ICT, Art and STARTS: Art lesson – DG CONNECT’s advice on involving artists in research programmes

Based on DG CONNECT’s experience of ICT ART CONNECT and STARTS, this is how you involve artists in research programmes:

For this recipe you will need a failing institution that pays lip service to fiduciary responsibilities, and is willing to spend public money as part of it image making political agenda, e.g. the European Commission, represented by DG CONNECT, and its ICT research programme. You will also need some willing accomplices, who are either unaware of what you are doing or do not care. Important to this mixture are technocrats with an interest in art, but who do not know a lot, for a little knowledge is most certainly always a dangerous thing. Add to this list of ingredients a pre-determined agenda and some words about being open and willing to listen and to learn, accompanied by the body language that makes clear that this is not the case. Also important are the following ingredients: neo-liberalism; a failing European economy; and a bureaucracy that needs to justify its own existence, even at the price of Europe’s economic wellbeing. Disregard the conflicts that these imply.

Now for the secret ingredient – political pressure from several sources demanding change, which will plant in your mind the notion of sucking from the arts, in a parasitic way, the credibility and kudos that they still retain, for on the whole, artists have not yet sold themselves to the power of money. This is obviously now in the process of changing as STEM people exercise their hegemony over research funding, and begin to bring the arts to bear on addressing their traditional agendas.

Optional at this point is trying to make yourself seem knowledgeable by referring to that technocrat called CP Snow – disregard the all the critiques of this man and his poorly informed simplistic opinions, which were just the product of a reductive mind (part of the problem).

Mix the above together and cook very slowly over many years. Make much noise! At some point in the cooking process add a special study which seeks to explore predefined themes such as using art to embed technology more gracefully in society. Make sure that the study is undertaken by people who are not going to be excluded from participating in the Call for proposals that you already know will result, when the topic you have already decided upon is included in the work programme – then set-up an advisory group on the same basis. Whatever you do, you must not involve the ICT industry. Disregard all previous relevant activities that have been undertaken over the past 20 years. Take advantage of those allegedly morally corrupt relationships that the former Chief Scientific Advisor to a former President of the European Commission identified as existing between the European Commission and the experts that it uses. Moral corruption in the form of conflicts of interest, and a desire to obtain public money, are wonderful at delivering that which you want. Whatever you do during the cooking, do not apply due diligence procedures to verify that what you have cooked is indeed the dish that is needed, otherwise you will not be able to eat that which you have already determined is going to be on your menu.

When you find that there is no evidence to support your sole truth, do not worry. The last thing you should do when you have dug yourself into a deep hole is to stop digging. Carry on digging regardless and START making random quotes taken from miscellaneous artists. Drop in a few buzzwords, like trans-disciplinary, and refer to issues addressed in the 1990s, like silos. Few, like yourself, will know what you are talking about, so you have little to worry about. Refer to Steve Jobs and Apple, but whatever you do, do not understand what he was saying back in 1996 about the liberal arts. Do not find out how Apple, and many other companies in the ICT sector (including the European ones), who produce consumer-facing products, go about developing their products.

Once the cooking is complete, enjoy the consequences, for when you sow the wind, you will mostly certainly reap the whirlwind. But you are a European, and a technocrat, so you do not understand this.

And for those of you in the European Parliament – is it not about time that you took action to stop these types of technocratic and morally corrupt practices? Surely it is time to do something about the problem that is DG CONNECT? And now you also know why there are people in the UK who want to leave the EU – it’s a choice between technocracy (remain a member) and democracy (leave), and the main argument for remaining is about money – the power of money once again!

ICT, Art and STARTS: Hacking DG CONNECT’s STARTS through ICT ART CONNECT DISCONNECT

ICT ART CONNECT (or STARTS) is something we have been following, monitoring and analysing since 2013, and on our web site we have archived most of the public-domain material to ensure that it is available for use by art historians and anyone else who wishes to make use of it, e.g. research funding agencies who want to avoid the catalogue of incompetence and unethical conduct that is DG CONNECT’s STARTS initiative. Unlike DG CONNECT, all those other public research funding agencies that may have an interest in deploying art in STEM related research, will be constrained in their actions by fiduciary responsibility, and will have to exercise due diligence. This is one of the motivations for our hacking activities – why make any mistakes when DG CONNECT has made them all so that you do not have to! We also have other objectives.

This hacking, we have given a name – we call it ICT ART CONNECT DISCONNECT.

The hacking of ICT ART CONNECT (and STARTS) means the creative misuse of ICT ART CONNECT as part of a larger process of developing something known as Art Practice as Research with a view to developing it into something that can fundamentally change Western science and as well as achieving something that we call innovating of the innovation process. We observe artists working with STEM people and note what they say, claim, and so forth. Interesting, but not in the sense that they would mean!

We learned long ago however that transforming Western STEM, is one of the greatest heresies that anyone can utter in the modern, so-called, but, in reality, not very, Enlightened world. But we care not. In fact it serves our purpose very well to create these subjective and irrational emotional responses – this, after all, is one of the things that art can do. And bringing the subjective, the irrational and also the spiritual into Western STEM is what we are about. How are you feeling now?

ICT ART DISCONNECT is also part of the process we are undertaking to develop something we term scriptovisualism – this has clear links to feminist art for sure, but we go far beyond what this term originally meant. Probably we will not however be saying much further about this for the time being. It will be the subject of further books.

And as the results of this hack begin to be, exposed

The pieces of the jigsaw, long hung, unplaced and, unused

Begin to assemble themselves as though by guiding, hand

Into a theory that DG CONNECT will never, understand.

