REM v.2 n.2 December 2010

REM

Research on Education and Media

vol. 2, no.

2

December 2010

SIX-MONTHLY JOURNAL

Erickson

vol. 2, no.

2

December 2010

SIX-MONTHLY JOURNAL

REM

Research on Education and Media

Erickson

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REM Research on Education and Media The magazine is published twice per year (hard-copy in Italian and online in English).

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Subscriptions office Tel. 0461 950690 Fax 0461 950698 info@erickson.it The Review is registred by the Court of Trento at number 1388, 19/06/2009 ISSN: 2037-0849 Editor in Chief Pier Cesare Rivoltella

Editor in Chief Pier Cesare Rivoltella Scientific Committee Ignacio Aguaded Gómez (Universidad de Huelva) Andrew Burn (London University) Ulla Carlsson (Göteborg University) Maria D’Alessio (Sapienza Università di Roma) Thierry De Smedt (Université de Louvain) Luciano Galliani (Università di Padova) Walter Geerts (Univerisiteit Antwerpen) Pierpaolo Limone (Università di Foggia) Laura Messina (Università di Padova) Mario Morcellini (Sapienza Università di Roma) Nelson Pretto (Universidade da Bahia) Vitor Reia-Baptista (Universidade do Algarve) Mario Ricciardi (Politecnico di Torino) Pier Cesare Rivoltella (Università Cattolica di Milano) Luisa Santelli Beccegato (Università di Bari) Jeffrey T. Schnapp (Stanford University) Editor Mario Ricciardi

Referral process Each article is anonymously submitted to two anonymous referees. Only articles for which both referees will express a positive judgment will be accepted. The referees evaluations will be communicated to the authors, including guidelines for changes. In this case, the authors are required to change their submissions according to the referees guidelines.

Articles not modified in accordance with the referees guidelines will not be accepted.

Secretary Alessandra Carenzio, CREMIT, Largo Agostino Gemelli, 1 - 20123 Milano.

Tel.: (0039) 02-72343038 Fax: (0039) 02-72343040 E-mail: rem@educazionemediale.it Note to the Authors Submissions are to be sent, as MS Word files, to the email address of the Secretary: rem@educazionemediale.it Further information about submission and writing-up can be found at www. erickson.it/rem Editorial office Roberta Tanzi Layout Loretta Oberosler Graphic design Giordano Pacenza Licia Zuppardi Cover Davide Faggiano

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INDEX

Editorial A house for the mind Mario Ricciardi

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5

Dossier: locative media Locative media: Patrolling the City Centered Festival Giulia Bertone

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15

Locative remediation: Connecting space and place, data and narratives Giulia Bertone

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49

Pervasive memory, locative narratives Gianni Corino, Duncan Shingleton and Chris Speed

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December 2010

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59

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71

Reification of data Mike Phillips and Chris Speed

Studies and researches: Creativity

SIX-MONTHLY JOURNAL

Crisis and clouds: New frontiers for the creative industries Massimo Riva

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85

Some initial observations on the EU Green Paper Yvon Thies

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97

Creativity and cultures: Towards a 6th C for UNESCO World Heritage policies?

Paola Borrione, Aldo Buzio and Alessio Re

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107

Reconsidering the concept of the “creative city�: Theory and reality in Japan Emiko Kakiuchi

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121

The creative professions: How the journalistic figure changes Chiara Migliardi

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143

Interviews Interview to Pierre Jean Benghozi Aldo Buzio

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157

Interview to Allen J. Scott Aldo Buzio

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EDITORIAL

REM – A house for the mind Introduction This issue of REM is dedicated to two themes: – locative media and the Internet of Things – the creative industries.

Locative media is a new topic in the Italian survey and represents projects and heterogeneous cultural positions, focusing on the idea of a renewed relationship between the practice of the web technologies and the evolution of the Internet society, and recovering a refreshed and direct connection with the territory through the participation of local communities.

Creativity, on the other hand, is a topic which has always been spoken and argued about. In this issue of R.E.M. it is seen in relation to the economic crisis. Creativity is at risk because of disintegration and impoverishment mechanisms, driven by the crisis itself; at the same time it represents a new chance for the innovation processes driven by the creative industries themselves.

A house for the mind Locative media and the Internet of Things (or of objects) are labels representing scenarios in movement, with an obvious composite nature but emblematic of trends that creep into the present situation. They may represent a paradigm shift that has its starting point in the computing and technological revolution originated in the second half

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EDITORIAL REM – A house for the mind

of the last century. The key points are: the criticism of the computational science and therefore of the pair computing/ information and the research of a form of reconcilement to bridge what is considered a gap: the distance, almost the origin of two parallel worlds, that is the network, or the ether, and the “real” life. This is the reason why both technological and social-focused turning points, based on interpersonal relationships inside a community, are dealt with in a resolute way.

The spread of the ubiquitous computing model is the starting point since it emphasizes an ever-present activity in the Internet era to the point of conferring on objects, labelled and enriched with Information Technology, a new active function, a spirit and a sensitiveness such that they can actively and autonomously communicate with individuals, opening up a dialogue and an unprecedented relationship.

The use of labels and the mechanisms of localization are a direct consequence of this. According to the positions of those who have greater theoretical ambitions, this movement means the beginning of a phase of great commitment. It actually aims to offer its own contribution to a change in the relection upon (as well as in the practice of) the relationship between humans (present-day humans) and the two worlds, the information one, determined by information technologies, and the physical one, where and through which our experience unfolds.

No matter how they are categorized or deined, localization technologies provide a link between two worlds, the digital world of data and the physical one, on both global and local scales. However, as it is possible to see also in the articles published on this issue of REM, the projects connected to locative media not only address the “location”, the “where/ here”, but act to re-build and re-establish the context.

The embedded technologies and information are the factor that permits objects to be enriched with a spirit and endowed with information, input and output which can satisfy the different and changeable forms of humans, whether they be users, consumers, spectators, visitors.

Nowadays the term “pervasive” is a synonym of ubiquitous computing. Thus, by using the term “pervasive” we conirm

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EDITORIAL REM – A house for the mind

its similarity with orality. Just like air, computation is distributed immaterially in the space and, as speech, it is incorporated in the human mind, and in the same way it is incorporated in objects, places and the human body.

The initial premise of personal computers was that every necessary thing had to be stored locally. From there, computers on a network started to build a “global” environment, in which all necessary information could be accessed universally on the internet. What is remarkable here is that this information on the net is perceived as totally dematerialized. Therefore common sense was driven to adopt the perception that this world of networks, by its nature and by the very experience that it induces, is a dematerialized world, i.e. another or a parallel world when compared to the material one. The production processes for the infrastructures that are necessary for the functioning and the eficiency of the networks have remained hidden.

Locative information technology goes further this notion, allowing you to take the Internet with you out into the real world, making every place accessible through a serious of devices. When we observe what can be described as “thing centred computing” in the context of an Internet of Things, we begin thinking of a world where the information we want to access, and the relationships we want to form, are not only based on the location where we are, but more increasingly, on the objects which are around us. These project ambitions transcend the simple “translation” of physical spaces and social relationships in igures. They aim at the “transformation” of space and time forms in human experiences.

To set these ambitions in a wider theoretical form, let’s take into account some theoretical passages, whose underlying content is here disclosed. It is above all the criticism to the widely spread opinion that computing is a science produced exclusively by the mind. Since Turing, the mind has been what guarantees the existence of computational science but, in the same way, even when it develops in an application science and technology such as computer science, computation redeines and enhances the role of the mind.

It is a mind that has been separated from its body and that has lost its link with the surrounding environment and

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EDITORIAL REM – A house for the mind

background, that is our daily life, our certain and clearlydeined experiences.

The mind has become enormously enlarged and dramatically spiritualized: a human with a tiny, thin, bony, slender body without energy and without “manifest” sexuality, with an enormous head and hyper-developed intelligence and cognitive abilities. The reaction to all this is the embodiment and also the recurrence to a clearlydeined territory. The mind is pushed to take its old position together with the other senses in a “re-embodied” body, that is materialized as it is in nature.

It is a second, third nature … to be all built with new perspectives, without wasting the huge progress that the Internet and the augmented reality model have represented and still represent.

To simplify, the idea of computing mind is opposed to the idea of alphabetic mind, as stated by Havelock. The computing mind is a one-sided mind, bound to a data ideology and to the one-to-one model (binary code, Von Neumann). In its most recent and aggressive version this kind of mind has been couched by Nicholas Negroponte in Being Digital.1 To testify the ultimate digital afirmation, Negroponte opposes the new world of bits to the obsolete world of atoms.

The alphabetic mind opens to a cultural revolution, even if it reduces richness in the orality world and ties human intelligence to the logical-sequential model.

The reaction in the positions of Locative media can be detected, simply, in the search for a place of identity and steadiness regarding lows and, most importantly, in the opposition of place and body on the one hand and mind and ether lows on the other; it can also be seen as a repair of the wrench between the cyber world, totally disenchanted with the earth and totally enchanted with the blogsphere, and the world of daily life, the world that belongs to us and that we can experience directly everyday. In contrast to the spell of all the facilitations that technologies would offer in cyberspace relationships, what is here proposed is to ind again a direct and real relationship with true reality, our

1

Negroponte N. (1995). Being Digital. New York: Albert Knopf.

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EDITORIAL REM – A house for the mind

daily life world. In this way it is also clear that cyberspace is not only an intellectual or artistic enchantment, but also that it is strongly supported by powerful economic and market interests.

The common objective of the works presented at the San Francisco conference is to re-establish a positive sense of living and, together, keep on going towards complexity, enrichment and augmenting.

A new path has opened that suggests a non-violent and non-radical paradigm shift; it does not want to deny the Internet society, the digital society, even if it has to register the ravage, the impoverishment and the crisis originated by the violence of globalization processes.

Resistance to globalization is expressed in the opposition between the world of things, that is the real world, and those globalization effects that remain engraved in the collective imaginary. It is a criticism to globalization as a process of disorientation and eradication, spread through network and visual technologies. It is a way of drawing off from the domination of inance over economy with its availability of unveriiable and incessant cash lows which is at the origin of the huge and increasing inequality: great wealth has been accumulated in short time while serious impoverishment puts strain on the middle class, beginning from the United States. The main vehicle proposing images which lead many people to believe in the possibility to get rich quickly through an easy borrowing promoted by banks is virtualization, i.e. that world of appearance, above all of television media, in which the reality of blood, wars and destruction is communicated and dematerialized to the point that it becomes a consumer good in an anaesthetized form (loss of reality).

Disorientation is contrasted by the revival of the place and by new forms of reappropriation of the location in which you can have new experiences. This reaction to deceptions or lying promises of a world where you can get easily rich through a naĂŻve use of communication technologies does not deny the direct interaction, on the contrary, wants to maintain it. The opportunity these media offer to connect in a domestic and universal way with anyone and anywhere, also in the ubiquitous form (that is always with us and

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EDITORIAL REM – A house for the mind

among us) has to be preserved. A new domain has opened, an unprecedented and potentially far richer form compared to the traditional forms of socialization.

It is a research on the depth and complexity of social relationships, and in it more stress is given to relationships and inter-relationships among subjects, to the value of private life and close relationships. In globalization, the boundaries of what is localized, that is our located experience, seem to disappear in boundless, frictionless lows, paths and crossings, but in the end they prove necessary in order to preserve our identity. A little resistance, a little friction, some restrictions and some limits are good for human beings.

Invisible worlds and latent stories The power of narration Depth rediscovers latency (what is unexpressed, repressed and invisible) and what belongs to one’s own experience (above all everyday life) that does not leak out onto the stage of common life and public relations. In this way a complex and rich view of social relationships can be developed. The opportunity is given by a critical path that stresses the limitations of information concept of data, of the bit considered as the representative element of the complexity of communication and of both humanenvironment and intra-human relations. From a social point of view this means considering what is below the surface.

Latency, on the other hand, is what draws our attention. It is not an accident that Michel de Certeau’s work plays a signiicant role in this study and research area. Freudian terminology resufarces here, but its “revolutionary impact” is attenuated and is made conciliatory in its more aggressive and radical aspects. For example the concepts of trauma and of repressed content, repression and suppression are played down.

In this perspective narration offers a peculiar occasion to restore what has been torn apart by social and cultural disintegration processes caused by globalization. Evil is even deeper than poverty, squalor, moral, social and

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EDITORIAL REM – A house for the mind

cultural decay in big slices of the middle class: it is an evil that penetrates in the depths of personal cultures, corrodes the roots of identity, breaks up social groups, thus depriving them of their deep raison d’être.

An experience that is relected upon and narrated, on the other hand, builds a web of bonds that are authentically social and that restore really lived events, which were obscured by networks and the power they have when it comes to communications and establishing immediate relationships.

The ideal time and space of narration can solve the conlict between immediacy, which is a perception caused by media, in their turn boosted by network technologies, and the research for an individual and social space (above all of local community). This is the space where common stories and life experiences can occur and become what they are just because they are narrated. Story-telling reopens social and public spaces. Invisible people and latent things are given voice again: either the poor or the middle class, which is already technologically equipped and socially at risk because of globalization. The hypothesis of the relative indifference to one’s birthplace, and therefore to the underestimation of bonds or chains that can limit and become a cage for the whole life, is opposed with the idea that it is necessary to explore again the place pertaining to our localized and limited life experience. The possible experience can re-emerge and recover a meaning within a circle of social bonds, which are restored using localcommunities-oriented technologies. Storytelling and tales contribute to rebuilding non-confrontational relationships using the complexity and richness of language.

We have two levels: the disclosure and communication of the complexity that goes beyond the simple transmission and processing of a datum (which is the computing technology limit) and the social value revival of the connection and cohesion of narrative forms, especially those which are not part of the canon but belong to real life experiences. Once they are brought to life, made visible, they automatically originate social relationships. The chosen ield is real life, daily events, located experiences; personal narration exploits accessability and availability

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of resources and public to escape the bonds of mass media monopoly.

Can personal narrations compete with the big business, generated by the favourable opportunity of the renewed use of cultural contents in the net, through geo-referentiality?

From Google to Facebook to Yahoo, the geo-localization is nowadays the direction computing giants are pointing to.

A typical conlict of the past century is repeated: on the one hand the cultural actions from below, i.e. the underground ones, and, on the other, the economic and cultural power that concentrates on monopolies.

Even geo-referentiality is inevitably a business, as happened for the pioneering Internet.

Here, in this dilemma, the relection and the analysis of the role of creative industries it in as it is clear through Massimo Riva’s and Yvon Thiec’s contributions.

In the twentieth century the relection of the great scholars who studied mass communication and cultural industry leads to an unsolvable dilemma.

Let’s start with Innis, McLuhan’s mentor, and his deinition of a monopoly. Innis, an economist, considers essential the passage from a monopolist concentration of a raw material economy to a monopoly of knowledge and therefore of the immaterial economy, that is cultural and communication industry. The monopoly in this case does not only represent the power of ownership but also the power of control and consequently of manipulation of individuals as well as of their souls and customs. The monopolist of the industrial economy has power over material life and its needs and hence can inluence opinions and consent.

According to Adorno (the irst one to use with a strong critical vigour the term cultural industry), if instead economic power is extended to the whole society and occupies not only the space of primary, elementary needs but also the space and time of consciences and free time, then this is what can happen: Culture now impresses the same stamp on everything. […]

Films, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part. Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth [is] that they are just business. […]

Automobiles, bombs, and movies keep the whole thing together

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EDITORIAL REM – A house for the mind

until their leveling element shows its strength in the very wrong which it furthered. 2 Regressive listeners behave like children. Again and again, and with stubborn malice, they demand the one dish they have been served.3

Innis looks at the crisis of the Weimar Republic, at the dramatic processes of collective impoverishment, at an inlation which destroys household savings. In this context not only the possession (ownership) of material goods is at stake, but also the control of information, of signs and symbols of the power itself and therefore of citizens’ daily life.

The demolition of class barrier, for example the monopoly of information starting from basic education and literacy, can open a great space to democratic public opinion and to emancipation processes, but historically it opens the space to plebiscitary power and totalitarian society”.4

Authoritarianism and monopoly: one commands over personality, over the “total” individual, the other commands over economy and life system, i.e. humans’ needs. From command and ownership we move towards control and manipulation.

Nowadays is it possible, with respect to a global economic crisis which is capable to destroy both individual wealth and social relationships, to ind an escape from this dilemma typical of the twentieth century society?

Is the existence of a creative industry which acts as a development and innovation engine possible or cultural industry always means standardization? Do social networks and the new network economy create the conditions for new forms of productivity on large scale capable of

2

3

4

Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T.W. (1947). Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische Fragmente. Amsterdam: Querido (eng trans.: Dialectic of enlightenmen, New York: Herder and Herder, 1972).

Adorno, T.W. (1958). Über den Fetischcharakter in der Musik und die Regression desHörens. In Dissonanzen. Musik in der verwalteten Welt. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (eng. trans.: On the fetish-character in music and the regression of listening in the essential frankfurt school reader, edited

by Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1982).

Innis, H. (1951). The bias of communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

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EDITORIAL REM – A house for the mind

generating richness and then being new forms of industrial productivity?

Is there any actual possibility to start a path which can modify, as stated by Jenkins, the igure of the passive consumer, i.e. an anonymous terminal of processes determined by monopolies, whose possibilities of interaction and involvement are null? A signiicant space for the research and the relection about the relationship between creativity and productivity is thus opened. The same is true in respect to the relation between the creative industries and innovation, the character of social network productivity and the value of dabblers, fans, ousiders (without rules, quality and canon).

These are the main underlying issues in the renewed debates and uneasiness raised by Jaron Lanier.

The contrast between the hive mind and the free, individual creativity brings us back to the criticism of the computing mind as a one-sided mind and of the cult of data objectivity as a unique pivot of information lows. Seely Brown’s hope to catch the creativity in the leeting moment of its maximum and most eficient expression is based on the dynamics of creative groups and élites that underline dynamism and frailty at the same time. It is the wave, the lows that rule. We have to meet them at their highest point; the individual has to swim in these oceans without drowning, without being carried away by the indiscriminate and increasing amount of data and information.

Mario Ricciardi Politecnico di Torino

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vol. 2, no. 2 December 2010

Dossier: Locative media

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Locative media: Patrolling the City Centered Festival Giulia Bertone

ABSTRACT

Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 – 10129 Torino. E-mail: giulia.bertone@polito.it

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The “City Centered, a Festival on locative media and urban community” was held this year, in June, in San Francisco. The Festival is the most recent and relevant occasion to compare different approaches in locative media research and it is here used to examine some issues related to the emergence of locative media as one of the most creative and innovative experiences in the digital contemporary culture.

Starting from the “City Centered”, this paper gives an overview of locative media experiences, analysing the way these projects interpret the themes of creativity, the relationship with communities and the complexity of places in an embodied and post-desktop technological frame. Rather than suggest labels and deinitions, I try to explore locative media experiences in relation to some trends and signiicant turns that characterize digital media culture today.

This analysis refers to information and data collected through direct observation of the projects exhibited at the Festival and the analysis of its documents (the summary description of the projects, the Festival call,1 and the website). 2 In order to integrate and support these sources, interviewswith some observers of locative surveys, selected on the grounds of their representativeness, have been completed.

In particular: – Leslie Rule,3 director of Digital Media division, at KQED Center, Festival organizer. She has been prominent within all aspects of the

The Festival call is available at: http://www.gaffta.org/wp/wp-uploads/2009/11/city-centered-rfp.pdf [last visited: 25-08-2010].

See: http://www.citycentered.org and http://www.gaffta.org/ [last visited: 25-08-2010].

Leslie Rule runs KQED’s Digital Storytelling Initiative in San Francisco, focusing on education and community outreach. She is also co-director of the Center for Locative Media, a non-profit organization for research and implementation of location-based new media and emerging technology projects. Over the last 10 years, Rule developed a nationally recognized teacher-training program for the American

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REM – vol. 2, no. 2, December 2010

Festival and its organization and for studying in depth of the connection between locative media and community; – Paula Levine,4 professor at San Francisco University and locative artist. Her contribution has been crucial for a more academic view on the theoretical implications connected to locative media, particularly on the subjects of narrative ad mapping.

– Jeremy Hight,5 artist and locative theorist, founder of narrative archaeology. He assisted in digging deeper into the connection

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Film Institute, taught new media storytelling at the College of San Mateo, and served as an educational technologist in middle and high schools. Currently she is moving her storytelling practice out of the lab and into the street. Delving into place-based story creation to investigate what happens when people tell stories of, for, by, about, and in their communities. She is exploring narrative archeology and place-based storytelling as it begins to find form through emerging technologies. As an expert on digital storytelling, locative media, and place-based narrative, she was a founding member and sat on the executive board of the Digital Storytelling Association. Also a founding member of the International Association for Mobile Learning, Rule is on the advisory board of ourmedia.org. She has spoken at numerous conferences, seminars and festivals, and trained over 2,500 new media storytellers around the world. Recent projects using mobile devices and emerging technologies include “Tagging the Blues Trail” in the Mississippi Delta for NBPC’s new media institute, a three-square-block “soundscape” located in the Mission District of San Francisco, a 100-year anniversary re-visioning of the 1906 Earthquake in the Civic Center of San Francisco (http://dsi.kqed.org/index.php/situated/C59/ [last visited 28-98-2010]), and a social justice/ environmental racism project in Oakland based on “Eyes on the Prize.” Rule is a 2007 Knight News Foundation Grantee in locative media. She has degrees in rhetoric and linguistics from the University of California-Berkeley and a Master of Arts in education with an emphasis on instructional technology. (from: http://www.citycentered.org/#429202/People).

Paula Levine Paula Levine is Associate Professor of Art in Conceptual Information Arts at San Francisco State University. As media artist and educator she comes from deep roots in experimental narrative, spatial theory and practice. Her current work uses cartography and locative media to bridge between local and global by collapsing the safety of distance and spatially translating the impact of distant crises and traumatic geo-political events in local terms, on local ground. Works from her series “Shadows from another place” (http://shadowsfromanotherplace.net/), which include “San Francisco<->Baghdad” (http://paulalevine.net/projects/shadows%20from%20another%20place/shadows.html) and “TheWall” (http://paulalevine.net/projects/TheWall/pages/TheWall.html) have shown in the HTMllES Festival, IMAGE FESTIVAL’s Transposing Geographies: Mapping on the internet, and ISEA. She has given talks at San Jose’s Zer01 Festival, MIT’s Media in Transition conferences and the University of Wisconsin’s Conney Conference for Jewish Studies and she was a recent keynote speaker at the 2009 Interactive Futures Conference in Vancouver, BC. Her videos have been shown at festivals and in galleries in the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan including Lincoln Center, the Mill Valley Film and Video Festival and in “HotBed” at the J.Paul Getty Museum. (from: http://www.citycentered.org/#429202/People) Jeremy Hight is a locative media and new media artist/writer/theorist. He collaborated on the early locative narrative project “34 north 118 west” (http://34n118w.net/34N/). His essay Narrative Archeology (Hight, 2003) is studied in several universities as a resource on locative narrative and space. He collaborated most recently on the landscape data edited project Carrizo Parkfield Diaries. The diaries are archived in the Whitney Museum Artport. He recently co-curated the online new media exhibition Binary Katwalk: http://binarykatwalk.net/). He is working on two large-scale locative media projects that look to push into new areas both in physical space and in functionality. He currently has a project shortlisted for possible development with the European Space Agency and as a form of locative narrative utilizing the European Space Station and points above the earth. Hight is currently editing a book of essays on locative media. Hight holds Masters in Fine Arts (writing, theory, art) from the Critical Studies/Writing program at Cal Arts, and a B.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He teaches Visual Communication and English at Los Angeles Mission College. His main research interest are new forms of mapping and new forms of publication and writing within maps and mapping, geo-spatial internet, immersive geometric time measurement and event data mapping, history of augmentation and Virtual Reality (from: http://www.locative-media.org/about/C94/).

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Locative media: Patrolling the City Centered Festival

between locative media and technology and the complexity of space.

Further, the interviews with these people have served to deepen the relationship between space and place and between narration and data in locative media. These issues are better analysed in the paper “Locative remediation: connecting space and place, data and narratives”.

Keywords: locative media; community; space; creativity; community mapping; geotagging; web 3.0; narrative archeology.

Locative Media: Definitions, development, frameworks It is dificult to ind a deinition for the term “locative media” able to include the heterogeneity of the experiences under this title.

Those interviewed about this debate give very extended deinitions of the expression, highlighting its complexity, due to both the multiplicity of disciplines that are using it with different meanings, and a sort of “latest fashion trend” that would have made it popular “I hate how the term became so fetishizing and honestly minimizing in a lot of ways, as AR is already doing6”; “different groups understand them in different way… it’s a huge term, there are so many disciplines in it…”.7 In very general terms, and following the deinitions we ind on the web, within the term “locative media” we can refer to location-based technologies enabling to link digital contents and geographical spaces, bringing the located and geographically situated character of the interaction out.

The prominent role of location is stressed by the interviewees as well, who deine locative media as: […] media tied to place in a fundamental and essential way.8 […] work that is location aware/location speciic and in some way augments the space and interaction therein. […]. Wearables got eaten by it. Ubiquitous computing loats along it. AR crosses it. It is deeply problematic.9

As the second deinition suggests, locative experimentations are set in the so called “post desktop paradigm”. This technological frame offers a 6 7 8 9

From the interview with Jeremy Hight.

From the interview with Leslie Rule.

From the interview with Leslie Rule.

From the interview with Jeremy Hight.

