My token contribution if of use now is below.
Collective genius seems part of the tensions between individualism and collectivism evident in the field of Art&Design; the searcher vs the re-searcher; talented anarchic individual vs trans-disciplinary team etc. This can mirror macro political stances too eg. re-search culture in a way mirrors communistic values, whereas the search culture of the anarchic individual artist can mirror a contrary position.
Gathering people together to create emergence of 'genius' is not as easy as it might seem. The notion that a individual neural network is likely to be lesser than a network of neural networks is problematic because the assumption is that the 'connections' are seemless. They are not. As in any circuit, connections give rise to noise, breaks, interference etc. In a collection of people differences in discipline terminology, attitudes etc. can reduce a trans-disciplinary team - a network of neural networks to merely a crowd, whereas the seemless connections within a single creative neural network are super efficent, and perhaps more likely to give rise to 'genius'.
This topic is touched upon in a paper led by Dave Everitt (ref below) which highlights the need for careful composition of creative collective effort.
Alec R (with factor 20 tan!)
www.4D-Dynamics.net
EVERITT, Dave., and ROBERTSON, Alec., 'Emergence and complexity,: Some observations and reflections on trans-disciplinary research involving performative contexts and new media' in International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. Volume 3, Issue 2&3, pp.239-252, doi:10.1386/padm.3.2&3.281/1. Intellect Books. ISSN: 14794713
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Article,id=4964/
-----Original Message-----
From: yasmin_discussions-bounces@estia.media.uoa.gr on behalf of Murat Germen
Sent: Tue 18/08/2009 13:39
To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS
Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] collective genius
roger,
couple of more things that somehow should matter within the realms of
collectivity and collaboration:
- collectivity does not necessarily have a physical boundary (not a
community, neighborhood, territory, etc.), does not necessarily have a
book (biblical, regulatory, constitutional, agreements of any sort in
written form, etc.), should be highly dynamic ans does not necessarily
form a clique, clan, brotherhood, fraternity, guild, society, union,
nation, civilization. this is why i love internet collectivity; the
first reason you are involved in a collective is very basic: you have
internet connection. the rest depends on your interests and your ability
to turn this into physical communication whenever possible and/or needed.
- a collective could be the "array of arrays" that are composed dynamic
definitions / coincidences / overlaps / concurrences / intersections /
convergences / etc. it is, in a way, a center of equal peripheries with
no center:) i did not know the great quote from the great marcel
duchamp, thanks for bringing it up: "... the artist is part of a larger
system in which his or her conscious intention forms a small part ..."
this is sort of what i mean by "center of equal peripheries with no center."
best,
murat
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On 17.08.2009 06:09, roger malina wrote:
> Murat
>
> I found interesting your IMECE connection and checked out the
> interesting web site for the event in turkey this october
>
> http://www.imece2009.anadolu.edu.tr/index.php?dil=en&icerik=konu
>
> "" Furthermore, it foregrounds certain concepts naturally available in
> "imece" practice such as solidarity, collaboration, experience
> sharing, common production, interaction and common use of public
> places in terms of their contribution to development of creativity. ""
>
>
> I think you make a good point about scale differences between
> collaborations , which usually involve smaller
> number of people, and collectives which can provide shared resources
> and infrastructurer for much larger
> communities of practice
>
> i just came across several interesting articles in the fall 2008 issue
> of Art Journal
> vol 67 nos: http://www.collegeart.org/artjournal/fall2008
>
> From Space to Environment: The Origins of Kankyo and the Emergence of
> Intermedia Art in Japan / Yoshimoto, Midori
>
> The Public Sensoriums of Pulsa: Cybernetic Abstraction and the
> Biopolitics of Urban Survival / McKee, Yates 46-67
>
> Steps to an Ecology of Communication: Radical Software, Dan Graham,
> and the Legacy of Gregory Bateson / Kaizen, William
>
>
> The first , by Midori Yoshimoto, about the japanese
> collective/collaboration describes the 1966 exibition involving 38
> artists who worked
> together to mount two exhibitions under the name of the Environment Society
>
> Pulsa was an american collective that exibited "unrestricted public
> experiments to redefine the urban environment ' ib boston and other
> cities in the eastern usa and their work is described in the text by
> Yates Mckee
>
> the third text ,(authored by william kaisen),includes some interesting
> discussion of the interaction of the media activist magazine radical
> software( the article discussses people such as frank gilette, paul
> ryan beryl korot,dan graham) but of relevance to our yasmin discussion
> a panel at
> the 1957 american federation of arts meeting in houston which included
> a panel with rudolf arnheim, stuart davis, marcel duchamp and
> particularly relevant gregory bateson
>
> the article quotes bateson : that he gives up any notion of man,
> redefining the self as an expanded mental
> field ...with the mind no longer bound by the invidual body..a
> conjunction of self and world produced through
> communication ecologies" which refers nicely back to the early posts
> on this YASMIN discussion
> ( even though bateson was talking 52 years ago !)
