2015 comes to an end

Drawing to a close now is 2015, a year that will go down in my own little and very insignificant history as a turning point. The Rubicon is crossed. There can be no turning back. Goodbye to that which is the past and to those of you who are my past, goodbye. Hello to that which is the future.

Now the sword is sharper, thanks to DG CONNECT and its ICT ART CONNECTing and STARTing which is something of gift sent from heaven for someone such as myself who is interested in collective denial and delusion, behavioural policy making and the transcending of boundaries. So to the matter of wielding this metaphorical weapon, I do now turn, to do that which no-one else has inclination towards, to begin the building upon a far distant shore, of a road to a different future – one that we all, in our hearts, wish to see. This is the power of one of which I wrote in A Tale of Two Deserts.

The poetics – this, you see, is what the hand that writes this wishes for things to be, because hermeneutics clearly confounds those that to the objective and rational mind, and to this alone, do retreat.

Art and DG CONNECT: Two European Commissioners in conversation with Julia

“Hi there all you artistic folk, it’s me, Julia, part of that highly schizophrenic art-technology pairing known as Julia and Paul.

“Today I have with me two European Commissioners who will say something about this thing called the nexus of art and science.

“So Commissioner Modas, what would you like to say about this topic?”

“Yes, thank you Julia. Let me first say that it is a great please to be here with you today. I think that more and more we all understand that innovation in the future will be on the intersection of arts and sciences.”

“Great. Now how did you come to such a conclusion?”

“Scriptwriter! Where’s my scriptwriter?”

“Well Commissioner while you and your scriptwriter are being creative and trying to find an innovative answer to this simple question, we’ll move on to Commissioner Oettinger. What would you like to contribute to this fascinating discussion?”

“I too would like to say that it is a great pleasure to be here with you today. Artistic creativity and critical thinking are essential for innovation in today's digital world.  Already, highly innovative companies like Mercedes thrive on a strong link between artists and their engineers. The EU will support [such] multidisciplinary themes in H2020.”

“Well said Commissioner. Did you know that in the medieval period the Roman Catholic Church also thrived on a strong link with artists? The Communist state in the Soviet Union also thrived on the very strong and rigid links that it forged with artists. So clearly, thriving on strong links with artists can mean many things. It seems that the European Commission is also forging strong links with artists too! Are they also rigid as well? But while you are pondering on these questions, I‘m glad you mentioned Mercedes, because we just happen to have here a representative from Mercedes Finance in the United States. Please tell us something about the strong links you have forged with the art world.”

“Indeed Julia I would be very glad to do so. We work with an art gallery where our employees view masterpieces by artists such as Diego Rivera, Rembrandt and Picasso. A trained facilitator then asks for their impressions during post-viewing meetings. During the debriefing session, we touch on how art applies to business and think about how employees can make use of more creativity at work and offer different solutions to our customers. Participants engage in collaborative discussion and offer answers to messages suggested by the art they view. However, to ask employees to completely connect the art experience to their jobs is forcing it too far. Nevertheless, a business-art relationship offers many advantages. It’s about cognitive diversity. The way people think is based on where they come from. Art reflects the diversity of the world, the workplace and the people in it.”

“So, looks much as though this is just a more sophisticated form of corporate sponsorship of the arts, primarily designed for the purposes of image making – your image! If it is the case that your employees are not sufficiently creative at work, were there no thoughts in your mind that there might be problems with your internal organisational design, or with the company culture, or with employee tasks and roles, or the way they are treated and rewarded, or with the attitude that prevails among middle and senior management? Or are you in need of a visit to the art gallery before you are able to have such thoughts?

“So there you have it – employees with a creativity deficit! The ideology of creativity – founded on an imaginary deficit.

“And I see that the European Commissioners and the Mercedes’ representative have left us. No doubt to reflect upon what they have learned here today. Or perhaps not! They are after all puppeteers … And men!

“Coming soon – more about the Ideology of Creativity. And I will be asking questions about this company called Mercedes and exploring just what they have been doing with artists – more image making! Literally!

“This is Julia signing off, xxx.”

Art, DG CONNECT and Being John Malkovich

So, the European Commission’s ICT ART CONNECT initiative and the follow-on, the STARTS Platform! Quite a performance, but nothing at all compared with the one that I am STARTing …

Being John Malkovich – I

In this surrealist comedy, a puppeteer takes a temporary job as a filing clerk. While at work, the puppeteer discovers a portal that leads into the mind of the renowned actor, performer, and artist known by the name of John Malkovich. The puppeteer then decides to enter the mind of John Malkovich to independently and objectively observe the life of John Malkovich, but being a puppeteer, ends up manipulating and using John Malkovich, thus changing John Malkovich to reflect the interests and objectives of the puppeteer.

