Tag Archives: creative industries

Sher Doruff part 2

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Ok, so…the creative industries. I must say that so far I have not heard one good thing about the plan to change to this model, and Sher was no exception. She feels the added bureaucracy will prevent any really interesting and original project from ever getting funded. While maybe this will push some artists into doing much more interesting work because they have no funding,but do have some freedom, in the meantime the money is going to some kind of domesticated, tamed crap.

The issue of tech becoming tame is interesting. Sher felt really strongly about that; how the ease with which we can now do things has eliminated the wonder people used to feel, and also made the practice of connecting online really routine, so that people don’t think about new possibilities, they just use it for pragmatic things. (Practice is really important for Sher, as I’ll get to later). To illustrate, I can compare something like google docs which numerous people edit a doc, even simultaneously, or that site (I forget the name of course) that let’s people kind of jam together and lay down musical tracks, to the tool Sher worked on for her PhD project at De Waag KeyWorx. The developers of this platform created a

Multi-User Cross Media Synthesizer – a distributed application that allows multiple players to generate, synthesize and process images, sounds and text within a shared realtime environment. As an instrument it allows communities of players to dynamically control and modify all aspects of digitized media in a collaborative performance.

and Sher described it as really exciting because you gave up control, couldn’t always tell what was going to happen or what would happen because keyworx would let other people change not just the media files that were being produced, but the actual functioning of the scripts that transformed the files, so it was a kind of live coding as well. (I think) Anyway, this tool really only makes sense for people who know some scripting or programming languages, so the availability of other tools that do much less but are much easier may stop artists (or whomever) from going as far as they could to learn a more flexible but also more difficult practice.

We also talked a bit about specific institutions and while I feel like maybe it’s gossipy, on the other hand, I think it’s informative so… I had suspected last summer that De Waag had really moved away from an art focus to a much more creative industry kind of focus, yet they were still applying for art funding, and also in site of having some massive budget already (not sure where their other money comes from). –This is what I have gleaned from numerous conversations, but of course what defines an “art focus” is debatable. V2_ on the other hand has become really hermetic and narrowly focused, (again, this is what I thought last summer when Alex told me he wasn’t really interested in outreach at all, and it seems to have been an issue for them this year. It’s also problematic (I think) in terms of how they participate in the scene because in the end they are just talking to themselves and not really participating in the development of new media in a way that affects or takes into account what anyone else is doing, or the socio-economic events going on around them.

Steim, I learned, has been around for ages and continues to do interesting things (don’t know as much about them) but they’ve never had enough money and don’t seem as well publicised (but maybe that’s because everyone already knows them?), which may also be why they have trouble. In fact, neither V2_ nor Steim seem to have communicated very clearly what they are contributing to the new media scene. –This is my sense because when I try to ask people about what they aim to do, I haven’t yet met anyone who says clearly “oh yes, they aim for this.”

–In fact since originally writing this I’ve emailed with Sher a bit more and she said that Steim is not actually interested in the new media scene, but rather is focused on instruments, interfaces and sound. Of course a group probably shouldn’t worry about explaining to people everything they are not concerned with, but on the other hand, many other people have said I should talk to some members of Steim, and seem to consider them part of the new media scene, so there really does seem to be some confusion. The conflicting perceptions of both the scene of what’s good for the scene or not are turning out to be really interesting. I think that I may end up with something like what one sees through a “dragonfly eye” rather than a single picture.

I mentioned Worm and Sher didn’t know them very well, but was interested in the kinds of things they’ve done, especially the collaborations with Piet Zwart–it’s funny but I find myself feeling the impulse to connect people I think would offer something good to each other, which seems to be a basic feature of this scene. I’ve seen Florian do it a lot, William Uricchio, Sher herself offered to help me contact people…I guess it really is very cooperative.

Finally, Sher spoke about a project she is working on right now with support from Brian Massumi and Erin Manning; it’s an artist’s residence, but her project is textual. She is trying to develop writing as an artistic practice and has evolved an approach that includes pasting texts and images onto an 8 meter scroll of paper everyday, taking pictures of that and reintegrating them on the scroll, cutting up the text, moving it around, and creating a kind of collage that represents the development of her ideas over time. Of course this immediately rang a bell because this process is very similar to things we have students do sometimes in the writing classes, but Sher is doing it in a much more sustained way, and also thinking more rigorously about it as a practice (or process, to use the comp. theory term). I’ll be interested to see where it takes her.