We are being too theoretical once again. Of course we are, because theory is everything and not just art and literary theory, but other theories as well. Theory provides a cross-disciplinary explanation, theory provides the basis for an interdisciplinary transfer from one field to another, but most importantly, theory provides the keys to open the doors to transcendence – transcending disciplines to create the transformational ...

ICT, Art and STARTS: DG CONNECT’s delusions and the new artist-led company called the Ideology of Creativity Inc.

Following on from our article on those unconventional and compelling products that special people called artists are going to create for DG CONNECT, Julia and Paul, the highly schizophrenic artist-technologist pairing, are proud to announce the launch of their new commercial venture which will be known as Ideology of Creativity Inc. This is an artist-led company dedicated to making the dreams of technocrats come true, by pandering to their delusions through the use of art to solve all those deficits that explain Europe’s declining economic situation – explain that is, only if you are caught-up in the STEM way of knowing the world and creating reality which is very Ancient Greek in its orientation (patriarchal; elitist; disparaging towards manual work; intolerant of that which does not conform with the normal; contemptuous towards people who are not Hellenic (those people otherwise known by the Ancient Greeks as the untermenschen that were the barbarians); inclined towards achieving genetic purity through the practice of eugenics implemented through infanticide ... ).

Together we will innovate at the nexus of science, technology and the arts. We will create business models for art-technology collaborations, invent and use common work practices to develop unconventional and compelling new products, navigate the valley of death, and participate in START competitions in the quest to win one of those truly amazing and much sought after prizes – it remains to be seen it they mean cash in our pockets with no strings attached!

We have identified many areas where our very special products can be used to address deficits. We will be presenting our first product launch in the coming months. We can guarantee that our first product will save research funding agencies millions in unnecessary expenditure of public money on art-technology collaborations, for we have truly found a world beating solution, a panacea, to the creativity deficit. Watch this space for details of this astonishing silver bullet –this amazingly unconventional and compelling product!

Julia and Paul

ICT, Art and STARTS: DG CONNECT and those unconventional and compelling products

“Hi Julia, I see you have a book there about art, science and technology.”

“Hi Paul xxx. Yes, indeed I do.”

“Art + Science Now: How scientific research and technological innovation are becoming key to 21^st century aesthetics, by Stephen Wilson. What's it about?”

“Well Paul, it's full of pictures and short descriptions of art made with science and technology.”

“So it's also full of unconventional and compelling products?”

“No Paul, it is not. It's full of what could be art. Whether all is art is impossible to say, but it's a book about art, because that's what artists do – make art. They do not, in general, create unconventional and compelling products, for such things are part of world known as design, unless you think of the work of artists like Jeff Koons in that sort of way.”

“I see that Arduino is one of the art objects included. Surely that's an unconventional and compelling product. The book says that this was developed by an international consortium of artists.”

“Well it's certainly used by artists, but also by maker communities, which are not necessarily the same thing.”

“And home hobbyists as well.”

"Yes, but the statement that it was developed by an international consortium of artists does not exactly tally with what is said elsewhere, for example in the book Participation is Risky. In that book the authors say that it was developed at an Interaction Design Institute in Northern Italy that teaches design students in new emerging fields of design intersecting with computer science and engineering. The teachers faced a problem that available programming boards were expensive and exoteric with difficult to learn programming languages. So they developed their own programming board.”

“That word again – design! And the relationship between art and design! A matter worth exploring at some future time, I think.”

“Yes Paul, design, not art, but as you say, a relationship worth exploring! And by CONNECTING with organisations like the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art, DG CONNECT could have ... Well we will never know that they could have done. The desire to reconstruct their image was everything, hence the CONNECTION with art, and DG CONNECT once again damage European industry at taxpayers' expense.

 “So Paul, back to Arduino, and its development by academics to teach their students. A plausible explanation?”

“It is certainly plausible Julia, for academics often do that – they are a maker community too! I have seen this is several university engineering departments. And of course in this specific case there is now a dispute among the founders about ownership of the Arduino name, and the issue of the rather underhand way that one of them registered it without telling the others.”

“Indeed. Not exactly a paragon of openness, open innovation, and open-source.”

"So, Julia, Raspberry Pi! That too is an unconventional and compelling product created by artists?”

"Why not, because it seems we are now in the realms of all sorts of nonsense and fantasy, thanks to DG CONNECT, and we are now entering that zone of discredited practice. It will set back the serious participation of artists in research by decades.”

“Certainly in the West it will. I know too well what the reaction will be in US funding agencies. But there are new players in the game now, with different rules.”

“You mean countries like China and India?”

“Yes Julia I do. These are not like the Vainglorious Enlightened Ones, and they know full well that most people in the Western world do not understand their cultures, or respect them or value them. So these non-European cultures have the potential to become a competitive weapon that can be used to unleash the forces of creative destruction again the West.”

“So Paul, we live in interesting times!”

ICT, Art and STARTS: DG CONNECT, art-science, art-technology and POWAQQATSI

From the film POWAQQATSI:

po.waq.qa.tsi (from the Hopi language, powaq sorcerer + qatsi life) n., an entity, a way of life, that consumes the life forces of other beings in order to further its own life.

This is what DG CONNECT, what scientists, what technologists will try to do to art – they will try to consume it to further their own ideology and dogma. It has already STARTED … The SEADs are sown … The process is STEAMing ahead.

STEM driven art-science/art-technology practices: STEM consuming art to further its own life – POWAQQATSI.

And while they go about consuming life forces, do you think that they are going to be paying artists at STEM salary rates?

We will show those who are still able to listen how to do something completely different, but this thing that we reveal, it will be a heresy to those from the Western world, but not to those of the mysterious East.

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 ...