Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
dear all: thanks for the clarifications, Helen, and for other comments that followed today, such as Davin's post. I think you are right to note that creativity and desire and community do not always move without conflict. This is an interesting portrayal of the mechanics of desire. I agree that desire is a motor for creativity, both individual and collective. But how do we actually move together into these commonly held futures you mention? A quick view on history may show that such moves have seldom been made without ruptures and conflicts. We could try to focus on the expression and actualization of collective desires from the viewpoint of complex systems, in which local interactions generate large scale changes. Politics, then, would emerge from a creative construction of the social actors, with all their common / opposed desires. I think these are the ontological stakes of consciousness. What we think has implications for what do. What we do has implications for what we think. And, if we live in a true community, our ideas and actions are bound to modify, be modified, contradict, and/or complement the negotiation of being. My questions were addressed precisely at these issues of conflict or contradiction, in a poltical and organizational sense, but also at the easy assumption (a kind of idealism) that networks (communicating via mobiles phone or internet or cybergames) equal communication equal creativity equal art. Eugenio's example, as well as the backa palanka example, may not indeed answer Julian's commentary on competitve excellence or values (cultural and aesthetic) associated with artistic form, and artistic forms are still being mentioned here without that we all have clear insight into what was performed or exhibited (again, I admit not having seen the creative manifestations). If performing an assemblage ( and i am still not convinced, Helen, that theatre and cyberperformance have much in common according to the rehearsals you describe) is valued here as creativity, then that is all right with me if you explain what kind of culturally transformative art (as Julian calls it) is meant, and whom dies it transform, and how is it accountable to audiences and receivership. One would think that the desire to excell and make a living is fair enough, Julian, but this may not answer the question (Simon's) whether sharing a method of creating or being creative together (for different ends, perhaps, and not the creation of an artwork), as a social choreography, can be defined as an ontological principle. what is a social choreography, and who benefits from it, and who is experiencing it as physically, emotionally and spiritually enriching in a communal sense (and now we are back to ritual)? Is there a relational consciousness and what would it be like? regards Johannes Birringer winmail.dat___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
The notion of creativity as a social ontology need not be considered only from an idealistic position. Foucault's panopticon is an expression of social creativity and collective (un-)consciousness too. Best Simon Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk si...@littlepig.org.uk Skype: simonbiggsuk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ Research Professor edinburgh college of art http://www.eca.ac.uk/ Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice http://www.elmcip.net/ Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts From: Johannes Birringer johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk Reply-To: soft_skinned_space empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 00:02:50 +0100 To: soft_skinned_space empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Subject: RE: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology dear all: thanks for the clarifications, Helen, and for other comments that followed today, such as Davin's post. I think you are right to note that creativity and desire and community do not always move without conflict. This is an interesting portrayal of the mechanics of desire. I agree that desire is a motor for creativity, both individual and collective. But how do we actually move together into these commonly held futures you mention? A quick view on history may show that such moves have seldom been made without ruptures and conflicts. We could try to focus on the expression and actualization of collective desires from the viewpoint of complex systems, in which local interactions generate large scale changes. Politics, then, would emerge from a creative construction of the social actors, with all their common / opposed desires. I think these are the ontological stakes of consciousness. What we think has implications for what do. What we do has implications for what we think. And, if we live in a true community, our ideas and actions are bound to modify, be modified, contradict, and/or complement the negotiation of being. My questions were addressed precisely at these issues of conflict or contradiction, in a poltical and organizational sense, but also at the easy assumption (a kind of idealism) that networks (communicating via mobiles phone or internet or cybergames) equal communication equal creativity equal art. Eugenio's example, as well as the backa palanka example, may not indeed answer Julian's commentary on competitve excellence or values (cultural and aesthetic) associated with artistic form, and artistic forms are still being mentioned here without that we all have clear insight into what was performed or exhibited (again, I admit not having seen the creative manifestations). If performing an assemblage ( and i am still not convinced, Helen, that theatre and cyberperformance