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.

ART and DG CONNECT: Instrumentalisation warning

Continuing from last week’s blog, I now ask this question: What part of, artists do not like to be instrumentalised, DG CONNECT, did you not understand?

Instrumentalisation – to use people as a means of achieving an end. ICT Topic 36: Boost synergies between artists, creative people and technologists – the State, in the form of the European Commission's DG CONNECT, using artists as a means of achieving their ends. This is a sinister development and a foretaste of what to expect in the future as technocrats, deluded into thinking that they know what they are doing, appropriate anything and everything in the service of the power of money. Time to resist while you still can! And if you do participate in the Tale of the Director General's new clothes, you cannot say that you were not warned! You too will stand there and proclaim that the very naked Director General is wearing the most exquisite suit of clothes. Such is the nature of self-constructed realities and collective delusion. It’s money talking! This is the corrupting nature of the Brussels bubble – and a bubble it most certainly is, full of people out-of-touch with reality, living in the past. But judging by what one also sees elsewhere in the world of STEM, they are not alone.

Instrumentalisation is wrong, but self-instrumentalisation is not, that is to say, artists leading the move and developing their practice towards the use of art for more utilitarian purposes, which they have been doing since long before DG CONNECT arrived on the scene. And there are examples and lessons to be learned from this self-instrumentalisation. If you want to know more about this, we refer you to the ICT ART CONNECT study report. And there you will find what? Read it and find out for yourselves about all the well-known examples and the lessons that can be drawn from them that were … never studied. Now why was that? Of course you may yourself not be aware of these, which is why the study report should have mentioned them, so that known problems would not be repeated. But why bother with such details when the poor taxpayer is footing the bill for DG CONNECT’s deluded adventure in wonderland.

The problem that we face is that the current drive to use art comes from people within the existing power structure and what is very clear is that they do not understand art and are just seeking to exploit it, often based upon restrictive cognitive biases, as well as STEM agendas, which lead to the positioning of art as a resource to be deployed in the service of those who hold power, i.e. those who have the money. This is often reflected in the words spoken by STEM people who advocate art-science and art-technology collaboration: it’s all about using art for communication, visualisation and, more recently creativity. This is just like the old artist-in-tow model from the 18^th and 19^th centuries – “hey sketch and paint that plant please.” This is not art. It is of often also the case that those in STEM also are engaging in image making; the remaking their own image to make themselves look more respectable. DG CONNECT serves to demonstrate the point.

The mind-set that treats art as just another way for STEM people to pursue their agendas and role as handmaidens is most definitely a subject for artistic study. There is plenary of material for satire, both of the descriptive and the plastic form. This is like finding a diamond mine!

To tolerate instrumentalisation or not to tolerate instrumentalisation, that is the question: whether it be nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them.

You might have already perceived that, in CONNECTing with STARTS, I have chosen to take arms, and my arms are the instrumentalisation DG CONNECT. Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself! So now they are being used to serve my ends …

What are these ends? What are the results? Revelation, you will find, is a slow process of discovery. But if you are artists you will already know this.

If there is to be self-instrumentalisation, then those who hold power, i.e., those with the money, will have to surrender that power and allow the arts to take charge of how that money is used. The message is clear – The European Commission, DG CONNECT, and others, they have to go. There are other means of undertaking international projects, European or otherwise. Is there anyone out there listening? Now is the moment to learn from the DG CONNECT’s nonsense and to begin to construct a different type of research and innovation system, one that is not founded in the past. Time to set Prometheus free! Skunk works!

There is more to bringing artists into ICT research and product development, than is dreamt of in DG CONNECT’s and STEM’s self-constructed and very limited reality …

And thanks to Will for allowing the use of his very elegant and poetic words, Julia xxx.

Art & DG CONNECT: The European Commission seeks artists to act as handmaidens to technologists

The European Commission, in the form of DG CONNECT, operating at the forefront of 1990s Ideology of Creativity thinking, is seeking artists to work with technologist, to bring creativity into ICT research, development and innovation processes, because DG CONNECT’s new ideology is that technologists and engineers are not creative people, which just shows how much they understand – very little. Terms and conditions most definitely apply. Most importantly, be clear that you will be a handmaiden and you should know what handmaidens are expected to do.

Terry Fenton wrote about artists as handmaidens in a 1969 paper called Two Contributions to the Art and Science Muddle: 1. Constructivism and its Confusions. Why, you might ask, is this issue still relevant in 2016? The answer is provided by John Dewey, who, around 1919, wrote this:

“Surely there is no more significant question before the world than this question of the possibility and method of reconciliation of the attitudes of practical science and contemplative aesthetic appreciation. Without the former, man will be the sport and victim of natural forces which he cannot use or control. Without the latter, mankind might become a race of economic monsters, restlessly driving hard bargains with nature and with one another, bored with leisure or capable of putting it to ostentatious display and extravagant dissipation.”

Humanity has now become that monster, and scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians have become its handmaidens. Now DG CONNECT has decided that artists must become handmaidens to the monster and help those other handmaidens in their quest to turn our planet into unconventional and compelling products, of which there are already far too many.

You will have noticed that in December 2015, the world’s politicians meeting in Paris decided that they are not going to do anything about this thing called Global Warming. Instead, they have shifted responsibility for dealing with this problem to our grandchildren, later this century. Cleverly they have reached agreement to do nothing, while being able to claim that they are doing something. So it is business as usual. And DG CONNECT are also contributing to this business as usual approach, and are appropriating art for political reasons, one of which has to do with its image and that of the European Commission.

In the report produced by the Los Angels County Art Museum concerning their Art and Technology Programme (late 60s & early 70s), they reflected on the reasons why industries participated. One of the identified reasons was companies trying to modernise their image. This is what DG CONNECT and the European Commission are doing – image making, because they have a very tarnished image and a poor track record, especially in DG CONNECT. They also do not understand very much about how to use art in research and worse, do not want to understand.

There is no such thing a view from nowhere.

Art is the way to destroy this monster (and DG CONNECT) and to begin to construct a different sort of culture – one that does not make a virtue of living life like a plague of locusts. So be aware when you join in with the STARTS circus, that you are becoming a handmaiden of the monster. And if you do join in, please become subversive, and make of DG CONNECT the fools that they are, for it is highly unlikely that they will recognise that, making them look like fools, is what you are doing. This is the power of art – artists can have very sharp teeth and can bite without those who have been bitten ever realising this.

To be continued, because what is now taking shape will be a book about STARTS …

Art and DG CONNECT – a post-action evaluation of ICT Topic 36: Boost synergies between artists, creative people and technologists!

"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 …