ICT, Art and STARTS: DG CONNECT and the Wizard of Oz

STARTS,

What STARTS, ENDS –

For the road to serfdom is, laid

But technocracy ultimately, fails.

DG CONNECT – lost in the, past

Unable to find the, present

No chance of being the, future –

Prometheus.

What STARTS, ENDS –

ENDS

DG CONNECT desperately searching for evidence. None found! "Never mind, we will still spend 8M euro of your money, for we will in the end just invite some of our experts to tell us what a marvellous thing STARTS was" – straight-out of the Communist party manual for running a technocratic state. Forget about reality – propaganda is everything.

Artists working in research, development, innovation and design projects; this is not the same thing as using art in these types of projects. To do that in fact one does not necessarily need an artist to be involved! This is part of the reference model we have developed. There are other modes of operation that are also part of this. We are, once again, being too theoretical! And reaping the benefits!

And now for a little story ...

“I am Oz, the Great and Terrible. Why do you seek me?”

They looked again in every part of the room, and then, seeing no one, Dorothy asked, “Where are you?”

“I am everywhere,” answered the Voice, “but to the eyes of common mortals I am invisible. I will now seat myself upon my throne, that you may converse with me.” Indeed the Voice seemed just then to come straight from the throne itself: so they walked towards it and stood in a row while Dorothy said:

‘We have come to claim our promise, O Oz.”

“What promise?” asked Oz.

“You promised to send me to paradise when the technologists became creative,” said the girl.

“And you promised to remove silos,” said the scarecrow.

“And you promised to produce unconventional and compelling products,” said the Tin Woodman.

“And you promised make European industry more competitive through working at the intersection of science, technology and the arts,” said the Cowardly Lion.

“Are technologists really now creative?” asked the Voice and Dorothy thought that it trembled a little.

“Yes,” she answered, “I gave them artist’s creativity elixir mixed in with a bucket of water.”

“Dear me,” said the Voice, “how sudden! Well come to me tomorrow, for I must have time to think it over.”

“You’ve had plenty of time already,” said the Tin Woodman angrily.

“We shan’t wait another day longer,” said the Scarecrow.

“You must keep your promises to us!” exclaimed Dorothy.

The Lion thought that it might be as well to frighten the Wizard, so he gave a large, loud roar, which was so fierce and dreadful that Toto jumped away from him in alarm and tipped over the screen that stood in the corner. As it fell with a crash they looked that way, and the next moment all of them were filled with wonder. For they saw standing in just the spot the screen had hidden, a European Commission DG CONNECT official, with head full of strange ideologies and beliefs, who seemed as much surprised as they were. The Tin Woodman raised his axe, rushed towards the official and cried out, “Who are you?”

“I am Oz, the Great and Terrible”, said the official in a trembling voice, “but don’t strike me–please don’t–and I’ll do anything you want me to.”

Our friends looked at him in surprise and dismay.

“I thought Oz was a knowledgeable Head, and knew about art”, said Dorothy.

“And I thought Oz was a lovely Lady who knew how to use art to address patriarchal power structures in ICT research and innovation systems,” said the Scarecrow.

“And I thought Oz was a terrible Beast that knew how solve all the problems of the European ICT sector by using art in research and innovation,” said the Tin Woodman.

“And I thought Oz was a Ball of Fire, that knew how to use art in research and innovation to sweep away the old and usher in a new golden era for the European ICT sector,” exclaimed the Lion.

“No you are all wrong,” said the official meekly. I am a technocrat who knows very little about all these things, and I have been making believe.”

“Making believe!” cried Dorothy. “Are you not a great Wizard?”

“Hush my dear,” he said: “don’t speak so loud, or you will be overheard–and I should be ruined. I’m supposed to be a Great Wizard.”

“And aren’t you?” she asked.

“Not a bit of it my dear; I’m just a common man.”

“You’re more than that,” said the Scarecrow, in a grieved tone; “you’re a humbug.”

