[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[Eugenio Tisselli]

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
cubo23 at yahoo.com
http://www.motorhueso.net


--- El dom, 7/4/10, Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk> escribió:

> De: Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> Asunto: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
> A: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at 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
> 
> Moderated by Simon Biggs (UK/Australia) with invited
> discussants Eugenio
> Tisselli (Mexico/Spain), Helen Varley Jamieson (New
> Zealand/UK), James Leach
> (UK), Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli  (USA/UK), Ruth Catlow
> (UK), Magnus Lawrie
> (UK), Scott Rettberg (Norway/USA)
> 
> Dear empyre subscribers,
> 
> Creativity is often perceived as a product of individual,
> or group, creative
> activity. However, it might also be considered an emergent
> phenomenon of
> communities, driving change and facilitating individual and
> ensemble
> creativity. Expanded concepts of agency allow us to
> question who, or what,
> can be an active participant in creative social
> interactions, providing
> diverse models for authorship. Creativity might be regarded
> as social
> interaction in reflexive mediation.
> 
> How might we understand creativity as interaction, as sets
> of discursive
> relations? Creativity can be a performative activity
> released when engaged
> through and by a community. In this context the model of
> the solitary
> artist, who produces artefacts which embody creativity, can
> be questioned as
> an ideal for achieving creative outcomes. Creativity can be
> proposed as an
> activity of exchange that enables (creates) people and
> communities.
> 
> In his book Creative Land, anthropologist James Leach (one
> of this month's
> guests) describes cultural practices where the creation of
> new things, and
> the ritualised forms of exchange (the performative) enacted
> around them,
> function to "create" individuals and their social
> relations, "creating" the
> community they inhabit. Leach's argument suggests it is
> possible to conceive
> of creativity as emergent from and innate to the
> interactions of people.
> Such an understanding functions to combat instrumentalist
> views of
> creativity that demand it have social (e.g.: "economic")
> value. Creativity
> need not be valued as satisfying a perceived need nor need
> it be
> romantically situated as a supply-side "blue skies" ideal.
> An alternate
> model can be proposed where creativity is considered an
> emergent property of
> community; an ontology.
> 
> Does the internet, the networks of people it facilitates
> and the communities
> that emerge through it, render these processes more
> explicit than they might
> otherwise appear? Does the internet facilitate the creation
> of communities
> where new modalities of creativity, authorship and exchange
> emerge? Do
> online communities, such as Furtherfield, 7-11, Nettime and
> empyre, present
> models and insights for novel social relations and
> creativity?
> 
> During the month of July we will discuss the issues that
> relate to these
> questions concerning creativity and community. Our guests
> are:
> 
> Eugenio Tisselli (Mexico/Spain):
> Born in Mexico City, 1972. Writer and programmer. Areas of
> interest include
> artistic software, social technologies and digital
> narratives. His work
> (installation, performance, software and text) has been
> featured in many
> publications, festivals and exhibitions around the world.
> He collaborates
> regularly with artist Antoni Abad at http://megafone.net. He was an
> associate researcher at Sony Computer Science Lab in Paris
> and is currently
> co-director of the Master in Digital Arts at the Pompeu
> Fabra University in
> Barcelona. His work can be found at http://www.motorhueso.net.
> 
> Helen Varley Jamieson (New Zealand):
> http://www.creative-catalyst.com
> Helen Varley Jamieson is a writer, theatre practitioner and
> digital artist
> from New Zealand, currently based in Europe. She holds a
> Master of Arts
> (research) in cyberformance - live performance on the
> internet ­ a form of
> networked performance which she has developed and presented
> internationally
> for over a decade. Helen is a founding member of the
> globally-dispersed
> cyberformance troupe Avatar Body Collision; project manager
> of UpStage, an
> open source web-based cyberformance platform; has
> co-curated online
> festivals involving artists and audiences around the world;
> and is the "web
> queen" of the Magdalena Project, an international network
> of women in
> theatre.
> 
> James Leach (UK):
> James Leach is a Social Anthropologist. His areas of
> interest centre on
> creativity, innovation, intellectual property and on
> knowledge exchange
> across cultures, disciplines and contexts. Building on long
> term fieldwork
> in Papua New Guinea, recent work has drawn understandings
> and relationships
> from that region into research on free software,
> interdisciplinary
> collaborations, the design of technological objects and
> choreography. James
> is currently Professor and Head of Anthropology at the
> University of
> Aberdeen.
> 
> Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli (USA/UK/Italy):
> Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli is an Associate Professor at the
> University of
> Edinburgh in Film Studies.  She is the author of The
> Unmaking of Fascist
> Aesthetics, and has published articles on digital and
> performance art,
> modernism, feminism, nationalism, representations of
> violence and
> post-socialist cinema. She is currently working on a
> manuscript entitled
> Mythopoetic Cinema at The Margins of Europe.
> 
> Ruth Catlow (UK):
> Ruth is an artist and curator working at the intersection
> of art, technology
> and social change. As co-founder, with Marc Garrett, of
> Furtherfield.org, a
> grass roots media arts organisation, online community and
> HTTP Gallery in
> North London, she works with international DIY artists,
> hackers, curators,
> musicians, programmers, writers, activists and thinkers.
> Her current focus
> is on practices that engage an ecological approach
> featuring an interest in
> the interrelation of technological and natural
> processes.  Ruth has been
> involved with developing networked participatory arts
> infrastructures such
> as VisitorsStudio and NODE.London. Ruth has worked in
> Higher Education for
> over 15 years and is currently running degrees in Digital
> Art and Design
> Practice and developing a new MA in Fine Art and
> Environment at Writtle
> School of Design.
> 
> Magnus Lawrie (UK):
> Magnus Lawrie has, over the past 15 years, been involved in
> creative and
> politically motivated urban communities in the UK, Germany
> and Spain. This
> engagement has resulted from a peripatetic lifestyle and an
> interest in
> grassroots action deriving from his background in visual
> arts (BA & MFA Fine
> Art 1991-97), DIY culture and - by a circuitous route - web
> design,
> programming, systems administration, GNU/Linux and Free
> Software. In
> September 2010 Magnus will begin a doctoral research
> studentship at
> Edinburgh College of Art as part of the pan-European
> Electronic Literature
> as a Model for Creativity and Innovation in Practice
> (ELMCIP) project.
> 
> Scott Rettberg (Norway/USA):
> Scott Rettberg is a Chicago native who now lives in Norway.
> He writes, and
> writes about, new media and electronic literature. Rettberg
> is co-founder of
> the Electronic Literature Organization. His work is widely
> published,
> including by MIT Press, The Iowa Review Web and the
> Electronic Book Review.
> He was co-editor with N. Katherine Hayles, Nick Montfort,
> and Stephanie
> Strickland of the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume
> One. He is an
> associate professor of digital culture at the University of
> Bergen.
> 
> 
> Simon Biggs
> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk 
> simon at 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
> 
> 
> 
> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in
> Scotland, number SC009201
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>