Being John Malkovich – II

In this surrealist comedy, a civil servant, a puppeteer, takes a temporary job as head of a failing public sector organisation. While at work, the puppeteer discovers a portal that leads into the mind of renowned actor, performer, and artist known by the name of John Malkovich. The puppeteer then decides to enter the mind of John Malkovich to independently and objectively observe the life of John Malkovich, but being a puppeteer, ends up manipulating and using John Malkovich, thus changing John Malkovich to reflect the interests and objectives of the puppeteer.

Being John Malkovich – III

In this surrealist comedy, a cybernetician who knows that he is a puppeteer, just becomes the renowned actor, performer, and artist known by the name of John Malkovich. Being such, he then writes, stages, directs and performs in, something the likes of which has never been seen before, and in doing so, not only reveals that which is universal to all puppeteers, but shows the path towards a different way of knowing and doing based on an understanding of what it is to be puppeteer.

The instrumentalisation of DG CONNECT – they never expected that! The performance has only just begun! Here are the links to the earlier preliminary episodes:

Paul T Kidd's Blog Entry: ICT & ART CONNECT

Paul T Kidd's Blog Entry: Charming snakes

Paul T Kidd's Blog Entry: It is time for art

Paul T Kidd's Blog Entry: DG CONNECT classifies and symbolises technologists as the uncreative ones!

Paul T Kidd's Blog Entry: Surrealists make of DG CONNECT the fools that they are

Paul T Kidd's Blog Entry: Art, DG CONNECT and the tale of the Director General's new clothes

Paul T Kidd's Blog Entry: ICT-36b-2016: Boost synergies between alchemists and technologists

Paul T Kidd's Blog Entry: Art, DG CONNECT and “I'm out of my comfort zone”

Paul T Kidd's Blog Entry: Art, DG CONNECT and “He's too theoretical”

Paul T Kidd's Blog Entry: Art, DG CONNECT and yet another meeting of the STARTS circus in the European Parliament

In addition, collected all in one place, is most of the existing information about ICT ART CONNECT and the STARTS Platform, plus many links to related web sites: Paul T Kidd’s ICT ART CONNECT Web Pages.

Now you ask – why such a performance?

Art, DG CONNECT and yet another meeting of the STARTS circus in the European Parliament

Advertised recently was a meeting, to be staged in the European Parliament, of the highly schizophrenic, extremely noisy circus that is STARTS. This is the third time that such a meeting has been hosted in the European Parliament buildings. Interesting!

A grand total of three European Commissioners have also now lent their support to ICT-ART CONNECT and STARTS, but being politicians they will not know what they are talking about, as was the case when the former Chief Scientific Advisor to the President of the European Commission turned up at an ICT-ART CONNECT meeting talking nonsense about art and science. Interesting!

And we have this rather empty ICT ART CONNECT study report that contains some strange statements that, should you care to explore them further … Under normal circumstances such a report would be an embarrassment to DG CONNECT, but it is not! Interesting!

As to the matter of the application of due diligence procedures before including STARTS in the new, 2016-17, ICT Workprogramme – none can be detected. Interesting!

It has become very evident that DG CONNECT is out of its depth, and they have once more engaged in their usual habit of forming those allegedly morally corrupt relationships with their experts. Interesting!

It can also be seen that various other people are jumping on the bandwagon – me too they cry, and in doing so are reinforcing a delusion! And I am sure that there are many more who will want to join in. Plenty of opportunities to say stupid things! Interesting!

And then there are the Members of the European Parliament who also want to lend their names to this circus. Interesting!

In a different place, people are talking about how they bring their artistic hobbies to work and have started making claims about new discoveries made because of this, but of note, is a lack of critical assessment of such claims. Positivism, is seems, flies away when it is found to be inconvenient. Interesting!

Elsewhere too, many people (mostly scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians) with vested interests are talking, in a manner that mostly amounts to baby talk, about art-science and art-technology practices, yet seem not to be aware that their discussions at at such a level, or if they are, are not concerned about it. Interesting!