“Exactly so!” declared the official, rubbing his hands together as if it pleased him. I’m a humbug.”

“But this is terrible,” said the Tin Woodman; “how shall we ever produce unconventional and compelling products?”

“Or make European industry more competitive through working at the intersection of science, technology and the arts?” asked the Lion.

“Or remove silos,” wailed the Scarecrow, wiping the tears from his eyes with his coat sleeve.

“My dear friends,” said Oz. “I pray you not to speak of these little things. Think of me, and the terrible trouble I’m in at being found out.”

“Doesn’t anyone else know you’re a humbug?” asked Dorothy.

“No one knows it but you four–and myself,” replied Oz. “I have fooled everyone so long that I thought I should never be found out. It was a great mistake my ever letting you into the Throne Room ...”

Thanks to L. Frank Baum for writing a children’s story that, like Hans Christian Anderson’s The Emperor New Clothes, speaks of the nonsense of human behaviour and DG CONNECT’s STARTS initiative. We call it behavioural policy making – the delusion that people know what they are doing and that they are acting in a rational and objective way – humbug!

ICT, Art and STARTS: DG CONNECT and the ideology of creativity

The ideology of creativity – a false image, a collective delusion, a constructed reality: one that is more attractive than reality, which is that many activities that people are forced to participate in by patriarchal power structures, do not represent fulfilling and original work, but the execution of other people's timetables, plans and agendas, which involve blocking real creativity in the name of preserving a culture that makes a virtue of living life like a plague of locusts. Whatever name one gives to the ideology of creativity – ICT & ART CONNECT, STARTS, STEAM or SEAD – they are still the ideology of creativity. No amount of CONNECTing, STARTing, STEAMing or SEADing will change this fundamental and uncomfortable truth.

So now we have a definition of STARTS; knowledge of what the letters S, T, A, R and T actually mean: artists are forced, often because of lack of funding, to participate in a patriarchal power structure, where they will not be undertaking fulfilling and original work, but will have to implement other people's timetables, plans and agendas, with their artistic creativity blocked in the name of preserving a culture that makes a virtue of living life like a plague of locusts.

When you have finished reading this blog, and the others we have written (and the ones that have yet to appear) you will know what Stephen Wilson meant when he highlighted one role of the artist in science and technology as being that of critical practitioner: the deconstruction of cultural patterns of integrating science and technology to clarify underlying meanings ignored in the over-hyped flow of normal technological and commercial life. In the case of STARTS, there is much to deconstruct. And one thing you can be sure of is that DG CONNECT’s feigned interest in art, most surely does not encompass critical practice. What image seeking exploiter of the arts would wish to become the subject of this type of artistic practice? Why would DG CONNECT, a failing public organisation, want to be the subject of satire and ridicule?

Back now to the ideology of creativity, which also reveals yet another strategic flaw in Western thinking, and those all important cognitive biases, that China, now ascending once more, can use to unleash the forces of creative destruction against the West. The people of the Western world proclaim their secularism, and sometimes even proudly announcing their atheism, but they are still People of the Book.

And when the Americans look at STARTS they will surely ask: where’s the beef? By this we mean where is the evidence? What’s that you say, “it’s in the ICT ART CONNECT study report!” But we have read this several times and cannot find any evidence. There are of course some anecdotes, not just in the report, but spread across the globe in many places, but that which people call evidence is hard to come by. It is an interesting area that requires further investigation, both theoretical and empirical. And this lack of evidence is why you, DG CONNECT, are now engaging in make-believe, inventing things, calling-on that that you do not understand, in the hope that you will not be found out. To which we say, Wizard of Oz, to which we turn next week ...

ICT, Art and STARTS: DG CONNECT and Maker Spaces

Before us, lying on the table, is the May 2015 copy of IEEE Spectrum Magazine. It is open at the page where there is an article about the growth of Maker Spaces in China and the support for Maker Spaces by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), support which includes an online platform for makers to exchange information about projects.

