Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology: Authorship
Dear Cris, I am very interested in the Isaac Beshevis Singers books about his relatinship with his translators that mentioned in your letter, could you tell me the name? Thanks. Melody On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 12:27 AM, christopher sullivan csu...@saic.eduwrote: Hi Scott This is all a lot of energy to argue against something that is so obviously true, singular authors write books... influences, editors, advise along the way, is not collaboration. it is very necessary and helpful, but the author is the main voice. why is authorship so threatening? perhaps it implies valuative intellectual skills, and that makes people nervous. Not me I like to be put in my place as an active reader, by a great writer, but I am not their collaborator. There is an interesting forward in one of Isaac Beshevis Singers books about his relatinship with his translators, that supports your argument. It is a fine piece of writing. Writing is social in it's moment of reception, but not conception. and that is fine. Chris. Quoting Scott Rettberg sc...@retts.net: Hello again, In the next few days I want to pick up more on some of Johannes' questions and Simon's thoughts and some of the interesting ways in which the idea of authorship is challenged and reformulated. I also think there are some things to consider about the economics of electronic literature (to the extent that there are any). Finally, I want to say a few words about why I think there hasn't yet been a great deal of activity in creative writing programs towards developing curricula for digital writing. As I wrote earlier, I think that the conception of authorship as a solitary activity conducted by the creatively inspired individual has always been more mythological than real. True, writing is very much a reflective / recursive process, in which the individual wrestles with his or her own ideas and then frames them as textual expression. It is an intensely personal activity. Few print novels or poems are actually *written* collaboratively. But the process of writing involves more than that work, more than those moments of framing thought. Stories emerge most often from the examples and archetypes or other works of literature that the author has read. Stephanie Meyer's Twilight books or JK Rowling's Harry Potter would not have been possible in the same way without Bram Stoker's Dracula or Le Guin's Earthsea novels, which might not have in turn been possible without JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Works of literature have always been produced in conversation with other writing. Most of those writers, in turn, work in conversation with and in close proximity to other writers. When Tolkien was writing Lord of the Rings, for instance, he was bringing drafts of it to the Eagle and Child Pub in Oxford and reading them aloud to his writer's group, the inklings, which included CS Lewis, whose Narnia books Tolkien disapproved of at the time. Those readings, and the discussions about the books the inklings were writing at the time, are undoubtedly a significant part of the process of authoring those books, regardless of whose name ended up on the volume. The writing process is most often social. The contemporary writing workshop at American universities is social writing practiced on an industrial scale. And once the book is accepted by a publisher, this process continues, with editors, marketers, designers, typesetters and so forth contributing to the processing of producing, distributing, spinning the cultural artifact. And today's capital A Authors, those lucky few who actually live off of the proceeds of their work, collaborate with Oprah's book club, Charlie Rose, film-makers and video game producers. The author is not alone. I would argue that the reason the name is on the book is in such bold type is not even really because the author is much more important than any other part of the process. The name of the author is on the book because it provides the publishers with an entity to contract, and to purchase the rights from, and to own the proceeds of, and to sell again. The author is a signature on a contract as much or more than it is a human being. Another authorship story: The writer of digital literature suddenly finds the tools of design at hand, a global distribution network at a click, and a small but responsive international audience in the inbox. This is a different sort of authorship, liberating but unromantic. This sort of author understands the whole process in a different way, in part because she is seeing the whole process in a different way, in part because her audience is seeing the whole process in a different way, and in part because she is operating in an entirely different sort of environment and system than she might have been tutored in during her years in writer's workshop. She will never
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
Dear Eugenio, Thanks for your reply. I am very interested in the creative community you talked about, however, it is actually related to politics as well. I think Censorship should be paid close attention to when we discuss cyberformance. For some countries like China, facebook is forbidden. Political and Commercial censorship would make a difference. Don't you think so? Melody On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 3:26 AM, Eugenio Tisselli cub...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi all, Helen, I find that UpStage is a very interesting example of an online community, since it states its scope (and thus its borders) quite clearly from the beginning. Networks like this make a lot of sense, as they can really help people with common and specific interests come together and collaborate. The fact that people in UpStage all relate to cyberformance may create a basis of familiarity, in which trust can be built from the bottom up. Do you agree? This may also happen within other networks where a common interest is made explicit right from the start. However, in bigger networks (ie. Facebook, MySpace) there is a tendency towards dispersiveness: there are myriads of groups, but they don't seem to be strong enough to generate a sense of community. In order to find out how networks can facilitate the emergence of creative communities, maybe we could start by proposing a taxonomy of networks. We would certainly find that some types of networks favor the cohesion of focused, collaborative communities more than others. I am not aware if such a taxonomy already exists... I will look into this. However, let me propose an initial set of traits which may help kick start a general characterization of networks: - Entry threshold: Can anyone join? Do new users have to be invited? Is there any kind of filtering? - Openness towards emergent topics: Does the network allow its participants to create new topics, or is there a set of pre-existent ones which can't be modified? - Openness towards group forming: Does the network allow the formation of groups of people with common interests? Would you like to add to this list? Melody: Although I haven't read After Babel, I can imagine that Steiner maintains a certain coherence throughout his books. In that case, it might be interesting to study the relation of his ideas of translation in communication and invention in the arts. The concepts you mention do point towards an idea of creativity which is quite close to Steiner's invention. G.H. Hovagimyan: The points you make are very interesting. Can you elaborate a little bit more on the relation between art and language? I find that artworks can also arise from the sense of an impotence in language. Eugenio Tisselli Vélez cub...