the author is not in disguise but is completely anonymous to both Frank Warren, the public, and all readers. The creation of the Post Secret blog allowed creative collaboration to go to the next level, giving registered users the ability to leave comments with their own personal feelings. With this ability, there is a remix of the idea of anonymity in this project. These users are revealed to the world with their feelings about other people's secrets and it seems the cycle of collaboration continues by everyone leaving their own creative twist to the community art project.

Post Secret truly takes advantage of the creative process, which is found to be the social process involving new concepts and ideas also by making associations between the creative mind and existing ideas. (www.productiveflourishing.com) The creative process is also a great example of the relationship between Post Secret and collaborative authorship. As discussed in class, hybrid creativity as Lessig explains as, "respects the rights of the creator - both the original creator and the remixer." This hybrid creativity is based upon remixing; creating and remixing different forms of writing. This type of creativity plays a large role in the creation of Post Secret while respecting where the work is actually coming from.

Creative collaboration has been reviewed as such an interesting form of authorship because it allows anyone and everyone interested to become involved in the Post Secret movement. While everyone is actually the author of their own post secret, they are submitting anonymously, which puts the rights to the artwork in Frank Warren’s hands. As all secrets come from different places in the world, it is unique that there is essentially, a secret for everyone, a secret that you will be able to relate to while finding comfort that there is someone out there very similar to yourself. That feeling of comfort that people receive is why anonymous creative collaboration has gotten the Post Secret project as far as it has come in the last few years.

Post Secret has taken creative collaboration to all levels by becoming involved in the trendiest of social networking websites available today such as facebook, twitter, and myspace. These websites have allowed the creator, Frank Warren, to advertise his community art project by allowing fans to "become friends with the project" and provide the community with their own personal opinions. These social networks also allow Frank Warren to advertise the project by itself as well as advertise upcoming Post Secret events around the country. All of these websites allow users and friends to collaborate more to each postcard by providing insight and support to the anonymous users being represented.

The anonymity of the secrets presented is a major part of why Post Secret is so sacred to many fans. It seems that as people publicly broadcast their darkest secrets, it is an empowering way of meeting society as a whole head on. Yet as the secrets are presented anonymously, privacy is broken down while simultaneously the anonymity increases social fragmentation through private data, those revealing feel safe. This is very important as safety is a growing concern in society today. This anonymity also allows readers to seek and find a connection not with one author but with the possibility of millions. The work does not belong to one person but to society as a whole, left open to interpret in their own ways. (www.culturge.com)

As the Post Secret project has grown over the years, it has been said that the project is considered art therapy for many individuals in need of personal attention. Art therapy is often described as expressive therapy while combining the components of the creative process, which is what Post Secret does. Many online Post Secret fans have posted that the Post Secret blog is what gets them through the week, giving them something to look forward to on Sunday mornings, which is when Frank Warren uploads the week's newest secrets. Kitty Campbell from The Carolinian Online sums up Post Secret therapy rather well, "Part therapy, part emotional voyeurism, PostSecret isn't about drawing attention to yourself - that's why the postcards are anonymous. It's about catharsis - cleansing yourself of those dirty little secrets that have bogged you down with guilt, fear, remorse, self-hatred, or have simply nibbled at your heels demanding to know why you can't be honest with yourself. "

While many say that imitation is often the biggest form of flattery, The "Children of Divorce" group based out of Tuscon, Arizona has imitated Post Secret by creating their own project, "Greetings from Splitsville." Greetings From Splitsville, like Post Secret, gives children the chance to send in their post cards, anonymously, by illustrating their feelings about divorce through drawing and multimedia collages but on a PG-13 level. The major difference found between the two projects is the legal rights explained clearly on the "Greetings From Splitsville" website. The rights explain that anonymous contributers give the "Children of Divorce" group legal rights to "use, reproduce, distribute, and otherwise exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to that postcard at its sole discretion including published books" (http://postcardsfromsplitsville.com/about). Unlike Post Secret, Greetings from Splitsville makes it clear that once postcards are received, they are the owners of your anonymous work which leaves them receiving credit for this anonymous work.

After much analyzation, it has become clear that authorship will continue to evolve over time. More specifically, the Post Secret community art project will continue to evolve as each week's Sunday Secrets are posted on the blog, with millions of new artists contributing to the collaboration of secrets. New projects will continue to be created while mimicking the Post Secret project, collaboratively putting all of these ideas together one can only hope. Frank Warren was quoted, ""Every single person has at least one secret that would break your heart. If we could just remember this, I think there would be a lot more compassion and tolerance in the world" (www.goodreads.com/author/quotes).