Thoughts on anInteractive

Creative Scotland

CROWD FUNDING

Amanda Fucking Palmer: inspiring

http://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking.html

Crowdfunding could be much more.

Interaction beyond cash exchange would be welcome between creator and audience.

Especially to artists.

MUSIC MEETS ART

The Johnny Cash Project

http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com

Interaction by collaboration using individual self-expression on a mass scale.

Ideal!

GAMESComputer games are interactive toward a common goal with multiple players - socially constructive

Grand Theft Auto trailer, Rockstar North, Edinburgh(a game clearly targetted at young people)

BUT- Violent goals in a fantasy land.- Health impact: addiction even with non-violent games.This need to make addictive, escapist games is a symptom of a dynamic in industry that is out of balance with human priorities.

TECH TOO FAR?...

Things are gladly changing as young computer users are realising the real power of the more rewarding challenge than gaming, of coding itself, and with this they have the power to shape the interactive realm rather than it simply shape them.

Thinking of people inside the tech honeypot more generally, however: the next clip shows where the fascination of a virtual world has started incroaching on reality in a more than virtual way:

…THOUGHT CONTROLLED COMPUTING?

http://www.ted.com/talks/ariel_garten_know_thyself_with_a_brain_scanner.html

I don't know what to make of it, but I'll just say I prefer Amanda Palmer!

… Not to take away from the major positive about digital interactivity and gaming - it encourages playfulness.

CREATIVITY FROM GAMES TO REAL WORLD?

This creative energy and brain power could drive real world applications. Serious gaming is already a concept, and in a way, art resembles the idea.

While design is central to both games and coding, the dialogue between fine artand tech is not as big as it could be*. Art for art's sake definitely has something to offer and learn. At the moment art is not 'in the game'.

It's amazing how much effort, prior knowledge, electricity, and cash it takes to draw a picture effortlessly on a computer screen/tablet, compared with using a pencil.

This practical problem would seem a simple indicator of theLack of a role artists have played in tech development to date.And the divide will continue unless artists hijack the tech spacein a serious yet playful way.

This needs funding to be effective in the necessary proportions.Only about £1 in £600 of Scottish taxes is spent on the cultural industries.…Digital interactivity certainly gives bang for buck.

CONCLUSION: GAME-LIKE COLLABORATION ON ART PROJECTS

Some kind of major investment of attention and finance into an arts-led collaboration site would seem to chime with the four aims as set out for Creative Scotland by the Scottish Arts Council in 2009:

• Encourage and sustain artists and creators of all kinds• Ensure that artists’ work is accessible to all• Ensure that as many people as possible can participate in creative activities• Extend and increase the wider benefits of arts and culture, including their contribution tothe promotion and development of Scotland’s unique national culture and its wider placein the international sphere.

Some way of collaborating and shaping the future of a creative Scotland in real time in the real world using the internet as a tool would avoid many of the problems raised at the previous Creative Scotland Open Session in Dundee:

As artforms evolve rapidly in the digital age, how do you make a 5 year planfor so many moving targets?

…You become the ideal vehicle for the moving targets.

Artists could take a leaf out of the tech community's e-Book:

GitHub: an on-line platform that allows collaborative exchange of code between developers.

This social, creative tech is already making huge changes to the structure of our lives by accelerating technological innovation. For many reasons, this action-orientated field of the internet needs more input from fine artists.

A sensible way for artists of all kinds to have a valuable role in digital change is to create digital art.

The Arcade Fire, Aaron Koblin & Chris Milk …and me?

http://thewildernessdowntown.com/

* APPENDIX: Clarification on ‘Art’ and ‘Design’'Fine art', art for art's sake, is a symbol of our freedom of expression in a deeper or different way than itmay be appreciated by the business community for whom it represents only the potential for graphic design with a view to marketing.Popular Art (that which permeates the mainstream/business community via radio and major internet sites) can still be called art if it remains connected with art for art's sake - if it is designed to point to something truer, more meaningful than itself.That thing is self expression: the realm of fine art. Art brings the existential into immediate conversation in a way philosophy textbooks do not. Art is self-expression which exhibits the freedom and courage to be percieved publically, and the courage to be misunderstood. Art’s 'industry' should be a wider symbol of self expression: what we decide to express as a society.Monetising art introduces a necessity to appeal to a collective emotion in order to 'sell product': something valuable, but not expressive of an individual. It's only evidence of individual subjective expression that really proves and furthers the freedom of a people. Art is that thing, and as such it should be seen as an intangible capital asset, and not a commodity.There's a place for commodified (popular) art and that is to market deeper values of self-expression: torecommend freedom of expression. There is a place for freedom of expression and that is to recommend more of itself, via the credible method available of fine art.The anthropologist Alfred Gell author of Art as Agency might agree with the idea that art is design thinking, but with an infinitely wide remit embracing intangible as well as physical reality, rather than design-thinking tied to a specific tangible outcome. As such it can be prescient, creative, dynamic, social, therapeutic, controversial and beautiful in a way design for a set purpose cannot.Art is the source of the outside of the box, if you will. With the very same logic that slavery is wrong, the source of creativity can't be monetised - it is priceless.But its vehicles need to be funded in order to transport such inherent value beyond the private sphere, or an ivory tower of artists.

Ed Stack, 19.3.2013