[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[Julian Oliver]

..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