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vision of computing released from the use of the traditional interfaces — screen, mouse, keyboard — and the metaphor of the desk as a place for the production and fruition of digital contents, moving the interaction out of the screen, into the real world of “things”. Technologies used by locative projects include GPS, mobile devices (laptops, recorders, microphones), wireless, Bluetooth, RFID, GSM, often embedded in networked environments that allow the access to data and information from any place, at any moment (ubiquitous computing), through wearable, touchable, or ambient intelligent interaction devices.

The emphasis on the value of both a physical and a geographic “sense of place” sets locative media between two epochal changes in the media world. On the one hand, the embodiment, that is to say the founding value of located, embodied and daily experience, emerges as an important theoretical frame, in the interaction design10 (Dourish, 2001). On the other hand, the increasing importance of geographical space in the media world and on the web leads media studies to speak of a “spatial turn” (Thielmann, 2010; Falkheimer, Jasper, & Jansson, 2007). The turning point is evident: from Google, to Facebook, to Yahoo, geo-location is today the main chance information giants are betting on: let’s consider Google Maps, Google Earth, and also the several location aware applications available for smart phones (Foursquare, Buzz, Google Latitude) or embedded in social network, like Flickr, Picasa, Facebook or Twitter. Geotagging is proving to be one of the most promising key to access digital contents in the web 3.0 or in the “geosemantic” web (Thielmann, 2010).

Embodied and spatial turn mark the technological frame of locative media. And yet these media are not to be understood just as location aware/ embodied technologies: locative history is also the history of a critical answer to technologies which were used at irst just for military-surveillance purposes and then for commercial and proit (we can think, on the one hand, to the traditional use of GIS and GPS in military cartography and, on the other hand, to the several location based services that are becoming more and more common).

Concerning this matter, it is useful to remember that locative media trace their origins back to the late nineties digital avant-garde. Born in the ield 10

«Embodiment reflects both a physical presence in the world and a social embedding in a web of practices and purposes»; and: «Embodiment is the property of being manifest in and of the everyday world.

Embodiment constitutes the transition from the realm of ideas to the realm of everyday experience» (Dourish, 2001).

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of digital art, as a reaction to the net art de-materialization, locative experimentations drew their inspiration from the practices of situational artists, strongly claiming the role of the experience in situ “beyond either gallery or computer screen…” (Tuters & Varnelis, 2006).

The mark the artists left in their use of location aware technologies opened new frames to locative media projects. Some international meetings (the locative media Workshop, organized in Lativa, in Julie 2003,11 or the special edition electronic journal LEA dedicated to this theme in 2006)12 are key points as they underlined for the irst time the radical critical potential13 of these media, afirming their strategic power of social innovation. Both in their theories and experimentations, locative media have thus emerged as new creative ways to create and express signiicant relations between people, communities and places, connecting the tangible to the intangible, the objects to the contexts, the places to their practices and uses.14

The City Centered Festival: Themes, technical forms, projects The City Centered Festival keeps on exploring the creative-critical potential locative media has to connect and stimulate people and places.

Held at KQED, the Northern California Public Broadcasting organisation, in San Francisco, in June, from 11th to 19th, the Festival brought together different kinds of people (artists, educators, researches, community organisers, architects, urban planners, new media designers, computer programmers, citizens…), gathered in an attempt to understand how locative media might be used for urban spaces and communities.

11 12

13

14

See: http://locative.x-i.net/ [last visited 25 August 2010].

Leonardo Electronic Almanac. The edition dedicated to locative media is: LEA Vol. 14, N. 3, July 2006, available at: http://www.leoalmanac.org/journal/vol_14/lea_v14_n03-04/home.html [last visited: 25-082010].

«Attendees to the workshop will explore the radically disorganizing potential (social, spatial & temporal) of ad-hoc wireless networking (for synchronization, interpersonal awareness & swarming), and use opensource mapping/positioning technologies to audioalize and visualize data in space» RIXC international workshop “Locative media”. Available at: http://locative.x-i.net/. «[locative media] is that made by those who create experiences that take into account the geographic locale of interest, typically by elevating that geographic locale beyond its instrumentalized status as a ‘latitude longitude coordinated point on earth’ to the level of existential, inhabited, experienced and lived place [...]. Locative media experiences may also cross space, connecting experiences across short or long geographic, experiential, or temporal distances. At its core, locative media is about creating a kind of geospatial experience whose aesthetics can be said to rely upon a range of characteristics ranging from the quotidian to the weighty semantics of lived experience, all latent within the ground upon which we traverse» (Breekley & Knowlton, 2006).

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The event has been supported by different institutions: Access Now15 (non-proit association for computer literacy), Center for Locative Media16 (a study and research centre on locative media), KQED Public Media17 (public media for the North California network), Gray Area Foundation for the Arts18 (a gallery and foundation for art, in San Francisco), Conceptual Information Arts/SFSU19 (the experimental program within the Art Department at San Francisco State University dedicated to preparing artists and media experimenters to work at the cutting edge of technology), UC Berkeley Center for New Media.20 An exhibition on the projects — selected through [an application announcement —were supported by a two day Symposium (11th and 12th June) in which some “hot” locative issues have been investigated: – Sensing the City – Data Visualization and Urban Life, in which representatives of the MIT SENSEable City Laboratory,21 which has been working on such themes for years, were invited to discuss them; – Location, Politics, and Community, which included, among others, speakers such as Joel Slayton (a pioneer in the ield of art and technology, professor at San Jose State University, Chair of ISEA 2006 and Editor-InChief of the Leonardo-MIT Press Book Series from 1999-2008); Brooke Singer (Associate Professor of New Media at Purchase College, State University of New York, and co-founder of the art, technology and activist group Preemptive Media) and Paula Levine.22 The “City Centered” festival ended on the 19th June with a “Hands-on community workshop”, dedicated to some typical locative practices: community journalism, community mapping, place-based digital storytelling and ield work with mobile technologies.

The brief for the Festival asked locative designers to focus on the following themes connecting them to the urban regeneration of the Tenderloin, a particularly troubled San Francisco neighbourhood:23 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

http://www.computerhelpdays.org/ [last visited 28-08-2010]. http://www.locative-media.org/ [last visited 28-08-2010]. http://www.kqed.org/ [last visited 28-08-2010]. http://www.gaffta.org/ [last visited 28-08-2010]. http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~infoarts/ [last visited 28-08-2010]. http://bcnm.berkeley.edu/ [last visited 28-08-2010].

See: http://senseable.mit.edu/ [last visited 28-08-2010].

See note 4.

«Tenderloin district is a densely populated, rapidly changing, loosely defined district with apartment buildings, single room occupancy hotels, nightclubs, bars, galleries and restaurants. Located near San Francisco’s cable car tourist attractions, downtown convention center hotel district and Union Square,

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– creative mapping: creative, personal and collaborative maps, their geopolitical importance and their role in framing the urban space and the identity of the communities that inhabit it («What is cartography? What is mapped identity? How can groups and populations better see themselves, their history and their futures?? in the realm of maps?»); – urban storytelling: urban stories and narrative as means to support neighborhood communities and social cohesion («Stories of the distant past or recent memory help hold groups together»); – sentient space: smart spaces and the role networked digital information can have in deconstructing and reconstructing urban places («How might we imagine and make debatable the ways in which networked information processing animates, invades, enables or undermines urban places?»); – body awareness: the relationships among all the social actors inhabiting urban spaces, both human and non human beings («What kinds of awareness of other humans — or non-humans such as animals, plants and trees — remind us of liminal and subliminal arenas of urban growth and transformation? How do embodied experiences — of crowds and solitude, of comfort and anxiety — relate to awareness of self and others?»); – local history: the importance of integrating various layers of local histories — the architecture, economic and city evolution histories and also the folklore and all the heterogeneous data lows — in order to interpret and understand the complexity of our contemporary space of living («How can local history be mapped? Is it collaborative or authorial? What kinds of stories constitute the history of a place? What kinds of data are placebased?»); – contested spaces: the contested spaces and the spaces of the conlict, the importance of situated and “partial” approaches and the civic participation («Art projects are never neutral. Even in evading explicit discussion of politics or controversies they take a stand with respect to a community of makers and audience of participants, listeners, or seers»); it is a flourishing, multilingual and multi-ethnic neighborhood home to many artists and galleries. Yet the Tenderloin is also notorious as a concentrated site of misery, known for violent crime, prostitution, drug addiction, and homelessness. Recently, the city has devoted considerable attention and resources to redevelopment in the Tenderloin, making engaging with locally-led organizations a priority. There are numerous multilingual, multicultural organizations with substantial art programs --Glide Memorial Church, Hospitality House, the YMCA and The Boys and Girls Club. It is also site of the Main Library, the center of San Francisco’s public library system. The festival’s close proximity to San Francisco’s administrative buildings and historic Market Street make it an especially intriguing arena for urban art making and location based creative practice». For more information visit: http://www.gaffta.org/wp/wpuploads/2009/11/city-centered-rfp.pdf [last visited: 25-082010].

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– gaming: play as a strategy to rediscovering the city, involving young people and activating powerful connections within the community and the ever-changing neighbourhood («What kinds of narratives are appropriate in challenging neighbourhoods? How can games be used to deal with social ills or help inhabitants navigate through periods of urban change?»).

The call asked the Festival participants to face these challenges through projects acting within ive essential sectors of locative practice: – Tenderloin relevant data visualisation: «Data visualizations – What data is relevant to Tenderloin inhabitants? How can visualization expose previously unrecognized patterns of exchange and which change the experience of familiar locations?».

– The production of maps: «Mapping and cartography – Maps produce and represent information about the meaning of place. Locative practices often engage the location-aware/context aware aspects of tools/networks, pinpointing and demarcating places according to creative interpretation».

– The employment of media for participation: «Participatory media – How can projects weave diverse groups and foster conditions for increased civic engagement, learning, and questioning? What barriers to civic engagement and participation are there and how might they be overcome?».

– The tracing of people and objects movements in the space: «Location tracking – Tracking the movement of people and objects can also record and augment experiences often unrecognized or culturally invisible. What kinds of movements of people and goods combine to form the economies and exchanges of a neighbourhood? What kinds of human movement alters the way we might think or conceive of a place and its changing milieus?».

– Urban games: «Games and playful interventions – Introducing ideas of competition, speed, and imagination into the city streets may help engage local inhabitants, young people, childrenand onlookers in experiences they see as new, surprising or special».

Projects descriptions Based on these requirements, ten projects were selected and exhibited.

What follows below is a summary description of them, taken from City Centered website.24 24

http://www.citycentered.org/ [last visited 28-08-2010].

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Beyond Boundaries Through utilization of digital media, Beyond Boundaries explores the diverse community of the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. By visually mapping the local area with community members from Hospitality House, the Vietnamese Youth Development Center and other local groups, and displaying the images in a prominent public space, the project emphasizes the dynamic interplay between the public space and urban context. The goal is to achieve an understanding of the inner community of the Tenderloin within the larger urban context of San Francisco. While the neighborhood can easily be framed by its negative characteristics, this area is also recognizable for its unique urbanity and complexity. The main objective of Beyond Boundaries is to understand how this community is thriving in positive and enriching ways.

Digital maps and photography will acknowledge the interaction among different urban layers, recognizing the urban environment as a living organism through physical and abstract form. By utilizing GIS/Geospatial data, such as urban programs, night activities, land use, population density, ethnicity and

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public spaces, images will begin to merge and overlap as part of a distinct urban story of the Tenderloin. Working with local community groups, Beyond Boundaries will explore the Tenderloin as a resilient urban culture. Mapping and photography will be displayed as an outdoor video projection in a public space. The project is developed by Topographical Shifts, a non-profit design and research organization invested in the belief that design is a catalyst for urban change. Their primary focus is public urban landscapes that bridge the gap between the different design disciplines and humanitarian needs.

TenderVoice/TenderNoise (TVTN)25 TenderVoice/TenderNoise (TVTN) is a two-faceted web-based applied acoustic ecology and community journalism project that collects, maps and layers sound samples and noise data across the Tenderloin. TenderVoice uses interview-based sound narratives from more than two dozen local service providers that are collated within an interactive website to highlight neighborhood services and amenities. TenderNoise explores the aural quality of streets via both real-time and historical decibel logging, visualizing the outputs through the web. This project also proposes an immersive physical public art installation for future development.

Together, the TVTN project frames a unique view of the soundscape of Tenderloin and addresses a wide audience ranging from novice computer users to expert designers, from local residents to the global citizens. By layering various data sources (buildings/streets), data types (qualitative/quantitative), data impressions (positive narratives/negative noise) and audience (novice/expert) on a common platform, TVTN develops a unique language to explore a very dense neighborhood in San Francisco in an engaging way. Based on the feedback from the Festival participants, the project developers are considering scaling up the application, which could entail expanding the real-time noise data logging or development of a physical art installation within Tenderloin.

25

Seee: http://tendernoise.movity.com/ and http://www.tendervoice.org/ [last visited 28-08-2010].

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The project is the outcome of many individuals who are employed at various organizations and who have collaborated on a pro-bono basis to realize the vision of TenderVoice/TenderNoise (Arup, a global, multidisciplinary firm of designers, planners, engineers and consultants founded on the principles of integrated design for the built environment; Stamen Design, leading design and technology studio in San Francisco specializing in interactive design and data visualization; Movity.com, a San Francisco startup focused on gathering hyperlocal data relevant to the real estate search (the company brings greater transparency to geo-data like noise, crime, and real estate pricing); Tenderloin Technology Lab, the Tenderloinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s only technology center specializing in adult computer and employment skills training, which aids nearly 1,000 homeless and low-income clients each year.

Tender Secrets An interactive experience in collective storytelling and urban confession from San Franciscoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most [diverse, dirty, evolving, seedy, misunderstood, working class, interesting, thespian, abandoned, Vietnamese, homeless] neighborhood.

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Tender Secrets asks Tenderloin citizens, community members, passersby, passers-through and GAFFTA gallery-goers one simple question: “What’s your secret?”. Responses to this question are left as anonymous audio messages through an antique phone situated in the Tenderloin, or through any cellular phone able to dial to a voice-mail box. Visual representations of the messages are created dynamically in real time and projected onto a street-viewable storefront or window. Visitors to the interior of this storefront can listen to the community’s secrets by picking up a phone placed adjacent to the visual projection. The visual archive is updated in real time. When there is no recent message activity, the visual archive is populated with secret messages from the digital archive of all of the past secret messages left behind. Listeners will hear random and anonymous messages that community members left behind. Ultimately, it is virtually impossible to have the same experience twice.

Tendersecrets runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and is always open to listen to your secrets. As a technical project, tendersecrets has an amazingly low threshold for interaction. Everyone has secrets and most people know how to use a phone or can talk into a microphone — almost everyone can engage with it, and the more diverse the participants, the more engaging the installation becomes. The Gray Area’s “Tendorama” window space is the ideal interface for these neighborhood secrets. Here it will take advantage of the diversity of the community on the outside — the owner of the Vietnamese sandwich shop, a student and gallery goer, children of a family going to the theater, a recovering addict, you — and it also takes advantage of the visible gallery space and setting from the inside. The installation creates a unique experience both inside and out, encouraging participation from the community and within the gallery itself. The project is developed by Kevin Collins,

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interaction designer, Scott Doorley, Director of the Environments Lab at the d.school at Stanford, Bjoern Hartmann, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley, Dan Maynes-Aminzade, Software Engineer per Google, Parul Vora, Designer, Researcher, Technologist, User Experience Specialist, Hacker, and Interactive Artist.

The Wireless Landscape â&#x20AC;&#x201C; See the invisible. Findings from the wireless landscape The Wireless Landscape project creates a map of the wireless landscape by walking the streets with a device that listens for wireless access points.

The collected information can then be represented digitally with an online mapping tool, or physically with printed maps. The project is grounded in the theory that by becoming intimate with the existing wireless landscape we better prepare ourselves for the possibility of new wireless landscapes.

Those new landscapes may be created in an ad-hoc, grassroots fashion, or they may be created by an overseeing entity such as a city government. The possibility and popularity of metropolitan wireless is constantly expanding, though many attempts at establishing these networks have failed due to a lack of consensus on the implementation.

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It is important to be prepared for the inevitability of new wireless landscapes by knowing what already exists, and understanding what is desired. This project aims to collect data and experiential narratives as a means of continuing a dialog about metropolitan wireless networks so that popular consensus may lead to the implementation of new metropolitan wireless networks.

The project is developed by Robert Damphousse, a conceptual artist, computer programmer and a builder of electronics. His work studies technology for what it is: the new natural environment. His projects make this new nature accessible in a way that engenders the viewer with a better understanding of the technological landscapes that surround us.

No where now here No where now here is an immersive interactive 3D art installation. By flapping your arms and moving your body you will be a bird flying over a dream-like version of San Francisco, where trees replace cars and being free to fly is your normal state of being. The immersive experience is achieved with a time-of-flight camera and full-body tracking algorithm providing realtime motion-capture data. A polarized light-based 3D projection will allow participants to see the virtual world through which they are flying in 3D for a full immersive experience. The project is lead by Stefano Corazza, who has a degree in Mechanical Engineering, a Master in Design, a PhD in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Bioengineering and Computer Vision. He is very active in the domain of Visual Interactive Arts and New Media.

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Transborder Immigrant Tool26 The Transborder Immigrant Tool is designed to repurpose inexpensive used mobile phones that have GPS antennas (through the addition of proper software which the TB project is designing) to provide emergency personal navigation, helping to guide dehydrated immigrants to water safety sites established by activists and to provide poetic audio nourishment as well. The Transborder Immigrant Tool is one of many projects that currently use some aspect of the walkingtools.net reference APIs. Its main thrust is as an activist and public culture project that addresses the public safety issues created by the broken immigration policies of the United States; a topic of considerable interest to many communities within the sanctuary city of San Francisco. At City Centered, the artists of the Transborder Immigrant Tool project will install wall-mounted mobile phones. The phones will run a continuous screen loop, alternating randomly between a simulation of the navigation compass UI, and pictures of the harsh desert landscape in which it is designed to be used.

Ultimately, the installation suggests the functional and aesthetical aspect of this revolutionary tool. The TBtool project, situated in the B.A.N.G. Lab at CALIT2 at the University of California, San Diego, provides software (both for the mobile phone and NGOs who manage distribution of the tool) that enables these cast-away, disposable mobiles to function as personal safety navigation systems for immigrants. As such, the project is a social, activist and interventionist project as much as (if not more than) it is a software project.

26

See http://vimeo.com/6109723 http://vimeo.com/6108522 http://vimeo.com/6108310 [last visited: 2808-2010].

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More significant than the controversial aspects of this project is the manner in which the project repurposes and revitalizes commonplace understandings of hospitality, sustenance, freedom, and justice.

The project is developed by Micha CĂĄrdenas / Azdel Slade, an artist/ theorist whose work spans from erotic mixed reality performance in motion capture studios to dislocative border disturbance art in remote desert areas, always striving to find limits and challenge them; Amy Sara Carroll, Assistant Professor of American Culture / Latino / a Studies and English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Ricardo Dominguez, co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), a group who developed Virtual-Sit-In technologies in 1998 in solidarity with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico; Elle Mehrmand is a performance/new media artist and musician who uses the body, electronics, video, sound and installation within her work; Brett Stalbaum a C5 research theorist specializing in information theory, database, and software development.

Every step27 Every Step allows a participant to create a short experimental animation while they walk. Each participant is given an armband with a mounted camera and pedometer. The pedometer is mounted inside the armband and is connected to the camera. The camera is mounted on the armband and points towards the sky. The pedometer acts as a trigger for the camera, and an image of whatever is above the participant is taken every time a step is made.

27

See: http://vimeo.com/1022550 [last visited: 28-08-2010].

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To create an animation, the participant simply puts on the armband and takes a walk wherever they would like to go. When the participant returns from the walk, the images are transferred from the camera’s memory and loaded into a custom software program. The software program uses the images to create a frame-by-frame animation and to create a soundtrack for the animation. When the program completes the animation, a DVD is made and given to the participant. The project is developed by Matthew Roberts, new media artist specializing in real-time video performance and new media applications.

Block of Time: O’Farrell Street28 The project is by Krissy Clark, an award-winning public radio journalist, documentary-maker. In her blog she describes her project: «a site-specific radio documentary/cell phone tour/super-hyper-local-journalism experiment, on the 900 block of O’Farrell Street between Polk and Van Ness. […] Imagine one of those audio tours you’d take in an art museum, or through a historic neighborhood, where there are little numbers next to notable paintings or buildings, and you can dial them up to hear more about them. Block of Time is like that, with one difference: the place you are touring has no obvious historic or artistic value. And that’s the point. The 900 block of O’Farrell Street is totally non-descript. But every place has a story, you just need to know where to look… Compulsive journalist that I am, I searched historical documents and maps, and interviewed dozens of people who’ve lived and worked on the 900 block over the years, to find interesting material. Some of the stories were inspired by Harriet Lane Levy’s memoir 920 O’Farrell Street, depicting her childhood on the street in the 1870s, and tracing her memories all the way up through the 1906 earthquake. But I also pounded the pavement, knocked on doors, called random apartment call-boxes, stopped people on their way home from work, and poked my head into businesses to find tales worth sharing. All in all, I curated and edited more than 20 stories, all under two-minutes each, connected to different spots and buildings along the street.

They spanned time from 1867 to the present. […] Red balloons marked the spots on the street where each story was “embedded,” and signs at those spots gave you a phone number to call. Each number you called took you to a different short story about what you were looking at. (The phone numbers and audio message system were generously donated by MobileCommons…)

It was as if ghosts from the street’s past, present and future history were talking to you over the phone lines. […]».

28

Quoted from: Krissy Clark’s blog: http://storieseverywhere.org/2010/06/16/block-of-time-ofarrell-street/ [last visited: 28-08-2010].

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Insights, the Tenderloin Insights, the Tenderloin invites the public to explore how a place might inspire design. An interactive map installation, created as part of the dMedia project at Stanford’s d.school, invites individuals to look into the Tenderloin and discover their own insights about one of San Francisco’s most dense and diverse neighborhoods. In April 2010, The dMedia project challenged students to create a game inspired by San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.

A game? The Tenderloin? Does this assignment invites trivialization of real challenges faced by the area? Yet, after delving into elements of game design and the motivational processes behind participation and gaming, students confronted this multi-faceted assignment, feet first. dMedia students spent a week discovering the stories, individuals, and artifacts that make up the Tenderloin They captured insights with images, sketches, and text, which they geo-located on a co-created, media rich map. Students built off of their insights to design five prototypes of games — some Tenderloin-specific, others sparked by findings in the Tenderloin. The games addressed such questions as: How might individuals find and co-create stories with the located objects they encounter? Can a game encourage players to open their eyes and see a place in new ways? How might small encounters foster interpersonal connections? However you choose to describe it — a shift from a consumer culture to a creative society, a tendency toward more mediated and less face-to-face communication, the dawn of social media and the collapse of institutions — our world is changing Media is no longer just

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a communication tool. It is a vehicle for creative, community participation and therefore, social change. We believe that media designers have the opportunity and responsibility to make this change positive. The d.media project is a growing community of people and projects at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design @ Stanford University, where students & faculty work together to discover the underlying frameworks of the new media landscape and apply these learnings in the design of media experiences that have a positive social impact.

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UrbanRemix29 UrbanRemix is a collaborative and locative sound project. Our goal in developing UrbanRemix was to design a platform and series of public workshops that would enable participants to develop and express the acoustic identity of their communities, and enable users of the website to explore and experience the soundscapes of the city in a novel fashion. The UrbanRemix platform consists of a mobile phone system and web interface for recording, browsing, and mixing audio. It allows users to document and explore the obvious, neglected, private or public, even secret sounds of the urban environment. Participants in the UrbanRemix workshops become active creators of shared soundscapes as they search the city for interesting sound cues. The collected sounds, voices, and noises provide the original tracks for musical remixes that reflect the specific nature and acoustic identity of the community.

The project draws upon long-standing aesthetic practices that bring real-world sounds into electronic works, such as musique concréte, acoustic ecology, and the chance approaches of John Cage, as well as practices in public art and design that structure new forms of engagement and collaboration between artists, designers and citizens. The project was conceived of and is directed by Jason Freeman, Michael Nitsche, and Carl Disalvo, who are professors at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, Georgia. It is made possible by the invaluable work of numerous students and designers, and supported in part by the Music Technology program, the Digital Media program, and the GVU center at Georgia Tech.

SENSEable Cities: Exploring Urban Futures30 A retrospective on MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory projects was part of the Festival.

29 30

See: http://urbanremix.gatech.edu/ [last visited 28-08-2010].

For more information about MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory projects, see: http://senseable.mit.edu/ [last visited 28-08-2010].

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Since 2003, MITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s SENSEable City Laboratory has been investigating how emerging digital technologies can be employed to make cities more livable, sustainable and efficient. Digital revolution has lent our cities a new layer of functionality and that now is the time to explore how sensors, cellphones, micro-controllers and networks of other handheld devices can be used to more effectively manage city infrastructure, optimize transportation, analyze our environmental impact and foster new communities.

In this, the first retrospective of the labâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work, 5 past projects that represent the potentials of this new world of pervasive computing have been chosen 1.

The work ranges from urban furniture to new modes of transportation, methods for data fusion to pervasive data mining and real time visualizations.

Here follows a summery description of some projects shown in the retrospective: New York Talk Exchange: Exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York Talk Exchange asks the question: How does the city of New York connect to the global conversation? Using phone and IT data, the images reveal the real time connections between various boroughs and the countries they connect to.

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iSpots: The iSpots project maps the dynamics of MIT’s wireless networks across campus, revealing the ebb and flow of daily life.

Obama One People: For President Obama’s 100th day in office, MIT SENSEable City Lab created visualizations of mobile phone call activity that characterize the inaugural crowd and answer the questions: Who was in Washington, D.C. for President Obama’s inauguration day? When did they arrive, where did they go, and how long did they stay?