So yeah, a really dense interview, and probably there are things I’m forgetting right now. More than any of the other people, Sher had a clear sense of herself as a practitioner, always looking for a new challenge, always exploring and testing. Like many of the people, especially the women, she seemed to really enjoy taking a moment (or several hours) to speak about these things. I’m wondering if it’s because no one has really been interested before (which seems unlikely with Sher) or if being officially asked to reflect is somehow interesting… well, maybe that will become clearer as I go on.

William Uricchio part 2

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So one of the biggest issues in many of my interviews has been funding and William talked about this as well. Right now there is a lot of money available for digitizing historical archives and so every school is looking through their library to see what might be worth proposing as a project. The money comes from both education and art funding, so this also represents quite a shift in emphasis from supporting art creation to supporting art history. Not to say that all the money is shifting, but a million or two million euros is still quite a big chunk, and some of the smaller organizations don’t get much money, or have much of a budget at all, so even small cuts are big problems for them.

Also, there is a change to the funding system underway because of a decision to use a “creative industries” model. Since the 1980s arts funding has worked as follows: “a long-term grant is awarded with the proviso that once every four years all the institutions receiving these subsidies (more than 800 of them) will be inspected – all at the same time (Smithuijsen 2005).”

I know this system is still in place now because all the organizations I’ve been in touch with in the last year just recently got recommendations about whether or not their funding should continue and on the same levels. It turns out that many lost funding, in part because of the above archiving project, but also because a shift toward a “creative industries” model is underway. This refers both to Richard Florida’s book about the Creative Class and also to a model of cultural policy developed in the UK over the last 10 years.

I encounter very mixed responses to this change; most of the artists and new media institutions seem unhappy and William also was intensely skeptical that this would be a positive change. I still haven’t heard a systematic critique, but two problems seems to be the expected increase in bureaucracy and loss of control over arts/cultural policy. Clearly though I need to get more detail on what the new system will be and why people don’t like it.

William and I also talked quite a bit about how new media is developing and I was flattered that he wanted to know who I thought were important voices and which I thought were important centers, both institutional and national. I mentioned Worm and Piet Zwart MDMA because I think they continue to do really innovative things, and I think Vienna is or will be important. In the US I find it much harder to estimate this because everything is so spread out and incoherent. I don’t know of any cities with really strong new media scenes. Boston has some, NYC has some, San Francisco, maybe Austin. But none of these is organized the way they are in Europe because there is just so much less public funding for any art.

Finally we talked about whether or not the new media scene had any cultural specificity, and whether fan culture, to which we were drawing some parallels, has any. While he could see the point I was making about how national context my change how people can participate in new media, William feels (in spite of the fragmentation) that it is a global discourse. I think this is true to a degree, but that it can’t be assumed. If one is studying the field, one has to check the extent to which discourse is local, national or global. For example, I can say that William certainly participates in a global discourse, because he travels constantly, publishes internationally, and works with other scholars who do the same. But this is hardly true of everyone I’ve interviewed. Most of them cannot travel so much, they may read international journals, but maybe don’t publish on that level so much, and most of their work may take place at one school or in one city. Just being on the nettime mailing list or even a bunch of people connecting on Facebook doesn’t make it a global field, at least not so far. I think that in fact the way scholars and artists participate in the new media field is quite variable–maybe I have to steal Mirko’s concept of heterogenous participation and Kate Hayles’ idea about emerging complexity to discuss this. Or maybe I just need to read Eric von Hippel on democratizing innovation. And he has this paper on actor network theory and user innovations…

One of the most challenging things lately in these interviews is that I begin to hear contradictory things and yet haven’t spoken to enough people to judge very well what is a more accurate picture. Or maybe in fact there is no one accurate picture.

at de Waag Society for Old and New Media

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Today I went to visit de Waag and met with Bart Tunnissen and Sher Doruff who are finance manager and head of the research dissemination program, respectively. This was an interesting meeting because de Waag takes a very different approach from either Piet Zwart or V2; though they conduct research they are not academic and they have a very broad target audience, and have many community connections. Though they have not been around for so very long–11 years, they have become very important in shaping the agenda for the “creative industry” in the Netherlands, in part it seems because their founder and director general, Marleen Stikker earlier created the “Digital City” in Amsterdam, and so has been a real pioneer in this area. Also, like V2_, they have established a reputation for good practice and innovation.

