[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?

[Kriss Ravetto]

Hi All,

Thanks for all the comments.  I wanted to ask a couple questions to  
Simon, James, and Eugenio (if you are still there) about agency  
(Simon's term) and James's question regarding creativity that defines  
us as human (Eugenio's term).  Simon, I am not so sure that experience  
is agency ? but you probably mean something other than what the new  
left means when you say this. Also we are not arguing for the "will"  
as James points out, but something that is also autopoetic, no? The  
difference between the term "thing"(process) as opposed to  
"object"(dead forms) leads us to communication (process) community  
(dead)? So the relation is affirmative, but the definition (the  
limits) amount to its death (Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of  
the state).

How is Ingold defining agency ? if I remember well he makes a case for  
a human centered study, something that Latour has refuted with his  
critique of sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) ? Ingold "reads  
back to the mind of an agent," i.e, human.  I like Andy Pickering's  
book:The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science, where he  
questions the production of scientific knowledge. Pickering argues  
that scientific knowledge comes out of scientific culture, a  
performative image of science (but there is no nothing).  "Whereas one  
could once get away with thinking of scientific culture as simply a  
field of knowledge, in what follows I take "culture" in a broad sense,  
to denote the "made things" of science, in - which I include skills  
and social relations, machines and instruments, as well as scientific  
facts and theories. And then I can state that my abiding concern is  
with scientific practice, understood as the work of cultural  
extension. My problematic thus includes the traditional one of  
understanding how new knowledge is produced in science, but goes  
beyond it in its interest in the transformation of the material and  
social dimen-sions to science, too."

Ingold, Latour, Heidegger, are in the business of producing knowledge,  
and come with their own cultures (anthropology, philosophy and  
sociology of science, philosophy), no? All of them, to their credit,  
engage with other knowledge cultures. Both Ingold and Latour use the  
term gathering together (Heidegger), in similar ways.  Maybe we can  
think about this term and creativity?  Why does this not work with  
community?  Yes, we do have to think about the limits of technology,  
mediation, and the geo-politics, or brute capitalism behind many of  
these technologies. How does gathering together help us get beyond this?

If we, as James pointed out, are trying to think how new technologies  
(particularly the speed of transmission of data) change or can create  
new social relations, then where do we place the human?  The human is  
not really that old of a concept and it has a lot of problems itself.

When we talk about networked communities and their limits some of  
these limits (I assume are not human), does that give them agency in  
the same way.  That is, how can we claim to isolate creativity, or  
community for that matter by placing exclusions / anxieties, etc.   
When we talk about inclusion or anxiety, what is the issue, are these  
always possibilities? Are they always the premise? Most of the  
theories of community (recent ones, do attempt to think beyond  
exclusions, starting with Agamben's Coming Community, and various  
others on the Italian left). Yet these theories are also moving away  
from state-based (ethnic and nationalist) understandings of community  
as temporary ? problem oriented rather than identity oriented.

I look forward to your responses!



Quoting empyre-request at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au:

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> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re: Hello from Hell (Simon Biggs)
>    2. Re: Hello from Hell (Simon Biggs)
>    3. Re: Hello from Hell (Eugenio Tisselli)
>    4. Re: Creativity as a social ontology (James Leach)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:56:46 +0100
> From: "Simon Biggs" <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>,
> 	<empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Hello from Hell
> Message-ID: <C861E8DE.28BDC%s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="US-ASCII"
>
> Living in Scotland I have evidence for the opposite take on creativity and
> temperature. Even in the Summer it is can be so cold you do not want to get
> out of a warm bed. Being originally from South Australia, a hot place at
> times, I remember the blistering heat and its draining effects on energy.
> However, I also fondly remember long nights in the studio working during the
> cooler (eg: less than 40c) hours. I am not sure which is the more
> deleterious to creativity.
>
> But, putting the weather to one side...and addressing each of Kriss's knotty
> and knotted points.
>
> 1. I hope we are not restricting ourselves to the visual. My hope was that
> this theme would allow us to discuss creativity in general, not visual (or
> any other) art in particular.