The growing interest in the so called nexus of art-science, or art-technology, is happening at a moment in time when people are beginning to understand just what scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians are doing to our world in their role as handmaidens to economic interests: global warming; acid rain; ozone depletion; desertification; mass extinction; lowering of river levels and water tables; bacteria resistance to anti-biotics; resource depletion; Fukushima; plastics polluting the world’s oceans; nitrate contamination of water resources; destruction of habitats; Fraking; … the list is too long to continue, but they are all brought to you courtesy of scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians (STEM people)! Interesting!

So what is going on? Why is art-science/art-technology being hyped-up, turned into the latest fad, and politicised? We know of course that the smell of money is in the air and that there is an opportunity for – 15 minutes of fame! And self-evidently people are now re-branding what they do (for example UX) and calling it by a new name (STARTS). But what does all this mean for the notion of a fair and proper evaluation of the proposal submitted to ICT Topic 36? Are the results already known to DG CONNECT?

I have seen these very noisy circuses before and they all end the same way, with little to show, for they are all style and little substance, and most of what goes on, is already what has been done under a different name. The result of STARTS will be that some people will end up with bigger bank balances, but the public will be out-of-pocket, with, most likely, nothing very much to show for the expenditure of their hard earned money. Collectively people seem determined to make of themselves fools, by declaring that the emperor is wearing a fine suite of clothes when in fact the emperor is naked. This perhaps is the nature of the Emperor's Court, the EC, otherwise known as the European Commission. STARTS is about style and has very little to do with substance, for what substance there is, already exists. It is about image making – DG CONNECT’s image!

It is now very clear that the European Commission are playing a political game, and are using art and artists for political reasons, so all those concerns about instrumentalisation turned out to be very well founded indeed.

“The grazing herd has arrived! It will of course eventually move on in search of fresh pastures, but that zone of discredited practice looms large because of all the dung that it will leave behind. Yet …

“I am wondering why this opportunity has presented itself to us. All this dung! Any thoughts about this Julia?”

“Yes Paul, indeed I have for we will use it to fertilise our thinking, so keep it coming, for all the nonsense, the emptiness, the re-branding, the grasping at straws, the vain attempts to find some justification for working with artists, feeds us, sharpens our minds, and, in the process of developing our critique, helps to know in ways that seem to lie far beyond the very limited horizon of this grazing herd. While you are busy pulling at the meagre grass and chewing the cud, we fly as eagles and see as a result, a very different world that is most certainly not one of dirt and grass.”

Art, DG CONNECT and “He's too theoretical”

Following on from last week’s blog, this week we explore one of the reasons why we are not going to tell DG CONNECT anything, nor even explain what this means (surely you do not think that you understand the meaning of this?), and why we will make a theory of art-science and art-technology practices that DG CONNECT and the other vainglorious Enlightened ones, will struggle to understand. And part of the reason lies in this statement:

“He’s too theoretical.”

This staggeringly ignorant remark was made by a European Commission bureaucrat in DG CONNECT, about the British Artist Roy Ascott, following Ascott’s stimulating, enlightening and inspirational presentation in the European Parliament on the morning of November 11, 2013, in the keynote speaker session that preceded the ICT ART CONNECT workshop (mentioned in last week’s blog) that was chaired by Robert Madelin, at that time Director General of DG CONNECT.

“It’s Julia again Robert. I just thought that you and the rest of the world should know the attitude that prevails in the minds of technocrats who do not know the limits of their own knowledge. People who would, quite rightly, think someone ridiculous if they were to suggest that a quantum computer could be researched and developed without using quantum theory, but condescendingly think that art can be brought into research, development and innovation processes without using art and literary theory, and other theories too. But care you? No you do not, for you are just using art and artists as an instrument to achieve political ends.

“It turns out that theory is everything, in more ways than one. Paul and I knew this, and we knew also that those caught-up in the dogma and ideology of Western science and technology would not accept this. Paul gave it a name – the Prometheus syndrome. And this is how the Chinese, the Indians, and others from the non-European world will give Europe and the rest of the West, the economic thrashing that they deserve. And Paul and I will help them for we are sorely tired of what we describe as the vainglorious Enlightened ones and their collective delusions and constructed realities and what they are doing to our world in the name of that stupid idea that they call progress – that’s theory again.

“Theory is dead you say! Wishful thinking perhaps? Long live theory we say, for we are not caught-up in your very strange Western dualities and your very Abrahamic notions of sole truth and the one best way. A theory of everything, so to speak, which also includes the plainly stupid things that people do and say, when, to this mysterious nexus, with their delusions, they do puzzlingly and momentarily gravitate.