have much in common according to the rehearsals you describe) is valued here as creativity, then that is all right with me if you explain what kind of culturally transformative art (as Julian calls it) is meant, and whom dies it transform, and how is it accountable to audiences and receivership. One would think that the desire to excell and make a living is fair enough, Julian, but this may not answer the question (Simon's) whether sharing a method of creating or being creative together (for different ends, perhaps, and not the creation of an artwork), as a social choreography, can be defined as an ontological principle. what is a social choreography, and who benefits from it, and who is experiencing it as physically, emotionally and spiritually enriching in a communal sense (and now we are back to ritual)? Is there a relational consciousness and what would it be like? regards Johannes Birringer Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
Johannes, why are social networks, or facebooks or twitters considered community building in a creative/artistic sense, after babel or not? is the creative here always associated with the artistic, and then what artistic terms are meant? I don't think we can consider all kinds of social networks as being community builders. There are many different kinds of networks. The very traits (even technical specifications) of these networks create basic conditions which favor (or inhibit) the creation of a community. I think Davin put it right when he talked about desires and the necessity of conflict in order to characterize a community: it's not simply a group of people gathered together in a physical or virtual space. I don't believe that creativity needs to be associated only with an artistic context. The fact that a community needs to constantly re-produce itself, and that this re-production can be done in creative ways, lets us think about social creativity as something happening in broader scopes: politics, economy, education, urbanism ... in any case, I think that an artistic environment is much better prepared to embrace creativity than others. In megafone.net, most projects have been sponsored by artistic institutions and shown at arts festivals. Yet the projects themselves have had all kinds of implications. For example, in Barcelona, 2006, a group of people on wheelchairs created a map of the inaccessible spots that they found in the city by using mobile phones and GPS modules. The map was printed and handed to the authorities, which responded with a map of the accessible places a few weeks later. The participants also created a cultural association which is still active organizing all sorts of events and workshops for disabled people. You can see the project here: http://www.megafone.net/BARCELONA/ And a video: http://www.megafone.net/INFO/index.php?/video/2006-barcelonaaccessible/ (with subtitles in English) Simon quoting Kevin So how do we attend to creativity's ontology as a condition of being social, without ending up with just another form of instrumentalized freedom? indeed. with regards Johannes Birringer Interaktionslabor http://interaktionslabor.de Simon quoting Kevin So how do we attend to creativity's ontology as a condition of being social, without ending up with just another form of instrumentalized freedom? Taking this idea of individual sublimation and considering how this dynamic might work in heterogeneous social contexts between people we can ask how we learn to use our languages, our means of expression, across human languages, media forms, scripts and materialities, and learn to be ourselves (pluriliteracy as an ontology)? Perhaps the manner in which we sublimate difference is as much about fear as desire? -Adjunto en línea a continuación- ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
Helen, getting back to the networked context, what this adds is the ability to initiate such projects where circumstances make it difficult or impossible to bring people physically together. I agree. Also, a digital network can provide tools for tracking and visualizing relational dynamics within the community, such as folksonomies, maps and channels that support different modes of communication. However, you seem to imply that physical presence is the most important condition for a community, and that a digital network would only be something like a prosthesis to alleviate distance. Is this correct? h : ) On 7/07/10 11:01 AM, Eugenio Tisselli wrote: Hi Helen, I fully agree with you that commonality is a necessary condition for the emergence of a community... which, in turn, will constantly transform the very nature of that commonality through interaction between its members. I also believe that commonality can be subtle, or even contradictory: a community may form even emerge out of people holding antagonistic positions. Let me illustrate: Last year, megafone.net was invited to do a project in Manizales, Colombia, involving two groups: displaced people (people who had to abandon their home towns because of violence) and de-mobilized people (ex-guerrilleros). Obvously, these two groups are in extreme positions, which can be understood as the opposite ends of the Colombian conflict. However, they were all willing to work on the project. Antoni Abad, the head of megafone.net, went there and started the project by working separately with both groups. Each group would share a common mobile phone, from which the participants could send tagged images and audio clips to a web page. The goal for each group was to create and share a community memory, in which they would reflect their daily life. Each week, the phone would change hands and would be passed on to another participant. Surprisingly, after a few days of