>
> 2. I agree that experience is creative and therefore a form of agency. I
> would also argue that it is not something restricted to particular forms of
> experience (eg: interpretation) nor to certain kinds of agent (eg:
> conscious). I would like to suggest that creativity is about relationships,
> interactions rather than actions. You mention Deleuze on this point, but we
> could also look to Tim Ingold's thinking concerning the nature of relations,
> interaction and agency. To some extent he counters but also augments
> Latour's approach, describing the eliciting of creativity as less a quality
> of interactions than "lines along which things continually come into being.
> Thus when I speak of the entanglement of things I mean this literally and
> precisely: not a network of connections but a meshwork of interwoven lines
> of growth and movement" (see ref), possibly evoking Deleuze's use of the
> metaphor of the rhizome. To me this (poetically) evokes Darwin's "tangled
> bank", itself a metaphor for creativity and agency beyond the human and
> certainly beyond the narrow conceptions of an exclusive creative arts
> discourse.
>
> 3. From this position it is impossible to disagree with Foucault's take on
> art being about sign value and property. One could regard art as the
> utilisation and capitalisation of creativity (the Situationist position and
> one that Baudrillard echoed). This dynamic can also be seen to affect other
> domains of creativity, such as scientific inquiry or invention (tinkering,
> relating to your reference to tacit knowledge). Governments and corporations
> (and many of us in our daily lives) refer to this as innovation, seeking to
> neuter creativity as agency and deploy what is left as art. We hope to
> render the potential of our interactions (creativity) safe. Our institutions
> are there to ensure this happens. The question then is how we remove these
> safety barriers and, perhaps more probematically, how we could live in such
> an unsafe world? Perhaps we really do need to be protected?
>
> 4. I am not sure how to approach the idea of thinking images in this
> context. Images can be thinking, but can they think? I would be tempted to
> agree. It depends on what you mean by thinking (and meaning). Can images
> have agency? Yes. Can images make meaning in their relations, irrespective
> of human intent? Yes. However, agency is about interactions. Can the
> interaction between images, without interpretation, be meaningful? I'm not
> sure. If there is no reception in this chain of events then is there meaning
> (what is meaning)? Perhaps. But I like the idea and often use it in my own
> (auto-generative) work (writing that writes itself and is not intended to be
> read by people but by other instances of automatic writing).
>
> 5. Nothing ever only takes place in the brain and lots of our interactions
> do not involve the brain at all. As for the mind, does that take place in
> the brain? I would treat the relationship of the mind to the brain
> similarly.
>
> 6. Innovation (utilitarian creativity) possibly does require privacy. I am
> not so sure about creativity per se.
>
> 7. ...and yes, intimacy and privacy are not the same thing.
>
> ref: Ingold, T (2008) Bringing things to life: Creative entanglements in a
> world of materials, presented at the Material Worlds symposium, Brown
> University, http://proteus.brown.edu/cogutmaterialworlds/4080
>
> Best
>
> Simon
>
>
> 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
>
>
>> From: Kriss Ravetto <k.ravetto at ed.ac.uk>
>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:13:49 +0100
>> To: <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Subject: [-empyre-] Hello from Hell
>>
>>
>> Hi [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology community,
>>
>> I have been baking here on the East Coast of the US with the record
>> heat wave, and I agree with the point about creativity and temperature
>> (I do not feel very creative).  Apologies if I am not coherent, there
>> is still some morning breeze here.
>>
>> Given that I come to the question of creativity and social networking
>> through critical theory ? I teach film and media theory at the
>> University of Edinburgh.  I am aware I am going to change the tone a
>> bit.  I would like to start by rethinking a few points (particularly
>> terms)  that came up in last week?s discussion, and ask if James and
>> Simon had some thoughts about these issues:
>>
>> 1)  ?a tendency to focus only on the visual.? Hasn?t this  focus on
>> the visual changed with immersive and more interactive work that
>> attempts to be more affective (trigger kinesthetic as well as
>> emotional responses)?
>>
>> 2) ?complex nature of our experience? ? How do we understand
>> experience? Isn?t it also creative? Or are we back to oppositions
>> about active / passive, the singular and the general.  Experience
>> seems to fall into the category of what Deleuze called the problematic
>> since it cannot be singular (yet we perceive it as such), since it
>> requires action, interaction, mediation, and some creative
>> interpretation.  When we talk about ?our experience? are we talking
>> about something that is also a creative network ? that is not owned by
>> anyone?