Current Cities — Amsterdam: Through partnership with mobile operators, Current Cities reveals the inner workings of a city through text messages, articulating the life of Amsterdam. Here, the images depict the volume and intensity of text messages on New Year’s Eve and Day.

Trash Track: Have you ever wondered where your trash goes? MIT researchers attached tags to trash to track it. Some trash is provincial, expiring not far from home, while other objects travel great distances to be disposed of.

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Trash Track has received wide attention in the national and international press.

It has been deployed in several U.S. cities, including Seattle and New York.

Copenhagen Wheel: Cars have GPS and traffic awareness; now bicycles can, too. But the Copenhagen Wheel has a new feature no ordinary auto navigation awareness has: it can track pollution awareness as well â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in real time. The state of the art hybrid bike also saves power when you pedal and lets you use it when you need a bit of a boost. Copenhagen Wheel is an example of the city data dialog taken to the next level â&#x20AC;&#x201D; beyond dialog to interactive decision making.

Creative innovation strategies in locative projects The common objective of the exhibited projects is to restore a positive way of living, focusing on planning, relation and social cohesion. They experiment with different strategies for innovation, at the core of which there are four key ingredients: critical creativity; community engagement; appreciation of complexity; technological embodied approaches.

Critical creativity and art Locative projects look at creativity as a key resource for change. The focus on creativity is often linked to the objective to investigate and suggest new perspectives and new uses for places. The creative use of spaces is considered an essential strategy, as well as the use of public space as a 39

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site of intervention and critical interpretation The Festival brief, in fact, asks for: site-speciic locative media art […] imaginative responses to the district and critical interpretations of place are strongly desired.

The discourse on creativity is linked to the critical reading of conventional/dominant uses of space and technology. Locative projects give voice to minorities and usually invisible interpretations, enabling them to emerge as new alternative and enriching practices. See, in regard to this, the Tender Secret project, that uses a building wall as a canvas on which to project the “invisible” secrets of the local residents; or Tender Voice, which maps the neighborhood space in an unconventional way, making the presence of useful services to the most vulnerable people visible; or Transborder Immigrant Tool, deinitely the most political31 project, which tries to repurpose used mobile phones as a means of salvation for illegal leeing immigrants.

Locative media’s critical-creative approach is evidently linked to the avant-garde artistic roots of the movement. We have already mentioned the connection between locative media and the digital experimental art, and it is prudent at this point to quote some of the interviewees All of them recognize the key role of the artist in the beginning of locative experimentations. Either because they were the irst ones to glimpse the possibility of a creative use of space: the artists were the irst to breakdown with locative. There were also GIS and GPS people but the artists were the irst ones to really break open and start to use place as a canvas […] artists started to really do this in early 2000, nobody else was doing it… storytellers weren’t doing locative […] artists were doing that, especially conceptual artists… because they wanted to talk about place and they are used to... you know… just struggling through.. […].

They were the irst ones to really do locative anything…32

Or because they were the irst to repurpose military technologies into creative ones: a lot of things artists use […] things like videos and GPS … they all came from military, so GPS has its deep roots in military, defense, and similarly with videos… video is a military technology. Lots of things that we use […]

31

32

See Fox News: http://video.foxnews.com/v/3955297/transborder-immigrant-tool [last visited 28-082010].

From the interview with Leslie Rule.

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have a kind of roots in military and I think artists generally repurpose things, they attempt to grab all the somethings and try to forget what the original purpose was and try to make other things…33

But, as Jeremy Hight notices, the artistic approach does not exhaust the heterogeneity of locative media, which includes an increasing presence of many other professionals (architects, urban planners, historians, business people…): Location aware projects are not always artworks. Architects, city planners, historians, businesses etc. do locative studies more and more and this is bleeding quickly into commercial augmentations with GPS and location aware data and graphical augmentation and text. […] Locative media art is honestly the little brother of all this, always has been. In 2002 and years after we were seen as eccentrics following the long lineage of the “avant garde” messing with cool new toys. The technology was the star and now that is the case more and more even as the “ield” (multiple ields really) has grown as it has.34

Despite concerns that we can read between the lines of this statement, the presence of other subjects ensures that locative projects are not reduced only to narcissistic experimentations, forgetting the complexity of places.

One of locative winning strategies, is, indeed, to focus on the collaboration among different professionals, to ensure that the inspiration of the artists is directed into concrete projects, achievable and useful for the communities and the places where they live.

Community engagement Locative projects need community participation as they are often focused on the residents activation for a creative interpretation of places. They follow the road of participation, the ground up processes typical of the tradition of civic participation. Among those interviewed, particularlyLeslie Rule focuses on this issue, describing her experience with schools, teachers, informal educators and community providers, in media-education and digital storytelling projects: about seven years ago I came to work here and with the technological tools that were becoming available we realized that there was a segment where we 33 34

From the interview with Paula Levine.

From the interview with Jeremy Hight.

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did not need to tell people stories, that we should be teaching people how to tell their own stories. We started showing people how to use digital media to create these emotional little pieces about their experiences. There were 4 steps: 1) […] understand your experience and ind the experience you wanna talk about; 2) […] tell your story: learn how to tell the experience, the story, in a multimedia environment; 3) create the piece. We wanted to teach people how to use the tools, the software […]; 4) distribute it: once you have these pieces, what can you do with them? put on a cd, youtube, e mail…35

Leslie’s experience radically changed with the introduction of locative media in her projects, when she understood that the stories communities told could be geo-localized, thus supporting the emerging of a stronger awareness of the experiences and relations people had with places: What happened to stories when they suddenly are place based? When the ifth component is place? The process was now located, we started locating stories, and then we realized that stories could enter places.36

The attention of the Festival to the community is evident both in the decision to dedicate the interventions to the Tenderloin district and its residents, and in the nature of the brief itself, which explicitly asks for projects with a high community involvement. See in this regard projects like Beyond Boundaries, which offers a visual map of the neighborhood, realized with the involvement of the residents; or TenderVoice/TenderNoise that explicitly refers to community journalism; or, inally, Urban Remix, which offers a set of tools to creatively remix the sounds of the neighborhood gathered by its inhabitants, creating opportunities to relect “upon the community speciic nature and sound identity”.

Enhancing the complexity of spaces Locative projects emphasize the complexity of spaces: the attention to the complex nature of places emerges in an interpretation of space as multilayered, both on a synchronous level (what different people or groups see in the same place today), and diachronic (what a place has been in the past). Digital technologies offer the possibility to make the complexity of spaces explode into multilayer interpretations and representations. This is a key factor for the interviewees as well: the idea was to understand that is 35 36

From the interview with Leslie Rule.

From the interview with Leslie Rule.

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just a position of time and space. Is not to recreate what it was many years ago, but it’s to understand what it was, irst off what it is, and what you can make of that. So you see what it is here, but you hear what it was in a previous age. […] people understand places in a very different way […] It just has to do with the way you understood places, your personality, your psychology.

People interact with places in a very different way, depending on who they are.37

The idea of catching the layers in which a place is stratiied is at the core of the work of Jeremy Hight, father of “narrative archaeology” (Hight 2003),45 a methodology aiming at bringing the meaningful layers of the places out, allowing objects and the materiality of space to speak directly by themselves, through narrative: “Narrative Archaeology” came that day to me as I stood in the middle of a busy street heading to my car. With g.p.s and signal to location places can have a voice. History and information can move from books somewhere else or texts online to their place of origin and the place can “speak” these layers of itself. The possibilities were limitless to me.38

Most projects take the complexity of spaces as a value to highlight, for example Block of Time: O’Farrel Street, that works on the historical layers, to projects where digital technology supports a multilevel visualization of different typologies of data, information and narratives. See, for example, Beyond Boundaries, that brings the complexity of Tenderloin out, using digital photography and maps to testify to “the interaction of different urban levels”, or TenderVoice TenderNoise: «by layering various data sources (buildings/streets), data types (qualitative/quantitative), data impressions (positive narratives/negative noise) and audience (novice/expert) on a common platform, TVTN develops a unique language to explore a very dense neighborhood in San Francisco in an engaging way».

Embodied technology for social innovation Locative projects believe in media and technology as tools for action and social change. The link with the hackers’ revolutionary spirit, the free 37 38

From the interview with Leslie Rule.

From the interview with Jeremy Hight.

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networks / free wireless movements and the “Do-It-Yourself” punk culture (Tuters & Varnelis, 2006) were revived at the City Centered, in projects such as The Wireless Landscape, Transborder Immigrant Tool and explicitly in the words of the designers of Insights, regarding the Tenderloin project: (“The media are vehicles for creative participation of communities and thus are a vehicle for social change. We believe that the media designers have the opportunity and responsibility to make this positive change”). The public and creative use of networks and technologies such as WIFI is also one of the objectives spelled out by the brief, as well as the “embodied” and “local” use of ubiquitous technology: «All proposed projects should address the theme of “urban community” and utilize wireless technologies in some relation to “location” and “place”».39 The emphasis on an embodied technology allows the projects to enhance the hybridization between material and digital, real and virtual. Moving away from virtual reality, and its disembodied and dislocated vision of cyberspace as opposed to physical reality, locative projects head for augmented reality, which, as someone points out (see Manovich, 2006), allows to work on multi-layered places, combining different semantic spaces. In this hybrid space, bits overlap into atoms and media becomes the interface between places, experiences and information (Ratti, 2009).

The embodiment of technology frames the work of people interviewed. For Jeremy Hight it represents the leaving of a paradigm that comes from afar … you can take this back to cybernetics, man/machine dichotomy, 19th century utopic drawings of 20th century technology, metropolis on up through sci i to vr, lm and ar […] A lot of my work deals with this […] All my information design does in fact, just in different facets, contexts and under slightly different umbrellas if you will.40

Leslie Rule points out the opportunities of augmented reality and postdesktop technologies, recognizing a key turn in the mobile revolution: locative media is placed, so this means not only that you are outside, but that you are in your body, your body is moving. Is a very physical kind of experience. You have cellphone, it becomes a real part of your experience.

You’re not taking your body and putting it in your room, you’re actually taking your body outside and putting movement into it, and all your senses 39

40

See the Call of the Festival: http://www.gaffta.org/wp/wp-uploads/2009/11/city-centered-rfp.pdf [last visited: 25-08-2010].

From the interview with Jeremy Hight.

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become alive, and this is a very different kind of experience with technology […] and it can happen because of mobile devices, because even with laptops and certainly with desktops, you were chained to a desk, basically inside a place. Now with mobile devices you can actually go outside and put your body into the process, you have to walk, you have to see, you have to hear.

And you have to engage with place… you are an embodied person.41

Embodied and post-desktop approaches are present in all projects, particularly in those involving physical activity in space: in Tender Secret, which transforms the window-space “Tendorama”, at Gray Area Foundation, in an interface to access the “neighborhood secrets”; or in The Transborder Immigrant Tool, which augments the desert space walked by leeing migrants with valuable information relating to water and poetic narratives; or in Block of Time: O’Farrell Street, which offers us a good idea of how to enhance physical reality through content, referring to the multidimensionality of the place, to its “elsewhere” in time and space; or, inally, in all projects developed by the SENSEable City Laboratory.

Creative and critical approaches and community-centered actions, a place’s complexity and embodiment are all ingredients that characterize locative media projects. These strategies converge on two main objectives: irstly, to build or rebuild patterns of meaning between people and places, enabling new readings in the spaces where communities live and starting from hidden or past experiences; and, further, to integrate data and visions of a different nature and scale, linking the local with the global dimension, personal narratives with scientiic and objective data.

References Albert, S. (2004). Locative literacy. Mute Magazine M28, Summer/Autumn, July. (available at http://www.metamute.org/en/Locative-Literacy).

Bleecker, J., & Knowlton, J. (2006) Locative media: A brief bibliography and taxonomy of gps-enabled locative media. LEA – Leonardo Electronic Almanac 14 (3). (http://www. leoalmanac.org/journal/vol_14/lea_v14_n03-04/jbleecker.html).

Dourish, P. (2001.) Where the action is: The foundations of embodied interaction. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Falkheimer, J., & Andre, J. (Eds.) (2006). Geographies of communication: The spatial turn in media studies. Goteborg: Nordicom.

41

From the interview with Leslie Rule.

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Galloway, A. (2006). Locative media as socialising and spatializing practice: Learning from archaeology, LEA – Leonardo Electronic Almanac 14 (3). (http://www.leoalmanac.org/ journal/vol_14/lea_v14_n03-04/gallowayward.html).

Hight, J. (2003). Narrative archaeology. Streetnotes, Summer. (http://www.xcp.bfn.org/ hight.html).

Manovich, L. (2006). The poetics of augmented space. Visual Communication, 5, 219-240. (www.noemalab.org/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/pdf/manovich_augmented_space. pdf).

Ratti, C. (2009). Talk at LIFT Conference, Geneve, February. (http://www.experientia.com/ it/blog/carlo-ratti-dan-hill-e-anne-galloway-al-lift09).

Thielmann, T. (2010). Locative media and mediated localities: An introdution to media geograph. Aether. The Journal of Media Geography, 5A, April, Northridge, California State University. (http://130.166.124.2/~aether/volume_05a.html).

Tuters, M., & Varnelis, K. (2006). Beyond locative media: Giving shape to the Internet of Things. Leonardo, 39 (4), pp. 357-363. (http://networkedpublics.org/locative_media/ beyond_locative_media).

Web42 Locative media projects Shadows from another place: http://shadowsfromanotherplace.net/ San Francisco<->Baghdad: http://paulalevine.net/projects/shadows%20from%20another%20 place/shadows.html TheWall: http://paulalevine.net/projects/TheWall/pages/TheWall.html 34 north 118 west: http://34n118w.net/34N/ Scape the Hood: http://dsi.kqed.org/index.php/situated/C59/ Tagging the Blues Trail: http://www.locative-media.org/projects/C93/ Beyond Boundaries: http://www.citycentered.org/#367136/Beyond-Boundaries TenderVoice/TenderNoise (TVTN): http://www.citycentered.org/#376082/TenderVoice/ TenderNoise; http://tendernoise.movity.com/ http://www.tendervoice.org/ Tender Secrets: http://www.citycentered.org/#364674/Tender-Secrets The Wireless Landscape:http://www.citycentered.org/#176476/The-Wireless-Landscape No where now here: http://www.citycentered.org/#382443/-no-where-now-here Transborder Immigrant Tool: http://www.citycentered.org/#382288/City-Decentered-TheTransborder-Immigrant-Tool; http://vimeo.com/6109723 ; http://vimeo.com/6108522 http://vimeo.com/6108310 ; http://video.foxnews.com/v/3955297/transborder-immigrant-tool Walkingtools: http://www.walkingtools.net/ Every step: http://www.citycentered.org/#375865/Every-Step; http://vimeo.com/1022550 Block of Time: O’Farrell Street: http://www.citycentered.org/#376009/Block-of-Time-OFarrell-Street; http://storieseverywhere.org/2010/06/16/block-of-time-ofarrell-street/ Insights, the Tenderloin: http://www.citycentered.org/#432424/Insights-the-Tenderloin 42

All the links were last visited the 25th of August, 2010.

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http://www.dmediaproject.com/can-you-design-games-for-the-sf-tenderloin/ UrbanRemix: http://www.citycentered.org/ilter/Michael-Nitsche#179858/Urban-Remix; http://urbanremix.gatech.edu/ New York Talk Exchange: http://senseable.mit.edu/nyte/ iSpots: http://senseable.mit.edu/ispots/ Obama One People: http://senseable.mit.edu/obama/ Current Cities – Amsterdam: http://www.currentcity.org/index.php Trash Track: http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/ Copenhagen Wheel: http://senseable.mit.edu/copenhagenwheel/

Other websites City Centered Festival: http://www.citycentered.org International workshop “Locative media” (July 16-26, 2003, K@2 Culture and Information Centre): http://locative.x-i.net/ Access Now: http://www.computerhelpdays.org/ Center for Locative Media: http://www.locative-media.org/ KQED Public Media: http://www.kqed.org/ Gray Area Foundation for the Arts: http://www.gaffta.org/ Conceptual Information Arts/SFSU: http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~infoarts/ UC Berkeley Center for New Media: http://bcnm.berkeley.edu/ MIT SENSEable City Laboratory: http://senseable.mit.edu/ Binary Katwalk: http://binarykatwalk.net/

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Locative remediation: Connecting space and 1 place, data and narratives Giulia Bertone Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 – 10129 Torino. E-mail: giulia.bertone@polito.it

Haunted places are the only ones people can live in.

ABSTRACT

M. de Certeau

1

Locative media strategies are motivated by two main tensions: the irst one is the effort to create connections between people and places, triggering meaningful understandings of space and bringing the relations it has with people’s everyday life out. The second one is the attempt to embed the local in the global one, combining personal and embodied experiences with global data and visions. These two trends – at the very heart of locative projects – lead up to interesting and peculiar strategies in places representation, which can be read as hybrid, liminal and questioning traditional dichotomies used in the re-mediation of place.

The map/tour bipolar distinction is the irst one to be questioned: locative media offer original and hybrid readings of these two axes de Certeau (1984) refers to as two fundamental and opposing logics we use in our understanding and relationship with the world we live in.

Furthermore, the opposition between database logic and narrative logic (Manovich, 2001) is questioned: rather than be alternative and conlicting, in locative media projects these two approaches are closely related and their natural alliance is set up as a successful way to face some key issues, including, for example, the global/local dynamics.

This paper contains references to interviews conducted with Paula Levine and Jeremy Hight, artists and locative scholars. For their profile, see the article Locative media: Patrolling the City Centered Festival.

There are also references to the City Centered projects, the description of which can be found in the same paper.

Edizioni Erickson – Trento

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By embedding cartographic project and space practices, global data and personal located narratives, locative media are envisioning creative and innovative relations between media, places and subjects.

Keywords: locative media; place; space; storytelling; narrative; database; place-based storytelling.

Mapping the place and acting the space In de Certeau’s reading «space» is opposed to «place»: the place is «an instantaneous coniguration of positions» (de Certeau, 1984, p. 117). We think in terms of places every time we need to identify, describe, see, know: a place is an ordered and stable meaning, a project of meaning settled by tradition and imposed by language. For these reasons it is always a place of power and exclusion: it allows only certain kind of meanings to emerge, while hiding and disabling many other ones. On the contrary, the concept of «space» refers to mobility and change: space is a «practiced place», «it’s like the word when it is spoken when, that is, when it is caught in the ambiguity of an actualization […] » (de Certeau, 1984, p. 117). With the term «space», de Certeau recovers the living, practiced and in-becoming dimension of places, which can not be reduced just to an ordered project, as they encompass many unpredictable uses and readings, often unusual, improper and subversive. The everyday practice of places reveals us multiple understandings of the world we live in and how the ordered place-projectconcept is just a symbolic force imposed and needed to build knowledges and discourses, yet not exhaustive.

Together with the discourse of places, the «walking rhetorics» of spaces do exist. Together with the «seeing», as «the knowledge of an order of places», «acting» and «going» as «spatializing actions» emerge. Together with “maps”, as means of description and knowing, we can as well recognize “tours”, which refer to people’s moving and their acting.

Maps and tours are different means to describe the world, different logics relating with two opposed but yet entwined power spheres: the «strategic» one, the one of the project, belonging to those who see from the void and represent the space functionalising it in an abstract disembodied idea (the concept city, made of «places»); and the «tactic» one, the one of the everyday life practices of the inhabitants that are constantly tracing different pathways, alternative, pluralistic, unexpected and always strange 50

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Locative remediation: Connecting space and place, data and narratives

(the lived and living city, made of «spaces», that is to say of practiced «places»).

According to Jameson (1991), the relation between map and tour refers to the relation between scientiic knowledge — which in the Cartesian and modern tradition is considered true, objective and reliable just because of its “clarity” and disembodied nature — and the opaque, embodied and «precartographic» experiences of common people — who have never had the power to make maps, but only personal pathways.

This dualism is at the core of the Modernity itself: we can also ind it in the mind-body Cartesian dualism and in the oblivion and sacriice of everyday embodied practices as a strategy needful to the scientiic knowledge.

Due to these reasons, the power of maps have been often questioned by the post-modern critics which have revealed us the normative tricks on which every cartography is founded: hidden by the seeming transparency of a scientiic objectivity, maps embody the project of the subject of power.

The refusal of the map has led to overemphasize its opposite: tours and drifts as individual and intimate strategies of subversion and deconstruction of places and their maps, as they are always means of power.

How can we nevertheless imagine any useful form of action in a space which can not be legible or understood in a project? Action requires understanding of spaces. Change requires maps. As Jameson (1991) says, we can not ground our plans just on private and existential readings: actions require «the coordination of existential data (the empirical position of the subject) with unlived, abstract conceptions of the geographic totality».

Maps and tours need an alliance, especially in our times: and if maps require openings to tours, in order to avoid dominance and control, at the same time, tours need to ind their own map, if they don’t want to give up any chance of action.

Map and tour in locative media Locative media are experimenting this alliance: they assert the cartographic usefulness of the map (not a colonizer and transparent map, but an impure, located and embodied one) and, in the meantime, they legitimate tours dignity as dynamic and creative means of change.

Now we also are about to see a greater realization that this is perhaps the greatest era of cartography in human history, and not for colonization 51

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and claiming per se, but driving, travelling, seeing, learning and to some extent questioning.2

Locative maps are useful means to bring all the power relations which wave places out. «Mapping» reveals us the signiicant relationships and the cultural frames in which places were born and have grown: it is a critical3 action, very similar to Michel Foucault’s concept of genealogy and archaeology, going beyond the distinction between tangible and intangible, as Latour suggests. In the Internet of Things and in Sterling’s (2005) Spimes times, locative mapping involves not only to places, and people in places, but things we use in our everyday life as well: many projects invite us to map and track the life and movements of objects in the world, revealing spatial and meaning relations embodied in them (see for example: MIT SENSEable City Laboratory Trash Track,4 or MILK5).

And if maps are necessarily means of power and control – they choose what to include and what not, where borders are to be drown, what to show and what to hide, matching the drawer’s point of views – in locative maps this kind of compromise is seen as a value. Locative projects don’t aim at giving a neutral or scientiic, transparent representation of the world, concealing subjectivities and partial, embodied visions of their authors. For these reasons they are “impure”: differently from scientiic maps, they are “affective”, in their promoting emotional engagement of people who make them, as in Lynch (1960) cognitive maps, or as the Parish Map English experience (Clifford, 2006) shows. Like the Deleuze’s rhizomatic chart, locative map have multiple entrances, is lexible, creative, and a useful tool for design and planning action: Then I moved into questioning mapping itself in a philosophical essay.

It looked at how maps are not only pragmatic tools but they also need to be de-fanged as they are born of war, territory, prejudice, hoarding and protection of raw materials, natural and precious resources and death. The “new” lands were not born in the air as the ships touched shore, but were claimed, changed, and arbitrary lines to be increasingly accurating drawn above them in little documents. Borders are like electrical wires, live, hot, and not just simple form but changing based on perspective and distance. This led to 2 3

4 5

From the interview with Jeremy Hight. «… when tied to a materialist vision, the recent turn to maps is among the strongest critiques of globalization available to us» (Tuters & Varnelis, 2006).

See: http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/ [last visited: 6-09-2010] See: http://www.milkproject.net/ [last visited: 6-09-2010].

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developing malleable, multi layered digital mapping (not Google maps) adjustable, ever expanding open source augmentations and icons that can be tagged with commentary, but not a simple note, but projects, animations, videos, community discussions and now to open source geo spatial internet and map as publication, writing and database/repository of history. […] Also the map is de-fanged. The function shifts, opens in a bloom from lat into growing, shifting, expanding and yet that stem.. that small spot.

It is key though not to focus only on it being “ART” (caps intentional) or purely a layer of pragmatic outreach data. This is like taking the jet stream and storms and unspooling them into two poles, one cold, the other also, cold. It is that messy space in between, that is alive, that is full of possibility and growth and the beauty of what simply is and how one sees it, shows it, experiences it, saves it from drowing a quiet death in no water, but in a slow morass of forgetting and time seeping along as it does.6

Hight’s words show that locative projects’ value and strength are between place (project) and space (in-becoming practices), between map and tour.

These two poles emerge in San Francisco Citycentered Festival projects, embedded together in hybrid and different ways. On the one hand, in some projects, like Beyond Boundaries, Tender Voice/TenderNoise, The Wireless Landscape…, the use of map, the cartography and the concept of the world as “place” prevail: this kind of projects aims at describing the world and tagging it. Nevertheless we can ind in them strong tour indicators. On the other hand, some others, like Transborder Immigrant Tool, Every Step, Insights the Tenderloin, UrbanRemix, stress the subversive value of space, tours and laneur’s drifts, but they offer as well some kind of strategic vision, that is to say they try to organize tours in maps.

Locative media propose a new, in-between representation of the world: a world made of in-becoming places and in-becoming spaces. And narrative is the key element keeping these two poles in connection.

Locative narratives as spaces/places rimediation De Certeau himself sees in narrative the connection point between spaces and places. Private and collective stories people tell of places enable the project of the place to open up and change. Embodying places in living 6

From the interview with Jeremy Hight.

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practices, narratives are real «treatments of space» (de Certeau, 1984, p.

