"Julia!"
"Yes Paul, xxx"
"Thanks. But what are you up to now you crazy artist? A
post-evaluation of an activity when the Call for proposals has not even closed!
The projects will not start until early 2017, and they won't be completed until
2019-20 at the earliest."
"Yes I know, it's great! Your problem is that you are
too logical. You’re far too bound-up in the notion of rationality and objectivity."
"Uncreative as well! Don't forget my creativity
deficit."
"Indeed!"
"And I'm a man!"
"Well, so it seems! But don't you understand that an
organisation that is spending eight million euros of public money, is over
hyping and politicising a topic, clearly has some other agenda that involves
instrumentalisation of art for dark political reasons, and, well, it’s going to
be a huge success this thing that they are STARTing. And having dragged-in
those European Commissioners to say stupid things, no-one is ever going to
admit that the whole thing has been a waste of public money because they did
the wrong things. What we are seeing is manipulation that needs exposing for it
demonstrates the true nature of the European Commission. So it's obvious that
the topic is going to be amazingly successful."
"You're right of course. So what's your post-action
evaluation?"
"Simple! STARTS has been a massive success. Synergies
between (uncreative) technologists and (creative) artists have been boosted. We
are overwhelmed by the number of unconventional and compelling products and
services that have been produced. Silos have collapsed and amazing dialogues
have resulted. The increase in the
transfer of knowledge between the ICT and the creative industries is astonishing.
The culture of the ICT sector has been transformed. At long last there is an
appreciation of the societal and economic added value of creativity. And we
have achieved a more innovation-oriented mind-set."
"Of course
you're right. Now that the technocrats have committed to spending eight million
euros they will have no choice but to proclaim it as a massive success."
"Now Paul, you
have a lot of experience of ICT product development and design, so tell me
please how one can measure if a product is unconventional and
compelling?"
"Good question Julia. The answer though, is not
something that those caught-up in ICT Topic 36 ideology will want to hear, for
it could take many years to determine just how compelling a product is. That it
is unconventional might be easier to determine, but the world is full of
unconventional products that failed to even make a glimmer of recognition,
because thinking up new ideas for products is the easy bit. And if you doubt
this, just watch Dragons’ Den on BBC2.
“People who engage in technology joy-rides are developing
unconventional products all the time, only to find that they have not thought
about it sufficiently to even be worth considering for anything other than the also ran list in the history of
potentially compelling product ideas. Ultimately what determines if something
is compelling is the market, and that applies if one is selling something or
giving it away free-of-charge through an open-source/Creative Commons model. But the chances of
achieving this status are much improved by doing the right things at the right
time, and one of the most critical phases is that which we call the front-end
of design.
“The market is more likely to respond if at the front-end, important
matters are properly considered such as concept development, industrial design,
as well as the emotional dimension of design, interaction design, usability, and
many other important issues, which today are all encompassed by holistic UX
with its strong emphasis on front-end ideation. And to these critical issues one
can add strategy and strategic vision, business models, timing, marketing, understanding
of competing approaches or technologies, regulatory frameworks, social issues,
barriers to adoption, …
“These are all things which those involved in the ICT commercial
sphere, especially those working on consumer products, should know about and
must today practice if they want to be successful. It’s basic and largely not
the sort of thing that artists are familiar with. Self-evidently, judging by ICT
2015 conference performance Driving
Innovation through Creativity and the Arts, it is largely also not the sort
of thing that DG CONNECT is familiar with as well.
“In that conference performance one can see some very bad
examples of design concepts, which actually undermine some of the speakers’
credibility and that of their organisations. Take the case of the car side
window that is providing the child with in-vehicle edutainment. A compelling product
idea? Not really. It is actually a very dangerous one. Someone in the audience
noted that the child in the video was not wearing a seat belt which is illegal
in the United Kingdom .
But matters are worse than this, for just look at the child’s posture, and how
the child’s torso, and hence its spine, is twisted. This is not a posture than
anyone, child or adult, should be placed in. But this is not the worst of it!
