http://framework.v2.nl/archive/archive/node/text/default.py/nodenr-154053
Collaborative Culture [2003]
Sher Doruff in "Making Art of Databases"
A remarkable, if contentious, trend of the past few decades, has been the
trans-disciplinary current of complex system theory running through and
between all fields of research practice, from physics, biology, neurology,
the social, computer, political and cognitive sciences, to philosophy and
art. Though interpretations and assessments vary, there is an appetite for
models and methodologies that reveal elements and conditions of non-linear
dynamic interaction in systems: in cells, in brains, in social networks and
human-computer convergence. It is a study of the interaction and
organization between things in their environment and the processes that
emerge from these conditions.
The dynamics, the enigmatic inter-ness - flow, dynamic, movement, process,
synapse, circuit, stigma, information - "between" organisms, nodes,
individuals and societies is the stuff of life. Complexity provides a
provocative contextual topology from which to approach a discussion of
collaborative practice in new media and live arts. The focus here is on
practice that extends well beyond the conventions of working relationships
in inter-disciplinary arts projects and moves towards a synergy that
marginalizes individual contribution over the relational dynamics and
emergent possibilities of the collective. That same collective that can only
flourish from diversity and difference among its group; that looks towards
the inter-authorship process as viable artistic expression; that builds and
uses media technologies that both reflect upon and engender new types of
social interaction and critical discourse.
The implications of emergent social behaviors, communication skills and
aesthetics arising from collaborative interplay and its dynamic properties
is potentially far-reaching, given the cross-cultural breadth of
informatics. Much of this discussion in theoretical practice is old news,
worn thin from cybernetics to rhizomatics. The vivid plausibility of
empowered, emergent networks sits uncomfortably on the utopian/dystopian
dialectical fence. Global political trends, as a case in point, contribute
to the dualism between neo-19th-century hierarchical colonialism and the
bottom-up revisioning of 20th-century social democracies.
Distributed real-time interaction strategies and negotiations for data
sharing and processing are examples of dynamic systems with a high degree of
complexity, just as culture itself can be viewed as a highly complex system.
I will point to contingencies that appear relevant with respect to issues
and phenomena that address emergent behavior and distributed cognition
within collectives that are connected and facilitated by malleable media.
The unpredictable, elastic modification of this media by multiple users is
essential to this discussion.
As the term "Collaborative Culture" suggests, this essay and the master
class at DEAF03 in March 2003, are an attempt to provoke both critical and
playful investigation into tools and techniques that incorporate social
networks, live mediation, synchronous co-creation, real-time access to and
transformation of databases and living archives. The technology enabling the
practical interplay for the class was KeyWorx (Waag Society); the
theoretical topology was complexity.