>
> and from marcel duchamp: "..the artist is part of a larger system in
> which his or her conscious intention forms
> a small part"...
>
> these discussions were of course all taking place in the same period
> as the macy cybernetics conferences
>
> a relevant comment is that art history, with its emphasis on
> individual creators/art market mechanisms= finds
> its difficult to give appropriate treatment to group and collective
> work= and as pointed out by frieder nake in
> a later issue of art journal= even in the case of E.A.T we tend to
> reemmber the names of individual artists
> (rauschenberg etc) and billy kluver of course, but the rest of the
> collective disappears in anonymity=- and
> even current artists whose work results from close and crucial
> collaboration with engineers often do not
> credit the engineers as co creators of the work.
>
> the problem with the concept of genius is that it is so tied to
> particular ways of writing art history
> that its perhaps hard to extend the concept to radical innovation
> arising from art-science or
> art-technology collaborations
>
> roger
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Murat Germen<muratgermen@sabanciuniv.edu>
> Date: Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 3:52 AM
> Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] collective genius
> To: Kerry Tunstall<hvkerry@gmail.com>, YASMIN DISCUSSIONS
> <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
>
>
> let me add one more cent so that we can jump to odd and/or prime numbers:)
>
> collaboration and collectivity are not the same thing. the scale /
> number of people involved in a collaboration is usually less than what
> you would expect in a collective act. in addition, collaboration does
> not always involve a good deed;
>
> there is one notion called "imece" in the traditional turkish culture
> which generically means collective labor. below is a link that tries
> to define the notion in english:
> http://www.imece2009.anadolu.edu.tr/index.php?dil=en&icerik=index
>
> and a quotation from mehmet kucukozer's paper:
> "Another concept that promoted village solidarity was imece, or
> "community project," as Delaney defines it (152). Mainly women engaged
> in cooperatives but this depended on the project, which could take
> various forms: pooling money for cooperative construction of
> infrastructure; helping members of the village community who were in
> need (such as relatives from the city when they run out of money, or
> taking in their children during the summers); and organizing sporting
> and social events. [...] Imece indicates the emphasis placed in
> Turkish culture on maintaining the harmony of the social group,
> whether the family or its extension, the village. Jenny White's (2002)
> ethnographic work of a poor migrant district of Istanbul illustrates
> how [...] imece continued to be the basis of social networking in the
> city and provided a foundation for horizontal political organizing,
> mainly among women." (from "Civil Society: A Proposed Analytical
> Framework For Studying its Development Using Turkey as a Case Study"
> mehmet kucukozer paper, p.21, UNIVERSITA' DEGLI STUDI DI MESSINA
> Facoltà di Scienze Politiche Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica,
> Matematica e Sociologia "Pareto")
> reference for Delaney: Delaney, Carol. "Traditional Modes of Authority
> and Co-operation," pp. 140-155. In Culture and Economy: Changes in
> Turkish Villages (ed. Paul Stirling). Hemingford, UK: Eothen Press,
> 1993.
> reference for white: White, Jenny B. Islamist Mobilization in Turkey:
> A Study in Vernacular Politics.Seattle,Wash.: University of Washington
> Press, 2002.
>
> i
>
> best,
> murat
>
> <<< +90 532 473 8970 (gsm mobile)
> <<< http://www.muratgermen.com
> <<< http://www.flickr.com/photos/muratgermen/
> <<< http://muratgermen.wordpress.com/
> <<< http://www.camgaleri.com/en/sanatci.aspx?id=27
>
>
>
> On 14.08.2009 23:58, Kerry Tunstall wrote:
>
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