[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[Eugenio Tisselli]

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 at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre