[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[helen varley jamieson]

hi johannes & all,

i was referring to both the physical performance studio AND the internet 
in talking about warming up & establishing trust between 
performers/artists. when a group of us begin to create a cyberformance, 
we spend time together online developing that trust, usually in fairly 
informal ways but often this spontaneously evolves into patterns of more 
structured exercises/games, such as word association jams, avatar 
movement games or visual dialogue via web cam images. this helps 
collaborators to get to know each other - we recognise who is a fast 
typist, which of us spar well together, who likes to draw & so on. we 
are stretching our imaginations at the same time as warming up our 
fingers, opening necessary applications, getting comfortable at the 
keyboard, setting up props or web cam scenes, & experimenting with the 
technology. these initial games are often interspersed with general chat 
- catching up on where everyone's at with their lives, at the same time 
as performing the mental task of leaving the day behind so that we can 
enter the virtual studio & focus our minds on the work.

i am referring to the practical business of making cyberformance (in 
UpStage & in other online platforms e.g. Visitors Studio, Second Life, 
etc), but i believe that this is inseparable from your point about 
"creative social ensembles experimenting with processes of working 
together". aside from an ensemble/group/community that consciously 
adopts an established process & sticks to it, the working process of any 
creative ensemble is always going to be at least in part experimental 
and adaptive. in particular with cyberformance & other forms of online 
collaborative artmaking, even when we start with processes from other 
mediums (such as theatre) they require adaptation. in cyberformance we 
have adopted ideas of warming up & establishing group trust, which as 
you suggest will be quite different when the participants are in 
different locations in front of a computer, instead of in physical 
contact in a single room, but the reasons for using such processes are 
not different.

i am not so sure about the creative/artistic community building aspect 
of social networks, but perhaps the observations we are making about our 
processes in cyberformance have useful application in other more purely 
social contexts. & the UpStage community can be seen as an example of a 
"social assemblage" as well as a creative community in that there is 
quite a bit of activity generated by the community outside of the 
performances themselves, & off-line as well as online, for example 
people who have met through UpStage events later meeting in person or 
the sharing of other experiences & information through the group.

h : )

On 7/07/10 2:41 AM, Johannes Birringer wrote:
> dear all:
>
> in the heatwave we have here (in my region), to think about ontologies of creativity or creation is not the easiest warm up task for trusting.
> (in theatrical terms, as mentioned here by helen varley jamieson, i trusted she refered to the physical performance studio, not the internet  [how do you
> warm up together with a trust exercise in front of your screen? with other avatars -- i am interested in this and have not seen the
> UpStage festivals, so need to expore how you make work together]}.
>
> I wanted to ask, initially, whether the opening moderation sought to avoid the notion of art or artmaking (and the completion of an art object or
> performance recognized as / in its artistic medium-ness, its form, which has already been addressed beautifully by Kevin's allusions to regularities
> of the material&  and the judgement of it ...... lest I misunderstood this) and, instead, proposed to open debate on "social
> interaction in reflexive mediation" (Simon)?
>
>   I had assumed this proposal meant to examine discursive or mediated/performed activities of exchange
> by so-called communities (so-called social networks).
>
> The notion (or ontology) of creative exchange thus seemed to be concerned with what social ensembles do (on the internet, or in mallists like this one,
> or in "cyberperformances" or online gaming etc) and how we think of such social ensembles  (and whether they warm up together or agree on
> a creatve form),  is the notion of (art) form or media form necessary?  and if not, why not, and how did religion enter into this discussion?
>
> I suppose the religious dimension of platonic/metaphysical dimension is needed since  many of you addressed ritual processes of some sort,
> but I wonder, being sceptical about dispersed network communities not obliged to cultural knowledge transmission or physical transmission of forms (in the creative sense
> of art, which keeps being mentioned,  and I believe Helen refered to artists making performances on UpStage, rather than speaking of creative social ensembles
> experimenting with processes of working together, inventing together, "writing" or conversing together ), whether Simon did not initially propose a very different
> topic, something that has to do with social assemblages?
>
> Now, if i can ask a second question, why do we look at social assemblages or interaction in terms of an ontology of creativity, rather than under
> a different, say, poltical or social lens of modes of leisure, consumption, spectacle, sport, fashion, or other nodes of capitalism, or self-euphorization,  and how does
> a poltical (or was it national? ethical, religious?) notion of community creep in, in these euphoric days of the world cup where 22 soccer players must stand there before the game
> for 2 minutes and hold up a banner  togehter : "stop racism"?
>
> 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?
>
> 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
>

-- 
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helen varley jamieson: creative catalyst
helen at creative-catalyst.com
http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.avatarbodycollision.org
http://www.upstage.org.nz
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