>>
>> 3)  artist genius as Foucault argued is now a question of signature
>> which means copyright and legality.   The social science network seems
>> to operate on different principles and I would argue that it is a
>> platform designed to produce social creative ontology.
>>
>> 4)  I am curious about what people mean by the ?ideology of the
>> visual.? If images think then they must not think in terms of
>> language, but in terms of images, no? Therefore, if we are talking
>> ideology, aren?t we talking the creation of visual concepts.  The
>> problem here is can a single image think, or do we need a chain of
>> images to think (like the Lacanian chain of signifiers, i.e. the
>> cinematic)?  This has been debated since the 1960s (Metz, Pasolini,
>> Dayan, Mulvey, etc.)
>>
>> 5)  When we talk about sense, we talk about it as tacit knowledge.
>> Where does sense take place: take vision for instance, do we claim it
>> only takes place in the brain? Or are there other interfaces? Do they
>> make sense?
>>
>>
>> 6) When we talk about Privacy or secrecy / trade secrets (i.e., no
>> open lab) then yes, innovation needs privacy in its inception. (This
>> is the subject of my husband's Mario Biagioli?s, current work, "From
>> Ciphers to Confidentiality" in States of Secrecy).
>>
>>
>> 7) Intimacy leads us in a completely different direction. Privacy is
>> the problematic term here: when we refer to secrecy (in terms of
>> innovation, we are talking trade secrets, and nothing intimate), but
>> rights to privacy do touch on this, yet again, privacy seems to me,
>> not to be intimate.  Innovation or creative communities need not be
>> intimate, unless we are redefining what this term means.   Also, I am
>> not sure that intimacy is related to place.
>>
>> But this leads to the question of platforms as space.  How does a site
>> relate to space? Yes, we can reveal intimate secrets on such sites,
>> but there is something spatially distinct an estrangement, and at the
>> same time the spectacular (as Victor Burgin argues).
>>
>>
>> --
>> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
>> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
>
> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland,   
> number SC009201
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:56:46 +0100
> From: "Simon Biggs" <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>,
> 	<empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Hello from Hell
> Message-ID: <C861E8DE.28BDC%s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="US-ASCII"
>
> Living in Scotland I have evidence for the opposite take on creativity and
> temperature. Even in the Summer it is can be so cold you do not want to get
> out of a warm bed. Being originally from South Australia, a hot place at
> times, I remember the blistering heat and its draining effects on energy.
> However, I also fondly remember long nights in the studio working during the
> cooler (eg: less than 40c) hours. I am not sure which is the more
> deleterious to creativity.
>
> But, putting the weather to one side...and addressing each of Kriss's knotty
> and knotted points.
>
> 1. I hope we are not restricting ourselves to the visual. My hope was that
> this theme would allow us to discuss creativity in general, not visual (or
> any other) art in particular.
>
> 2. I agree that experience is creative and therefore a form of agency. I
> would also argue that it is not something restricted to particular forms of
> experience (eg: interpretation) nor to certain kinds of agent (eg:
> conscious). I would like to suggest that creativity is about relationships,
> interactions rather than actions. You mention Deleuze on this point, but we
> could also look to Tim Ingold's thinking concerning the nature of relations,
> interaction and agency. To some extent he counters but also augments
> Latour's approach, describing the eliciting of creativity as less a quality
> of interactions than "lines along which things continually come into being.
> Thus when I speak of the entanglement of things I mean this literally and
> precisely: not a network of connections but a meshwork of interwoven lines
> of growth and movement" (see ref), possibly evoking Deleuze's use of the
> metaphor of the rhizome. To me this (poetically) evokes Darwin's "tangled
> bank", itself a metaphor for creativity and agency beyond the human and
> certainly beyond the narrow conceptions of an exclusive creative arts
> discourse.
>
> 3. From this position it is impossible to disagree with Foucault's take on
> art being about sign value and property. One could regard art as the
> utilisation and capitalisation of creativity (the Situationist position and
> one that Baudrillard echoed). This dynamic can also be seen to affect other
> domains of creativity, such as scientific inquiry or invention (tinkering,
> relating to your reference to tacit knowledge). Governments and corporations
> (and many of us in our daily lives) refer to this as innovation, seeking to
> neuter creativity as agency and deploy what is left as art. We hope to
> render the potential of our interactions (creativity) safe. Our institutions
> are there to ensure this happens. The question then is how we remove these
> safety barriers and, perhaps more probematically, how we could live in such
> an unsafe world? Perhaps we really do need to be protected?