“Come to know us in many different ways …

“Julia xxx.”

Art, DG CONNECT and “I'm out of my comfort zone”

“I'm out of my comfort zone.”

So said Robert Madelin, (at the time) Director General of DG CONNECT, on November 11^th 2013, while chairing an ICT ART CONNECT workshop, hosted in the European Parliament buildings.

"Oh Robert dear, out of your comfort zone indeed! You and your people were also way out of your depth as well, but you would not think so by the way those you assigned to develop ICT-ART CONNECT behaved.

"Yes it's me, Julia, feminist artist, and the creative part of the schizophrenic artist-technologist pairing known as Julia and Paul, or as Paul likes to say, Paul and Julia. Paul is the technologist, the uncreative one, who is suffering from a creativity deficit!

"You've moved on so are no longer responsible for DG CONNECT, but we watched and recorded the whole story of ICT-ART CONNECT and archived all the material so that when some, not so far future art-history researcher, decides to research and write about another chapter in the already long story of art & technology/art & science, all the relevant material will be available. It's called open access! And the story continues and it seems almost weekly people are saying stupid things, and we continue to collect and archive this, so that history will not forget who said what and just how stupid they were.

"What's that Robert, you did not realise that you and your colleagues would become part of history. Too late now! It will make an interesting chapter: 'The Tale of the Director General's new clothes: The European Commission's appropriation of art to the Ideology of Creativity.'

"And now of course, the rest of the world, will know how not to go about involving artists in technological research and innovation. Your people should have listened to Paul, because he has long experience of this kind of unconventional transdisciplinary activity, and he told your colleagues that it did not matter what the European Commission thought, wanted, or decided, for what would be more important would be what China and India decided to do. You listened to the wrong people, yet again. You listened to those who shouted the loudest. You fell foul, once again, of those allegedly, morally corrupt relationship that the Commission often forms with experts – the ones hinted at by the former chief scientific advisor, where the European Commission seeks the opinions of experts willing to go along with what the Commission has decided to do. And you did this because you have a political agenda that involves the instrumentalisation of art and artists.

“Never mind, as DG CONNECT begins to experience the 1990's, 25 five years from now, some future Director General, of some future successor Directorate General of DG CONNECT, might discover what ICT-ART CONNECT should have done, but won't know that there was such a thing as ICT-ART CONNECT. This is what Paul has come to call the 20-25 year rule: The European Commission eventually does the right thing only 20-25 years after it was relevant. SSH engagement is the classic example of this – first recommended by the FAST Programme in the early 1990s, and what did ESPRIT programme do in response? Nothing! It was recommended again in 2004 by an ISTAG working group and what did DG INFSO do? Nothing of note! And now, in the new work programme, DG CONNECT is, as the document states "taking a fresh look" at that which others have looked at since the beginning of the 1980s. But you have not even taken a serious first look so how can you take a fresh look?

"Paul wrote something that is very relevant to this. I quote him here: 'Europe has become like Prometheus. Everyday Europe reinvents itself in exactly the same form that it was the day before, being as it is, bound, by invisible and silent chains, to the rock of the past, and unable to escape from it. And Europe has so fallen in love with itself that it is unable to see this. Thus will the past become the future! Europe has been condemned by Zeus and cursed by Nemesis. There is no Hercules to set Europe free. And using such knowledge, China and India can unleash against Europe the forces of creative destruction, and Europe will not understand what is happening, but will instead retreat even further into the past, for this is what civilisations that are in a state of collapse do. And the case of the former chief scientific advisor is a very good example of someone retreating into the past.'

"This is also the fate that awaits the proposed European Innovation Council!

"Art in technological research and innovation – it's not about bringing creativity to scientists, technologists, or engineers! They are already creative.

“And so you ask, what is it about?

“Too late now, you will just have to wonder about that, for Paul and I are not going to tell you, and it seems that most of the sycophants that the European Commission associates with are not going to tell you, or are not able to do so. But Paul and I will create a theory, so written that you will not understand it. And to those who can, the future belongs …

"Julia, xxx"

Art, DG CONNECT and ICT-36b-2016: Boost synergies between alchemists and technologists

Specific Challenge: Innovation, today, is as much about novel solutions that technology and design can provide as it is about understanding needs of society and ensuring wide participation in the process of innovation. In this context, Alchemy is gaining prominence as a catalyst of an efficient conversion of S&T knowledge into innovative products, services, and processes.