activity, the participants themselves asked Antoni if he could arrange a meeting of both groups. And then it happened: displaced and demobilized people were shaking hands and even hugging each other after realizing that they had so many things in common. According to our Colombian hosts, something like this had never happened before. The web-based community memory they created together is available at megafone.net: http://www.megafone.net/TEMPORAL If I have to see this project in retrospective, I must say that the web page both groups created using mobile phones unexpectedly worked as a pretext for their face-to-face meeting. I also have to say that this community's creative production of itself is reflected in the folksonomy which emerged from their participation in the project, which can be viewed here: http://www.megafone.net/TEMPORAL/tags.php The most relevant tags speak for themselves. Finally, I must admit that my intention to start from a taxonomy of networks was maybe a little too far-fetched. I agree that networks are a good example of a fluid space, which can hardly be made to fit into a set of fixed categories. But I just wanted to try and see if we could characterize and find different types of networks, and see if we could identify which of their traits favor (or inhibit) collective creativity. Eugenio Tisselli Vélez cub...@yahoo.com http://www.motorhueso.net -- helen varley jamieson: creative catalyst he...@creative-catalyst.com http://www.creative-catalyst.com http://www.avatarbodycollision.org http://www.upstage.org.nz ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
This begs the question why nobody has setup a Facebook-like system based on actual human characteristics and behaviour, reflecting how we socially interact in practice? Such a model would require an open and generative approach to what characteristics and modes of engagement are possible, with constantly emerging dynamics and modes. Hate, love, tolerance, boredom and distaste would be only a few of the states that connections between people could be set to. People might choose to determine these states themselves or the system could heuristically do this on their behalf. That could be fun...and revealing. Best Simon Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk si...@littlepig.org.uk Skype: simonbiggsuk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ Research Professor edinburgh college of art http://www.eca.ac.uk/ Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice http://www.elmcip.net/ Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts From: Eugenio Tisselli cub...@yahoo.com Reply-To: soft_skinned_space empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 02:36:47 -0700 (PDT) To: soft_skinned_space empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology Davin, When I read your phrase And, if we live in a true community, our ideas and actions are bound to modify, be modified, contradict, and/or complement the negotiation of being. the rose-colored environment of Facebook immediately came to mind. You know, you can like but not dislike, and people rarely disagree or contradict each other. You say that we are bound to be contradicted when we live in a true community, and I would say that we actually need to be contradicted in order to set arguments, discussions and debates in motion. The fact that we are here at empyre, not necessarily contradicting each other, but offering continuous counterpoints and different viewpoints, makes us all richer. Knowledge can emerge from disagreement. So, in the almost complete absence of a minimal quota of agonistic exchanges between people, how can a community emerge from Facebook? Are there so many contradictions and conflicts in the real world that we turn to Facebook simply to escape from them? Could we then see Facebook as an anti-community, where we all just whiz by other poeple's walls, stopping only to acknowledge what we like and ignoring what we don't? Eugenio. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
hi eugenio, I agree. Also, a digital network can provide tools for tracking and visualizing relational dynamics within the community, such as folksonomies, maps and channels that support different modes of communication. However, you seem to imply that physical presence is the most important condition for a community, and that a digital network would only be something like a prosthesis to alleviate distance. Is this correct? no, that isn't what i meant to imply at all. i was speaking specifically about those two examples, from colombia serbia/croatia, where the physical getting-together of the two groups was an outcome of the creative event. many - actually, most - of the communities i consider myself a member of are not physical communities at all. i value enjoy face-to-face meetings, sometimes there are things that are more efficiently done in the flesh, but most of my networked community interactions are virtual/remote this is perfectly successful. h : ) helen varley jamieson: creative catalyst he...@creative-catalyst.com http://www.creative-catalyst.com http://www.avatarbodycollision.org http://www.upstage.org.nz ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology, ...stanza to simon biggs ----off list email