Maker Spaces and maker culture, link to notions of hacker spaces, hacking culture, and the associated ethics and motivation. One might say that collectively these represent a growing cultural phenomenon of creative expression, playfulness, which are driven by more utopian ideals than society provides through its focus on selfish greed, which is the driver of Western capitalist economies past and present, which, clearly, an increasing number of people are dissatisfied with.

There is an interesting remark in this IEEE article, which relates to speakers at the CESAsia 2015 contest who represented the Chinese government. These people seemed to consider makers as nascent business entrepreneurs, and Maker Spaces as commercial incubators that would feed directly into industry. And there is this very interesting quote:

'But several speakers were quick to make the point that while commercial products can come out of Maker Spaces, it would be a mistake to view them, and the people working in them, so narrowly: “We try our best turn our creativity and hobbies into reality. We may be able to commercialize in some areas, but in others we are simply playful in our effort. Makers go beyond the scope of entrepreneurs in our effort,” says Nanjing Maker Space’s Zheng.'

So I am back to the question of DG CONNECT and their understanding of artistic practices in research, development and innovation, and indeed, whether they have appreciated the difference between creative expression and artistic expression, and also if they have appreciated that in Maker Spaces, there is a crossing of beliefs, for clearly there are artistic movements which also embrace the ethics and ideals of Maker Spaces. Collectively these are a part of a fundamental change away from the very economy and its beliefs that DG CONNECT is still immersed in, and to which it seeks to appropriate art to the service of (yet another example of the art-science muddle).

Artists therefore take note – if you participate in STARTS, history may well judge you to be out-of-step, and you might in the end be branded as being also, people who are living in the past. You could of course become subversive and hack STARTS from within, which is most definitely something that history will applaud, and if in the process of doing this, you relieve DG CONNECT of some of its money, that too would be a nice thing to do for poor artists – Robin Hood!

However reality speaks a different story. Most of the EU money will be going to institutions that by their nature consume vast resources, and require resources to oversee the consumption of resources, and resources to acquire resources, so that resources can be consumed in overseeing the consumption of resources and acquiring more resources, which require resources ... And the – literally – poor artist will receive of this money taken from the rich, very little, for the reality of STARTS is that it has been hijacked by a small group of vested interests who seek only one thing – money – resources to feed the resource hungry institutions that consume resources ...

The good thing though is that all this technocratic nonsense that is STARTS reveals to the rest of the world how not to address art in research, development and innovation processes. And hacking ICT ART CONNECT now expands to a hack of Europe itself, through the enabling of its creative destruction, for now the weaknesses, flaws and moral corruption of the institution that is the technocracy known as the European Commission are revealed for all to see.

More to come! And more, and more ... This is a book taking shape! And what a book it will be: STARTS – Science, Technology and the Arts: Julia and Paul’s Artistic Examination of the life of DG CONNECT and its Image Making Appropriation of Art. This is the working title for now.

Art and DG CONNECT: Something old ...

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

Well it turns out that something old in DG CONNECT’s case means that people from the arts have been involved with ICT research projects in DG CONNECT’s past when it was called something else (as was the ICT Programme).

We are looking at project titles such as Creating Aesthetically Resonant Environments in Sound, and The Educational Puppet Theatre of Virtual Worlds and Developing Collaborative Story Telling Environments for Children, with Children. There is even a project with a partner called ZKM – you know who they are? Yes of course you do, they are the famous Centre for Media and Arts, where artists work with technologists.

So when Robert Madelin, at that ICT 2015 DG CONNECT theatrical performance, asked ...

“How can the arts inspire creativity in general? How can spill-overs from creativity in the Arts be harnessed by industry? How can spill-overs from creativity in the Arts be harnessed by society?”