So where to begin, well Bart gave a brief run-through on the history, but that’s on the website so I won’t repeat it. Mostly they talked about how they go about connecting with the community, choosing projects and carrying them out, and then some about funding and those challenges. They get 6-10 proposals per week and make a first pass through them to look for those that will a)match one of the 4 domains and 6 programs they have chosen to focus on, and b) appear to have a good chance of really succeeding–I’m not sure how they measure that though, except it may mean they can create new knowledge that eventually leads to a new product heading to market.

Bringing products to market seems to be one of the bigger challenges for de Waag, because the Netherlands doesn’t have so many venture capitalist types (comparatively). –After the tech crash I’m not sure how easy it is anywhere, really. This is one way the are really different from PZI and V2_ though, in having this as a goal. But they also emphasized that you can’t start working with a partner and have profit as a goal, or why would that partner trust your intentions? Intellectual Property issues are thus a double concern for them, both in theory but also in their practice. –In fact I think this must be quite tricky and I will have to email some follow up questions because de Waag really emphasizes what they call a “user as designer” approach, so if something does eventually end up being developed for the market, then what? Who is the designer and to be blunt, who profits? I admire the approach for its Freirean quality, and I think it certainly would strengthen the commitment from community groups to a project, and strengthen ties between them and de Waag, besides of course being more educational for everyone. I appreciate though how balancing different concerns takes real skill.

Well, there is more to say, but today Remediating Lit. starts and I have to get ready for the trip to Utrecht.

Alex Adriaansen at V2_

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This afternoon I had a lengthy meeting with Alex Adriaansen, director at V2_ ; he could not have been more generous with his time or forthcoming with his views about the context for New Media studies in the Netherlands or the challenges they face. So I will note it all down before I forget!

First, V2_ has been around for 25 years and that means that by now they have established a reputation as doing interesting, edgy things and also having good practices. Alex emphasized how important it was to them to be truly interdisciplinary themselves, and this brings it’s own challenges because scientists have one way of doing things and, people concerned with business have another, and artists still another, and so on. But he felt this was something they had succeeded in working out over the years, and now these other groups respect their way of doing things.

Another characteristic of the Dutch context is the focus on projects rather than on structural funding schemes for the long term. Alex attributes this to politicians and business people tending to take a short view that always judges success by some concrete result, rather than on what is learned or on long-term possibilities. The problem for V2_, (or any organisation, because I see this in the US as well) is that you have to always follow whatever trend the funding agency is hot for, which means first that you may not be able to really follow through on ideas that need more time, and, perhaps a greater problem, you can get caught up iin the hype so that you lose your critical perspective. I’ve heard this from Florian at Piet Zwart as well, and I will be sure to check on it at De Waag tomorrow.

But Alex felt that they were navigating these challenges successfully. I think V2_ audience may be less prone to falling for hype as well, because most of their programs are aimed at the “creative class” meaning artists, designers, theoreticians, etc. Except for the DEAF Festival, they aren’t very concerned with reaching a wide audience. However, they have decided to strengthen their ties to some educational institutions. They have a pretty strong connection to Piet Zwart MDMA already, and now they are pursuing a PhD programs with some universities (he didn’t say which). I think that sounds like a great idea, and it makes me wish I had time to take on another degree!

The biggest challenge Alex sees ahead for V2_ is reorganizing itself so that it can on the one hand strengthen it’s artistic focus, but on the other build on the more “practical” possibilities suggested by their research. So I look forward to seeing what happens in the next year. –Or rather the next four, as these things go in the Netherlands.

In addition to talking about V2_, we also talked about the program under development at my school, CSU Stanislaus, and the challenges we face in being rather isolated from any big cities or cultural institutions. He suggested looking at the IAMAS program in Japan; from their website, IAMAS is:

AMAS consists of two schools: the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences and the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences. The Institute is solely a graduate school (for obtaining a Masters Degree) and has one faculty and one course, namely Media Creations. There are 20 students in each year of the course. The Academy is a vocational college accepting 30 students each year who must have at least graduated from high school.

That sounds like an interesting program to investigate.

In addition to thanking Alex for his time, and for sharing of the electronic proceedings of DEAF with me, I also have to thank him for being so gracious about my being almost an hour late! On my way there I got completely loast in the tram system and every time I thought I figured it out, I went even more wrong. Finally I just took the Metro, which I seem to understand better. Lucky for me I had already purchased an OV-chipkaart, which iis a smart card for the metro, buses, and trams. My strippenkaart would never have lasted through that maze, and then I would have had to search for a shop to buy one… But anyway, all’s well that ends well.

I may edit this later if I realize I’ve forgotten something.