[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology, and some music by Bonaparte

[Simon Biggs]

Came across this, which seems directly relevant to this discussion,
describing the event that Scott mentioned the other day (Kingston
University's e-lit conference and Jay Bolter's keynote). It looks at many of
the same questions being raised here but from a distinct perspective;
clearly written by someone with a very deep connection to print and the
word.

http://openreflections.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/the-struggle-to-define-a-pos
ition-what-will-be-the-future-of-electronic-literature/

The main thing this emphasises is that we have, for several centuries,
conflated writing and printing to the point we no longer differentiate
between them. It is important to remember that writing is only one modality
of communicating with language and print only one modality of writing, just
as it is of the printed image. Interestingly, artists have often worked with
the printed image as a problematic (Cindy Sherman, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar
Polke are classic examples of post-modern angst about print) but few artists
regard print as defining of what they do. I guess that as for video artists
television was an inescapable trope so for the writer print is defining of
their practice. However, it need not be.

Perhaps we all need to go back to being strolling troubadours, pre-Boccaccio
authors. That sounds awful...I'm not a folk music fan :(

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: Scott Retberg <scott.rettberg at uib.no>
> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:05:54 +0100
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology,and some music by
> Bonaparte
> 
> Johannes,
> 
> Some great provocations here -- I'll respond in more detail tomorrow,
> but I would say in brief that when I said that the solitary "author"
> is a thing of the past, was intending to emphasize both the "solitary"
> and a particular set of romantic assumptions about the nature of
> authorship, not to deny that people still write books and that many of
> those books are well worth reading. My walls are covered with them and
> they are not just there for decoration or emergency fuel supply. I do
> think that the nature of authorship and that "author" as economic
> function is changing in some fundamental ways.
> 
> As the health of literary reading, in particular those forms that come
> in books -- novels, poems, nonfiction, etc., you won't find me
> fighting against it. I think that the explosion of new forms of
> textuality on the network can only be good for reading and writing of
> all kinds. More people, after all, spend more of their time reading
> and writing various forms of text than they ever have before. How
> could that be bad for literature?
> 
> While you are correct that I suppose that  "electronic literature
> points towards a new path of creativity" (or a number of them) I do
> not assume that means that it is in turn "(out-dating the old authors/
> readers)." People are remarkably capable of enjoying and participating
> in a number of different art forms, and utilizing a number of
> different reading technologies. If anything, I would hope that
> electronic literature experiences are companions to reading
> experiences of a number of other kinds, including print novels and
> haiku. I still read a lot of them. Novels. I would be a liar if I said
> I spent a lot of time with haiku.
> 
> I do have some opinions about the apparent resistance to digital
> writing in conservative creative writing programs, which I think is
> due to an epic failure of the imagination. But more on that tomorrow.
> 
> All the Best,
> 
> Scott
> 
> On Jul 27, 2010, at 4:54 PM, Johannes Birringer wrote:
> 
>> hello all
>> 
>> 
>> "I boycott everything that's not made by my hands"
>> 
>> (from the song "Boycott everything" by Bonaparte, Berlin trash punk
>> band); their new album is called "My horse likes you".
>> 
>> I read that social psychologists are doing research on emotional
>> confusion/irritation, and how it might be turned into something
>> creatively productive, not cognitively dissonant and disturbing.
>> The article that reports on this (and the sometimes difficult
>> adaptation processes, especiallly for older people),  and places the
>> study in the context of what Scott refers to as the magic of
>> "globalized technologically mediated communication environments,"
>> appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
>> 
>> http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/gemischte-gefuehle-hier-geht-es-um-killerha
>> ie-1.975594-2
>> 
>> The report was headed by a photograph of a graffiti wall in an urban
>> neighborhood, like the one Scott's hypothetical account walks by.
>> 
>> So i thought 'd send you the picture.  The music that goes with it
>> can be downloaded from Bonaparte [http://www.myspace.com/bonaparte].
>> This theatrical band / theatre group refers to its music as
>> ""Aufmerksamkeits-Defizit-Syndrom-Musik" .  their success is
>> probably based on their extravagant circus-like live
>> concerts, but their popularity, so we hear, is largely based also on
>> their "digital" presence/distribution & viral promotion via the
>> YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and twitter networks.  when they play in
>> New Zealand or St Petersburg, the fans can sing along with the songs.
>> 
>> Not sure how how to try to analyse the relations of ADHS-syndrome to
>> social networks.
>> 
>> but it occured to me that Scott's proposition is perhaps based on an
>> assumption that electronic literature points towards a new path of
>> creativity (out-dating the old authors/readers) > "Network Based
>> Creative Community: Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity
>> and Innovation in Practice".
>> 
>> But recent findings show that reading, and books (written by
>> authors), is alive and well, in fact the literary world seems to be
>> doing better than ever anticipated. Now why would this be the case?
>> 
>> Scott argues:
>>>> 
>> Yet the very nature of producing work, for a network, for a
>> platform, using software written by huge collaborative teams, which
>> is then read or experienced by a participatory audience, who more
>> often than not affect the way that the art is received and that the
>> artist changes and changes his or her own practice, in an an endless
>> feedback loop that cycles very quickly, strips bare the idea of
>> "authorship" or "creativity" as located within any particular
>> individual. I think it is now almost accepted as a given that
>> creativity is enabled by social relations and cultural contexts more
>> than by inspiration.>>
>> 
>> To come back to Bonaparte (founded by Tobias Jundt.  who also writes
>> most of the songs), would you apply your proposition to hype
>> phenomena such as bands or celebrities who are enabled (and also
>> self promote and enable themselves), and in the same manner, would
>> you apply it to media arts, grass roots activists, NPOs?   how are
>> NPOs enabled, or enabled differently from a trash punk band?  what
>> happened to the self-promotion?  why has electronic literature faced
>> such apparent resistance in the creative writing departments?   (at
>> least I remember that there were such resistances when Sue Thomas
>> headed the trAce Online Writing Centre (since 1995), in Nottingham.
>> At the institution where i work, in London, there is a vibrant
>> creative writing program, but no one seems to touch e-literature).
>> 
>> 
>> regards
>> Johannes Birringer
>> 
>> 
>> 



Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201