All he needed to do to find answers to these questions was to look back to the late 1990s and early 2000s and consult with projects funded in Framework Programmes 4 and 5 under an initiative called Intelligent Information Interfaces (i3). To find out more about i3 and some of its art-driven projects, just look in the ICT-ART CONNECT study report where you will find ... Oh dear there is no mention of i3! Now why is that we wonder?

And armed with such insights, along with knowledge of all those artists in industrial research lab initiatives (over the period from the 1960s to the early 2000s), and all those other art-science/art-technology programmes that have been and gone, combined with understandings of industrial and societal changes and needs, he just might have been able to construct something that might have been useful. We say might, because one can never tell with technocrats, especially given that in another area, the social sciences, DG CONNECT are also engaging in another nonsense based on poor understanding of past work and future needs.

As for all those people at ICT 2015 praising the European Commission – what were they thinking saying such stupid things? Perhaps they were ... (Paul’s note – Apologies but I have removed Julia’s text!).

Now Commissioner Modas is here and wishes to make an apology too:

“When I said that more and more we all understand that innovation in the future will be on the intersection of arts and sciences, I was wrong, for which I apologise. What I should have said is that innovation in the past has been at the intersection of arts and sciences. What it will be in the future I have no idea and neither has DG CONNECT. In future I will be sticking to my own portfolio, and will leave Commissioner Oettinger to speak DG CONNECT’s words of nonsense. I wish him good luck for he will obviously need it.”

DG CONNECT has stated that their STARTS circus is going to be rolled out across Horizon 2020! In other words, a further waste of public money! And few will raise objections because what most people want is to get their hands on public money. This is the nature of the moral corruption that now pervades Europe’s research and innovation systems.

Here is an opportunity for the rest of the world to do things that are not circus acts. Artist-led research programmes with carefully selected foci, strategically driven to transform research and innovation systems, to transform STEM, to ... We have given this matter much thought and to do that we first had to know the past and understand the future potential.

Art, DG CONNECT and constraints

Constraints are parameters that guide processes and activities. They can be externally imposed such as through culture, deadlines or requests. They can be internally imposed unconsciously through developed beliefs and habits. They can also be consciously yet still internally devised in order to focus action towards specific goals that would not be explored in depth otherwise. Or they can be internally devised to ensure that matters that should be addressed are not! The design of constraints directly defines and confines a problem’s search space, thereby provoking new and potentially creative explorations, or not, as is the case with DG CONNECT.

ICT ART CONNECT, otherwise known as STARTS, is the product of constraints, mostly those of the kind that are imposed unconsciously through developed beliefs and habits, but also, the constraints that come from a culture that ‘does not know what it does not know’, and an intention to exploit art for the European Commission’s political reasons.

There are also another set of constraints at work, that rule out-of-order any thinking outside the limiting horizons of the European Commission political agenda, which at its highest levels, in harmony with the policies of most of the National Governments, is about abandoning the peoples of Europe to the power of money. Taken for granted here, are the neo-liberal agenda, with its defining features of global capitalism, economic inequality, environmental destruction, and cultural colonialism, where deviant cultures have to be converted to a secular and materialistic way of life though the imposition of European values. This is ultimate victory of Western Enlightenment thinking over anything that smacks of not being the rational and objective machine so much worshiped in the Western world, operating in the wider context of the economic machine, which exploits nature, another machine, in the cause of control and domination of people and nature.

All who oppose are evidently suffering from a deficit – which is also about classification and separation, which are also the first two steps on the path to genocide. There is a reason why most of the known cases of genocide are linked to European culture or its adoption by others.

Now is the time to resist, and to find a way to out-manoeuvre Europeans and their cousins in the former colonies, for they surely have a far too good opinion of themselves and do not understand or respect those that are not European and do not want to be European. The opportunity now exits for the non-European world to exert itself, and to create the conditions which will also force Europe to stop being European. And if that happens then the planet and humanity will have a chance of surviving. The alternative is going forwards in the way that is defined by the past, which increasingly is how humanity is conducting its affairs, with both the old and the new Western powers, using their military might to enforce conformance with the European way. Fortunately, China and India are armed to the teeth as well, so bombing and droning are not options for the West. It is time to abandon your civilised killing and violence, time to give peace a chance, and time to turn your weapons into ploughshares.

