Outside of the context of Geoffrey Small, as I see it, plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of some previous work one is aware of in one's creations. This leads me to three points:
One cannot plagiarize nature.
If someone in Porous, Jamaica, designs a pattern on a dress, and three years later Missoni or DVF puts the exact same pattern on a dress, unaware of Porous (as many people are) or the previous designer, it is not plagiarism. The coincidence simply suggests that the designers drew inspiration from similar sources.
Third, so what if Small was inspired by previous work? Isn't "inspiration" one of the prerequisites of creation? And with millennia of human creation preceding us, is it really reasonable to expect someone not to be influenced by others?
One cannot plagiarize nature.
If someone in Porous, Jamaica, designs a pattern on a dress, and three years later Missoni or DVF puts the exact same pattern on a dress, unaware of Porous (as many people are) or the previous designer, it is not plagiarism. The coincidence simply suggests that the designers drew inspiration from similar sources.
Third, so what if Small was inspired by previous work? Isn't "inspiration" one of the prerequisites of creation? And with millennia of human creation preceding us, is it really reasonable to expect someone not to be influenced by others?
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