>
> 4. I am not sure how to approach the idea of thinking images in this
> context. Images can be thinking, but can they think? I would be tempted to
> agree. It depends on what you mean by thinking (and meaning). Can images
> have agency? Yes. Can images make meaning in their relations, irrespective
> of human intent? Yes. However, agency is about interactions. Can the
> interaction between images, without interpretation, be meaningful? I'm not
> sure. If there is no reception in this chain of events then is there meaning
> (what is meaning)? Perhaps. But I like the idea and often use it in my own
> (auto-generative) work (writing that writes itself and is not intended to be
> read by people but by other instances of automatic writing).
>
> 5. Nothing ever only takes place in the brain and lots of our interactions
> do not involve the brain at all. As for the mind, does that take place in
> the brain? I would treat the relationship of the mind to the brain
> similarly.
>
> 6. Innovation (utilitarian creativity) possibly does require privacy. I am
> not so sure about creativity per se.
>
> 7. ...and yes, intimacy and privacy are not the same thing.
>
> ref: Ingold, T (2008) Bringing things to life: Creative entanglements in a
> world of materials, presented at the Material Worlds symposium, Brown
> University, http://proteus.brown.edu/cogutmaterialworlds/4080
>
> Best
>
> Simon
>
>
> 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
>
>
>> From: Kriss Ravetto <k.ravetto at ed.ac.uk>
>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:13:49 +0100
>> To: <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Subject: [-empyre-] Hello from Hell
>>
>>
>> Hi [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology community,
>>
>> I have been baking here on the East Coast of the US with the record
>> heat wave, and I agree with the point about creativity and temperature
>> (I do not feel very creative).  Apologies if I am not coherent, there
>> is still some morning breeze here.
>>
>> Given that I come to the question of creativity and social networking
>> through critical theory ? I teach film and media theory at the
>> University of Edinburgh.  I am aware I am going to change the tone a
>> bit.  I would like to start by rethinking a few points (particularly
>> terms)  that came up in last week?s discussion, and ask if James and
>> Simon had some thoughts about these issues:
>>
>> 1)  ?a tendency to focus only on the visual.? Hasn?t this  focus on
>> the visual changed with immersive and more interactive work that
>> attempts to be more affective (trigger kinesthetic as well as
>> emotional responses)?
>>
>> 2) ?complex nature of our experience? ? How do we understand
>> experience? Isn?t it also creative? Or are we back to oppositions
>> about active / passive, the singular and the general.  Experience
>> seems to fall into the category of what Deleuze called the problematic
>> since it cannot be singular (yet we perceive it as such), since it
>> requires action, interaction, mediation, and some creative
>> interpretation.  When we talk about ?our experience? are we talking
>> about something that is also a creative network ? that is not owned by
>> anyone?
>>
>> 3)  artist genius as Foucault argued is now a question of signature
>> which means copyright and legality.   The social science network seems
>> to operate on different principles and I would argue that it is a
>> platform designed to produce social creative ontology.
>>
>> 4)  I am curious about what people mean by the ?ideology of the
>> visual.? If images think then they must not think in terms of
>> language, but in terms of images, no? Therefore, if we are talking
>> ideology, aren?t we talking the creation of visual concepts.  The
>> problem here is can a single image think, or do we need a chain of
>> images to think (like the Lacanian chain of signifiers, i.e. the
>> cinematic)?  This has been debated since the 1960s (Metz, Pasolini,
>> Dayan, Mulvey, etc.)
>>
>> 5)  When we talk about sense, we talk about it as tacit knowledge.
>> Where does sense take place: take vision for instance, do we claim it
>> only takes place in the brain? Or are there other interfaces? Do they
>> make sense?
>>
>>
>> 6) When we talk about Privacy or secrecy / trade secrets (i.e., no
>> open lab) then yes, innovation needs privacy in its inception. (This
>> is the subject of my husband's Mario Biagioli?s, current work, "From
>> Ciphers to Confidentiality" in States of Secrecy).