122): they give shape to that always-slipping Elsewhere every place evokes (virtual or in potentia place), and to its multiple layers of meaning. These virtual layers may belong to the past and not being active anymore, or belong to the present time and yet being invisible in the pre-established geography: In a pre-established geography […] everyday stories tell us what one can do in it and make out of it. (de Certeau, 1984, p. 122)

Locative narratives enable latent projects of the places, as Paula Levine says: I’m really fascinated by the way open spaces in spite they’ve been so calculated for purposes and uses can be repurposed for other things […] and one of the things that does this particularly well is narrative. Narrative is a form that changes public spaces because of its ability to inscribing. So for example if you have a corner of a block… and you know it’s just an intersection where you can cross over from one side of the street to an other… a narrative can change that space, it can overlayer it with an other kind of purpose, another kind of meaning that just swell that space giving it a kind of form and body that is different from just the physical structure.7

Jeremy Hight stresses his interest in narratives, especially relating to the possibility of rediscovering the past or what is less known and at risk of oblivion: Every place has stories, every person has stories, every parcel of time is a body full of experiences, moments, collisions, etc. And we must save our history, places are losing their past, languages are dying, past areas are being lost.8

We can ind some City Centered projects using narratives in this way, to evoke other meanings of a place and introduce space-making openings in it, through “once upon a time” storytelling (Block of Time: O’Farrell Street), or less known stories (Inside the Tendorline, Tender Voice), or even secret and invisible ones (Tender Secretes).

In this case narrative is used to remediate place in space. Yet the role of narrative is not limited at space-making, as it also has the job of organizing 7 8

From the interview with Paula Levine.

From the interview with Jeremy Hight.

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space-making actions in a sense making project. This is the most dificult challenge locative media try to take up, following that double movement de Certeau refers to: «stories thus carry out a labor that constantly transforms places into spaces or spaces into places. They also organize the play of changing relationship between places and spaces» (de Certau, 1984, p.

118).

Locative media offers to the spaces-multiplying frenzy a chance to order and become a nature useful to action project. This is a never-lasting order, instable, lexible and always ready to be discussed and questioned, a compromised and partial place — «not necessarily by any means to any totality or linearity».9 In this case narrative is used to remediate space in place: even in those projects emphasizing spatialising actions (Transborder Immigrant Tool, Insights the Tenderloin, Urban Remix), some narrative strategy, which organizes personal tours and drifts can be found (could it be a game, a map, oral storytelling, personal remixes).

Making isolated facts, events and experiences in connection, giving them meaning and a frame in our life is the narrative core, from which we can not get away easily:10 It’s hard to get away from narrative, it’s the way our brain works, it attempts to tie and make connections and bridges between differences. It’s hard to stop creating a logic in our day to day life and I think narrative is the way that does that.11 To narrativize is to give connectivity (not necessarily by any means to any totality or linearity) and some sort of balance or inter-relation/terpolation beyond just data/info and isolated nodes).12

Database and narrative: embedding data and stories in the maps of the future Locative media give narrative the fundamental role to remediate spaces and places. How does the database logic, the one Manovich (2001) deines as opposite and an enemy, work, then?

9 10 11 12

From the interview with Jeremy Hight.

See: Di Fraia (2004).

From the interview with Paula Levine.

From the interview with Jeremy Hight.

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Locative media deeply question this dichotomy itself. First of all they deny the anti-narrative logic of the Web and new media, putting narrative in a centre stage in highly digital and networked media. Furthermore, they embed information catalogues and stories, simple data collections and narrative tools for understanding them in the same media contest, revealing us the non sense of our traditional dichotomic thinking.

I know Manovich considers data base and narrative to be oppositionals, the one is mutually exclusive, it does not relate with the other. I don’t subscribe to that kind of isolation. I’d prefer to see the relationship between the two, in a piece when one may be dominant and the other not […] you can have a certain amount of one within the other or you can try to make your own narrative from statistical cluster… but I do think they’re related, they’re like cousins […] They’re not the same thing by any means but they do have elements of each others within themselves.13

Maps — and digital maps in particular — are the most suitable media to this kind of hybrid re-mediation of space. As de Certeau14 reminds us, maps have been the ield of an historical battle between two different strategies of remediation (transparency vs opacity, database vs narrative, logos vs mitos). If the logics coexisted with equal dignity in the ancient and medieval maps, things change with modernity. Since scientiic knowledge birth onwards, narrative logic signs began progressively to disappear in favour of the database logic and a transparent and objective representation of the world, towards a fully non-narrative data visualization utopia.

Today we believe, on the contrary, that narrative is everywhere15 and maps themselves, even the most “scientiic” ones, are very special form of narrative, and not just simple-sterile data-base. It is more and more impor13 14

15

From the interview with Paula Levine.

The change in geographic maps analyzed by de Certeau illustrates the evolution of the relation between map and tour and between geometric and narrative dimension in the representation of space: the early mediaeval maps are representations of tours, of going, they are full of useful and performing indications (distance in walking days, indication on accommodation, where to stop for praying). The narrative dimension is purposeful: the drawing is almost a real travel diary, with the representation of the events that have taken place there (meals, battles, crossings…). From the 15th to the 17th century the map becomes more and more autonomous from the tour, although narrative images and tour descriptors remain (ships, animals, various characters...). The map starts progressively to prevail, colonising the space of representation and eliminating the pictorial representation of practices. The operation of making the space readable coincides with making practices transparent and invisible to the eye: transforming acting into legibility, but in doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten» (de Certeau, 1984, p. 97 ).

The linguistic turn in philosophy, the semiotic and cultural studies remind us of the discursive nature of every knowledge. Narrative is at the base of human experience and knowledge: the language and the symbolic cultural systems we are framed by condition our understandings of the world.

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tant to produce maps able to enhance these multiple and hibrid mixture, leaving the traditional dichotomic oppositional logic away: mapping is a form of representation of space and the representation can be un-dominantly qualitative or dominantly qualitative. It can shift in a continuum from objective to subjective and through the history of mapping there has been arguments and examples of maps that combine both of those things but perhaps if you don’t think about it as a linear continuum but maybe as a kind of graph where you have x and y axes.. as the map moves it can combine those two elements of subjective and objective, of qualitative and quantitative.16

Locative maps teach us how to re-ill maps with stories, stressing the value of data at the same time. This hybridisation can lead sustainable and successful strategies, useful to re-think and therefore inhabit — projecting — our present days. The rise of digital maps as favourite and more and more common representation devices suggests us one thing: map is the most powerful tool we have to describe our times because it can put the two poles of our experience in connection, the global and the local one (the space of lows and the space of places). Keeping together personal representations with collective visions, private experiences with discourses able to reading them, daily knowledges (the bricoleur’s ones) with scientiic knowledges (the engineer’s ones) is perhaps our way out after the loss of faith in the “grand narratives” (Lyotard, 1981). If today the world seems to be a chaotic collection of images with no structure (Manovich, 2001), a database with no sense, unforeseeable, and illegible, more than ever we need to tell stories and get them from each other, in order to make this complexity legible, framing its data in a shared and sense-making way.

References Clifford, S. (2006). Luoghi, persone e Parish Map. In S. Clifford, M. Maggi & D. Murtas, Genius Loci. Perché, quando e come realizzare una mappa di comunità. Torino, IRES Piemonte. (English version: http://www.england-in-particular.info/cg/parishmaps/mppp.html). de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.

16

From the interview with Paula Levine.

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Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1980). Mille plateaux. Capitalisme et schizophrénie. Paris: Les éditions de Minuit. (Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F., Rizoma. Millepiani. Capitalismo e schizofreniza. Sez. I. Roma: Castelvecchi, 1997).

Di Fraia, G. (2004). Storie con-fuse. Pensiero narrativo, sociologia e media. Milano: FrancoAngeli.

Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or the cutlural logic of late capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press (Jameson, F., Postmoderismo, ovvero La logica culturale del tardo capitalismo. Roma: Fazi Editore, 2007).

Luisetti, F. (2004), Il bisogno di mappe e l’assenza comunitaria. Signum, 2 (1), Luglio, Biella, BieBi Editrice, pp. 47-51. (http://cultura.biella.it/on-line/Welcomepage/EcomuseodelBiellese/Archivi/documento5002326.html).

Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. Cambridge: Technology Press (Lynch, K., L’immagine della città. Padova: Marsilio, 1964).

Lyotard, J.F. (1979). La condition postmoderne. Paris: Les éditions de Minuit (Lyotard, J.F., La condizione postmoderna, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1981).

Manovich, L. (2001), The language of new media. Massachusetts Institutes of Technology (Manovich, L., Il linguaggio dei nuovi media, Milano, Edizioni Oivares, 2002).

Sterling, B. (2005). Shaping Things, Massachusetts Institutes of Technology (Sterling, B., La forma del futuro, Milano, Apogeo, 2006).

Tuters, M., Varnelis, K. (2006). Beyond locative media: Giving shape to the Internet of Things. Leonardo, 39 (4), August, 357-363 (http://networkedpublics.org/locative_media/ beyond_locative_media).

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Pervasive memory, locative narratives Gianni Corino*, Duncan Shingleton* and Chris Speed**

ABSTRACT

* University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, UK. E-mail: gianni.corino@playmouth.ac.uk ** Edinburgh College of Art, Lauristone Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. E-mail: duncan@shingleton. org; c.speed@eca.ac.uk

Locative media as a term shares with another term, the “Internet of Things”, the very state of the art attempt to deine the technical and cultural shift anticipated in the society as it moves to a ubiquitous form of computing in which every device is “on”, and in some way connected to the Internet. Through different location based technologies, we create a data sphere for the Internet that offers up new possibilities to locate or “attach” the digital to objects, space and people.

This is the starting point for rethinking our relationship with the physical and material world; we can begin to imagine scenarios where the physical and digital spheres collapse onto each other. One important element in the equation refers to the kind of agency objects and spaces we will have in this relationship. As a case study the article will present a project entitled Remember me. This project, as part of a larger UK research grant called Tales of Things, aims to explore how personal or collective stories coupled to objects and/or spaces could transform our current value system across communities and society. Tales of Things’ main aim is to investigate in practical terms the emerging ield of the “Internet of Things” culturally and technologically.

Keywords: locative media; Internet of Things; locative narratives; pervasive memory; spime; blogjects; cybrids.

Introduction The proliferation of different terminologies if, on one side, helps to frame and focus new emerging practices, technology or phenomena on the Edizioni Erickson – Trento

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other hand it creates distinctions or borders that are ictitious or useless to understand the whole picture.

Locative media, as a deinition, represent a complex ield of different technologies which boundaries are not strictly deined.

Locative technologies include not only speciic location-positioning tools like GPS (Global Positioning System) but also wireless communication technologies typical of digital mobility. The wireless cloud around us includes telecommunication system at different geographical scales: global, local and personal.

As Bruce Sterling, a science iction writer and design journalist proposed, there are different locative media technologies, the Global Positioning System and Local Positioning System (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, RFID, ZigBee). The Local Positioning System is deinition conceived for short-range technologies that could communicate among each other, with people and environments. According to Nicholas Nova, locative media are: those that use geographically deined or location-based information in order to create new types of content or services, through their ability to locate, track, map, visualise and attach information to physical location. Locative technologies deal with physical location as well other contextual cues.

(Nova, 2004)

Locative technologies provide a bridge between two worlds, highlighting the tension between digital world of data and physical world both on a global scale and on a local one. The implications are, therefore, huge in cultural, social and political terms; enabling information to be tied to geographical space it allows a new digital morphology to grow overlapping the real one — a data sphere enacted wirelessly by information and communication technologies.

Although the article starts by using the locative media framework, we would like to shift to a broader terminology. Locative media is not just about where you are, but it is also about the context.

Thirteen years ago, in an article for Scientiic American, the late Mark Weiser outlined his bold vision of “ubiquitous computing”: small computers will be embedded in everyday objects all around us and, using wireless connections, will respond to our presence, desires and needs without being actively manipulated This vision is getting into reality nowadays; the idea behind the scenario is that computational processing power can be embedded in the world, in 60

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places and objects instead that merely in a computer, it provides a more “natural” way to interact between human-computer, utilizing notions of how we interact with the physical world. Although driven by technology this vision has a cultural and social background that is the one we would like to empathize in the article.

Given this historical context, a new framework arises, helping us to include in the picture the idea of network: this has been called Internet of Things.

From an interaction design perspective the Internet of Things provides a hybrid design space that on one hand poses a unique set of methodological, ethical and philosophical design challenges. On the other hand it also provides opportunities to design new locative media systems that augment the way we experience our environment and that provide novel ways to access social memory. These are the context and the terminology that will be used across the whole article.

Locating you inside of the network The Internet of Things (IOT) is evolving as a conceptual framework for understanding how physical objects, once connected to a network, will inherited the capability to report on the world around them, and on themselves. When we think of the kind of social networks that the Internet facilitates, we think of human agents participating in an exchange of ideas, centered on meaningful topics, whatever they may be. Until now, objects and things have been conspicuously absent from this sphere of contributing to culture. The IOT could be viewed as just a world of RFID tags and networked sensors, in which case it would seem to have little value to a social space beyond the characteristics/beneits to an economic process.

However if indeed the IOT changes the way we cohabit physical space with Things, then what will happen if it’s not only humans contributing to the social network, but also our Things that can upload, download, broadcast and stream meaningful and meaningful-making information. When we co inhabit in a world where Things can all of a sudden be viewed as having more than a mandatory value, how do they start to matter in terms of actors in a social network?

To theorize on why Things in the context of the IOT matter, we can draw patterns from the theory behind Cybrids, the irst weak signal regarding 61

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the relationship between objects and spaces we inhabit, and more recently Spimes and Blogjects, which relate directly to the importance of Things in a social network.

The theory of Cybrids is mainly applied to architectural spaces, investigating how cyberspace can work in a way that is native to ways we think and live with space. Cybrids, termed by Peter Anders, represent a link between concrete objects and abstract data, producing a hybrid of physical and electronic spaces. Although the research into Cybrids relates more to the construction of the built environment, and not objects in a social network, it does relate to the issue of the merger between the digital and the real and the resulting relationship that can be generated between them.

Anders (2006) talks of a “cybrid reality”, which could easily be interpreted as an early vision of an IOT, in which “I have a physical object here that notes my handling of it and displays its contents to me in this way”. The importance of the Cybrid is the close connection between the physical and non-physical spaces.

Secondly Bruce Sterling coined the term Spime, for a currently theoretical object that can be tracked through space and time, and throughout the lifetime of the object. Sterling sees Spimes as something coming through the convergence of emerging technologies, related to both the manufacturing process for consumer goods, and through identiication and location technologies. These technologies are speciic to constructing the framework that is the IOT and would allow us to track the entire existence of an object, from before it was made (its virtual representation), through its manufacture, its ownership history, its physical location, until its eventual obsolescence and breaking-down back into raw material to be used for new instantiations of objects. If recorded, the lifetime of the object can be archived, and searched for; «a Spime is, by deinition, the protagonist of a document process. It is an historical entity with an accessible, precise trajectory through space and time» Sterling (2005, p. 77).

Sterling predicts how the presence of Spimes, in the IOT, will completely change our relationships with our possessions; «I have an Internet of Things with a search engine. So I no longer hunt anxiously for my missing shoes in the morning. I just Google them». Sterling (2005, pp. 93-94). Objects within the IOT, connected to a host of machines that can crunch the complexities of the patterns of relationships formed between person and object, and objects themselves, will allow for the relationships you have with them to appear simpler and more immediate.

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Thirdly Julian Bleecker uses the term Blogjects in order to distinguish between Things connected to the Internet from “Things” participating within the Internet of social networks. «Blogjects don’t just publish, they circulate conversations. Blogjects become irst-class a-list producers of conversations in the same way that human bloggers do — by starting, maintaining and being critical attractors in conversations around topics that have relevance and meaning to others who have a stake in that discussion» (2006, p. 4).

Bleecker extends Sterlings proposal of a Spime by adding agency to its characteristic.

Agency is about having an ability to be decisive and articulate, to encourage action. Blogject’s intellect is their ability to effect change. Their agency attains through the consequence of their assertions, and through the signiicant perspective they deliver to meaningful conversations. In the Internet of Things, this kind of agency happens within the arena of the networked public; streams, feeds, track-backs, permalinks, Wiki inscriptions and blog posts. Things that matter inlect the course of social debate and discussion, and cannot help inlicting local and global change. If an object can comment on the world around it, and through that commenting creates change, then the agency between subject and object, human and non-human is completely transformed.

So what is the result of having the ability to access this network of objects from any location at anytime? It means you are part of the global network. Immersed in a ubiquitous environment saturated with RFID tags, and readers, both you and objects are a blank ield in a database, waiting to be illed in. In the attempt to develop an even more detailed semantic structure for the Internet, we will, increasing detail intensively, map the real world onto cyberspace, and visa versa. As people, objects and space become tracked, traced and saved, via an infrastructure of readers and tags everywhere in our environment, we will become mere descriptions of the things we carry with us, the spaces we move through. The Internet of Things is a strange space, since it’s use will lead to three results: “there will be no more public space; there will be no more memory loss and there will be no more people, just dataclouds” (Kranenburgh, 2006). In other words we don’t describe the data; the data will describe us.

The Internet of Things has moved beyond Marc Weisers (Greenield, 2006, p. 11) view of anywhere, anytime, always-on communications, and transforms the semantic, social network as we know it today. When we connect inanimate objects and things to communications networks, we will 63

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further facilitate the dawn of ubiquitous networking, by most importantly including anything to his equation. RFID will prove to be a catalyst for the development of The Internet of Things. Moreover, RFID in combination with sensors and mobile phones can create a truly “ubiquitous environment”, one in which the status of users and “smart objects” will be continually determined, monitored and communicated. This generates a switch in the way we view and interact with the Internet. Now we are caught inside of the net, in an always-on, invisible stream of data transfer. we are no longer outside this mass of information, curating its content in a web 2.0 model of tags, keywords and trackbacks, but we share instead the network with objects that contribute not only to the social web, but also to the physical world. The IOT is one way in which we can merge the physical world with the digital world, where our environment becomes a conduit of information transfer between people to people, people to things, and things to themselves. However, with the Internet of Things, it will not be simply enough for humans to apply the context of the object and its meaning, instead we will see a real world where networked objects generate meaning for data.

Whereas the Internet of Non-Things was limited to human agents, in the Internet of Things objects are actors in the network; participants in the creation, maintenance and knitting together of social networks.

Pervasive memory A way of create and maintain together this mixed social network lays on the ability through tracking, locating and collecting data of developing a memory system, physically or virtually, attached to the place, object or body.

Baudrillard (1996) discusses the capacity for objects to evoke memories within us and the complexity of the relationship between human and object, connoting the “emotional value” objects take on; “What gives houses of our childhood such depth and resonance in memory is clearly the complex structure of interiority, and the objects within it serve for us as boundary markers of the symbolic coniguration known as home. In their anthropomorphism the objects that furnish it become household gods, spatial incarnations of the emotional bonds and the permanence of the family group”. He terms these objects technemes, items he considers not only for their technical function but also for the ideas, values, and fetishes connected to them, and 64

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he describes them as being in a ‘perpetual light from technical structure towards their secondary meanings, from technological system towards a cultural system’.

In his most inluential book, Orality and Literacy, Walter Ong describes the evolution of technology in terms of cultural technologies starting from the technology of word; The man develops it to transmit knowledge and culture and at the same time inluencing as in a loop the human perception.

Ong identiies three phases as milestones in the developments of culture and knowledge according to three cultural technologies used to transmit information: • orality, by means of the spoken word • chirography, by means of the written word • typography, by means of the printed word.

All those three have a profound inluence on the way we think mainly because of the way they reshape and organize memory: in the inal pages of Orality and Literacy the author introduces in the argument the computer as the next cultural technology, pointing out the similarities with oral culture.

The technemes idea reconnects the interrupted track started by Ong and then abandoned by cultural and media theorists to show how it is possible to inform the design of the Internet of Things with a cultural perspective.

In an oral culture, memory is transmitted by mean of air; it is actual, performative, narrative, discursive and spatial or situated. Memory, with the technology of the spoken word, is based on an inter-subjectivity model, and this model is strongly opposed to the mathematical model of communication that simpliies human communication in three elements (sender, receiver and communication channel) mainly informative while the inter-subjective model considers human communication as a performative phenomenon. The spoken word is always present, therefore actual and it involves the audience; the memory with the technology of spoken word is dynamic, never ixed on a static and external object (paper, book) and it is narrative because to be remembered it needs events, characters and places. These are the elements recollected, how they are connected together is part of the performative, narrative process of memory in an oral culture. The spoken word cannot be considered a medium in the sense of the material culture (started at the time of chirography until the twenty century ,when memory became more and more a mediated memory: photographs, videos and other kind of media forms). Most of the digital technologies or media stays in this line, until the 65

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paradigmatic shift represented by ubiquitous computing. This distinction is fundamental because if reality is considered a medium, then, in terms of interaction design, the logical consequence is thinking just in terms of the interface. It is at this stage that the concept of pervasive memory claims its relevance.

The word “pervasive” etymologically means “to spread in the space in an immaterial way” or ‘go through” from the Latin origin, but nowadays “pervasive” is synonymous of ubiquitous and tangible computing. Using the word “pervasive” therefore reinforces the similarities with orality; like air computation is spread in the space in an immaterial way and like the word is embedded in human mind, also computation is embedded in objects, in places and in human body.

In the words of the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler we are creating a “global mnemotechnical system”… with such mnemotechnical system in place, information never leaves the world. It just keeps accumulating, simultaneously more explicit, more available, and more persistent than anything we had ever experienced.

Trying to deal with this global mnemotechnical system, the cultural framework of pervasive memory attempts to give a contribution to deine interaction design strategies for spime, sentient objects, blogjects or whatever they are going to be called.

Pervasive memory is real, situated or localized, inter-subjective, discursive, narrative and performative like memory in an oral culture.

It is mainly a performative and narrative process as part of an interspecies discourse; it is not delegated to a symbolic or representative object, a medium whatever we consider it, but because it is permanently embedded in objects and places it becomes part of the physical nature of the thing, part of the physical digital ecosystem. As an exempliication of this cultural narrative approach two interconnected projects, Tales of Things and Remember me will be presented. Remember me has been publicly performed at FutureEverything digital arts festival in Manchester, Uk in May 2010.

Tales of Things and Remember me projects It has been suggested that people surround themselves with between 1,000 and 5,000 objects. Of those thousands of objects many of them are 66

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probably not truly cared for and end up in rubbish bins or in storage. But for every owner, in almost every household there is a selection of objects that holds signiicant resonance, and has already connected them to an Internet of memory and meaning. An intrinsic human trait is the process of imbuing meaning onto objects so that they provide connections to people, events and environments.

Remember me project, developed in collaboration with the Oxfam charity shop in the student quarter of Manchester, with a creative/technical intervention explored how memories that are attached to objects can affect consumer habits. Oxfam is a charity that has 700 shops in towns and cities across the UK. The shops receive donations of clothes and artefacts from people, and sell them on to new owners as second-hand goods. A research associate worked for one week in the Oxfam shop in Manchester and asked people that dropped things off to tell a brief story about the object into a microphone e.g. where they acquired it, what memories it brings back and any other associated stories. These audio tracks were then uploaded and linked to newly created stories on the Tales of Things website.1 One week later, with the permission of people involved, this audio track was linked to two-dimensional barcodes and RFID tags that were attached to the objects in the shop with a custom RememberMe label. Two dimensional barcodes, commonly known as QR codes (Quick Response) are printed paper barcodes that can to contain an internet address, and like RFID Tags can easily be associated with information or data iles.

People browsed the shop used bespoke RFID readers and the Tales of Things iPhones and Android phone based applications to scan the labels.

Once triggered, speakers located in the shop played back the audio stories associated with the labels.

Although the team anticipated an interest in the stories, we were surprised at how affective the very individual voices were upon visitors to the shop. The actual sound of somebody’s voice associated with an object offered a supernatural extension to handling an artifact. People visiting the shop, browsing the objects and scanning the tagged donated items, spoke of the “personal connections” experienced, as artifacts conjured an actual voice that gave the objects additional meanings.

The projects emphasis upon personal stories and not quantitative data such as price, temperature or other logistical data, and offered a rich im1

http://www.talesofthings.com/

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material dimension to each objects material instantiation. The result of this supplementary information meant that every object (approximately 50 in total) was sold, even the types that are notoriously hard for a second hand shop to sell.

Conclusion This paper set out to question how the Internet of Things can be the starting point to rethink our relationship with the physical world, and it is clear that it provides a technological framework in which we can attach the content directly onto spaces, peoples and things; thus allowing us to access the digital sphere wherever we may be. This offers us new possibilities that extend beyond our traditional understanding of the role of technology, and how we access information and visualize relationships. Personal computers dealt with the assumption that everything one needed was stored locally.

Networked computers built upon that, assuming everything one needed could be made universally accessible on the Internet. Locative computing furthered this notion allowing you to take the Internet with you out into the real world, accessible through a new array of technological devices. When we look at what could be described as Thing centered computing, in the context of an Internet of Things, we begin to imagine a world where the information I want to access, and the relationships I want to form, are not only based on where I am, but more increasingly importantly, on what and who is around me.

As objects in the Internet of Things have more visible roles in the arena of memory and agency, new connections arise in the networked spaces we inhabit; objects become actors in society as they take on the characteristics of an agent. An object in the Internet of Things seems to fulill this character set. The merger of a Cybrid, Spime and Blogject would see a Thing that has its own memory, can identify what is and what is in its environment, and can react accordingly to this information.

A crucial feature of objects as agents in the Internet of Things, is that they can interact, that is, they can pass informational messages to each other and act on the basis of what they learn from these messages. The messages may represent a dialogue between people, or a more indirect means of information low, such as the observation of another object, or the detection of effects on another object or personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s actions. It is impor68

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tant to note that this dialogue takes place directly within our environment; creating new spaces which link agents — people and things — together in a network in which the only indication of an agent’s relationship to other agents is the list of the agents to which it is connected by network links.