@yahoo.com http://www.motorhueso.net --- El lun, 7/5/10, helen varley jamieson he...@creative-catalyst.com escribió: De: helen varley jamieson he...@creative-catalyst.com Asunto: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology A: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Fecha: lunes, 5 de julio de 2010, 06:26 pm hi everyone, thank you simon renate for the invitation to be part of this discussion, thanks eugenio for starting things off : ) speaking as a live performance/theatre artist, i'm also of the opinion that creativity doesn't happen in isolation or on our own; we are always building on what has gone before. in this sense, creativity can be understood as interaction conversation, or even a translation (interpretation) ... my work is pretty much always dialogic, it is a creative exchange between performer(s) audience in a shared moment (whether we are physically or virtually present, the time is shared). to begin to respond to simon's questions, in particular Does the internet facilitate the creation of communities where new modalities of creativity, authorship and exchange emerge?, i'll give as an example one of the projects that i've been involved with since 2003: the online cyberformance platform UpStage (http://www.upstage.org.nz/). the project began with the practical needs/desires of four artists, over the years a thriving community has evolved around it. there are about 50 artists currently working with UpStage to create performances for the annual festival ( there might well be others using UpStage who i don't know about), around 300 on the mailing list, it's used in educational situations from primary school through to universities. there is a small ongoing developer community as well. one aspect of the UpStage community that particularly delights me is the emergence of cross-collaboration between the artists; four of the 19 performances selected for this year's festival involve collaborations between artists who have met through UpStage ( mostly have not met in the flesh). this is similar to my experience with Avatar Body Collision - we came together through online networks still have not all met, 8
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
Dear Eugenio and all, Glad to hear from you. I am a new comer to Empyre, and thanks Renate for getting me access to this group. I learnt a lot from you. I am currently studying in SCT at Cornell, but my study is in fact migrant literature/ Asian American literature/ translation, so I do not know much about your field, I hope you could help me. I do want to share my opinions and join your discussion though. I found your argument of creativity is really interesting. I read George Steiner's After Babel, in which he talks about translation and language. For him, everything is translation, which is closely related to his view that seeing actions as manipulation in Grammars of creation. Isn't it? I haven't read Latour, but your insightful description of him let me think that remaking of social may seem another deeper sense of interpretation/translation? I think we had better figure out some key concepts like representation, simulation, translation, interpretation, transference, ect, when we talk about creation. Just ignore me if you feel it's not reasonable. Best. Melody On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 6:30 AM, Eugenio Tisselli cub...@yahoo.com wrote: Dear all, First, let me thank Simon and Renate for inviting me, I'm very excited to be part of this month's discussion at empyre. Please allow me to be straightforward: lately I have grown quite wary of the idea of creativity itself. If I look at it in its traditional sense, as the act of producing something from out of nothing, I find that there is too much theological background noise in it. My suspicion surrounding creativity stronlgy developed after reading George Steiner's book Grammars of creation (2001), which starts out in an amazing way by saying that we have no more beginnings left. Throughout the book, Steiner argues that our western vision of the act of creation is deeply rooted in religion; in the idea of the Platonic demiurge, who fashions the material world out of chaos. Seen from a contemporary perspective, this original idea seems almost unsustainable. At some point, Steiner proposes that instead of considering our acts as being creative, we should see them as being inventive, suggesting that we actually make new things only by assembling and manipulating their constituent elements, which already existed before. Of course, Steiner was not the first one to question the idea of the artist as a creator: we only need to turn towards the well-known objet trouvé. So, the artist as inventor may cause the solitary artist that Simon mentions in his introduction to crumble under his/her own weight, for an artist is never solitary even if working in isolation. The artefacts produced will necessarily be polyphonic, and will contain the echo of those who came before and provided the raw materials, however hidden they may be: the multiple beats within the singular. Nevertheless, I am willing to accept a contemporary idea of creativity that is detached from its Greek-Latin roots, and which necessarily implies the interweaving of collective threads in innovative ways. I would like to address one of Simon's questions, How might we understand creativity as interaction, as sets of discursive relations?, by refering to Bruno Latour's book, Reassembling the social. In his book, Latour points out that we should not view the social as a given entity which exists per se, but rather as something that is continuously re-created (or re-invented) through the multiple interactions of its actors. I largely agree with this vision, but I find that this continuous re-making of the social is not necessarily a creative act. Everywhere we may find groups of people immersed in an array of constant interrelations, from which all sorts of destructive actions can emerge. I believe that creativity emerges from individuals and their social relations (physical or virtual) only when the interaction among them is focused constructively, and is based on the idea of a common good, mutual trust and shared engagement. Emergent communities whose relations are mediated by digital networks may find their creative potential increased quantitatively, in terms of number of individuals, and qualitatively because of their diversity, but I think that building and maintaining trust and engagement within them becomes particularly important, as these networks tend to promote rather detached/ephemeral (just a click away) modes of interrelation. Just a few general thoughts to start off... Looking forward to hearing from you! Eugenio. Eugenio Tisselli Vélez cub...@yahoo.com http://www.motorhueso.net --- El dom, 7/4/10, Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk escribió: De: Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk Asunto: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology A: soft_skinned_space empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Fecha: domingo, 4 de julio de 2010, 10:19 pm July on empyre soft-skinned space CREATIVITY AS A SOCIAL ONTOLOGY http://www.subtle.net/empyre