>>
>>
>> 7) Intimacy leads us in a completely different direction. Privacy is
>> the problematic term here: when we refer to secrecy (in terms of
>> innovation, we are talking trade secrets, and nothing intimate), but
>> rights to privacy do touch on this, yet again, privacy seems to me,
>> not to be intimate.  Innovation or creative communities need not be
>> intimate, unless we are redefining what this term means.   Also, I am
>> not sure that intimacy is related to place.
>>
>> But this leads to the question of platforms as space.  How does a site
>> relate to space? Yes, we can reveal intimate secrets on such sites,
>> but there is something spatially distinct an estrangement, and at the
>> same time the spectacular (as Victor Burgin argues).
>>
>>
>> --
>> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
>> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
>
> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland,   
> number SC009201
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:59:26 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Eugenio Tisselli <cubo23 at yahoo.com>
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Hello from Hell
> Message-ID: <808860.30536.qm at web50206.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Dear all,
>
> I am sorry for being silent during this weekend, but I was also   
> experiencing extreme temperatures in a small town called Morille   
> near Salamanca, Spain, inhabited by a mere 200 people. No Internet,   
> no phones, but I returned totally energized after a 3-day art &   
> poetry festival done together with the local community. It may be   
> interesting for you to know that there is an art cemetery there, and  
>  every once in a while artists (well-known or otherwise) go there to  
>  bury one of their pieces, in what sometimes becomes a very intense   
> ritual. Everybody in Morille participates in these burials, and they  
>  are very proud of having this "Museum-mausoleum" in their town.
>
> Anyway, I want to thank you all, especially Simon and Helen, for   
> such an interesting week of discussion. I don't want to put down any  
>  "concluding remarks", since the discussion continues, so I'll be   
> popping up from time to time. But, to me, Julian's contribution   
> reflects the tension happening in digital networks in a great way:
>
> "Exlusion has an awful name, largely due to xenophobic, classist projects
> throughout history, but we're all already practicing exclusion in   
> the interests of our cherished communities every day. In   
> consideration of this topic, one could say any social network is the  
>  industrialisation of social exclusion (network anxiety) - "Am I  
> your  friend or not"?"
>
> Yes, any community has to constantly define and protect its borders,  
>  if it wants to retain its existence as such. But how permeable /   
> flexible can the borders be? Do permeability / felxibility have any   
> relation to the community's collective creativity? These things,   
> together with the new ones I'll read here, will be running around in  
>  my mind.
>
> Best,
> Eugenio.
>
>
>
>
> --- El mar, 7/13/10, Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk> escribi?:
>
>> De: Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
>> Asunto: Re: [-empyre-] Hello from Hell
>> A: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>,   
>> empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> Fecha: martes, 13 de julio de 2010, 12:56 pm
>> Living in Scotland I have evidence
>> for the opposite take on creativity and
>> temperature. Even in the Summer it is can be so cold you do
>> not want to get
>> out of a warm bed. Being originally from South Australia, a
>> hot place at
>> times, I remember the blistering heat and its draining
>> effects on energy.
>> However, I also fondly remember long nights in the studio
>> working during the
>> cooler (eg: less than 40c) hours. I am not sure which is
>> the more
>> deleterious to creativity.
>>
>> But, putting the weather to one side...and addressing each
>> of Kriss's knotty
>> and knotted points.
>>
>> 1. I hope we are not restricting ourselves to the visual.
>> My hope was that
>> this theme would allow us to discuss creativity in general,
>> not visual (or
>> any other) art in particular.
>>
>> 2. I agree that experience is creative and therefore a form
>> of agency. I
>> would also argue that it is not something restricted to
>> particular forms of
>> experience (eg: interpretation) nor to certain kinds of
>> agent (eg:
>> conscious). I would like to suggest that creativity is
>> about relationships,
>> interactions rather than actions. You mention Deleuze on
>> this point, but we
>> could also look to Tim Ingold's thinking concerning the
>> nature of relations,
>> interaction and agency. To some extent he counters but also
>> augments
>> Latour's approach, describing the eliciting of creativity
>> as less a quality
>> of interactions than "lines along which things continually
>> come into being.