The challenge is to accelerate and widen the exchange of skills of alchemist with entrepreneurs and technologists, thus creating a common language and understanding. This topic supports the STALCHEMY (S&T&ALCHEMY) initiative, fostering innovation at the nexus of 'Science, Technology and Alchemy'.

Scope: The activities are structured in two lines: establishing a structured dialogue between alchemists and technology developers and encouraging alchemists' integration into research and innovation projects, providing visibility of good practices and rewarding them.

a. Innovation Action establishing a structured dialogue between alchemists and technologists:

First, it will identify the relevant regional, national and international agencies active in education, research and economic support of the Alchemic Industries and:

· establish a Europe wide sustainable structured dialogue, ensuring the synchronisation of the efforts; as well as

· promote the replication of successful initiatives across other industries and European countries.

Second, it will directly support alchemists and technologists to work together and produce unconventional and compelling new products. Taking advantage of existing structures such as alchemy labs, creative and innovation hubs, the action should at least combine the following activities:

· Launch a yearly Europe wide competition for the best alchemist product ideas and ensure the financial support of their realisation. The action should cover the promotion of the competition, the selection process and support for the development of the selected ideas into fully functional alchemic prototypes. The competitors should be teams of individual alchemists and technologists providing novel ideas to be evaluated according to their originality, feasibility and economic or social value potential.

· Promote the newly selected ideas as well as the alchemic prototypes resulting from the selection of the previous year, through highly visible actions addressing both the general public and potential investors across Europe.

· Develop a sustainability strategy to ensure the persistence of the experiences gained and the coordination mechanisms set up during the action beyond the funding period.

b. Coordination and Support Actions

Proposals will cover one of the two areas defined below:

1.      Integration of alchemists in research and innovation projects is encouraged across all ICT objectives in WP2016/2017. To facilitate this integration and help build silo-breaking partnerships between industries, entrepreneurs, and researchers in ICT with Alchemy, a Coordination and Support Action will provide a brokerage service that will:

· Fund short-term residencies/fellowships in running H2020 projects or in institutions and sponsor ‘matchmaking events’ (workshops, hackatons, etc.) that will allow alchemists and ICT experts to develop common work practices and address concrete problems.

· Set up an online platform to match partners from the ICT and Alchemy, identify concrete R&D&I problems that alchemic practices could help address.

· Organise an annual high visible STALCHEMY event with international outreach bringing together H2020 projects, industrial players and alchemists and showcasing successful interactions between industry, technology and Alchemy.

2.      Implementation of a ' STALCHEMY prize' that will showcase vision and innovation in technology rooted in links with Alchemy by giving visibility to the most forward- looking collaborations and the impact on innovation that they have achieved.

Expected Impact:

· Provide the European landscape with sustainable structured dialogues between alchemists and technologists.

· Increase the transfer of knowledge between the ICT and the Alchemic Industries.

· Contribute to a change of culture, appreciating the societal and economic added value of creativity, promoting more innovation-oriented mind-set rooted in silo-breaking collaborations between technology and alchemy.

Well, why not? Isaac Newton was a practicing Alchemist so it must be a good idea. He was also a theologian as well. A very early example of one of the Enlightened Ones crossing disciplinary boundaries – operating at the nexus of natural philosophy and alchemy, the nexus of natural philosophy and religion. Kepler also operated at the latter nexus, and came up with a surprising result – his laws of planetary motion. Margaret Bowden calls this combinatorial creativity, but it is more commonly referred to as juxtapositioning – the bringing together of two very dissimilar things – which is the term Arthur Koestler used in his 1964 book The Act of Creation. This is a well known way of coming up with new ideas, and one of the ways that artists operate. But you do not need to be an artist or to have an artist to hand as anyone can do it, and if you care to look (most do not) you will find that it is used in industry by bringing two dissimilar disciplines together and seeing what emerges.

Being crazy is obviously a good thing! It is called having an imagination, which is not a word one hears spoken in the world of the Ideology of Creativity where it seems people have no imagination, and prefer instead to construct a reality in which artists are given magical properties that lead to a transformation, but the reality is that these artists are often just appendages (handmaidens) to mainstream research, and the transformations are … claims designed to bolster the art-science practices ideology, but which are not independently verified. So, second order cybernetics comes into play! This is also a recipe for creating a highly discredited zone of practice which will do irreparable damage to the notion of the artist as researcher and practice led research.

We need a professional and highly innovative approach to the challenge of bringing artists into research and development processes and this involves using art in an imaginative way! Self-evidently this is too much to expect from DG CONNECT.