[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[magnus lawrie]

Hi,

Reading through Ruth's posts, I am really struck by the coherence and
apparent reach of Furtherfield's activities. It's got me thinking
about the relational networks in The Chateau. You could think of ChIT
as a crew, in the way several distinct crews came out of or became
involved in events at The Chateau. ChIT had visits from geeks and
artists alike and had a limited degree of involvement with the bigger
events such as machinista in 2004. A good deal happened without being
documented. It's true that plenty of people came to see The Chateau,
though most of my involvement was with people active within The
Chateau (an exclusive network, perhaps).

I think ChIT did play a role in defining and enabling it's community,
but again, much of this is not recorded (I am thinking now of the
tubers mentioned in James Leach's book, which would not be dug up to
see if they are growing). There were people involved who did not see
themselves as creative that have since gone on to work in artistic
collaborations and people at the time who contributed work that
encouraged co-authorship (the flyer, printed with 'we belong to you' -
a take on 'all your base are belong to us' - placed together with free
home-made food by an unknown event visitor).

If I think about the networks operating within The Chateau, these were
nothing like as clear as in Paul Baran's illustration. My own
experience was that there was much disconnectedness and fragmentation,
temporary and passing interaction. Everything seemed in a continual
state of becoming. ChIT played a role in focussing some of that
energy, whilst there were many actors directly working within The
Chateau, or connected and working outwith the building and many of
them were working in different directions, whether individually or
collectively. I'd like to ask Ruth how this sense of collective
purpose works out in practice with Furtherfield. What are the
organizational efforts that need to go into realizing any project? To
my mind, The Chateau involved different creative people with different
objectives (sometimes more and sometimes less clear), the building
sitting cheek-by-jowl with Glasgow City Centre and the organization
ad-hoc: "...different folk sharing different ideas in different ways
in different places, for example" as others at The Chateau said.

Best wishes,

Magnus