>> Thus when I speak of the entanglement of things I mean this
>> literally and
>> precisely: not a network of connections but a meshwork of
>> interwoven lines
>> of growth and movement" (see ref), possibly evoking
>> Deleuze's use of the
>> metaphor of the rhizome. To me this (poetically) evokes
>> Darwin's "tangled
>> bank", itself a metaphor for creativity and agency beyond
>> the human and
>> certainly beyond the narrow conceptions of an exclusive
>> creative arts
>> discourse.
>>
>> 3. From this position it is impossible to disagree with
>> Foucault's take on
>> art being about sign value and property. One could regard
>> art as the
>> utilisation and capitalisation of creativity (the
>> Situationist position and
>> one that Baudrillard echoed). This dynamic can also be seen
>> to affect other
>> domains of creativity, such as scientific inquiry or
>> invention (tinkering,
>> relating to your reference to tacit knowledge). Governments
>> and corporations
>> (and many of us in our daily lives) refer to this as
>> innovation, seeking to
>> neuter creativity as agency and deploy what is left as art.
>> We hope to
>> render the potential of our interactions (creativity) safe.
>> Our institutions
>> are there to ensure this happens. The question then is how
>> we remove these
>> safety barriers and, perhaps more probematically, how we
>> could live in such
>> an unsafe world? Perhaps we really do need to be
>> protected?
>>
>> 4. I am not sure how to approach the idea of thinking
>> images in this
>> context. Images can be thinking, but can they think? I
>> would be tempted to
>> agree. It depends on what you mean by thinking (and
>> meaning). Can images
>> have agency? Yes. Can images make meaning in their
>> relations, irrespective
>> of human intent? Yes. However, agency is about
>> interactions. Can the
>> interaction between images, without interpretation, be
>> meaningful? I'm not
>> sure. If there is no reception in this chain of events then
>> is there meaning
>> (what is meaning)? Perhaps. But I like the idea and often
>> use it in my own
>> (auto-generative) work (writing that writes itself and is
>> not intended to be
>> read by people but by other instances of automatic
>> writing).
>>
>> 5. Nothing ever only takes place in the brain and lots of
>> our interactions
>> do not involve the brain at all. As for the mind, does that
>> take place in
>> the brain? I would treat the relationship of the mind to
>> the brain
>> similarly.
>>
>> 6. Innovation (utilitarian creativity) possibly does
>> require privacy. I am
>> not so sure about creativity per se.
>>
>> 7. ...and yes, intimacy and privacy are not the same
>> thing.
>>
>> ref: Ingold, T (2008) Bringing things to life: Creative
>> entanglements in a
>> world of materials, presented at the Material Worlds
>> symposium, Brown
>> University, http://proteus.brown.edu/cogutmaterialworlds/4080
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Simon
>>
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>> > From: Kriss Ravetto <k.ravetto at ed.ac.uk>
>> > Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> > Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:13:49 +0100
>> > To: <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> > Subject: [-empyre-] Hello from Hell
>> >
>> >
>> > Hi [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
>> community,
>> >
>> > I have been baking here on the East Coast of the US
>> with the record
>> > heat wave, and I agree with the point about creativity
>> and temperature
>> > (I do not feel very creative).  Apologies if I am
>> not coherent, there
>> > is still some morning breeze here.
>> >
>> > Given that I come to the question of creativity and
>> social networking
>> > through critical theory ? I teach film and media
>> theory at the
>> > University of Edinburgh.  I am aware I am going
>> to change the tone a
>> > bit.  I would like to start by rethinking a few
>> points (particularly
>> > terms)  that came up in last week?s discussion,
>> and ask if James and
>> > Simon had some thoughts about these issues:
>> >
>> > 1)  ?a tendency to focus only on the visual.?
>> Hasn?t this  focus on
>> > the visual changed with immersive and more interactive
>> work that
>> > attempts to be more affective (trigger kinesthetic as
>> well as
>> > emotional responses)?
>> >
>> > 2) ?complex nature of our experience? ? How do we
>> understand
>> > experience? Isn?t it also creative? Or are we back to
>> oppositions
>> > about active / passive, the singular and the
>> general.  Experience
>> > seems to fall into the category of what Deleuze called
>> the problematic
>> > since it cannot be singular (yet we perceive it as
>> such), since it
>> > requires action, interaction, mediation, and some
>> creative
>> > interpretation.  When we talk about ?our
>> experience? are we talking
>> > about something that is also a creative network ? that
>> is not owned by
>> > anyone?
