[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[Ruth Catlow]

Dear All,

It's great to see Scott's first post and look forward to the promising new shift in direction this week.

However I was temporarily waylaid towards the end of last week and would like to do the excellent discussions between Johannes, Simon and Magnus the courtesy of a proper sign-off. I hope Scott will forgive the poorly timed interjection.

There were times in the discussion where I struggled to maintain daily activities alongside the reflective processes here. So I am going to start by giving a small window on life at Furtherfield/HTTP that ran in parallel to the discussion here on Empyre. I would also like also to pick up on your questions about whether we are creating useful models of organising and finally to come back to the question of evaluation.

During last week at Furtherfield/HTTP we discussed
      * how we might reorganise, plan and work differently to sustain our values, in the context of the ever-more-icky emerging politics. Collaboration with other organisations who share our
        values seems like the way forward.
      * Plans for the possible future of Zero Dollar Laptop project to be realised at larger scale in our local borough.
      * how to manage our own budget disorder in the short term.
        
We were also inspired by
      * Make-shift, a networked performance about connectivity and consequences http://make-shift.net/ - after 10 days in residency on Thursday evening a small audience got very involved with the public sketching of a new work by artists Helen Varley Jamieson and Paula Crutchlow
      * the arrival from Rome of Salvatore and Penelope from 'Art is Open Source' http://www.artisopensource.net/ and ongoing discussions connecting with our thinking about how participatory technologies and the hacker ethic might inform new ways of getting organised.
        
I'd like to pick up on Johannes skepticism about the claims made for networked creativity.

Johannes wrote:
 > > >
....spaces or temporary zones, in other words, where things might happen
or do happen and then the energies disperse or people move on,
dissociate,  or sustainability (of anything really) becomes an issue or
is actually rarely achievable, and yet the "social" or "organizational"
creativity is claimed.  Why is that?
< < <

You are right, many organisations continue to make loud and ridiculous claims for networked creativity as a model for all future development without managing to demonstrate its benefits in reality.

However my feeling is that seemingly ad hoc organisation is sometimes more purposeful than it appears and established hierarchical organisation can be incredibly aimless, inefficient and
soulless. From our own experience, mutual engagement with others gives the processes their authenticity rather than imposed models or structures. It has to be grounded in some way.

Magnus wrote:
> > >
“ I personally felt strongly influenced by the time spent in The
Chateau, a building I often perceived as more a body on the point
of death (or execution), complete with bare wiring and windows that were
bent or broken inwards; in a sense the architecture/structure had a
great effect on the identity of ChIT - this is a framework that we
weren't independent of and it's condition seemed to make maintaining the
computer network all the more labour intensive; I know others in
hacklabs have remarked on the unreasonable overhead of maintaining just
a few machines in ad-hoc situations. But that's only one take on being
the medium, the network. You mention also compost and that really
touches a chord with me. There is a often a flourishing of identity and
shared purpose that comes out of such conditions...the phrase 'network
ecologies' has become commonly used, right?”
< < <

I think that workers within smart, white box offices with machines running smoothly, maintain their company's or institution's mission, not just by fulfilling their job descriptions but by operating, serving and expressing their physical and virtual infrastructures. It is another way to express a loyalty to a shared corporate identity. In contrast, what is produced in the kinds of spaces you describe, with their wiring exposed and broken windows, is shared learning about creating infrastructure and organisation. Group identities get created too of course.

In Magnus's descriptions of the activities and organisations that grew out of ChIT he clearly describes methods, processes and sets of values, that grew out of a different kind of physical and social and working space and that we might summarise as learning together about tools for
conviviality. These went on to be sustained in a diverse number of ways. These ways moved through and between people and places and grew differently in new contexts but the effects are sustained and amplified. Sometimes it is not so important that an identifiable organisation or institution or project survives. What is important is that people are able to apply and redistribute these newly learned values into different contexts.

I think that these projects are understood as creative in social and organisational terms because they generate infrastructures to serve their purposes rather than operating through pre-established 
models (that would prescribe what they could do). Sustained relations are an important part of this process. Robert Axelrod's 'Evolution of Cooperation' demonstrates the importance of longevity in the evolution of trusting, diverse and responsible social relations. For this and many other reasons that we do not have time to discuss here we are in it for the long-haul at Furtherfield. However these models are context specific and grass roots. They cannot be applied in a systematic
way to squeeze surplus value out of culture. This is not what they are for.

Johannes wrote:
> > >
but we can't say for sure what impact social networks have. can we?  and
what kind of impact? impact now is also a government assessment term,
and rings hollow as it will be used ideologically and with economic
repercussions.
< < <

I agree that we cannot say for sure what 'impact' social networks will have. I suspect that they will mainly tend to continue to reproduce the dominant media and corporate interests. But this is not really your point is it? It is more a warning about careless adoption of government
terminologies. I take your point!

It is a tricky business – setting our own criteria for the value of what we do. We are required to translate and redescribe the value of our work in terms that are set by others in order to receive public funding or provide services- it's kind of fair enough. It's troubling (though not
surprising) to note the rise in demand for quantitative over qualitative data in assessing the 'impact' of our activities. Perhaps this is an effect of digital industries cleverly providing the basis of its own growth- promoting methods of evaluation that produce machine-readable outputs. We are only allowed to reflect on and describe our work and the experience of participants in terms that can be machined.


Oddly, according to the blueprint for creative industries that you pointed us to
http://www.creative-choices.co.uk/knowledge/creative-blueprint/ , the first challenge to people working in the visual arts 'industries' in the UK, is the lack of standardised monitoring statistics that would allow us to prove the value of our work to funders. Thanks to Simon for such a concise and spot-on summary of the role of the blueprint. Very helpful.

Now what I would really like is to follow this all up with a beer and a good round-table argument.

Perhaps sometime in the future.

In the meantime. Thanks to you all, and I look forward to the ongoing discussion.


respect,

Ruth


-- 
Ruth Catlow
Co-Director 

Furtherfield.org - for art, technology and social change

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