Happy to. Foucault's panopticon interprets Bentham's centralised eye of control as distributed throughout society. Everybody is implicated in the gaze of control. Foucault connects Lacan's concept of the gaze and Freud's of the super-ego (the social-self as controller of the Id) fixing surveillance as distributed agency. It is like the human-aliens in the Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, who are all wired to recognise the others (the normal humans). This film has always been understood as a metaphor for McCarthyism and the manner in which populations can enforce normalisation of minorities. This can be seen as social and individual formation, like other similar social dynamics, such as inclusion in a group (or exclusion), common language, sub-cultural codes, etc. Best Simon Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk si...@littlepig.org.uk Skype: simonbiggsuk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ Research Professor edinburgh college of art http://www.eca.ac.uk/ Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice http://www.elmcip.net/ Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts From: stanza sta...@sublime.net Reply-To: sta...@sublime.net Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2010 12:38:35 +0100 To: Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology,...stanza to simon biggs off list email Hi Simon I just read this post of yours on...on empyre I don't suppose you have time to elaborate on this (below) for me..if you do thanks. Foucault's panopticon is an expression of social creativity and collective (un-)consciousness too. stanza www.stanza.co.uk Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
Hey Simon, That sounds like a really interesting art project! Very early internet practice before high speed internet and web browsers involved electronic bulletin boards and also MUD's MOO's. Those sort of morphed into artists websites/lists and second life. Early BBS (bulletin board services) had a lot of emotion. Among artists it was like belonging to a secret club that only a select few knew about. Most of the art world neither knew nor cared about computers and the internet. It was a lot of fun then because of the freedom and the anarchy. There are some people who are trying to do facebook art but it's not very potent. facebook ties into a soft marketing information system. What was most interesting about early internet art practices was that the software and code were very primitive. most of the actual content and structure was left up to the imagination. It is still possible to set up an alternative system on the internet that uses the same structure as facebook and iTunes. Just off the top of my head I'd say you could use RSS (XML) or maybe some PHP. My colleagues in France Peter Sinclair and Jerome Joy are designing sound systems that have people around the world put up microphones connected to the internet. The sound become the material for art works. I like the idea of working in partially physical and partially virtual worlds. It's a way to disrupt or open up the way we socialize, make art and communicate. Here's the link for those works; -- http://locusonus.org/ -- Here's a recent piece of mine using a seesaw as a movie controller. Talk about social sculpture! -- http://youtu.be/2E76h201_5Y -- On Jul 8, 2010, at 6:01 AM, Simon Biggs wrote: This begs the question why nobody has setup a Facebook-like system based on actual human characteristics and behaviour, reflecting how we socially interact in practice? Such a model would require an open and generative approach to what characteristics and modes of engagement are possible, with constantly emerging dynamics and modes. Hate, love, tolerance, boredom and distaste would be only a few of the states that connections between people could be set to. People might choose to determine these states themselves or the system could heuristically do this on their behalf. That could be fun...and revealing. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
Eugenio. you speak of something I posted earlier, the challenge of agreement as a sign of a healthy community. commonality with criticality sounds a lot healthier. I myself do not think that art is something that all members of a community should engage in, I do think that all should experience it, but for me there is nothing exclusionary about being an observer. and observer and partaker of a good cook at a restaurant, a good musician, reading the book of a good writer. I recently got a survey form an agency that had granted me money decades ago, their questionnaire asked me nothing but question about how my work engaged, involved, gave voice to, the community. It was frustrating because my work is very social, but it does not function in this, collaborative , workshop way with non artists. I guess it gets down to me really being invested in an art object, the social aspect of which can be vastly varies. saw a great piece by a performance artist Barrie cole. it was about face book. I paraphrase, but it went like this. I am talking about the Face book dream, you know what that is, yes you do. It is the Idea that you will gather together all of the people from your fragmented past, and present, and when they are all assembled, suddenly , your life history will make perfect sense. Chris Sullivan. Quoting Eugenio Tisselli cub...@yahoo.com: Davin, When I read your phrase And, if we live in a true community, our ideas and actions are bound to modify, be modified, contradict, and/or complement the negotiation of being. the rose-colored environment of Facebook immediately came to mind. You know, you can like but not dislike, and people rarely disagree or contradict each other. You say that we are bound to be contradicted when we live in a true community, and I would say that we actually need to be contradicted in order to set arguments, discussions and debates in motion. The fact that we are here at empyre, not necessarily contradicting each other, but offering continuous counterpoints and different viewpoints, makes us all richer. Knowledge can emerge from disagreement. So, in the almost complete absence of a minimal quota of agonistic exchanges between people, how can a community emerge from Facebook? Are there so many contradictions and conflicts in the real world that we turn to Facebook simply to escape from them? Could we then see Facebook as an anti-community, where we all just whiz by other poeple's walls, stopping only to acknowledge what we like and ignoring what we don't? Eugenio. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Christopher Sullivan Dept. of Film/Video/New Media School of the Art Institute of Chicago 112 so michigan Chicago Ill 60603 csu...@saic.edu 312-345-3802 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