>> >
>> > 3)  artist genius as Foucault argued is now a
>> question of signature
>> > which means copyright and
>> legality.   The social science network seems
>> > to operate on different principles and I would argue
>> that it is a
>> > platform designed to produce social creative
>> ontology.
>> >
>> > 4)  I am curious about what people mean by the
>> ?ideology of the
>> > visual.? If images think then they must not think in
>> terms of
>> > language, but in terms of images, no? Therefore, if we
>> are talking
>> > ideology, aren?t we talking the creation of visual
>> concepts.  The
>> > problem here is can a single image think, or do we
>> need a chain of
>> > images to think (like the Lacanian chain of
>> signifiers, i.e. the
>> > cinematic)?  This has been debated since the
>> 1960s (Metz, Pasolini,
>> > Dayan, Mulvey, etc.)
>> >
>> > 5)  When we talk about sense, we talk about it as
>> tacit knowledge.
>> > Where does sense take place: take vision for instance,
>> do we claim it
>> > only takes place in the brain? Or are there other
>> interfaces? Do they
>> > make sense?
>> >
>> >
>> > 6) When we talk about Privacy or secrecy / trade
>> secrets (i.e., no
>> > open lab) then yes, innovation needs privacy in its
>> inception. (This
>> > is the subject of my husband's Mario Biagioli?s,
>> current work, "From
>> > Ciphers to Confidentiality" in States of Secrecy).
>> >
>> >
>> > 7) Intimacy leads us in a completely different
>> direction. Privacy is
>> > the problematic term here: when we refer to secrecy
>> (in terms of
>> > innovation, we are talking trade secrets, and nothing
>> intimate), but
>> > rights to privacy do touch on this, yet again, privacy
>> seems to me,
>> > not to be intimate.  Innovation or creative
>> communities need not be
>> > intimate, unless we are redefining what this term
>> means.   Also, I am
>> > not sure that intimacy is related to place.
>> >
>> > But this leads to the question of platforms as
>> space.  How does a site
>> > relate to space? Yes, we can reveal intimate secrets
>> on such sites,
>> > but there is something spatially distinct an
>> estrangement, and at the
>> > same time the spectacular (as Victor Burgin argues).
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body,
>> registered in
>> > Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > empyre forum
>> > empyre at 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 at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:47:15 +0100
> From: James Leach <james.leach at abdn.ac.uk>
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
> Message-ID: <94F4AAE2-DBBC-46B0-8EAB-E24A2FC8E115 at abdn.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> Thanks to Simon for inviting me on board. With so much said already,  
>  trying to cover all the points made so far will be too much for me.  
>  Forgive the late entry into the discussion (I was away all last   
> week), and the partial nature of the response and these thoughts.
>
> Euginio started us off last week with a welcome caution about the   
> idea of creativity.
>
> The idea of creating something from nothing, as he said, is   
> necessarily outside human experience (by definition) in the   
> Judeo-Christian mytho-poetic worldview. Simon generously cited some   
> of my work on a small village on the Northern Coast of Papua New   
> Guinea, where I divined a rather different place for ?creativity?,   
> stemming from a different mythically structured consciousness of the  
>  place of humans in their world. Creativity is not a distant and   
> sought after ideal that can be turned, on appearance, into an   
> individually attributed good, but is inherent in the actions of   
> human beings as they make and remake their position as humans ? that  
>  is, engage in acts that are consciously and explicitly geared to   
> establishing gendered bodies (initiations) and resultant separations  
>  between kinsmen (and emergent named places in the landscape) so  
> that  (re)productive exchange is necessary.
>
> In Reite novelty, innovation, invention etc. are not goal of human   
> action. Creativity is not outside human experience, but part of its   
> everyday reality. Creativity is inherent in what it is to be a human  
>  being because in myth, the actions referred to above, beginning  
> with  the acts which established gender, and thus the possibilities  
> for  human reproduction and kinship, were the actions of the first  
> human  beings constituting themselves as human and not something  
> else. In  their everyday lives of gardening, animal husbandry,  
> hunting etc.,  these people are the same as those first creator  
> beings, and thus  are constantly partaking of the original  
> ?creativity? as they also  constitute their lives as human and not  
> something else.