Now is the moment in time for humanity to recognise that it is not seven billion individuals, but one living organism in which all people are connected together in ways that most Europeans do not understand, value, or even recognise. I am most definitely my brother’s keeper, for I am my brother. When a child dies of famine in some forgotten poorly developed part of our planet, part of me dies too.

We are hyper-connected and always have been.

“Hey Julia, how did we get onto this subject?”

“Everything is connected Paul. Everything! Art is not just about gazing at aesthetically pleasing objects hanging on walls! It is also about confronting uncomfortable truths. And one of those uncomfortable truths is the reality of DG CONNECT – they are living in the past.”

And speaking of the constraints and the past, next week we will examine an aspect of DG CONNECT’s past – a very specific constraint of the not knowing kind – which will come as a surprise to all those people, attending that ICT 2015 theatrical performance we wrote about a few weeks ago, who thought that DG CONNECT was doing something new and timely. Déjà vu! 

Art, DG CONNECT and DG CONNECTivism

DG CONNECT last week issued a proclamation decreeing that all artistic work undertaken with its funding will be part of a new artistic movement that will be known as DG CONNECTivism. The basis for the new movement is the ideology of creativity. Artists practicing in this new movement will be limited in terms of the topics that they will be allowed to explore. Enforcement will be achieved through the proposal evaluation process where a committee, working behind closed-doors, will decide what will be supported. Monitoring for continuing compliance will be achieved through a process called project review, where another committee, again working in secret, will ensure that only that which complies with the manifesto of DG CONNECTivism will be allowed to continue.

And if all this sounds familiar, something heard in the past, and even today in places, then this is because it is a very familiar refrain. But you want the money ...

This reminds me that I must write my article about the DG CONNECT, the Roman Catholic Church and the Soviet Communist Party.

Every honed blade needs its dull stone, otherwise the cutting edge would just be blunt metal, undifferentiated from other blunt implements, and not able to do that which needs to be done.

Thank you DG CONNECT for being our dull stone.

Julia and Paul 

Art & DG CONNECT: a ‘baker’s dozen’ of reasons not to participate in a proposal to ICT Topic 36

If you are thinking such things as "if we're not in the race …" or "it's worth a try …" and other such foolish thoughts, here are ‘baker’s dozen’ of reasons why they are foolish thoughts and you would be better devoting your energies to something more productive. I decided to do exactly this back in August 2014 and I have never looked back, and I was able to walk away because of experience, knowledge and insights, which lead me now to highlight the following:

1. Be honest, you and everyone else are primarily interested in the money so what you will create is a marriage of convenience which is not the basis for a happy marriage. You might be lucky and find someone who you do want to work with, but most likely you will be stuck with people and organisations who take more resources than they need, do very little in return, and who know little about the matter at hand. You will want a divorce.

2. Do you want to spend your time doing things that, you know are a waste of time, but some expert reviewing the project once it is up and running (if you manage to get one through the evaluation process) thinks that you should be doing, so that he (it is most often a man) can demonstrate his knowledge and that he is earning his review fee. Chances are he will not read all those useless paper documents that you will have to spend so much precious time writing.

3. Writing a proposal for an Innovation Action (IA) or a Coordination and Support Action (CSA) is very difficult and the chances are you will not write a very good one. But even if you do …

4. Do you really think that you proposal is going to be evaluated properly? Quite a delusion that you have! Chances are that it will not be properly evaluated, for all sorts of reasons: the wrong experts looking at it; their lack of experience in peer review; their cognitive biases; their hidden agendas; their misunderstandings that they should not be evaluating against that which they would wish to see; people who do not know the limits of their own knowledge, etc. Add to this some very basic yet common mistakes like experts not understanding the evaluation criteria, and, the sole expert with a negative view, out-of-step with the others, who, having decided that your proposal is weak, will drag down the consensus mark so that there is no chance of the proposal being funded.