Eugenio, I would to expend on your words: I don't believe that creativity needs to be associated only with an artistic context. There too many who only associate creative with art, and most of them with object based art. It is diffcult for others who have understood that creativity is at full in all aspects of nature, to discuss how creative impact humans since most of these discussions about creativity are related to the ideology of the visual. We can not separte us from nature since our senses are the interfaces with the outer world and the inital process of what will become our creative expressions. Unfortunately, must people, even some who called themsel intellectuals, do no discuss the importance of all senses and always favor the visual apparatus. If we become aware of the placement of the senses and the way in which they articulate a geometrical mechanism of perception in all humans, then, the discussion about the creative could take us to a better understanding of how social and personal networks work. The whellchair people involved in the Barcelona project have understood that process. Saludos and great to encounter your wise ideas in this network, raul morquech ferrera-balanquet --- El jue 8-jul-10, Eugenio Tisselli cub...@yahoo.com escribió: De: Eugenio Tisselli cub...@yahoo.com Asunto: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology A: soft_skinned_space empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Fecha: jueves, 8 de julio de 2010, 4:51 Johannes, why are social networks, or facebooks or twitters considered community building in a creative/artistic sense, after babel or not? is the creative here always associated with the artistic, and then what artistic terms are meant? I don't think we can consider all kinds of social networks as being community builders. There are many different kinds of networks. The very traits (even technical specifications) of these networks create basic conditions which favor (or inhibit) the creation of a community. I think Davin put it right when he talked about desires and the necessity of conflict in order to characterize a community: it's not simply a group of people gathered together in a physical or virtual space. I don't believe that creativity needs to be associated only with an artistic context. The fact that a community needs to constantly re-produce itself, and that this re-production can be done in creative ways, lets us think about social creativity as something happening in broader scopes: politics, economy, education, urbanism ... in any case, I think that an artistic environment is much better prepared to embrace creativity than others. In megafone.net, most projects have been sponsored by artistic institutions and shown at arts festivals. Yet the projects themselves have had all kinds of implications. For example, in Barcelona, 2006, a group of people on wheelchairs created a map of the inaccessible spots that they found in the city by using mobile phones and GPS modules. The map was printed and handed to the authorities, which responded with a map of the accessible places a few weeks later. The participants also created a cultural association which is still active organizing all sorts of events and workshops for disabled people. You can see the project here: http://www.megafone.net/BARCELONA/ And a video: http://www.megafone.net/INFO/index.php?/video/2006-barcelonaaccessible/ (with subtitles in English) Simon quoting Kevin So how do we attend to creativity's ontology as a condition of being social, without ending up with just another form of instrumentalized freedom? indeed. with regards Johannes Birringer Interaktionslabor http://interaktionslabor.de Simon quoting Kevin So how do we attend to creativity's ontology as a condition of being social, without ending up with just another form of instrumentalized freedom? Taking this idea of individual sublimation and considering how this dynamic might work in heterogeneous social contexts between people we can ask how we learn to use our languages, our means of expression, across human languages, media forms, scripts and materialities, and learn to be ourselves (pluriliteracy as an ontology)? Perhaps the manner in which we sublimate difference is as much about fear as desire? -Adjunto en línea a continuación- ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