Latour, Law and Hassard have all discussed the role of non-human agents in a network. As objects go online that creates a new layer of complex relationships that were previously not visible in our networks. By allowing us to examine the objective pattern of interactions represented by how people to people, people to things, and things themselves are connected to one another, we will gain insights into the structure of social interactions.

The structure of a network, the relations among network members, and the location of a member within a network are critical factor in understanding social behavior.

Complex, dynamic social systems are analysed in terms of stabilising and destabilising mechanisms, and traditionally they were only human agents whom played strategic roles in these processes. Institutions and cultural formations of society carried by, transmitted, and reformed through individual and collective actions and interactions. Social structures help to create and recreate themselves in an ongoing developmental process in which collective agents play constructive as well as destructive and transformative roles in the context of complex sociocultural arrangements.

In other words in the context of the Internet of Things, they will not only be human agents, but also object agents which will constitute and reconstitute time, space, place and cultural forms through their interactions.

References Anders, P. (2001). Cybrid Landscape. (http://www.uoc.edu/caiia-star-2001/eng/articles/anders0302/anders0302.html).

Baudrillard, J. (1996). System of Objects. London: Verso.

Bleeker, J. (2006). A Manifesto for Networked Objects – Cohabitating with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things. California: University of Southern California.

Greenield, A. (2006). Everyware, The dawning age of ubiquitous computing. Berkley: New Riders.

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social. An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ong,W. (1982). Orality and Literacy. New York: Routledge.

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Nova, N. (2004). Locative media: A literature review. (http://wiki.commres.org/pds/ Project_7eNrf2010/Locative Media %3B a literature review.PDF).

Sterling, B. (2005). Shaping Things. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Stiegler, B. (2010). Education and the global mnemotechnical system (http://culturemachine. tees.ac.uk/cmach/backissues/j005/Articles/Stiegler.htm).

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Reification of data Mike Phillips* and Chris Speed**

ABSTRACT

* Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL48AA, UK. E-mail: mike.phillips@plymouth.ac.uk ** Edinburgh College of Art, Schools of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Edinburgh College of Art, Lauriston Place, Edinburgh EH39DF, Scotland, UK. E-mail: c.speed@eca.ac.uk

This paper explores a series of transpositions; event to data to code to behaviour to experience. It draws off the experience of the authors working with augmented environments (architectural, social, and reciprocal), framed collectively as Operating Systems, culminating in recent developments implementing an environmental Operating System. Through the use of environmental sensors, “ecoids”, a dynamic temporal model is emerging and that can be seen as a redeinition of the landscape and our relationship to it. Through the use of networked environmental data gathering, modelling and visualisation, the transpositions described above construct an ubiquitous sense of space and place, one that is simultaneously out there and in here, endowing an ability to be present in every place.

Placed within the context of the evolution of these Operating Systems, the paper articulates the development and deployment of real time data sensors and the manifestation of data as experience. The projects provide a new networked architecture for internal and external environments. Location aware data provides the public, artists, engineers and scientists with a real time temporal model of the environment. A critical aspect of data is that the reiication of its metaphorical and experiential potential is a powerful tool for transformation.

Keywords: art; architecture; behaviour; data collection; information dissemination.

Context The authors have been developing a range of “Operating Systems” which dynamically manifests “data” as experience in order to enhance perspectives on a complex world. Arch-OS (www.arch-os.com), an “Operating System”

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for contemporary architecture (“software for buildings”) was the irst “OS”, developed to manifest the life of a building. An Arch-OS kernel has been recently installed as the i-500 (www.i-500.org) in Perth (Western Australia) to relect and manifest the research of a community of nanotechnologists. ArchOS provides a framework for “tele-social navigation” in buildings that are far too complex to be understood just by looking at them. Tele-Social navigation refers to the feedback loop that exists when the movements of people are modiied by environments that are responsive to the interests of the crowd. Arch-OS prioritises the activity framed by the building over its physical architecture.

Using this ubiquitous, networked and embedded model, similar strategies have been deployed through: S-OS, a “Social Operating System” developed a series of creative interventions and strategic manifestations to provide a new and more meaningful “algorithm” for Social Exchange and a better measure for “Quality of Life”. Whilst town planners and architects model the “physical” City and Highways Departments model the “temporal” ebb and low of trafic in and around the City, S-OS models the “invisible” social exchanges of the City’s inhabitants; Likewise Co-OS is a collaborative Operating System, a “Reciprocity Engine” to enhance cultural brokerage and social networking. Co-OS will establish a social networking platform that couples an open Web 2.0 online network environment with a modiied LETS (Local Exchange Trading System) scheme to develop new non-monetary trading model.

These initiatives provoke the disassembly of solid buildings and the remanifestation of social exchanges, expanding the physical structure into a dynamic model and invisible values generated by human networks into a measurable and, signiicantly, experienced form. The ecoid’s discussed below apply this modelling process to a mobile environment, from buildings and people to the landscape they inhabit. The potential with these projects is more than a reduction of a physical place and social exchange to numbers. The key issue is the transduction of temporal and spatial forms, things that are too slow, big or mundane, to human experience. This paper explores a series of transpositions; of event to data to code to behaviour to experience.

Dislocation of place Knowing where we are, and when we are, has become a slippery subject.

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has become softened as lexible forms of accumulation have facilitated more complex approaches to the production of time and space. In addition the advent of networked communication technologies has supported asynchronous relations with friends, colleagues and family, which has led to a need to sustain many communications with many people in different places. Consequently the contemporary sense of time can be seen to have accelerated in order to support relationships between people and resources.

Real-time and real-space are not what they used to be, no longer do they orientate around a single church bell or sense of home but they are now subject to the streams of data that describe biological, meteorological, social and economic parameters that inform our relationship with the world and demand us to remain mobile. To understand the terriic shifts in temporal and spatial consciousness, the authors begin this paper by describing the change in relationship with the world that occurred from the Middle Ages to a contemporary post-modern condition.

In his book Spatial Formations, Nigel Thrift recounts the introduction of the clock into Medieval society. From an era when “natural rhythms dictate the pace of life and work and the content of language”, and any expectation of a future “centres on a short lifespan and the imminence of the Day of Judgment” (Thrift, 1996), he illustrates how a combination of forces brings about the clock orientated society. Today, as we debate the next mobile phone contract, we do so in an acutely time conscious manner: how many free minutes do we get? Clock-time has become a primary element in organising consumer society and the production of space: after all, until very recently, it was more likely that you would carry a time piece on your wrist than a map in your pocket. Locative media however, and the rise of the smart phone, is beginning to change this. When asked for the time now, many people pull out their mobile phone, which as it happens, also has a map in it.

Thrift’s proposition of the “temporal innocence” of the Middle Ages was equally spatial, and it was through the accounting of space in projects such as the Doomsday Book instigated by William 1st, that a sense of place could be divided into separate currencies. By the Age of Discovery, space and time were identiiable units that supported mapping projects on a global scale, and throughout the Enlightenment and toward Modernity, society was cultivated to measure experience using a split model for time and space.

Through the development of the clock, and subsequently the map, space was commodiied, and as Heidegger suggests, we began to lose an intrin73

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sic connection to land and, in doing so, we lost our sense of “dwelling” (Heidegger, 1971). By tracing the term “building” back to the German phrase “bauen”, which is related to “I am”, Heidegger concludes that building and dwelling are closely bound to the concept of being. For Heidegger dwelling does not stem from building, but the reverse; building comes from the need for shelter and a sense of being in the environment.

«The nature of building is letting dwell. Building accomplishes its nature in the raising of locations by the joining of their spaces. Only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build». (Heidegger, 1971).

At the end of the 20th century a new form of ‘homelessness’ was identiied through the use of the internet, but its interpretation was more constructive. Stephen Perrella describes the «loss of being» as a central part of the cyberspace experience, one in which there is an «omnitemporal logocentricsm» (Perrella, 1995) or an «anywhere, anytime» through which we ind ourselves further dislocated from a sense of place. This perspective was part of an excitement for a new type of space that was beginning to emerge across the digital networks of the early 1990’s; cyberspace. A place in which dislocation and “homelessness” were embraced as powerful attributes of a new type of space, rather than being symptoms of an old one in crisis. Cyberspace represented an opportunity in which a reconciliation between dwelling and modern technology wasn’t necessary, because there were ground rules for a new type of space in which artists, theorists and architects could regain the power to provide meaningful spaces. Cyberspace provided the re-establishment of a «metaphysical, even theological dimension» (Larner & Hunter, 1995) to space because it was constituted by a person to person communication. It constructed an ‘instantaneous dynamic consciousness’ (Larner & Hunter, 1995) with the potential to develop new aesthetic forms, away from the lineage of art and industry, and across the borders of countries and continents.

The implications of the development of the borderless environment of the internet were ones that offered an exciting element of lack of control and an element of decentralisation. Reliant upon their development by a rich mix of users, the boundaries and territories could not follow the planning models of any of the individual’s authoritarian dreams. For Sadie Plant the “continual lux and change” that is offered by a highly socialised development offered an antidote to the consequences of Modernity in which «the sciences, arts, and humanities lose their deinition and discipline: law and order fall into decay; social bonds slip beyond repair» (Plant, 1995). Roy 74

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Ascott’s conceptualisation of this organic model of the network of the internet led him to the term cyberception which «involves a convergence of cognitive and perceptual processes» that become «locked socially and philosophically» through the web to support a new model for seeing both virtual concepts and spaces as well as a close attachment to actual natural systems (Ascott, 1995).

Buildings in motion The Arch-OS combines a rich mix of the physical and virtual into a new dynamic architecture, and a pragmatic manifestation of this convergence of cognitive and perceptual processes. But more importantly it provides a new knowing of where we are, and when we are. Arch-OS uses embedded technologies to capture audio-visual and raw digital data through a variety of sources which include: the Building Management System (BMS) (which has approximately 2000 sensors in the Portland Square development); digital networks; social interactions; ambient noise levels; environmental changes.

These vibrant data are then manipulated and replayed through audio-visual projection systems and broadcast through streaming Internet and FM radio.

(Phillips & Speed, 2003)

The Arch-OS visualisation The Arch-OS (Operating Systems for Architecture) infrastructure at the Institute of Digital Art & Technology, represents the early signs of a “substrate” across which the social construction of space may be informed, and the space between body and architecture dissolved. The Arch-OS system has been used to present representations of social systems, and its exposition of network and environmental data has revealed the invisible conduits through which we construct social relations. Whilst many of the projects that have used the Arch-OS data have engaged with traditional themes found within art, they all have at “different” times connected “different” sensors to “different” displays that explore the multiple associations between humans.

Precisely from an understanding of Arch-OS as a tool for evidencing social exchange and human activity, Wilfried Hou Je Bek launched the blog www.urbanxml.com which documents the growth of RSS feeds that trace human activity across the world. More strategic in its efforts to support architectures “environmental” communication across digital networks is 75

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Haque’s and Leung’s Extended Environments Markup Language (EEML), which constructs protocols to support collaboration and exchange.

The perpetual and relentless streaming of Portland Square data to the internet over the past ive years seems to demonstrate a potential for similar systems to operate not just after a building is open, but before (from preexisting social and environmental networks) that operated on a building site, to during (as the building takes shape and as people can use networks to overcome the barriers to the site), and after the building is re-introduced to a space (through the growth of further connections from occupants). In doing so the construction of the building has the potential to become secondary to the sustaining of social networks that cross the space, and subsequently reduce the impact of the “new” buildings detachment from society.

With systems such as Arch-OS offering interfaces to communications on and around a building site, suddenly our wooden wall may not be so opaque.

As we become smarter at driving through the city and relying even more on digital systems to help us negotiate socio/spatial networks, we can anticipate engaging with conversations and offering advice to people not just behind windscreens but also behind walls. In the same way the steel shell of a car has become irrelevant in the interface between the street and us, the running wall that surrounds a construction site will become less of a barrier between and to the building that is being built. The building no longer needs to be isolated from a social and environmental context, while the construction of a new building can be an extension of existing social networks.

The Renegotiated Self and the Space Between The interaction between individual inhabitants operating as part of a networked composite model brings a new understanding of their social space.

They are no longer a person in a room separated from other inhabitants by walls, doors and windows, they are participants in a larger space which requires a shared social responsibility. This is as much a psychological space as a physical or technological space is. The interaction of individuals within such a system generates a “social” space, which, according to Harré (1985), is the “space” where understanding and knowledge are exchanged and learning takes place. The Arch-OS model occupies such a space, it exists as much in the minds of the inhabitants as it does in code or on screen. This spatial consciousness is enhanced by the buildings’ feedback on ecological and 76

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temporal activities. Arch-OS here becomes a conduit for complex human interaction at a level not normally experienced in the built environment.

The perception of the self within the complexity of Arch-OS is problematic. The body exists within a fractured space-time architecture: sitting in a room and viewing the larger space of the networked building as a real-time 3D model can be both disorientating and exhilarating. The viewer is both within the model and removed from it, physical space dissolves into the Arch-OS model effectively sharing rooms in the same way that iles are shared over a network. Arch-OS can model and manifest the implosion of space and time, the shrinking of distances and the multiplicity of moments that occur within a building.

This shrinking through a complex layering data over and through the building generates the new space between the physical and the digital. This ‘space between’ is a conceptual and temporal space, a space which can be experienced by the buildings inhabitants through their shared interactions with it. Consequently Arch-OS fractures the single point of view of the lived perspective of a building’s inhabitant. By providing a dynamic telematic data model it is possible to extend the individual perspective, offering a high tech Baroque vista. Pallasmaa describes the expansion of the Albertian window and how the “paintings of Bosch and Bruegel, for instance, already invite a participatory eye to travel across the scenes of multiple events”.

With Arch-OS the potential is to extend this ocular space beyond the «soft focus and multiple perspectives, presenting a distinct, tactile invitation, enticing the body to travel through the illusory space» (Pallasmaa, 1996).

In this new dynamic the buildings’ occupants are not just inhabitants, a term that negates participation. Telematic activity, as Sermon (1997) describes, «is nothing without the presence and interactions of the participants who create their own television programme by becoming the voyeurs of their own spectacle». It is at the crossroads of these interactions between the participants and the space of an Arch-OS enhanced building that a reciprocity is formed, a building that is continually reconstructed and renegotiated in real/lived time.

Reciprocity Engines The Arch-OS Operating System for building has been extended through the S-OS.org and CO-OS.org projects. Here the approach of collecting data 77

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from the residue of human interaction and manifesting it as experience has been extended; from the building to the inhabitants and then back out into the city. The S-OS project provides an Operating System for the social life of a City (in this instance the City of Plymouth). It superimposed the notion of an “OnLine” Social Operating System onto “RealLife” human interactions, modelling, analysing and making visible the social exchange within the City. S-OS is a collection of creative interventions and strategic manifestations that provides a new and more meaningful “algorithm” for modelling “Social Exchange” and proposes a more effective “measure” for “Quality of Life”. […] people operate as a type of distributed intelligence, where much of our intellect behaviour results from the interaction of mental processes and the objects and constraints of the world and where much behaviour takes place through a cooperative process with others.

(Norman, 1993, p. 146)

The algorithm used was: A(n): = nr [r = 1,2,…..N] where A(n) is probably the value of the Quality of Life, and [r = 1,2,…..N] are the numerous calculations that happen within a city. These calculations constitute an invisible fabric woven through the everyday processes of social exchange (a smile, a swap, a sneer) and can be understood as a Social Operating System when made manifest through the use of digital technologies. S-OS was developed to propose and calculate a new “Social Exchange Index” based on a unique methodology that links the strategic S-OS applications and processes to the Governments “Quality of Life Indicators”. These indicators are used by governments to measure “success” and progress towards economic, social and environmental sustainability, calculating “quality” by measuring “quantity”. They suggest that happiness lies somewhere at the end of a bell curve and that true love can be found in a slice of a pie chart.

S-OS Central Processing Unit The project took the form of an exhibition located in Plymouth Arts Centre which was converted into a “Central Processing Unit” to run S-OS as a “RealLife” Social Operating System, generating creative interventions and strategic manifestations on, by and for the citizens of Plymouth. S-OS is framed by the individual projects or urban sensors which constituted the exhibition at Plymouth Arts Centre. These range from: the acoustic residue or echo of human interaction; traces that highlight the routines of human 78

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behaviour; juxtaposed currency exchange systems with embryonic nonmonetary exchange and trading systems; mobile phone apps to calculate personal values for ‘happiness’; semantic ecosystems; the City as a tensegrity of the synergetic forces and volatile social relationships. Each one of the above projects feeds an output “value” to the S-OS Index. The index uses the S-OS Algorithm: A(n): = nr [r = 1,2,…..N] and allows visitors to the exhibition to prioritise one input over another. This last ambiguous human interaction provides the inal value of A(n)! The calculation is/will be complete.

The playful application of the principals established through Arch-OS has a more pragmatic manifestation in CO-OS, a Collaborative Operating System. CO-OS, a “Reciprocity Engine”, is a cultural brokerage and social networking project which facilitates a radical new network model of collaborative creative production. The intention is to use the principals of reciprocity evident within Arch-OS and S-OS to generate new opportunities, practices and collaborations in mutually beneicial or reciprocal relationships capitalising on available resources and those generated through new non-monetary trading models. The Reciprocity Engine uses interest-free credit, so direct swaps do not need to be made. For instance, a member may earn credit by providing software-programming skills for one person and spend it later on access to another member’s technological resources. Each transaction is recorded and generated by the network software system and evaluated by its members in a distributed relationship with all data open to all members, in a mutual credit system.

CO-OS is being created on an experiential, anecdotal and theoretical understanding of shared networks and resources forming a major part of creative industries ‘working culture’. It is intended to address practical issues around production and practice that leads up to the dissemination of new work. Primarily, but not exclusively, these works would have been previously described as “New Media” product; however as these practices and processes are now endemic to all areas of the “creative industries” sector, such distinctions are worthless. This sector is a resource heavy ield that relies on good will and exchange in order to function. CO-OS aims to address these issues and to attach value to the actions and services that people provide in a network and to formalise that exchange of knowledge within the sector. It also looks to expand the resources out beyond traditional geographical networks through e-learning/exchange and knowledge sharing online.

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Reciprocal and recursive landscapes Like a matryoshka doll these Operating Systems endlessly fold in on themselves. Through ECO-OS, an ecological Operating System, the manifestation of collective activity and the calculation of social exchange are literally placed in the broader landscape. Eco-OS further develops the sensor model embedded in the Arch-OS system through the manufacture and distribution of networked environmental sensor devices. Intended as an enhancement of the Arch-OS system, Eco-OS provides a new networked architecture for internal and external environments. Networked and location aware data gathered from within an environment are transmitted within the system or to the Eco-OS server for processing. Eco-OS collects data from an environment through the network of ecoids and provides the public, artists, engineers and scientists with a real time model of the environment.

Ecoids Ecoids: they are sensor devices (small pods) that can be distributed through an environment (work place, domestic, urban or rural). The sensors allow environmental data to be collected from the immediate vicinity.

The sensors can be connected together through the formation of Wireless Sensor Networks (WNS) that enable the coverage of an extensive territory (several kilometres). Each ecoid has a unique id and its location within a network can be triangulated giving its exact location. Consequently locative content can be tailored to a speciic geographical area. Ecoids can also be used to produce content by receiving instructions from Eco-OS. Distributed performance can then be orchestrated across a large territory through light displays or acoustic renditions.

Feeds Of course in contemporary society the “homeless mind” inds a space to dwell in peer-to-peer and socially constituted systems such as Facebook, Bebo and Twitter. These digital networks bind together activities and relations within digital spaces to offer a context in which «we ind community in networks, not groups» (Wellman, 2001, p. 227). Highly social, but totally unconnected to the landscape, digital networks operate at the extreme end of a secular and luid 80

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model of time and space. There is no universal time in cyberspace, only the streaming sense of presence as different people in the network update their status. The effect of these technologies is that time and space have slowly softened as media technologies have supported personal consumption across telecommunications networks. This softening is accelerating as people communicate more and more, and begin to appreciate the relativity of friends and colleagues personal time (Rheingold, 2002, p. 194). The projected amount of registered users for Twitter will be 18 million by the end of 2010 (Ostrow, 2009). The extraordinary rate of asynchronous postings is providing with subscribers to Twitter with a minute by minute update of life within their social network.

At the same “time” as social feeds are being posted and received, XML feeds from environmental monitors located in urban and rural landscapes also ‘twitter’ their change in temperature and chemical status. Pachube was launched in 2008 and is an open resource that «enables you to connect, tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments around the world» (Haque, 2008). Through this streaming information, social nodes on the network become mixed up with nodes from the landscape, re-establishing a connection to place.

Streaming updates provide us insights into the complexity of time and in turn the production of space. As feeds from people become accompanied by feeds from environments; air quality, CO2 levels, lighting conditions, noise levels all supporting a growing spatial and temporal consciousness that is expanding from a local to the global. With locative media it is possible to envisage the increase in the rate of feeds that we receive to a second by second, as we ind ourselves moving from coordinate to coordinate past sensors in our social and geographical networks.

The social, spatial and temporal synthesis offered through locative media offers many characteristics of a time/space consciousness that is no longer split. A consciousness that situates the individual in a networked moment in which actual space can be superseded in value by the connection (social, temporal and geographical) to our friends and environments that we care about.

Transpositions This paper draws attention to the series of transpositions; of event to data to code to behaviour to experience. As such these Operating Systems challenge the fallacy of ambiguity by concretising the abstract through experience — 81

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less a “thingiication” and more a shared manifestation. Data are the detritus of modern human existence; from the data shadow that trails our inancial affairs to the server logs that trace online social interactions, we shed data like dry skin. The ambition for these projects is to put it to effective use by making data manifest and tangible. As an abstract and invisible material, their applications are at best dull and at worst terrifying, but with the reiication of their metaphorical and haptic potential, they are powerful tools for transformation. The data collected by these Operating Systems generate a dynamic mirror image of our world, relecting, in sharp contrast and high resolution, our biological, ecological and social activities with the reiication of their metaphorical and haptic potential, they are powerful tools for transformation.

References Ascott, R. (1995). The architecture of cyberception. In M. Pearce & N. Spiller (Eds.), Architects in cyberspace. London: Academy Editions.

Haque, U. (2008). Welcome to pachube. (http://community.pachube.com/about).

Harré, R., et al. (1985). Motives and mechanisms: An introduction to the psychology of action. London: Methuen & Co Ltd. Heidegger, M. (1971). Building dwelling thinking in poetry, language, thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper Collins.

Larner, C., & Hunter, I. (1995). Hyper-aesthetics: The audience is the work In M. Pearce & N. Spiller (Eds.), Architects in cyberspace. London: Academy Editions.

Norman, D. A. (1993). Things that make us smart. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Ostrow, A. (2009). How many people actually use twitter? (http://mashable.com/2009/04/28/ twitter-active-users/).

Pallasmaa, J. (1996). The eyes of the skin. London: Academy Editions.

Perrella, S. (1995). Hypersurface. In I. Lénárd, K. Oosterhuis & M. Rubbens (Eds), Sculpture City. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers.

Phillips, M. & Speed, C. (2003). Arch-OS v1.1 [Architecture Operating Systems], Software for Buildings Paper presented at 5th International CAiiA-STAR Research Conference and Workshop. Consciousness Reframed July 2003 (University of Plymouth, UK).

Plant, S. (1995). No Plans In M. Pearce & N. Spiller (Eds.), Architects in cyberspace. London: Academy Editions.

Rheingold, H. (2002). Smart mobs, the next social revolution. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.

Sermon, P. (1997). From telematic man to heaven 194.94.211.200, Conference Proceedings Consciousness Reframed 1997, CAiiA, University of Wales College, Newport.

Thrift, N. (1996). Spatial formations. London: Sage.

Wellman, B. (2001). Physical place and cyberplace: The rise of personalized networking.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25, 227-252.

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Studies and researches: Creativity

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Crisis and clouds: New frontiers for the creative industries Massimo Riva

ABSTRACT

Brown University, Virtual Humanities Lab, 190 Hope St. Providence, Rhode Island 02912, USA. E-mail: Massimo_Riva@Brown.edu

The two most relevant developments of the past few years, characterized by the systemic crisis of inancial markets, are the explosion of social media, on the one hand, and the advent of cloud computing, on the other. This article reviews the ideas explored in two recently published books by Jaron Lanier and John Seely Brown, about the key role of these emerging technologies, and their adoption by “intensive users,” in order to better appreciate the complexity of the challenges faced by the creative industries and by advanced education systems in today’s “creative economy.”

Keywords: information technology (cloud computing; social media); creative industries; innovation; social learning.

Introduction Speaking of information technology, the two most relevant developments of the past few years, a time characterized by the systemic crisis of inancial markets, are the explosion of social media, on the one hand, and the advent of cloud computing, on the other. There are even those who have attributed to the latter, in particular, the role of a potential “game changer,” able to Edizioni Erickson – Trento

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stimulate innovation and trigger a jump in productivity (whether understood in individual or social terms).

Not everybody shares this opinion: a February 2009 article in Fortune magazine (Hempel, 2009) voiced the skepticism still widespread among economists and CEOs about the ability of technological innovation to relaunch the current development model, as it happened back in the 1970s with the advent of the microprocessor, in the 80s with personal computers, and the 90s with the internet, in its civil and commercial applications. Even in 2001, when hundreds of dot-com companies went bust in the space of a year, a couple of guys were already working on a startup that would make money on web searches (that would be Google, which now employs more than 20,000).