In the UK
there is a law that requires children up to the age of 12, or until they reach
a height of 135cm, to use a special car seat (restraint). Good quality ones are
designed to provide some protection again side impacts. And the potential site
of the side impact is the rear door and window, which is also the very place
where the child is being invited to play. This is not good design, it’s
technology joyriding!
“So, one should ask why such a design was pursued to the
stage demonstrated in the speaker’s video clip. The speaker actually provided
the answer to this question – they are caught-up in the ideology of
prototyping, which is otherwise known as the road to making expensive mistakes.
“It’s like being back in the early 1990s watching people
talking about prototyping as though it is some form of panacea. It’s actually a
very dangerous and addictive drug that needs to be used with great caution.”
“So Paul, the more we look into these matters the more
foolish DG CONNECT look.”
“Yes Julia. It’s like turning over a stone – all sorts of
things start wriggling and crawling about. And it is not a matter of DG CONNECT
looking foolish, they are fools – arrogant, and incompetent ones. And fools and
their money are easily parted and the phrase incompetence at the tax-payers expense comes to mind.
“The point I am making, is that if you are in the ICT sector
and do not understand the basics of modern design practices, and are looking to
DG CONNECT for assistance, then we have beyond doubt achieved a situation where
the blind are leading the blind. This
is truly the Road to Serfdom… Post-evaluation over?"
"Not quite
Paul. The stupidity of all this creativity nonsense, clearly exposes, to those
who care to look, a significant strategic weakness in Western thinking, which
those who are not caught-up in Western ideologies, like the Chinese and the
Indians, can exploit.”
“Yes, Julia. Xerox
PARC plainly understood though, for they clearly said of their Artist in Residence Programme that
started in 1992, yes that’s right, 1992, nearly 25 years ago – ‘it’s not about
bringing creativity to …’ ”
“The 1990s once
more and your 25 year rule, Paul – the EC does the right thing only 25 years
after it was the relevant thing to do! And it is indeed the case that bringing
artists into research, development, and innovation processes is not about
bringing creativity to scientists, engineers and technologists. Deficit
thinkers, however, having no other way of understanding the complexities of the
matter, have no choice but to position artists in this way, for to do otherwise
would undermine their ideologies and collective delusions. Oh, the delight of
the fragmented and reductive mind, with its cognitive biases and its silent
narratives – such minds speak so much about evidence-based policy making, about
quantified knowing, but in reality they engage in behavioural policy making but
do not realise this.”
“It’s that old
question, ‘Why so smart yet so stupid?’ The answer to which, we know.”
“Yes Paul, we do
indeed. But there is more …”
“More?”
“Yes Paul. More!
The Call topic ICT 36 mentions in the expected impacts, silo-breaking. Robert Madelin also mentions this in an interview he
gave just before he started his new job as Senior Adviser for Innovation. But
it is clear that the European Commission, DG CONNECT and the ICT programme if
they know anything about silo-breaking and why silos exist in Western culture, are
making a very good job of hiding this understanding, for if they did know, they
would certainly not have specified ICT Topic 36 the way it is. And I must say
most artists and creative people also do not understand this issue. Why should
they?”
“Because they’re
alchemists Julia!”
“Yes Paul, this
seems to be how we are perceived. We are, as the Americans would say, the
proverbial silver bullet. So more of
that zone of discredited practice!
Yet, I do know someone who does have knowledge and experience of silos.”
“Yes, back once more
to the early 1990s! And there are worse revelations yet to come Julia!”
“Oh yes indeed
Paul, there is far worse to come. By the end, when this series of blogs is
complete, and then published in a book, all those governments in other parts of
the world, who might also be interested in bringing artists into research
programmes, will have a reference model of what not to do – it’s called the
European Commission STARTS Platform, and ICT Topic 36. This is the price, DG
CONNECT, that you will pay for not listening. Welcome, DG CONNECT to the nexus
of Science, Technology and the Arts! Did no-one tell you about art and what it
can do, and the notion of maintaining critical independence? Evidently not.”
So as minds in DG
CONNECT cross the frontier that marks the boundary between 1989 and 1990, and they
begin to experience the 1990s, back in 2016 …
No comments:
Post a Comment