>
> Most/all things Reite people do have an aesthetic dimension ? their   
> subsistence horticulture, for example, always involves ?ritual?   
> forms of planting; things of symmetry and some beauty, that are   
> there for the pragmatic purpose of drawing the correct relations   
> between people, spirits, other people at a distance from the garden   
> etc., at the heart of the garden space. They make fabulous objects   
> for self-decoration, compose extraordinary music, and so forth, all   
> as aspects of the processes of production, kinship, lifecycle   
> changes, reproduction.
>
> However, it seems to make little or no sense to call any of these   
> things ?art?, as they are not separated from everyday and prosaic   
> acts ? and those acts, as I have said, are the ones that reproduces   
> the world (makes it appear over and again - Latour)  in the form   
> recognisable as a human world, to Reite people. But unlike the world  
>  Latour describes, they are not in the business of consciously   
> creating ?the social?, or ?society? as an entity that can be   
> discussed, analysed etc,
>
> Maybe all I am doing here is concurring with the thread already   
> established about Foucault, the artists, identity and copyright as   
> dependent on a particular place for ?creativity? in western, and   
> institutionalised, understandings of society.
>
> But I thought to go somewhere else: and that is to talk about responsibility.
>
> I noted in Euginio?s comments that despite suspicion with the term,   
> it is very hard for any of us to avoid the positive moral valence of  
>  ?creativity?. In his stimulating post, ?constructively?, ?common   
> good?, ?mutual trust? etc. appeared.  My short description of Reite   
> above could be read to speak of ?constructive? actions in the   
> ?common good?.  But I think that would be to mistake what is going   
> on, deceived by the conceptual associations of our own understanding  
>  of creativity, and partaking of the kind of ?constructionist? view   
> of the social world that Latour refers to.
>
> In Reite, the acts that create the human world as it appears are   
> also the acts that make death inevitable, competition and suspicion   
> between people vying for control over the power to reproduce   
> themselves through relationships to other, etc.
>
> So everything for these people can be, and is, explained by the   
> actions of other humans or their associated sentient beings in the   
> land or forest. There are no accidents, no landforms, weather events  
>  ? all the things we think are there beyond and outside human   
> ?creativity? - that are not the responsibility of people. All   
> illness and death there is the direct responsibility of other   
> sentient beings, and mainly human ones. In other words, being   
> creative of the world is also to be unavoidably responsible for its   
> destruction.
>
> That brings me on to say that to want to be creative is a very   
> different thing from the kind of creative/destructive power that   
> exists in Reite.
>
> Having said all that, and given the underlying premise of all the   
> above is that we, just as Reite people do, constitute our existences  
>  through the particular way we engage in relations to each other   
> (social ontology), structured through certain key principles   
> available in myths we tell ourselves about how we have got here and   
> what our responsibilities as human being are -- what are we to make   
> of the current idea that somehow the mediation of human relations   
> through technological networks will make us more ?creative??
>
> What is it about the speeding up of communication, the mediation of   
> geographical and social distance, that makes us believe (and I use   
> the word consciously) that we are going to be doing anything very   
> different?
>
> We are constantly telling ourselves that the world is changing   
> rapidly, that things are speeding up, that technology is now the   
> condition of our existence, its ongoing development and the   
> consequences of that, outside human control.
>
> But as Kriss points to in her comments, these images do political   
> work. The faith and horror in technology is, as always, a projection  
>  of the faith and horror in the human ability (or lack of it) to   
> change their circumstances. The personnel who may have control over   
> that change seems to have shifted. And hence the hope in   
> technologically mediated futures. But looking at the fine grain of   
> the worlds and ?communities? created in this mediated space, many   
> familiar themes emerge: exclusions, emergent hierarchies, control   
> and secrecy etc.
>
>
>
> Can we help but be creative?
>
> What is it we are creating if we think of creativity as a social ontology?
>
> Is it something we can dip in and out of, chose to do, or avoid?
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
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> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
> End of empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10
> **************************************
>
>



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