The cloud computing A year and a half ago, however, the fear still prevailed, among prominent analysts, that the great recession had arrived too early for cloud computing — understood as the web distribution of servers and services, a way to augment capacity and functionality without investing in expensive patents, new infrastructures and training1 — to combine innovation and economies of scale (read budget cuts and reduction in investment funds). Basically, the technology was not yet ready for prime time and the margins of risk still remained too high.

A year and a half later, Werner Vogels, Amazon’s CTO, was able to announce, at the annual convention of GigaOM’s Structure held at the end of June 2010 in San Francisco, that the biggest change in cloud computing over the past year was that «we went from talk to action» (Ingram, 2010). For instance, one of the major entities implementing cloud services rather than just talking about them is the federal government, with the rollout of “data. gov”, followed by “recovery.gov” (which tracks the government’s recovery spending), and more recently the launch of “treasury.gov” by the Treasury Department — all initiatives directly linked to the “transparent” management of the inancial crisis by the Obama administration, a corrective to the 1

Even though the very definition of cloud computing is still evolving, it may be useful to refer to the one provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology: http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloudcomputing/cloud-def-v15.doc .

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expansion of bureaucracy (and the accusations of socialism) that the answer to the crisis, the so-called Stimulus or Recovery Act, has required. This leading, New Deal-style role of the federal government is not surprising, because, if we consider the history of cloud computing, we ind it associated since the beginning with the idea of a public utility (like the electric grid).2 On the private side, Amazon has played an important part in the development of the cloud architecture, providing access to its own AWS (Amazon Web Service) on a utility system basis since 2006. According to the Amazon CTO, Vogels, the launch of Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and S3 (Simple Storage System) has deinitely dispelled the “top myths of cloud computing,” including the idea that it’s not reliable, not secure, that cost is all that matters, that the cloud “locks you in,” and so on. If in 2008, the company was talking about how the S3 service hosted close to 20 billion objects, that number is «now just a blip», and «the company’s data storage business now has more than 100 billion objects hosted on it, and handles an average of 120,000 operations per second» (Ingram, 2010).

Creativity and productivity in the cloud computing model Since our real topic, however, is cultural creativity in the information society, namely in its necessary intertwining with the emergent forms of what is called “creative economy” (for example, in the European Green Paper on Creative industries, 2010), we must tackle the issue of how creativity and productivity are related, or depend on one another in today’s context: particularly so, if we want to promote the idea that the model of cloud computing is not just a strictly economic solution to the current crisis but represents a true paradigm change in the management of digital resources. Speaking of computational resources, it must be pointed out that the access to their distribution not only applies to resources directly linked to productive or commercial activities but also to resources linked to the scientiic or even humanistic research which increasingly pervade the life and experience of large masses of people. Needless to say, in today’s information society these two circuits (innovative research and economic application) are highly integrated. The so-called creative industries play a vital role in this integration.

2

See about this subject: Parkhill, D., The Challenge of the Computer Utility (1966).

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In a context in which, to quote the European Green Paper, «cultural contents play a crucial role in the deployment of the information society, fuelling investments in broadband infrastructures and services, in digital technologies, as well as in new consumer electronics and telecommunication devices», technological developments and innovation increasingly depend on the demand of those who are deined “intensive users.” Within this context, it is dificult to deine to what extent creativity can be reduced to the prevailing criteria for calculating productivity (and therefore the extent to which its deinition depends on technological innovation) and to what extent, instead, the latter increasingly depends on emergent forms of individual and social creativity that technological innovation enables but which are nevertheless substantially unpredictable. An appropriate example is that of social media, a social use of the technological infrastructure, which in turn feeds its development in innovative ways. Two recent publications may help us to better understand what is at stake in this debate.

Jaron Lanier: You are not a gadget A book published toward the end of 2009 by Jaron Lanier (a guru of “virtual reality” since the 1980s) seems to argue against the idea that a biunivocal connection between productivity and creativity is to be taken for granted. More speciically, Lanier questions the social media and Web 2.0 model from the point of view of their cultural effects. Lanier is already known for his attack on what another book of his, published in 2006, called “Digital Maoism,” deined by the subtitle as “the new online collectivism.”

His new book, entitled You are not a gadget: A manifesto (Knopf, 2009) reinforces this criticism in the name of a digital neo-humanism which, arguing against the “hive mentality” promoted by social media, would give back to the thinking individual a central role in the development of web culture. According to Lanier, the major responsibility for the negative turn which risks compromising the positive potential of Web 2.0 rests with a cognitive design which values information above the individuals who produce, exchange and use it, making it «fashionable to aggregate the expressions of people into dehumanized data» (Hartmann, 2010). This, Lanier argues, enriches “the aggregator” (for example, Google) while depriving the producers of knowledge and information, with lethal effects on “the middle class.” One quote is suficient to clarify Lanier’s thinking. He sees the process of massive digitization started by Google as a sort of cultural Manhattan project 88

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which will transfer and literally “explode” books into a cloud; not, perhaps, as threatening as a nuclear cloud, but nevertheless carrying risks: «If the books in the cloud are accessed via user interfaces that encourage mashups of fragments that obscure the context of authorship of each fragment, there will be only one book». This, Lanier argues, «is what happens today with a lot of content; often you don’t know where a quoted fragment from a news story came from, who wrote a comment, or who shot a video. A continuation of the present trend will make us like various medieval religious empires, or like North Korea, a society with a single book» (Lanier, 2010, p.b46).3 In Lanier’s argument, a “pseudo-collectivist” economic model (which wants to “free” information, or make information free for all) and the “hive” cognitive model are coupled together in a criticism which sees in cloud computing an infrastructure that can promote (and be driven by) both: based on economic as well as cultural assumptions, such an infrastructure can push forward the utopia of a collective intelligence which, according to Lanier, in fact risks destroying the real sources of cultural and economic creativity, the individual or the thinking and living subject. In short, according to Lanier, an “anthropomorphic” conception of information (following the slogan, that information wants to “free itself”) is a form of fetishism: «The idea that information is alive in its own right is a metaphysical claim made by people who hope to become immortal by being uploaded into a computer someday. It is part of what should be understood as a new religion» (Hartmann, 2010).

Upon a closer look, the apparently anti-Marxist manifesto of Lanier brings to extreme consequences the Marxist paradox of commodiication: “anthropomorphic” information is a sort of immaterial commodity, but it is still a commodity, a cognitive surplus alienated from the producers of knowledge to the beneit of the aggregators. «The only business model for aggregated or collectivized information- information that isn’t bought and sold directly- is the routing of advertising. Everything but advertising becomes free. It isn’t the advertisers who become rich in the long term, because there are fewer and fewer things to be sold, other than ads. It is the owner of the ad exchange that becomes rich. At the moment this means Google for most purposes, though in the inancial sphere there are other parties playing an analogous role» (Hartmann, 2010).

3

«The Bible — Lanier adds in a footnote — can serve as a prototypical example. Like Wikipedia, the Bible’s authorship was shared, largely anonymous, and cumulative, and the obscurity of the individual authors served to create an oracle-like ambience for the document as the literal word of God…»

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For instance, the costs and beneits of cloud computing cannot be measured exclusively in technological and/or economic terms. It is the ideology, not the technology, that worries Lanier: «Cloud computing as a technology is not the problem. It is, in fact, an essential resource for mankind. Let me point out, for instance, that without global cloud computing to gather and analyze data, a global phenomenon like Global Warming could not be understood, or even properly detected. Only its local effects would be observed. What IS a huge problem — continues Lanier — is the use of cloud computing to support the fantasy that information is alive in its own right, and that the activities or expressions of individual people are nothing but one form of computing resource, targeted for aggregation. This is, unfortunately, an approximate statement of the latest ideology that has taken hold of the cloud» (Hartmann, 2010).

Yet, the ideology also has economic and technological consequences.

This critique of the “collectivist” Web. 2.0 ideology takes an interesting twist if we replace the notion of commodiied information with the idea of knowledge as a social good. If it is true that we live and operate in a context in which «immaterial value increasingly determines material value» (to quote again the European Green paper), creative industries can and do have a decisive cultural-political and “ideological” role to play: for example, in spreading the knowledge which feeds the response to global challenges such as global warming, the transition to a green economy and sustainable growth. The problem, then, is how to increase the value of cultural products in such a way that is measurable on a social scale, for the beneit not only of the abstract individuals who produce them (Lanier’s and Obama’s “middle class”) but also of society as a whole, be it conceived in local or global “humanitarian” terms. Only on this basis one can envision sustainable growth.

A meaningful link, and a dialectical tension, is thus established between economic and cognitive models, which is typical of an advanced information society. To be sure, Lanier helps us identify and address two orders of problems. On the one hand, he debunks the idea «that the collective is smarter than the individual». Interestingly enough, the examples brought by Lanier of when the collective is smarter than the individual, or better able to solve certain problems, are: “setting a price in a marketplace” and “an election process.” «All such examples involve what can be called optimization, where the concerns of many individuals are reconciled» (Hartmann, 90

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2010). The process based on the anonymous collective (or the “multitude,” to use the term adopted by Toni Negri and Michael Hardt)4 fails instead, according to Lanier, when a different type of creativity comes into play, requiring an imaginative process: rather than a cognitive “swarm,” this type of creativity «requires periodic, temporary “encapsulation” as opposed to the kind of constant global openness suggested by the slogan “Information wants to be free”. Biological cells have walls, academics employ temporary secrecy before they publish, and real authors with real voices might want to polish a text before releasing it. In all these cases, encapsulation is what allows for the possibility of testing and feedback that enables a quest for excellence. To be constantly diffused in a global mush is to embrace mundanity». Of course, encapsulation also requires complex technological and social mechanisms to protect the “temporary secret,” such as irewalls, encryption, intellectual property rights, etc.

Cognitive creativity, in other words, requires a different kind of “optimization” than the collective problem-solving at work in the anonymous processes of the market and of electoral democracy. It is not by chance that the sentence “design by committee” has a pejorative sense: «a collective of programmers can copy UNIX but cannot invent the iPhone». In his book, Lanier draws an in -depth distinction between these two forms of creative innovation (collective problem solving, on the one hand, and a creativity based on temporary encapsulation, on the other, which values the contribution of the individual or a community or a team). We, instead, must limit ourselves to drawing some conclusions based on the general gist of Lanier’s critique: the cognitive design prevailing in an advanced information society, based on the cloud cyberinfrastructure, might not be in and by itself the optimal solution for scientiic research or artistic expression; nor, perhaps, for creative industries which take on the role of “aggregators” and producers of “immaterial value”, providing a bridge between the world of research, education, etc., and the marketplace. Creative industries need a more complex model of innovation, capable of “optimizing” both the advantages provided by the cloud and those provided by temporary encapsulation.

Is Lanier’s critique constructive? What remedies does he propose to guard against the risk of a double failure of both the socio-economic and the cognitive models underpinning Web 2.0? One of his proposals, 4

Lanier uses the term “crowd,” as in “crowdsourcing,” the term coined by Jeff Howe in 2006, to indicate the distribution or the outsourcing of a problem’s solution to an anonymous crowd on the internet.

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not entirely new, is an economic one: «The architecture of the internet must support a global, universal micropayments capability. In this way, anyone could charge for information made available online, whether it is music or a program for a future robot». If it is true that «a silly YouTube-like prank might generate a windfall for a silly teenager, while a scholar’s writing might be only occasionally accessed», it is also true that «over a long period [the latter] might still generate enough income to be of use. People could then re-create the best social formula that has been achieved thus far in human experience. Middle class people could own something- the information they produce- that would give them sustenance as they have children and age» (Hartmann, 2010). However, in order for this economic formula for the distribution of the immaterial value (and cultural creativity) to work, «there would have to be some structural changes introduced gradually. This direction is the only way to create a human-centric internet, instead of one that serves the cultists who believe in information more than people. It would not attempt to make information free, but instead make it affordable. It is worth noting that this is exactly how the web would have developed if the initial design proposal for it, dating back to the 1960s, had been carried out. (This was Ted Nelson’s vision.) It is the obvious way to design the network if people are your top priority» (Hartmann, 2010).

John Seely Brown: The power of pull Let’s listen now to another voice, that of John Seely Brown, once director of Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), and now Chief of Confusion (his own self-attributed title) and co-president of the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation (an expression of the professional services group present also in Italy since 1923). Seely Brown describes his role as that of «helping people [scholars, entrepreneurs or CEOs, from Silicon Valley to China] asking the right questions» in the uncertainty and confusion surrounding the current crisis and the way to emerge from it. Among Seely Brown’s books, perhaps the most successful is The Social Life of Information, written with Paul Duguid and published by the Harvard Business School Press in 2000.

In April 2010, Seely Brown published a new book, this time written in collaboration with John Hagel III, president of the Deloitte Center and Lang Davison, entitled: The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion.

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In short, the central thesis of the book (based on the white paper previously published by Deloitte with the title The Big Shift) is the following: from the Push model, on which both the organization of labor and education were based in the 20th century (from the Fordist to the post-Fordist era), in harmony with the whole productive and commercial infrastructure whose fundamental mechanisms — the decisive push — were economies of scale, the predictability of the demand of goods and services, etc., we move now to the Pull model; that is, toward an infrastructure pulled by the exponential growth of information technology (of which the so-called Moore law is only one of the indicators). In this new context, predictability is reduced if not entirely annulled; industrial and economic cycles as well as those of education and professional development, are highly compressed, characterized by an evolution punctuated by constant adjustments, economic and institutional as well as cultural; and education is permanent, at all levels. In this situation of unprecedented dynamism, the vital cycle of a stock or asset (including the intellectual property which is an essential part of it) or the life cycle of a skill, are drastically reduced (according to Seely Brown, approximately to a ive-year cycle). The implicit question then becomes: how is it possible to sustain a socio-economic model on these bases?

Even the novelty of cloud computing, according to Seely Brown, must be considered within this perspective: for the moment, we are still in the context of “scattered and isolated clouds,” but within one year or so we will be faced with a “federation of clouds” from which it will be possible to pull not only resources, services and tools but also, and above all, ideas. The entire commercial infrastructure as well as the cyberinfrastructure which provides access to the cognitive resources that make the information society work, will have to adapt to this fundamental shift. From an economy based on the Stock Exchange we shift to an economy of Flows, preigured at least in part by the rise of the “aggregators” of which Lanier writes: an economy which increasingly works as a search engine, which, thanks to proprietary algorythms, enables one to follow constantly the lows (be they inancial or informational) rather than count or bank on the production, storing and marketing of an idea or a good. In cognitive terms, from the storing and accumulation of knowledge (all that we know in a given moment) we shift to a constant participation in interactive knowledge lows (what we do not yet know but becomes, from moment to moment, important to understand).

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participation in “creative luxes”. The secret of a successful entrepreneur (or a scientist or an artist or a designer) is to remain on the edge of the lows, of the process of innovation and knowledge production.

Seely Brown does not entirely discount the importance of Lanier’s temporary encapsulation (new knowledge, he admits, contains a strong component of tacit knowledge, both in terms of accumulation and encapsulation).

Yet, to him the fundamental dynamism is on the edge (cutting or bleeding as it might be), or on the tip of the wave, of experimentation. The two examples that Seely Brown loves to give in his lectures are those of extreme suring and World of Warcraft: on the one hand, an extreme sport practiced literally at the tip of the wave by small teams of acolytes who obsessively perfect their moves inspired by other extreme sports (such as, for example, dirt bike acrobatics); and, on the other, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) which, in its dimensions and its exponential growth, has outclassed its direct competitors. World of Warcraft is based on an extremely competitive structure organized in “guilds,” or teams engaged in constant reciprocal emulation, in order to improve their own performance.

It is not as extravagant as one may think to search in these two apparently eccentric examples of intensive, or better “extreme” and “edgy” users the models for new types of entrepreneurship and cognitive innovation, on a distributed basis. They represent an essential component of the new ecology created by technological attractors. According to Seely Brown, the fundamental secret of innovation is that of increasing the advantages of the “collaboration curve,” the new form that the learning curve acquires within this ecology: if in the “push” model the learning curve was based on the principle that the more you practice a certain activity, sport or game, the better you become (by reducing ergonomic or cognitive entropy to the minimum, for example), the collaboration curve is based instead on the idea that, in an age characterized by instability and lows, by the extremely fast circulation of information and constant technological change (whose effects are dificult, if not impossible, to predict in the long run) one can stay on top of things, ride or surf on the tip of the wave, only by constantly interacting with the best. The innovation happens at the edge, triggered by marginal but qualitative shifts, and the secret of success consists in constantly inventing new ways in which a certain activity, sport or game is conceived and practiced, from wave to wave.

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in which it emerges. If the isolated individual is overwhelmed by the mass of information thrown at him/her, being part of a competitive-collaborative interaction within a group of intensive users, at the edge of action/innovation, allows the individual (and the team) to optimize this information, at the very source of the cognitive surplus. Individual creativity thus becomes proportional to the contribution that the individual gives to the collective; and the collective (the structure of the “guilds in World of Warcraft, for example) channels and multiplies this input in exponential ways. According to Seely Brown, the secret of 21st century distributed entrepreneurship consists in harvesting the exponential growth of talent and know-how (on the example of Google): irst of all, the talent of knowing or understanding what is essential to learn, and when it is essential to learn it. This would be the model for the creative industries, considered as that distributed microentrepreneurship that Lanier, too, extols.

Yet, for Seely Brown, the hotbed of ideas and skills doesn’t exist only in temporary encapsulation: rather, it consists of a constant exposure to and an active participation in the “game,” with all the risks that entails. What must be developed and cultivated, according to the theoreticians of the edge, is not only the capacity to «access people and resources when you need them» — as in the initial coniguration of the cloud architecture — but to «attract people and resources you didn’t even know existed» and «achieve potential in less time and more impact than you imagined possible».

Let’s try to draw some conclusions from what we have been saying so far. The economic and cognitive model desired by Lanier and the one proposed by Seely Brown seem, at irst sight, to contradict one another: Lanier aims at re-empowering people (the human factor), the individual members of the middle class, as knowledge producers and economic and cultural subjects, counterpoised to the anonymous and de-humanizing forces which aggregate and re-aggregate information on the web. Seely Brown insists on the power of pull exercised by the exponential growth of technological systems and resources on marginal but crucial aggregations of highly focused “intensive users.” Both these points of view together can in fact help us understand the complexity of the challenges that creative industries face today. Only by understanding these challenges the creative industries can play their vital innovative role in the re-organization of knowledge work and the production of cognitive and social surplus, within the context of an information economy based on social media and the cloud computing infrastructure (however they evolve in the near future).

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These challenges are no different from those the educational system in its entirety now faces, from literacy-building primary schools to researchoriented tertiary institutions. Universities, in particular, must recognize the opportunity in these challenges, if they want to transform themselves from sites of accumulation and encapsulation of tacit knowledge (adequate for a push economy), into centers of permanent education and laboratories for collaborative experimentation: the hotbed of innovation, the production of a “new” knowledge in the context of a pull cognitive economy. It seems plausible to say that these challenges are already affecting the “edge” of our university system, the pursuit of excellence in research or artistic expression; and, following in the wake of the creative industries, forcing us to reconsider the whole structure and the role of universities in the 21st century.

References Deloitte, The center of the Edge. (http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/Industries/Technology/center-for-edge-tech/index.htm).

European Commission Culture (2010). Green paper. Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries. (http://ec.europa.eu/culture/our-policy-development/doc/GreenPaper_creative_industries_en.pdf).

Hartmann, E. (2010). Some Q & A concerning one aspect of You Are Not a Gadget: The Political/Economic argument. (http://www.jaronlanier.com/poleconGadgetqa.html).

Hempel, J. (2009). Supertech has met its match. Technology helped pull the U.S. out of the past few recessions. Not this time. (http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/02/technology/ hempel_supertech.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009020211).

Ingram, M. (2010). Structure 2010: Amazon’s CTO Says the Cloud Has Arrived. (http:// gigaom.com/2010/06/23/structure-2010-amazons-cto-says-the-cloud-has-arrived/).

Lanier, J. (2010). You are not a gadget: A Manifesto. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Seely Brown, J., Hagel, J., & Davison, L. (2010). The power of pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion. New York: Perseus Books Group.

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Some initial observations on the EU Green Paper Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries Yvon Thies

ABSTRACT

Eurocinema, 19 rue des Chartreux, bte 12, B-1000 Bruxelles. E-mail: eurocinema@eurocinema.eu

This article is a synthesis of the Green paper presented by the EU Commission on the cultural and creative industries (CCI) (April 2010). The Green paper is an attempt to identify the needs of cultural and creative industries in order to build a framework at EC level to enhance the growth of CCI. However, the inconstancy of the Green paper to achieve theoretical patterns of development for these industries at EU level is a fundamental question addressed substantially in this paper.

Keywords: cultural policies; cultural and creative industries; EU competencies; Green paper; public regulation; digital shift; cultural diversity; globalization.

Introduction The European Commission brought out a Green Paper “Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries”1 on 27 April 2010. The purpose of this Green Paper in the Community system is to launch a consultation, a 1

Green Paper “Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries” COM (2010) 183/3.

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discussion and to draw responses from interested parties on which the Commission can base future legislative proposals. This makes it an important procedure. This Green Paper follows a Communication of the European Commission on a European agenda for Culture in a globalizing world2 [The European agenda for culture] which may be seen as the irst expression of the Commission’s interest in putting culture “in the frame” and “organizing” it on a pan-European basis. Culture does feature in Community instruments: the Treaty contains an article on culture (Article 151 of the Treaty of Lisbon).3 The European agenda for culture brings out the fact (and these are the words of the Commission, i.e., the guardian of the European Treaties) that culture is and will remain primarily a Member State responsibility. «Action at EU level is to be undertaken in full respect of the principle of subsidiarity, with the role of the EU being to support and complement, rather than to replace, the actions of the Member States, by respecting their diversity and stimulating exchanges, dialogue and mutual understanding» (European Agenda, p. 4). As so often when there is no clearly deined competence, the European Commission chooses a roundabout way to deine an action in a sector that ostensibly does not come within its competences. In the cultural sector, therefore, a culture programme to stimulate exchanges between artists and cultural operators has been implemented for the period 2007-2013.4 The fact is that the European agenda for culture offered nothing of intrinsic substance apart from a promise to continue incorporating culture into the European Commission’s policy-making. However, as a result of this Agenda, the European Commission implemented two parallel forums –one formed of Member States public oficers with cultural policy expertise, 2

3

4

“Communication of the European Commission on a European agenda for culture in a globalizing world” COM (2007) 242 of 10 May 2007.

Article 151 – Lisbon Treaty «The Union and the Member States, having in mind fundamental social rights such as those set out in the European Social Charter signed at Turin on 21 October 1961 and in the 1989 Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers, shall have as their objectives the promotion of employment, improved living and working conditions, so as to make possible their harmonisation while the improvement is being maintained, proper social protection, dialogue between management and labour, the development of human resources with a view to lasting high employment and the combating of exclusion. To this end the Union and the Member States shall implement measures which take account of the diverse forms of national practices, in particular in the field of contractual relations, and the need to maintain the competitiveness of the Union economy. They believe that such a development will ensue not only from the functioning of the internal market, which will favour the harmonisation of social systems, but also from the procedures provided for in the Treaties and from the approximation of provisions laid down by law, regulation or administrative action».

Decision No 1855/2006/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 establishing the Culture Programme (2007 to 2013).

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Some initial observations on the EU Green Paper

the other, of representatives of the cultural sector and cultural industries in the broad sense.5

The Green Paper In this context, the Commission decided to publish its Green Paper and we will try on this article to make a few thoughts about it. The very irst thing to say is that, even with its somewhat attention-grabbing title Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries the Green Paper, like the European agenda for culture, remains theoretically quite weak and very confused, didactically speaking.

Recognition of the cultural industries as a major player in the cultural ield is a big issue. The Green Paper to its great credit does acknowledge the existence of the cultural industries — and that is not axiomatic. Because the primary purpose of these industries is to support, nurture, inance, produce and distribute a creative act that is the reason of their existence, it is tempting to forget that they are industries of value chains6 which bring together talent, investment and trade (purchase and sale of rights). Recognizing that culture is not only an (accumulation derived from ephemeral talents but also from the existence of organized and highly developed industries, making the wealth of the heritage created, clearer to see. Each year, European cinema produces around 800 ilms, while European audiovisual production of iction and documentaries adds up to tens of thousands of hours a year.

The Green paper, by focusing on cultural industry, is giving a new proile of what culture is. Of course, since the publication of Walter Benjamin’s 5

6

One of the two forums set up brings together government experts through an Open Method of Coordination (OMC), which is a non-binding intergovernmental framework for exchanges and concerted action appropriate to a sphere that is largely the responsibility of Member States. It aims to bring more joinedup working to areas of policy-making which are inherently outside the Community policy sphere. The OMC in the cultural sector has resulted in various papers being written on good practices and ways to improve the workings of the cultural industries in a European context. Civil society (in this case, the representatives of the cultural industries — chiefly the representatives of collective management societies, the real cultural entrepreneurs not having been approached) was invited to create three platforms for submitting stakeholder views to the Commission. Nevertheless, the accurate point of view on these platforms remains conventional and lacks of ambition (see also references): – Platform for Intercultural Europe: http://www.intercultural-europe.org – Platform on access to culture: http://ec.europa.eu/culture/archive/communication/pdf_word/ participants_1st_meet_industries.pdf – Platform on the potential of culture and creative industries: http://ec.europa.eu/culture/our-policydevelopment/doc1583_en.htm The cinema is a value chain that includes prototype development (writing, financing, production / sale of rights / cinema, DVD, TV, and online distribution).