5. The possibility that the Commission, a political organisation, have already decided who will be successful … surely you do not believe all that nonsense about proposals being fairly evaluated. Topics like ICT 36 are exactly the type where the Commission is most likely to manipulate the evaluation. Of course I must make clear here that this never happens!

6 ICT Topic 36 is not research! In fact it has been termed as “fiddling with technology”, which means that it is based on ‘end-of-pipe thinking’ where everything is decided, and you just get to look at it, make a few minor suggestions, and then everyone will dance around saying how marvellous ICT Topic 36 is. CSAs and IAs will consume your time in activities that are not research. The best you can hope for is that you might in the process find something of interest for later use … The fact that research is not wanted says a lot about the mind-set and level of understanding of the people in DG CONNECT. Read the descriptions that define what constitutes legitimate activities for CSAs and IAs, and then compare these with what is expected from a Research and Innovation Action, and you will understand what I mean.

7. You are unlikely to be involved in any art – more likely it is design that you will be participating in.

8. If you know anything about past initiatives that bring artists into industry/research projects, like Welcome Trust’s Sciart, the LA County Arts Museum A&T programme, Xerox Parc, and so forth, you will know that none of the lessons that can be learned from these have been incorporated into ICT Topic 36 – you can see this from the wording. Look carefully for the words that reassure you that there is protection for the artists and that you will not be exploited and then just discarded. Do you want to lose the right to use your ideas in any way that you choose?

9. After close to three-and-a-half years of engagement with artists, DG CONNECT are still caught-up in the same stupid notions of users and technologists suffering from deficits – this is exactly what they said at the very beginning in 2012. They still also hold to the (just as stupid) notion that special people called artists have special powers to address these imaginary deficits. They have learned nothing, which is no surprise for the mind-set from the outset was that they have nothing to learn, and they knew what art should be used for. Do you really want to be associated with such ignorant and arrogant people?

10. You can also see from the Call Topic wording that DG CONNECT are caught-up in the notion of the ‘elitism of art’, with creativity being the preserve of a few ‘special individuals’ called artists, and they think too that the ‘art object’ has a ‘special status’ which only people with money can own – the very things that many contemporary artists reject. They are the new wealthy patron of the arts!

11. You should know that organisations that appropriate art for their own agendas also end up imposing on artists, restrictions on artistic freedom. Surely you do not think you are going to be allowed to do what you want if it does not fit with DGCONNECTivism?

12 So whatever happened to distributed authorship? STARTS was put together behind closed-doors, and the infamous study was undertaken by a chosen few, who must be very special indeed, for they obviously had discovered the truth. So tell me please the names of the advisory group. We know a few, from quotes in the report, but who are the people that advised DG CONNECT? Not exactly the reference model of openness and transparency that the European Commission are trying to implement through things such as Science 2, etc.

13 The above is largely directed at people from the art world, but if you are a technologist you too should also be asking questions whether you should be engaging in ICT Topic 36. DG CONNECT have classified you as being one of the uncreative ones, not at all special in the way that artists are. This is insulting and completely wrong. It demonstrates also the contempt in which people, such as yourself, are held by this arrogant out-of-touch organisation. And this they have made very clear at every step of the way towards that which they decided upon over three years ago. One of the biggest problems that Europe’s ICT sector faces is an organisation called DG CONNECT and companies that still want to engage with them. What to do about the problem that is DG CONNECT?

Our condolences if you find yourself in a position of having no choice but to apply. Fortunately we did not need to put up with DG CONNECT’s nonsense and are not interested in obtaining a share of the eight million euro. And that, as they say, has made all the difference. And what a difference it turned out to be. What this is however, will only emerge very gradually. Enjoy participating in the various collective delusions, of which there are many – a new Axial Age, etc. etc. etc.