Dear All, One of the clever aspects of Facebook was that it found a way to capitalize (in mutliple senses) relationships that pre-existed in meat world. That it is a panopticon is what keeps me disinterested in participating. And this leads me to a question that rubs against a number of these threads. Fair disclosure, it came up yesterday in a face to face group I am part of. Is privacy necessary to innovation (not necessarily artistic)? Follow up: is it necessary only to individuals or can it be a feature needed by working groups as well? I am raising this question not particularly with respect to protecting property interests in advance of publication (although they may come up along the way) but much more with regard to psychological/cognitive processes. Looping back somewhat in the conversation about the utility of art, why it is important (and by art, I mean all forms/media of expression), I have always thought that it represents the wider mind, gives form to its integration, which is incredibly powerful and important. What do I mean? The contents of our mental lives are big stews of the present/past experience, fantasies, unconscious material of all kinds, and yes, desire (=drive?), kinesthetic knowledge, etc.. Art making, because it draws on all these sources can, quite aside from the expressive goals of the maker, assure others that integration is possible. And it gives permission to others to try the same thing. So a more refined version of the question above is this: Is privacy required to invoke/evoke the broad contents of the mind in either individuals or as a result of group process? Christina Eugenio Tisselli wrote: Davin, When I read your phrase And, if we live in a true community, our ideas and actions are bound to modify, be modified, contradict, and/or complement the negotiation of being. the rose-colored environment of Facebook immediately came to mind. You know, you can like but not dislike, and people rarely disagree or contradict each other. You say that we are bound to be contradicted when we live in a true community, and I would say that we actually need to be contradicted in order to set arguments, discussions and debates in motion. The fact that we are here at empyre, not necessarily contradicting each other, but offering continuous counterpoints and different viewpoints, makes us all richer. Knowledge can emerge from disagreement. So, in the almost complete absence of a minimal quota of agonistic exchanges between people, how can a community emerge from Facebook? Are there so many contradictions and conflicts in the real world that we turn to Facebook simply to escape from them? Could we then see Facebook as an anti-community, where we all just whiz by other poeple's walls, stopping only to acknowledge what we like and ignoring what we don't? Eugenio. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology, ...stanza to simon biggs ----off list email
..on Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 06:21:44PM +0100, Simon Biggs wrote: Happy to. Foucault's panopticon interprets Bentham's centralised eye of control as distributed throughout society. Everybody is implicated in the gaze of control. Foucault connects Lacan's concept of the gaze and Freud's of the super-ego (the social-self as controller of the Id) fixing surveillance as distributed agency. Indeed. Social networks leverage a pre-existing social anxiety, the fear of social irrelevance and subsequent obsolescence. A symptom of this is suspicion of those that choose not to participate, as participation edges toward social compulsion and then the compulsory. Guilty until proven subscribed. Again, we need to remind ourselves that the most popular social networks are not owned by their Public. Rather, they are owned by the most legally inverse form, Private enterprises. One can reasonably consider subscribers of Facebook as employees, without contract, whose renumeration is access to the data they create. Subscribers encourage, patrol and regulate participation (pokes, invites). Cheers, Julian From: stanza sta...@sublime.net Reply-To: sta...@sublime.net Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2010 12:38:35 +0100 To: Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology,...stanza to simon biggs off list email Hi Simon I just read this post of yours on...on empyre I don't suppose you have time to elaborate on this (below) for me..if you do thanks. Foucault's panopticon is an expression of social creativity and collective (un-)consciousness too. stanza www.stanza.co.uk Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre -- Julian Oliver home: New Zealand based: Berlin, Germany currently: Berlin, Germany about: http://julianoliver.com ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
Eugenio and Simon, My guess is that people would use a dislike button on facebook much more as an I sympathize with you device than as a you are completely off your rocker indicator. People want to have that for the My cat/mother/father died response. You're probably right though, Eugenio, that the reason it has not appeared is not that it would interfere with real human interaction, but that it would cause problems for the many corporate entities participating in facebook. When BP posts some PR message about their efforts to rescue the pelicans in the Gulf, or McDonald's trumpets the health effects of their burgers on facebook, the dislike buttons would light up. On the other note, I don't think that the tendency toward everybody happy completely interferes with dialectic discourse on social networks like facebook. I've stayed friends with a number of facebook friends with whom I have radically different political views, and have actually had constructive political debates with them, even though I completely oppose their world-view. In a way, I think that that is one of the more interesting aspects of my experience on facebook. It has revealed to me that I actually know people who think the way that I thought only fictional others could possibly think (for example people who truly believe that health care reform in the US was the end of civilization). It felt good to engage with those people, even as it was frightening to know that my ideological bubble does not extend as far as I had believed. While facebook is an environment shaped overwhelmingly by the desire of the network's developers to harness user information for corporate profit, it is already a space in which boredom, hatred, love, tolerance and distaste are expressed, more in the comments than in the buttons. Regardless of the shape of