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well-known work (Benjamin, 1939), it has become clear that culture is a matter of business and industry far-removed from the romantic view of the individual author lost in his solitary reveries. Nothing embodies the reincarnation of culture in the industrial age better than Hollywood. Before the Green paper, UNESCO was the irst body to give a deinition of cultural industries in the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions7. By this way, UNESCO gave a full legal recognition at an International level to the cultural industries. This means that public authority has been very long to recognize that public action needs to be incorporated and that cultural industries have to be encouraged as a major tool for cultural development.

However, the Green paper is not only focusing on cultural industries, it concerns also creative industries. In the mind of the Green paper, creative industries are sectors like design, advertising, fashion, etc. In that sense, the differentiation with cultural industries probably lies in the fact that cultural industries are creating prototypes (even being reproduced and replicate) while creative industries are creating to a certain extent, mass services and goods (?). The question to be asked is: Is there enough consistency to gather cultural industries and creative industries? The Green paper is not facing these questions that remain open.

The Green Paper devotes important efforts to the development of cultural diversity, the digital shift and globalization: the three main drivers for the further development of cultural and creative industries [CCIs] (Green Paper, Sec.2, p. 6). Although this conception is very interesting, no explanation is given in the Green paper on how these three factors interact. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s give it some hypothesis. It is obvious that the three processes play into one another: 1. Cultural diversity: understood as a living process, constantly creating and recreating cultural values.

2. Digitisation: understood not so much as a technology but more as a stimulant. Indeed, when analog ixations lead to static uses, digitisa7

Referring to the definition given by the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, whereby cultural industries are those industries producing and distributing goods or services which at the time they are developed are considered to have a specific attribute, use or purpose which embodies or conveys cultural expressions, irrespective of the commercial value they may have. The goods and services produced or distributed by the cultural industries include performing arts, visual arts, cultural heritage, film, DVD and video, television and radio (audiovisual sector), video games, new media, music, books and press.

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tion (storage and access of content) obviously enables several kinds of dynamic uses. In that sense, giving access to content may satisfy the demand for entertainment services, knowledge and innovation services, and more conventionally, for cultural services. The cultural diversity/ digital technology interplay will expand as the digital supply builds up.

In any case, it can be said that the greater the volume supply of European digital audiovisual content will be, the more inluence identiiably European content will have on cultural diversity.

3. Globalization: the G20, the small, select group of statesmen who govern the countries that account for over 80% of global wealth, is a revelatory illustration of the intensity of globalization. Globalization is a factor at play in all areas (social, economic, cultural, public health, environment). The way in which the cultural/digital/globalization interplays described here should be examined in more details by the Green Paper. Concerning the implementation of a European dynamic to stimulate the cultural industries in Europe, a better understanding of how the three variables — cultural diversity, the digital shift and globalization — can improve (or undermine)8 the current potential of European cultural industries, is needed.

Some statements made in section 2 of the Green paper need to be qualiied, such as «this new environment substantially changes traditional production and consumption models, challenging the system through which the creative community has up to now drawn value from content » (Green Paper, Sec. 2, p. 6). For the cinema and audiovisual industries, up to now the digital environment has not at present substantially changed the mode of production (that would take a big inancial input into production by the new players in the digital chain (telecom operators, ISPs) which could then inluence the content of movies or TV series (format, variant endings to the work, interactive mix of episodes, etc.). There is at present no (or nearly no) such ability (or willingness) to inject funding, which places a huge question mark precisely over the development and inclusion of innovative business models.9 Furthermore, the assertion that, «the content industries, particularly 8 9

In the absence of appropriate measures (regulatory, financing, etc.).

«Economic value is being displaced towards the end of the chain, which in certain sectors affects the effective reward for creation». This assertion must be corrected with regard to audiovisual content in the broad sense. The online digital market (which must be distinguished from the offline digital market — basically all the broadcasting networks) does not create value for the moving image industries.

Online uses generate too little revenue for this to finally have a destabilising effect on the operating and financing business models (which are inseparable).

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the recorded content industries, have been severely hit by piracy and losses in sales of physical supports (e.g. CD, DVD), which have damaged their development, shrunk their revenue basis and consequently limited their potential to generate jobs and investment». This is why the statement that «the industry also needs to develop new and innovative business models», cannot go without comment. To say that piracy affects the music and audiovisual industry is correct. But the conclusion drawn from it, is arguably spurious.

Obviously, existence of massive piracy requires new business models to be adopted... but if so, which ones? A free-for-all, unqualiied legalization of ile-sharing? Contrary to what this observation implies, the EU cannot skimp on measures to prevent and ight against mass piracy. The Green Paper’s failure to fully consider this issue is of particular concern: some of the cultural industries — the audiovisual industry in particular — supply goods and services in the form of «recorded content» (p. 6) which can be reproduced ad ininitum. In theory, the more the service or good (DVD) is reproduced and acquired against payment, the greater is the possibility of recouping the investment. Mass reproduction also enables a reduction in selling costs commensurate with marketing to a mass market. Mass piracy breaks this virtuous circle and represents a massive outlow of revenues which stops a virtuous circle from being recreated. It also hampers the development of new legal offerings of online services and represents an unfair competition.

Section 2 of the Green paper concludes that «the Commission will be working on three major policy frameworks, which will have a signiicant impact on the framework conditions for CCIs in a digital environment» (p.

7). What are these «three major policy frameworks»?

1. The Digital Agenda for Europe.

Create a true single market for online content and services: • borderless and safe EU web services and digital content markets; • a balanced regulatory framework governing the management of IPRs; • measures to facilitate cross-border online content services; • fostering multi-territorial licences; • adequate protection and remuneration for rights holders; • active support for the digitisation of Europe’s rich cultural heritage.

2. Union for innovation.

Speciic actions undertaken to strengthen the role of CCIs as a catalyst for innovation and structural change: 102

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• promoting entrepreneurship; • access to inance; • identify research and skills needs; • develop cluster concepts; • better support mechanisms.

Aims: • bring the actors at regional, national and European levels together; • enhance transnational cooperation.

Desired outcome: • create new products and services that create growth and jobs.

3. EU strategy on IPR The strategy falls under DG Internal Market whose competency traditionally extends to intellectual property rights.10 Section 3 of the Green Paper addresses the strategic issue of «putting in place the right enablers». Where the Green Paper’s analysis falls down is in its attempt to build a single system view of the way the cultural industries work, portraying them as a near-homogeneous self-contained unit; this takes the discussion onto a somewhat abstract plane and deters any speciic sector-based consideration. It would have been better to take the Section 3 discussion into a cultural industry by cultural industry11 description of the innovations that need to be offered in order to leverage adaptation to the digital shift. It is to recognise that each cultural industry is characterized by distinctive features. The investment required to produce a ilm, for example, bears no relation to what is required for a literary or musical work.12 The Green Paper addresses a series of questions relating to inancing the cultural industries, promoting cultural diversity, integrating CCIs in regional and local development, improving CCIs through access to ICT services, artist mobility, cooperation and trade. All these quite vague questions chime with the climate of “political correctness”, and prompt a wide-ranging series of 10

11

12

Points 1, 2 and 3 are summary of the author. For complete understanding, please refer to the Green paper. i.e., audiovisual industry, newspaper, book, music... as the Commission reflection document “creative content in a European digital single market: Challenges for the Future” had started to do (EU, 22/10/2009).

See the question of financing in the Green paper: How to stimulate private investment and improve CCIs’ access to finance? Is there added value for financial instruments at the EU to support and complement efforts made at national and regional levels? If yes, how? How to improve the investment readiness of CCI companies? Which specific measures could be taken and at which level (regional, national, European)?

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answers from interested parties. The risk is that in a market which is heavily fragmented by national identities, the size of the cultural industries (where very small entities are up against giant players), different business models (the size of the investment required to produce a ilm bears no relation to that for literary or musical works), the responses to the Green Paper will again produce a hotch-potch or confusing jumble of ideas in response. The litmus test of such an exercise would ultimately ask the question of whether or not would the Member States and interested parties agree on what is needed at European level to reinforce and structure the cultural industry, and to what extent?

The Green Paper also fails to address the question of regulation. Culture, cultural heritage and cultural dynamism are arguably seen as wild mushrooms, spontaneously appearing as by some kind of chemical action. The wealth of culture in Europe did not develop out of thin air but is the result of centuries of action by towns and states to construct and promote their identity (languages, art, architecture and so on...). Florence and the Medici stand as a prime example of that historical process. Thomas Mann’s novel Buddenbrooks (which created a huge scandal in his home town) exempliies how such an effort by the authorities and citizens to build their culture might fail. Green paper is, in a classic neoliberal approach, never paying tribute to the public policies who successes to build this extraordinary patrimony.

The Tuileries Palace and the Galerie du bord de l’eau wing of the Louvre museum — whose construction was initiated by the Medici family — now home to a major collection of Italian paintings collected by French Kings and paid for by French tax payers, would never have been possible without dedication to public good which is the driver to public policy. This is the inal remark, the lack of reference to public regulation in Green paper and especially to EC regulatory framework is a signiicant omission. Since the Commission’s main policy instrument is its regulatory power, not least through competition policy and its far-reaching internal market action, and both policies have or can have a real — negative or positive — impact on cultural diversity and the pluralism of businesses operating in the cultural sector, it is regrettable that the Green Paper does not really get to grips with these issues which we see as fundamental.13 13

Note that the completion of the internal market is precisely what have enabled many economic sectors to gradually reap the benefits of a single market (uniform standards, harmonization of procedures, easing of cross-border constraints, economies of scale). Likewise, competition policy can be a powerful encouragement to concentration (mergers in the recording industry) or means of protecting independent

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Some initial observations on the EU Green Paper

To conclude this short introduction to the Green Paper, we would state that the policies focused by the EC to “unlock” the potential of cultural and creative industries are still obviously unclear. One thing is certain: The need for the Commission to produce something of substance. A failure to do so will be seen as a further instance of the EU27’s inability to make a decisive action.

References Benjamin, W. (1939). L’œuvre d’art à l’époque de sa reproductibilité technique. In W. Benjamin, Œuvres III (pp. 269-316). Paris: Gallimard, 2000.

EU (2009). Creative content in a European digital single market: Challenges for the Future. (http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/docs/other_actions/col_2009/relection_paper.pdf).

EU, Platform for Intercultural Europe. (http://www.intercultural-europe.org ).

EU, Platform on access to culture. (http://ec.europa.eu/culture/archive/communication/ pdf_word/participants_1st_meet_industries.pdf).

EU, Platform on the potential of culture and creative industries. (http://ec.europa.eu/culture/ our-policy-development/doc1583_en.htm).

European Agenda (2007). Communication of the European Commission on a European agenda for culture in a globalizing world. COM 242,10 May 2007.

Green Paper (2010). Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries. COM 183/3.

production. The question how an internal market specific action related to cultural industries could enforce these sectors, is a pertinent question, not raised in the Green paper.

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Creativity and cultures: Towards a 6th C for UNESCO World Heritage policies?

Paola Borrione*, Aldo Buzio** and Alessio Re**

ABSTRACT

* IRES Piemonte, via Nizza 18, 10125 Torino, Italy ** Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10125 Torino, Italy

This article intends to propose a contribution to the relection on creativity in its many meanings, technological, social, artistic, and the debate on cultural heritage, including UNESCO Heritage List, with particular attention to the problems inherent to its management. Cultural heritage and creativity are linked by a strong relationship because the irst one is the result of accumulation, over time, done by artists (creative by deinition) which, in turn, take inspiration for new creations from the existing heritage. In recent years there has been much discussion about cultural industries and creative cities, leaving heritage just the role of tourism attraction. In addition to this function, important in the social and economic ield, are other relations that exist between heritage and creativity, which, if exploited, could open up interesting prospects for both sectors. To analyze these issues, speciically in the ield of World Heritage, irstly the two issues will be analyzed separately and theoretically, presenting the reader with certain aspects of the ongoing research in two areas. The second part examines the current policies that seek to incorporate the concept of creativity within the guidelines proposed by management UNESCO, inally bringing some theoretical views and practical applications that, in our opinion, justify the inclusion of creativity priority for the management of World Heritage Sites.

Keywords: cultural heritage; cultural policy, international organization, creativity

Edizioni Erickson â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Trento

REM â&#x20AC;&#x201C; vol. 2, no. 2, December 2010 (107-120)

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About creativity and around it In order to analyze the relationship between creativity and cultural heritage it is necessary to deepen what we mean by talking about creativity. The concept has become increasingly known in recent years, the scientiic community has widely discussed it, in some cases creating misunderstanding or even abuses. As was underlined by J.P. Benghozi, interviewed about this issue in this magazine, many European cities now adopt policies known as “creative”, which tend to look similar and sometimes digress from the real meaning (or meanings) of creativity.

The deinition of creativity has changed considerably in the history of humankind and we have also changed the models and values around it. From Romanticism onwards there are three different models of creative attitude.

The irst model is the classic romantic vision of a creative genius. One who has a higher capability allowing him to create things from nothing. This model identiies creativity as a gift, a talent, that very few have. A creative genius is usually someone who rejects the nonconformist rules and often borders insanity. The creation is a kind of light that hits the genius in a particular state, often sought to artiicially alter the personality. The reference model for a social relationship, thinking about this type of creativity, is the crazy artist (see Throsby, 2001, pp. 137-138).

The second model relates to Herbert Simon and the theory of problemsolving. Simon’s idea is that creativity is inding the best solution of a problem. Indeed, for Simon when you are faced with a problem situation, we put in place procedures by neurobiological mechanisms that resolve this situation and create a routine that is somehow applied whenever you are faced with the same situation... The starting point is not merely a choice between alternatives. We are not in a ield of decision theory. However, what creates a problem solving process is, as in Dewey, the search for a solution to a problem situation. In other words, the person must develop a strategy that would allow a jump from one situation to a desired situation. The crucial problem is identifying a path to achieve the goal... Again according to Simon, problem solving is a search through a maze, consisting of the environment. Human behavior is simple, what is complex is our environment». (Rizzello, 1997, pp. 103-107)

Simon’s eficacy data interpretation is based on three factors or individual characteristics.

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The irst is the preparation: the accidental discovery, fruitful romantic lighting, according to Simon, doesn’t exist. «Chance, in the words of Pasteur, favors the prepared minds... It is the surprise, the departure from the expected, that creates the fruitful accident; and there are no surprises without expectations, nor expectations without knowledge» (see Santagata, 2003, pp. 17-18).

The second point is the experience. For Simon, a strong theoretical and practical preparation to analyze the problems arriving at an innovative solution is a necessity.

Risk is the third factor. Accepting and facing some calculated risks are part of the creative process. To explore new areas are needed to manage information that go against «scientists require a contrarian streak that gives them the conidence to pit their knowledge and judgment against the common wisdom of their colleagues» (Santagata, 2003, p. 8).

«I would add, be tenacious, well prepared, experienced and risk takers, because often the creative solution isn’t around the corner, but remote and reachable only by insistence and repeated attempts» (Santagata, 2007, p.

40).

The synthesis of the two models probably is the solution to the dilemma and lies in the analysis carried out by Damasio in Descartes’ Error. Both the mind and the brain are central to the spiritual part, the emotions are interpreted through the physical component, the somatic markers.

Only Damasio discovered the area of the brain in which the emotions reside, to some extent. Damasio notes that the process of emotions, without thought, turns into an endless sequence of weights as advantages and disadvantages, without reaching a decision. This shows the importance of emotions for decision making. If we look at creativity as a process of problem solving, emotions clearly inluence our decision-making skills. Our different capacity to react and manage emotions, inluence our ability to ind a solution to a problem and then to create. The creation becomes not only a personal gift or a physical process but, rather, just the best combination of both. The creative is the one that is due to a natural predisposition or because of experience, is able to decode stimuli in innovative ways and problems provided by the external environment. At this point it is natural for a strong connection between social environment and individual susceptibility to creative thinking.

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scholars have begun to develop theories on facilitating creative development in an area. The choices made by economic and social policies are increasingly interested in creativity, the ability to produce ideas, knowledge and innovation, if the change from agricultural industrial economy has led to the replacement of production factors (land and agricultural work) with others (raw materials and factory work), the ongoing changes in socio-economic context are, however, based on the crucial role assumed by the creative capacity of man. Starting from this premise the theory developed by the American sociologist Richard Florida in The Rise of the Creative Class was born (Florida, 2003). The economic need for creativity has found expression in the rise of a new class called from Florida “creative class” and arrived to cover almost 30% of workers in the economically “advanced” countries; members of this class are characterized as committed in professional activities whose primary function is to produce signiicant new ideas and are divided into two subdivisions according to the nature of the creative process behind their work: “ super creative core” and “creative professionals”.

The core (“super creative core”) includes scientists, engineers, university professors, poets and novelists, artists, actors, designers and architects, as well as the aristocracy of modern society: non-narrative texts writers, publishing executives, members from the cultural world, researchers, analysts and commentators. Whether they are programmers or software engineers, architects and ilmmakers, all are engaged in a creative process. This level of creative work is characterized by the production of new forms or new solutions that are easily reproducible and widely used. Beyond the core, the creative class also includes the so-called “creative professionals” which are responsible for a wide range of knowledge-intensive occupations, such as high-tech, inancial services, legal and health professions and management.

The latter are responsible for solving problems by drawing on a sophisticated system of knowledge. What is required from these “creative professionals” is to apply or combine in a new way, the classical approaches to it the situation. Such people are discerning and occasionally experience something radically new. Doctors, lawyers and managers, all belong to the creative class and they are like this when addressing different cases which they deal with.

In this regard Richard Florida developed the “creative capital theory” which claims that the economic development of a region or city is driven by the location’s choices of creative class as they prefer «the different places, 110

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and are tolerant and open to new ideas» (Florida, 2003, p. 295). Refuting the argument that the New Economy requires the death of geography in the era of communication and virtual networks, the American economist claims the criticality of the “geographical location”, and especially the “city” as basic organizational units for the development the new creative class and as the engine of the economy. In particular, the important aspect is the creation of a statistical model in which Florida is to validate the existence of a link between creative class presence of three speciic factors: technology, talent and tolerance (the 3T). The presence of creative people should be higher in urban settings characterized by the presence of high-tech companies and a large number of patent products (technology), the presence of people with a high educational level (talent) and a signiicant number of foreigners and homosexual (tolerance).

The American economist doesn’t simply expose what are the regions and cities so lucky to host a large number of these people but he identiies also the reasons that determine their location decisions, these are no longer dictated, in fact, by traditional reasons (place of work, presence of infrastructure, shopping malls etc..) but by a series of ideas summarized by Florida in the concept of “quality of place”.

The analysis made by the American sociologist has certainly the merit of addressing the problem of public decisions aimed at stimulating creativity, this has been very successful in European and transnational and local, but over the years has shown some limitations.

Alan Scott, a geographer at UCLA, presents the analysis of creative districts, as Hollywood, and puts much more attention about the history of public policies in that territory. A territory, according to Scott, can not invent creativity without having it in its roots in history and the Florida creative class in Hollywood is the result of a transformation between the ilm industry and an emerging class of local artisans engaged in other manufacturing activities. The idea that people move to the city’s most convenient and stylish part is strongly questioned and jobs are placed at the heart of the decision rather than recreational activities.

Do jobs follow people or do people follow jobs? A number of currently prominent approaches to urbanization respond to this question by privileging the role of individual location choice in response to amenity values as the motor of contemporary urban growth. Amenities, it is often said, have an especially potent effect on the migration patterns of individuals endowed

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with high levels of human capital. However, these approaches raise many unanswered questions. Theories that describe urban growth as a response to movements of people in search of consumer or lifestyle preferences can be questioned on the grounds of their assumptions about human behavior, as well as their silence in regard to the geographical dynamics of production and work. We argue that a more effective line of explanation must relate urban growth directly to the economic geography of production and must explicitly deal with the complex recursive interactions between the location of irms and the movements of labor. (Storper & Scott, 2009, pp.147-167)

The point for both of these scholars is the analysis of the geographical factor in sedimentation of creativity, this phenomenon is analyzed in several relationships worldwide focusing almost exclusively on large urban realities and their relationship with the world of work related to cultural industries.

Although urbanization is a growing phenomenon, the study of public policies related to creativity in not urban centers deserves more attention. In these places there certainly isn’t a high concentration of cultural activities but it is where the majority of cultural heritage is localized. As reported by Scott’s interview, the Lake District in Britain is an area rich in cultural and natural heritage and has lived a remarkable concentration of artistic geniuses in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for this reason we can deinitely see the Lake District a place of creativity. «Nevertheless, there is a special sense in which the English Lake District might still be seen as a type of creative region. In a nutshell, the region’s cultural economy depends not so much on innovation in the narrow technical sense of the term, but on an overall atmosphere — and a facilitating grid of commercial activities — that is endemically conducive to experiential discoveries» (Scott, 2010).

Around World Heritage meaning The UNESCO World Heritage List was established in 1972 through the Convention for the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Its purpose is to preserve the heritage of excellence value from deterioration or abandonment so that future generations can enjoy it. With the gradual emergence of the global list, and the consequent exponential increase of listed sites (now nearly 1000), this list becomes not only an instrument of protection and conservation, but also a chance for promoting economic development and local contexts.

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For the irst twenty years included sites’ categories were the image of the more traditional categories of cultural heritage: archaeological sites, called “monuments” and the historical centers of urban settlements. The attention is placed, for sites that receive recognition, on the issues concerning the protection and heritage conservation. The sites included in the list are mainly belonging to the more developed countries, mainly in Europe.

These dynamics led, in 1994, to 410 listed sites, almost exclusively representative of the mentioned categories. The emergence, by the scientiic community, of a skepticism about the limitations of representative-ness of the List, together with political power of non-European countries, led, in 1994, the World Heritage Centre, to promote a Global Strategy for a Balanced, Representative and Credible World Heritage List.

Later, in 2002, through the declaration of Budapest, the World Heritage Center ixed the 4C future goals for implementing the World Heritage List: Credibility, Conservation, Capacity Building, Communication are the watchwords, plus, in 2007, the ifth C Community Involvement. Targets linked with a broader discourse of reorganization of the entire UNESCO generally set by the Millennium Development Goal.1 Alongside these new basic management objectives, categories signiicantly different from classic shapes are included in the UNESCO list of cultural heritage. The irst innovation is probably represented by the sites included as “cultural landscapes”, attempting to cover large areas, bearers of values linked to a virtuous and well-established relationship between man and land. These categories of sites, range from agricultural landscapes, sacred to the territories of Africa, Australia and South America.2 To this are added the cultural routes such geographical representations of a heritage that unite different communities and cultures.

In this sense they could be considered the so-called serial sites, whose characteristic is the division of the site in areas with similar characteristics but detached from them. The Baroque of Val di Noto, the Savoy Residences, Sacred Mountains are examples where the assets’ excellence is recognized in many parts, distributed in areas that can be very broad and cross national boundaries.

1

2

Budapest declaration adopted in the 26° meeting of World Heritage Committee (Budapest, Hungary, 2002). http://whc.unesco.org/en/culturallandscape” http://whc.unesco.org/en/culturallandscape; see World Heritage Series n°6 – World Heritage Cultural Landscapes 1992-2002; World Heritage Series n°7 – Cultural Landscapes: the Challenges of Conservation, World Heritage Series n°26 – Cultural Landscapes.

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The future of the UNESCO list seems to go further towards new types of sites, historic urban landscapes as3 inclusion of intangible values associated with sites, trade and religious international routes that are increasingly complex examples of how the concept of world heritage has changed over the years.

UNESCO programs about creativity Current policies supported by UNESCO for creativity are divided mainly into two strands: one related to art and craft creativity, understood as a possible means of livelihood in developing countries. Second, as underlined by the same Benghozi, promotion of local policies for creativity, conducted the program through network of creative cities (Cites Creative Network), a network of cities where an excellent character is recognized in policies for the traditional culture and creativity.

In the irst case, the art and craft, UNESCO, is encouraging cultural diversity and artistic expression today, seeking to ensure that all cultures derive beneits from the development opportunities created by cultural industries. This is ensured by strengthening local markets and facilitating access to international markets, particularly through cooperation among the richest countries and developing countries.

In the ield of creative industries such as crafts, design, publishing, cinema and music, support is provided to cooperate between public and private training, festivals and shows. UNESCO provides support and cooperation to promote linguistic diversity in particular through translations and capacity, building on protection of property rights on authors and publishers.

Finally it should be emphasized that other UN agencies also operate in this ield, such as, irst and foremost, WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) and ILO (International Labour rganization). Both agencies, even in the Italian campus of ITC-ILO Turin, organize training courses and International Masters.

Internationally, the legal instrument is the Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, adopted in

3

World Heritage and Contemporary Architecture – Managing the Historic Urban Landscape’ Vienna, Austria, http://whc.unesco.org/en/activities/48/; http://whc.unesco.org/en/activities/48/

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2005/4, that facilitates the relationship between governments and civil society members.

On the same vein, it should be recalled that in September of 2009 the irst UNESCO World Forum on culture and cultural industries took place in Italy at Monza. The event was been attended by over 200 representatives from the world of fashion, design and craftsmanship that have stressed and agreed, on occasion, the importance of cultural and creative industries development and renewal of society.

The Creative Cities Network connects cities that agree to share experiences, ideas and best practices to promote the cultural, social and economic city. A key feature is the creation of partnerships between public and private entrepreneurial initiatives to facilitate new business and creativity in small traditional irms. The Creative City is divided into 7 categories (literature, cinema, music, crafts, design, media and gastronomy. Next to cities such as Edinburgh, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Lyon, Bologna, for music is the only Italian that counts with this recognition.

Creativity and UNESCO policies: Towards a 6th C for cultural heritage?

Creativity as an input for social life quality For the reasons given so far, multiple points of contact are revealed between the two areas of creativity and world heritage. Can we ind creative declination for the policies concerning the UNESCO sites?