the stage, I think the human actors shape it to a great extent through their interactions, already. All the Best, Scott On Jul 8, 2010, at 4:06 PM, Eugenio Tisselli wrote: Simon, I have seen people in Facebook toy around with the idea of having a dislike button, but it hasn't been implemented. I wonder what would happen with such a button. My guess is that few people would use it. It's so easy to shut down anyone in Facebook (or other large-scale digital networks, for that matter)... you can simply ignore dislikers and, as an extreme case, delete them from your list. People would not use the button because of fear of being excluded or deleted. Can networks like Facebook be regarded as disciplining technologies for individuals, as training grounds for adapting to the disengaged, everybody happy, positive thinking stance favored (and needed) by contemporary capitalism? Eugenio Tisselli Vélez cub...@yahoo.com http://www.motorhueso.net --- El jue, 7/8/10, Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk escribió: De: Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk Asunto: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology A: soft_skinned_space empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Fecha: jueves, 8 de julio de 2010, 02:01 pm This begs the question why nobody has setup a Facebook-like system based on actual human characteristics and behaviour, reflecting how we socially interact in practice? Such a model would require an open and generative approach to what characteristics and modes of engagement are possible, with constantly emerging dynamics and modes. Hate, love, tolerance, boredom and distaste would be only a few of the states that connections between people could be set to. People might choose to determine these states themselves or the system could heuristically do this on their behalf. That could be fun...and revealing. Best Simon Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk si...@littlepig.org.uk Skype: simonbiggsuk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
..on Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 12:02:50AM +0100, Johannes Birringer wrote: dear all: thanks for the clarifications, Helen, and for other comments that followed today, such as Davin's post. I think you are right to note that creativity and desire and community do not always move without conflict. This is an interesting portrayal of the mechanics of desire. I agree that desire is a motor for creativity, both individual and collective. But how do we actually move together into these commonly held futures you mention? A quick view on history may show that such moves have seldom been made without ruptures and conflicts. We could try to focus on the expression and actualization of collective desires from the viewpoint of complex systems, in which local interactions generate large scale changes. Politics, then, would emerge from a creative construction of the social actors, with all their common / opposed desires. I think these are the ontological stakes of consciousness. What we think has implications for what do. What we do has implications for what we think. And, if we live in a true community, our ideas and actions are bound to modify, be modified, contradict, and/or complement the negotiation of being. My questions were addressed precisely at these issues of conflict or contradiction, in a poltical and organizational sense, but also at the easy assumption (a kind of idealism) that networks (communicating via mobiles phone or internet or cybergames) equal communication equal creativity equal art. One answer is probably just not necessarily. Art is intended, not incidental. Even found art expresses the intent to find unintentional art objects. While all communication is obviously a form of creative expression it's not neccessarily art. Art doesn't happen when you increase the possibility for communication between individuals. Communities do. Even if we take an active position, of those making art using computer networks, we find that few people actually use the internets to make art together. Most use the internets to distribute artwork, connect with audiences, plan and research how to make artwork, curate, discuss and organise artwork - not make it. Like offline collaboration, there are very few artists actually making art together in large groups online. This says more about the desire for recognition and exposure than anything else, something endemic to contemporary art in general. We hear of the supposed revolution that collaboration on the internet brings, of a hyper-dividualism, a dissolution of authorship etc but I don't see many creators flocking to be one-of-many without the promise of earning positive and directed social rewards. By bringing money into the picture however, creating artworks resourcing the talents of large numbers of creators becomes very feasible. Aaron Koblin and Daniel Massey's A bicycle built for 2000 comes to mind as one example, leveraging the micropayment system provided by Yahoo's Mechanical Turk to attract the sincerity of intent to create a singular work from those 2000 (unnamed) people. http://www.bicyclebuiltfortwothousand.com/ Anything that happens in Second Life (for instance) expresses no more about computer networks and creativity other than that geographically separated people /can/ collaborate on building a 'house', a sculpture, a performance. Previously one had to be very creative with postage stamps, ink, time and the social networks of friends in the vicinity of your collaborator (Fluxus did a lot with this). As you suggest it really is an idealism we're talking about here and one we'll be a little embarrassed about in years to come. The supposed wisdom of the crowds, with the Internets as a platform, will continue to fail to actually contribute more than small groups, or even individuals, have acheived for aeons. Cheers, -- Julian Oliver home: New Zealand based: Berlin, Germany currently: Delft, Nederlands about: http://julianoliver.com ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
..on Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 06:01:37PM +0200, Julian Oliver wrote: leveraging the micropayment system provided by Yahoo's Mechanical Turk to Oops! Should have read Amazon's Mechanical Turk. https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome -- Julian Oliver home: New Zealand based: Berlin, Germany currently: Delft, Nederlands about: http://julianoliver.com ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
Simon and Eugenio, there is always Hatebook http://www.hatebook.org/. But, really, I think that this thread touches upon the general spirit of depression that seems so pervasive these days (as well as the counterinsurgency techniques that have been deployed to neutralize it). For a period of time, just about every adult that I associated with was on a medication to correct a chemical imbalance. So, at once, this means people have a hard time feeling OK. And, that there was nothing they could do to feel OK. And my worry is that this medicalization of being dissatisfied robs the person of the validity of their feelings of dissatisfaction. I understand that when one doesn't feel OK, they should try to figure out how to feel OK. But when the world basically tells you that you have nothing to feel bad about, except that your brain makes you feel bad until you take this pill you are basically being told that nothing in your life matters except how you feel about it. It always sounds judgmental to argue against the banal neutrality of technocapitalism, but I think it's a pretty big slap in the face to be told that a pill is going to fix you up, if you are upset about the absurdities of the workplace, the tragedy of widespread disenfranchisement and dispossession, the lack of agency you have in the world, the banal ideals of love advanced in self-help industries, the disappointment of the spectacle, and, finally, the idea that your life is a treatable disorder. It seems to me that the real solution to feeling shitty is to know that no matter how shitty you feel, your life is not without consequence. I watch my four year old climb trees he loves to climb trees And he doesn't care if he gets these big bloody scrapes, bruises on his knees, knots on his head. It would be easy to say, let's make a game where you pretend to climb a tree, but you only get hurt for pretend, because climbing trees is dangerous he's not going to go for it. Because it is great to do things that are hard. It feels good to take risks. It is assuring to pass through danger successfully. There might be something immature about adults doing dangerous things for no good reason (I cringe when I see a grown man doing wheelies on a motorcycle where other people are trying to drive). But I do think that, socially, we do really want our relationships to have consequences. We want our deeply held ideas to effect people. And we want the people that we value to be able to effect us. I think most of us actually kind of feel good when someone changes our mind about something. We might argue like hell about it. But in the end, it feels good to have learned something. And, if you have something to share, and another person responds to it, either positively or negatively, that is also a powerful feeling, too. To get back to Johannes' question, what is a relational consciousness?, maybe human consciousness itself is relational, maybe it is at the point of relationality that we come into our being. At some level, it is possible for us to think things without communicating them to an other. But even in isolation, when we take our thoughts away from impulse, and place them into the stream of time we are relating our thoughts to prior situations and speculative situations. We take thought into representation, into the ought, into the ethical. Yet this relation to what we were and what we might become is not entirely unlike our relationship to external others--both relationships are based in speculation, in assessing probabilities, trying for the one we desire, coping in various ways with the failure to achieve this desire, and initiating the anew process instantaneously. This might not be art (but I think it is, if we view art as techne), but it certainly is creativity. Davin On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 10:06 AM, Eugenio Tisselli cub...@yahoo.com wrote: Simon, I have seen people in Facebook toy around with the idea of having a dislike button, but it hasn't been implemented. I wonder what would happen with such a button. My guess is that few people would use it. It's so easy to shut down anyone in Facebook (or other large-scale digital networks, for that matter)... you can simply ignore dislikers and, as an extreme case, delete them from your list. People would not use the button because of fear of being excluded or deleted. Can networks like Facebook be regarded as disciplining technologies for individuals, as training grounds for adapting to the disengaged, everybody happy, positive thinking stance favored (and needed) by contemporary capitalism? Eugenio Tisselli Vélez cub...@yahoo.com http://www.motorhueso.net --- El jue, 7/8/10, Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk escribió: De: Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk Asunto: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology A: soft_skinned_space empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Fecha: jueves, 8 de julio de 2010, 02:01 pm This begs the