On one hand we may recall the concept of creativity to the social quality (Santagata, 2009), on the other hand we can consider creativity as an engine of innovation and innovative management practices for these sites.

Social quality is deined as the extent to which people are able to provide for themselves and their families independently, to participate in social, economic, and cultural, to cultivate friendly relationships and emotional, to contribute to the development and welfare of society and realize their potential. It is therefore a complex concept with different sizes, joined to the political agenda of international organizations (consider OECD, World 4

Approved in 2005 its goal is to identify, safeguarding and promote multiple cultural expression of local populations.

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Forum, “Measuring and Fostering the Progress of Societies”) and by National governments (consider the report made by Commission sur la Mesure de la Performance Économique et du Progrès Social of the French government).

In the various deinitions of social life quality, culture and creativity are considered to be two of the basic construction of life quality and opportunities for social development in a territory and they are closely interdependent within each other.

Culture here is understood as cultural consumption, and it allows people having access to more information and expanding their perspectives and increasing their capacity for analysis. It is therefore considered as a means of personal enrichment, like, or in parallel to the progress’ possibilities offered by education. It is for this reason that public policies, at national or local level, seeking to expand the number of readers, to democratize access to museums, concerts, plays, to encourage different types of cultural consumption. The improvement of personal skills allows individuals to participate in society more aware, to take more effective decisions and to identify more clearly the personal goals and the community you want to strive for.

The result is the ability to make society more inclusive, cooperative, open, able to evolve and cope with problems. Moreover, culture is an important component of the construction of personal and collective identities, it’s the nucleus around which are structured activities, social behavior, communication patterns, social roles.

Creativity is an essential input for the production of culture: it is the spark that can conceive original ideas and transfer them into plays, music, sculptures, paintings and installations. But if, on the one hand, creativity is an engine of cultural production, the other culture is the framework within which creativity inds its own space to move. Culture works very well as a ilter for creative action: deines the direction of development, determines the ethical boundaries within which creativity can move for the good of society as a whole, contributes to choose processes and goods covered. In this sense creativity is a means to achieving shared social values that relect the community of reference, which are geared to improving the quality of life and increase the welfare of society.

Creativity and culture are therefore inseparable from the perspective of social quality, because both contribute to improving the quality of life of individuals and communities, help to maintain inclusive and cohesive society over time and at the same time, provide incentives for change and 116

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growth. In a world constantly changing and where the processing speed is signiicantly expanded culture provides people with a compass to navigate and understand the world, where creativity, however, is one of the forces contributing to change.

UNESCO sites and the areas that surround them — are the perfect materialization in time and space of the joint between creativity and culture.

On one hand, in fact, they are the only cultural areas, they represent, preserve and make available unique conditions of the people, not repeatable, the cultural heritage of humanity. On the other hand, over time, was the creativity of artists, designers, or people to create and implement a given cultural heritage, to evolve it to suit the needs of people, to integrate with the natural heritage.

However, as clearly shown by Santagata (2009, p. 15) «historical conditions and space are not in themselves a suficient condition for the success of a cultural industry» or, more generally, the production of culture.

For being able to produce culture, in cultural industries but also contributing to the development of social quality of a territory, the UNESCO sites need an ad hoc public policy in order to stimulate creativity. This approach is valid whatever the socio-economic is and cultural context in which is placed the UNESCO site. While in some countries, in fact, policies that stimulate creativity can help develop a more inclusive and democratic society and speciically, to promote the involvement of population in the protection and enhancement of the site, or make it a vehicle for communication, in other countries it can help overcome the economic and social crisis that is compromising societies, especially the Western ones.

Creativity and innovation for the UNESCO sites’ management The second deinition of creativity which we want to refer in this paper is understanding creativity as innovation in management policies for the sites.

Innovation in the management of sites becomes necessary to meet the new targets set for the future by the cited statement of Budapest. Management means no more only to protect, preserve and allow the use of sites, but also put them at the center of processes of empowerment of people and communities of improvement of human relations, production of content for the global communications.

World Heritage sites must ind a role in improving the quality of life of people starting from their ability to dialogue with the social, business and 117

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politics. This requires management systems of cultural heritage which can facilitate communication, exchange of ideas, shared plans.

A irst step in innovating the management of cultural heritage is to invest in technology, along two streets. The irst is related to investing in tools for cataloging, monitoring the status of “health” of the property, enjoyment of heritage itself. The second is the use of new technologies, particularly Web 2.0 technologies in innovative ways, inventing new ways of communicating with people, to participate in managing assets, building networks of interest around the capital.

Regarding the irst option, UNESCO sites, as representatives of worldwide excellence, they can serve as incubators for new technologies, relating both to the conservation and management and promotion, which may be experienced in a very controlled environment yet well known and appreciated. In the case of a product for research or conservation, we could think, for example, to the technology in analysis and restoration, being applied to a UNESCO site carries the dual advantage of increasing the image of who carries out the project and to spread internationally the results. For a product related to the enhancement and promotion, the high numbers of visitors usually entering into the world heritage sites provide an economic return and image that can justify investment in further research. Examples of such technologies can range from 3D laser scanners for the knowledge to the agreements between the WHC UNESCO Trip Advisor and technologies for energy saving or Fotopedia, a collection of 20,000 photos on the World Heritage that are freely accessible because they are registered as Creative Commons.5 The investment in Web 2.0 technologies, however, would result in UNESCO sites to be more present on the communication global scene. A series of cultural movements, civic, creative people are developing online, they have brought a breath of fresh air in the political and cultural global arena: they are for example the music stars “born” on YouTube and achieved worldwide success without a record company that promotes, at least initially, as well as several examples of crowd sourcing in both business and cultural matters.

Such tools, integrated in the management plan, could lead to the objectives set in the Budapest Convention, in particular regarding the ability to 5

See the journal Siti: http://www.rivistasitiunesco.it/rubrica.php?categoria=Innovazione%20tecnologica

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Creativity and cultures: Towards a 6th C for UNESCO World Heritage policies?

involve the local community, both the community of experts or the one of residents, and the ability to innovate and enhance communication.

In conclusion we can stress that for each of the deinitions of creativity presented in the irst paragraph, may correspond a different relation with the cultural heritage. In the case of the romantic vision of cultural heritage, think about the architectural or artistic works, creativity is a source of inspiration, landscape and nature have always played a key role in this regard.

Thinking of the vision of Simon, cultural heritage can help to provide and reine creative solutions, such as new technologies in the service of heritage.

In a more complex vision of creativity, cultural heritage covers all these functions adding others as an educational function or the development of the territory. Both Florida and Scott stress the important role that cultural resources have, in establishing a local development, focused on creativity.

But it’s in the relationship between creativity and social quality that cultural heritage can play a primary role , maybe, a relation good enough to justify the suggestion for a sixth “C” among the priorities of UNESCO. The objectives of the World Heritage List, conservation, capacity building, credibility, communication, community involvement, which were created to strengthen the list itself and increase its capacity to foster sustainable development policies. The adoption of creativity among these priorities, understood as social quality and management, should be even greater in this direction.

References Florida, R. (2002). The rise of the creative class. And how it’s transforming work, leisure and everyday life. New York: Basic Books.

Rizzello, S. (1997). Economia della mente. Bari: Laterza.

Santagata, W. (2003). Cultural projects for Development. Torino: International Training Center of the ILO and University of Torino.

Santagata, W. (2007). La fabbrica della cultura. Ritrovare la creatività per aiutare lo sviluppo del paese. Bologna: Il Mulino.

Santagata, W. (2009). Libro Bianco sulla Creatività. Per un modello italiano di sviluppo.

Milano: EGEA. Scott, A. (2010). Cultural economy of landscape: Development pathways in the English lake district, Working paper CSS EBLA no. 15.

Siti, section «Innovazione tecnologica», http://www.rivistasitiunesco.it/rubrica. php?categoria=Innovazione%20tecnologica.

Storper, M. & Scott, A. J. (2009). Rethinking human capital, creativity and urban growth.

Journal of Economic Geography, 9 (2).

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Throsby, D. (2000). Economics and culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

UNESCO (2002). Dichiarazione di Budapest adottata durante la 26° riunione del World Heritage Committee (Budapest, Hungary).

UNESCO (2003). World Heritage Series n°6 – World Heritage Cultural Landscapes 19922002, Paris, 7.

UNESCO (2003). World Heritage Series n°7 – Cultural Landscapes: The Challenges of Conservation, Paris, 8.

UNESCO (2010). World Heritage Series n°26 – Cultural Landscapes, Paris, 3.

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Reconsidering the concept of the “creative city”: Theory and reality in Japan 1

Emiko Kakiuchi

ABSTRACT

Cultural Policy Program, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) 7-22-1, Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-8677, Japan. E-mail: kakiuchi@grips.ac.jp

Facing aging and depopulation, Japan is being forced to change its socio-economic structure from one based on growth to a more sustainable model. Globalization is also having a great impact on Japanese society, including the Japanese economy as a whole as well as people’s daily lives. “Creativity” has been proposed as one of the key concepts for sustainable development in cities in Japan, as creating new values in a way that leads to further development can contribute to ameliorating negative side effects of structural change. In this paper, a brief outline of ongoing socio-economic changes in Japan is introduced, and then the theoretical framework concerning development of cities is examined on the basis of an analysis of statistical data. It is found that the presence of a relatively large population of artists correlates well with economic prosperity, but that this is more likely to be an effect of the prosperity than its cause.

Keywords: creativity; sustainable development; arts; statistical analysis.

Socio-economic changes in Japan Japan has modernized itself for the past 150 years. After World War II, Japan’s new constitution renounced war, and placed a strong focus on eco1

This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No. 21560634).

Edizioni Erickson – Trento

REM – vol. 2, no. 2, December 2010 (121-142)

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nomic development. In the 1960s and 70s in particular, when Japan experienced rapid economic growth, serious social problems such as disorderly development, public nuisances, and depopulation of rural areas became part of the political agenda.2 After the oil crises of the 1970s, Japan still maintained reasonable economic growth through an export drive, which led to the “Plaza Accord” agreement to devalue the US dollar relative to the Japanese Yen and other currencies in 1985. Accordingly, credit was easier to obtain in Japan, which caused excessive property and stock speculation in the late 1980s. This led to soaring land prices and spurred disorderly and excessive development in what became known as the “bubble economy.” After the bubble burst in 1990, national and local governments, carrying the burden of huge debts, were squeezed for resources for proper development of urban infrastructure, and the economy was stagnant for a period which is commonly characterized as the “lost decade”.3 Due to the inancial crunch as well as local needs, a devolution process has been ongoing.4 However, even now, many economic and commercial functions are concentrated in the Tokyo Metropolitan area and along the Paciic coast, and disparity and inequality among cities has been widening.5 Japan’s population growth stopped in 2004, and the population is now declining. In general, by the early 21st century, the society and economy of Japan had matured.

These socio-economic changes have affected the values of the public.

Data from a national survey of values is shown in Figure 1. Japanese people increasingly consider non-material satisfaction to be more important than material satisfaction.

Based on these trends, the Japanese government has undertaken several initiatives. In 2001, the Fundamental Law for the Promotion of Culture and Arts was enacted. This law is the irst of its kind; it relects a broad social consensus on the importance of culture. Another important law is the 2

3

4

5

The National Income Doubling Plan and the Comprehensive National Development Plan were put into effect in 1960 and 1962, respectively, and in 1964 the Shinkan-sen (bullet train) service was inaugurated and the Olympic Games were held in Tokyo.

The total amount of government bonds is 720 trillion Yen as of 2010, and the total amount of local authority bonds is 141 trillion Yen as of 2009: http://www.mof.go.jp/gbb/1912.htm; http://www.soumu.go.jp/ main_content/000020157.pdf.

The Decentralization Promotion Law, enacted in 1995, was the third significant reform of the local government system, following the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and the reforms after WWII. “Greater Tokyo” includes an area located within about a 70 km radius of the center of Tokyo (including portions of Kanagawa, Yamanashi, Saitama, Ibaraki and Chiba prefectures), and has a population of more than 34 million. The urban agglomeration of Tokyo as defined based on population density by the UN has a population of 26 million, while the total population of Japan is about 120 million as of 2008.

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600000

70

60

500000

50 400000 40 300000

GDP (billion yen) ％ ％

30

％ 200000 20 100000

10

0 1972

Figure 1

1980

1990

2000

0 2008

National survey on values & GDP (Source:http://www8.cao.go.jp/survey/h21/h21-life/images/ h20-2.csv).

Landscape Law, which was enacted in 2004, aiming to promote pleasant and beautiful scenery in cities and villages. This is the irst law that refers to the importance of the “beauty” of cities and villages in Japan. In 2005, Japan’s 21st Century Vision was released. This document calls for Japan to become a “culturally creative nation.” Japan is now considering “cultural creativity” as a factor in future development. The National Land Council recommended effective land use by utilizing culture for local sustainable development in 2008.6

Theoretical framework Global city concept Several theoretical frameworks for the development of cities in Japan have been considered by past research. From 1980-90, the “global city” concept was introduced in Japan, whereby the megacity is viewed as playing an important role in dealing with globalization, serving as an incubator for innovation, and in developing talent through training (Sassen,1991). This model focuses strongly on networks of highly specialized services such as accounting, inance, advertising, telecommunication, and other manage6

http://www.mlit.go.jp/kisha/kisha08/02/020214_.html

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ment functions. It was suggested that global cities with a concentration of these services such as New York, London and Tokyo, would be the leading players.

This theory still appears to be applicable to some extent (Kakiuchi et al., 2008). Tokyo, with a population of 12 million, roughly 10% of the national population, produces roughly 18% of the national GDP, amounting to 92.27 trillion Yen in 2005. (Since the most recent population data is from the 2005 census, all data used in this paper are from 2005, or or near to 2005, even though more recent economic data are available.) Tokyo has a high concentration of business services in general, but in certain subsectors, it has an even greater concentration.7 Through industry, Tokyo created 35.7% of national GDP in inance and insurance, 26.6% in wholesale and retail trade, and 23.1% in service activities.

As of 2006, less than 20% of all business establishments, headquarters and employees were located in Tokyo. However 68.3% of clearance of bills in terms of value is conducted there, 48.7% of large scale irms with capital exceeding one billion yen are located in Tokyo, and 45.2% of lawyers’ ofices are also located in Tokyo. In the ield of information and broadcasting services, the concentration is even larger; 47.7% of all employees work in Tokyo, and 70.1% of employees and 45.2% of establishments in the ield of internet based services. Tokyo is dominant in terms of employees and establishments as well: 67.1% of employees in the publishing business work in Tokyo, 79.4% in sound information, and 72.1% in video picture production and distribution. Cultural activities are also concentrated. One third of all classical music concerts are held in Tokyo, and roughly half of cultural organizations operate in Tokyo, and a quarter of non-proit organizations operate in Tokyo.

On the other hand, in many smaller cities, globalization has caused weakening of key industries, and led to increases in the number of bankrupt companies and unemployed workers, which has led in turn to increases in crime rates and other deterioration in the quality of life. Suffering from a drop in tax revenues, they have been unable to take any effective measures to tackle these problems. Each local government must seek solutions to these problems by mobilizing all of its resources.

7

Deregulation policies called the financial “big bang” in 1998 accelerated the growth of information communication and technology related companies and other knowledge based industries in the central part of Tokyo Prefecture.

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Sustainable city concept The concept of the “sustainable city” was introduced in the late 1990s as an alternative to the global city concept, and several measures to create sustainable cities were recommended to the Japanese Government by the OECD in 2001.8 These recommendations strongly inluenced arguments and trends concerning urban development policy.

In particular, the concept of the “compact city” was derived from the sustainable city concept, aiming at a livable city for the handicapped, aged, and pedestrians through human-scale development. Due to motorization (and lack of public transportation), suburban sprawl and large roadside shopping centers led to urban decay. The inner cities, which are not convenient for cars and not easy to develop due to complicated land rights, have deteriorated, and streets with shuttered shops are common. In order to solve these problems, many cities are now following the compact city model, aiming at a more pedestrian/bicycle oriented environment.

However, even before the OECD recommendations were proposed, sustainable development had become one of the most important topics in Japan, placing a priority on sustaining the quality of economics, environment and society beyond the present generation. Endogenous development is considered an essential factor for a sustainable city formation. It becomes important to harmonize economic development and the quality of life of the community, not only at present but also in the future.

Creative city concept In the 21st century, the creative city concept was introduced as an urban planning tool (Landry, 2000) and/or as a hub for the creative class (Florida, 2002). In view of rapid globalization and changes brought about by the knowledge-based information society, the concept of the “creative city,” in which innovative economic structure and unique regional cultures co-exist, has been attracting attention. Florida pointed out that the existence of an emerging creative class who are engaged in science, technology, architecture, design, education, arts, music, entertainment, etc., creates new ideas.

8

OECD (2001), Urban Policy in Japan. Their recommendations are: revitalization of urban centers and managing urban growth in suburbs to achieve sustainable cities, achieving appropriate land use patterns in urban areas, restructuring regulations, expanding investment for cities, securing financial measures for improvement, reconciling private rights and the public interest, and re-evaluating the role of national government, taking a comprehensive approach.

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In the past, cities with good location with regard to the transportation network and/or with rich natural resources could develop themselves. Florida’s model suggests that at present and in the future, those cities which can attract creative people will develop themselves, as this human capital can attract industries, business, and investors as well. The creative class plays a critical role in the city to nurture an internationally high level of culture and develop a real creative city. In this sense, as mentioned before in this section, Tokyo is one of the most creative cities in Japan.

The concept of the creative city, however, has been interpreted in different ways in Japan, although all interpretations place a strong focus on the importance of creative talents, artists and creators (those who are engaging in IT related cultural activities in particular) and creative industries based on individual creativity, skill and talent. In sum, these talents and creative industries are expected to create economic wealth directly, and/or attract talented people who will create high added values through developing intellectual property.9 In particular, Bologna, an Italian city, is considered to be one of the most successful cases, and this Bologna model has prevailed (Sasaki, 1998); cultural assets and practices are considered to stimulate the skills of the people who live in the city and make them more creative, thereby enhancing the entrepreneurial culture. The cities of Kanazawa and Yokohama are actively working towards becoming creative cities, Attempting to attract artists and creators, and have committed signiicant inancial resources to these efforts.10 Other cities are expected to make such attempts in the future.

Creativity argument11 In Japan, the importance of “creativity” has long been discussed in relation to education, culture, and science and technology.12 Since Japan attained rapid economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s based in part on uniform education which produced a well-trained workforce which allowed Japan to catch up economically to advanced western countries, more attention 9 10

11 12

http://www.wipo.int/ip-development/en/creative_industry/ The “Creative City Yokohama” project started in 2004, with large-scale funding from the Yokohama city government. In 2010, roughly 1.8 billion yen was allocated, and among them, 834 million yen to convert vacant offices to artists’ studios, support film festivals, train artists and creators, and so on. http://www. city.yokohama.jp/me/keiei/souzou/outline/pdf/estimate-02-h22yosan.pdf This section is based on Kakiuchi (in press).

For example, the Central Council for Education issued a report in 1971, referring to the importance of developing creativity through formal and informal education.

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has been paid to the creation of human capital with diversiied character and talent. In the course of discussion of this issue, the number of patents, Nobel prize winners, research papers published in international journals, and so on, are used as measures of creativity in Japan.

At the same time, in the ield of business management, creativity has been viewed as an important element for innovation, which allows Japanese companies to adapt their operations to an ever changing business environment, by re-deining the values of goods and services they are offering, adding new values to their products, and creating new markets and clients.

In this discussion, tacit knowledge and corporate culture shared by corporate members are considered to play an important role (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995).

The newly introduced “creative” city concept, at least as it is taken in Japan, seems to basically be an extension of this philosophy, but with the slight difference of paying more attention to arts and culture (in a narrow sense) as well as science and technology. In the following section, considering the above theoretical models, the actual situation will be examined on the basis of oficial statistics, focusing on “artists” as one segment of Japan’s workforce.

Data analysis Overview of workforce13 structure Since the end of WWII, Japan’s economy has been growing rapidly (Figure 2), however since the 1980’s the growth rate has been slowing. Japan’s economy has matured, and requires a highly educated workforce, and the university matriculation rate has been increasing steadily, particularly since 1985. Also, economic development has made it easier for families to send their children to tertiary education. In addition, the government policy of providing inancial assistance to enhances this trend,14 as Japan, with few natural resources, has to rely on human resources.

13

14

In this paper, “workforce” means the employed labor force, following the usage of the National Population Census; the labor force consists of “employed” persons who actually performed work for pay or profit and “unemployed” persons who had no job but were able to work and were actually seeking a job. See http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/kokusei/2005/terms.htm Due to the financial crunch, the government has recently reduced budget allocations for tertiary education.

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12

60.0

10 50.0 8 40.0 6 4

30.0

real GDP growth rate (%) university going rate (%)

2 20.0 0 10.0 -2 0.0 1955

Figure 2

-4 1975

1995

Real GDP growth rate (%) & university attendance rate (%) (Source: School Basic Survey, each year, http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/kokusei/index.htm. As for GDP, see http://www. esri.cao.go.jp/en/sna/h20-kaku/22annual-report-e.html. As for GDP, the same data is used in this paper).

The number of workers by occupation is shown in Figure 3 and Table 1.

Production, clerical, sales workers and “Specialist and technical workers” (hereafter referred to as “ST”) comprises three quarters of the workforce, and the proportion of “ST”, clerical, and service workers has been increased.

In the 1990’s, the so-called lost decade, the number of “administrative and managerial workers” decreased, but in most occupations, the workforce structure remains almost the same.

“ST” Figure 4 shows a breakdown of “ST”, which increased generally, except “teachers”. Depopulation might have a negative effect on “teachers”, and aging deinitely affected a steady increase of “healthcare workers”. “Scientists” and “engineers” decreased recently. “Artists” slightly increased.

As of 2005, “healthcare workers” comprised the largest portion of “ST” (Figure 5), and “engineers and technicians” about 25%. On the other hand, “artists” were around 580,000, comprising 8.2% of “ST,” and less than 1% in total.

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70000000

600

60000000

500

(10)workers not classifiable by occupation (9)production process and related workers (8)transport and communication workers

50000000 400

(7)agriculture, forestry and fishery workers (6)security workers

40000000 300

(5)service workers (4)sales workers

30000000 200

(3)clerical workers

20000000 (2)administrative and managerial workers

100

10000000

(1)specialist and technical workers GDP

0

Figure 3

0

The number of workforce by occupation & GDP.

year

1955<a>

1995<b>

2005<c>

2005 (%)

c/a

c/b

(1)

1905702

8006767

8462314

13.80%

4.44

1.06

(2)

844111

2653854

1471819

2.40%

1.74

0.55

(3)

3242860

12119795

11894019

19.30%

3.67

0.98

(4)

4211976

9728611

8935609

14.50%

2.12

0.92

(5)

1972593

5027458

6145808

10.00%

3.12

1.22

(6)

429760

937338

1050882

1.70%

2.45

1.12

(7)

16057926

3807145

2939723

4.80%

0.18

0.77

(8)

1088386

2385614

2077204

3.40%

1.91

0.87

(9)

9836880

19084132

17420320

28.30%

1.77

0.91

(10)

257

390830

1108275

1.80%

4312.35

2.84

Table 1

The workforce by occupation and GDP. 1 ~10 follow the categorization used in Fig. 3.

GDP by economic activities Real GDP classiied by economic activities is shown in Table 2. Industries produced most of the real GDP, 500 trillion yen in 2008, but the growth rate is relatively small, and the structure did not change signiicantly in the past decade.

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3000000

2500000

(1)science researchers (2)engineers and technicians (3)health care workers (4)legal workers (5)management specialists (6)teachers (7)artists (8)others

2000000

1500000

1000000

500000

0 1970

Figure 4

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

Breakdown of specialist and technical workers.

663,962; 7.8% 193,718; 2.3%

148,460; 1.7%

267,968; 3.1% 122,589; 1.4%

2,140,612; 25.1%

115,699; 1.4%

1,398,069; 16.4%

132,701; 1.6% 58,020; 0.7%

science researchers engineers and technicians Helthcare workers Social welfare specialists professionals Legal workers Management specialists Teachers Workers in religion Writers, jounalists and editors Artists, photographers and designers Musicians and stage designers Other specialists and technical workers

654,216; 7.7% 2,645,919; 31.0%

Figure 5

Breakdown of ST (2005).

Roughly half of Japan’s real GDP (chain-linked) of industries was generated by “service” and “manufacturing”, and one quarter was generated by “wholesales & retail trade” and “real estate” in 2008. According to the survey results, the contents market has remained at almost the same level in this decade, although digital market has been growing (Figure 8).15 Digital terrestrial broadcasts started in 2003, which contributed to its growth since 15

Digital Contents Association, Digital Contents White Paper 2009.

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1990<a> 2008<b>

b/a

1. Industries

415116.9 505050.8

1.22

2. Producers of government services

37882.8

49767.2

1.31

3. Producers of private non-profit services to households

7322.2

11628.3

1.59

4. Real GDP classified by Economic Activities Chain-linked)* 447369.9 554098.4

1.24

Table 2

Real GDP classified by economic activities (Chain-linked, 10 billion yen). Source: National Accounts for 2008 http://www.esri.cao.go.jp/en/sna/h20-kaku/22annual-report-e.html. * Real GDP was estimated by the chain-linked method, based on the calendar year 1990.

The accumulation of sub-totals is not equal to the estimated total. As for Real GDP the same data is used in this paper.

600000

500000 (10) Service activities (9) Transport and communications (8) Real estate (7) Finance and insurance (6) Wholesale and retail trade (5) Electricity ,gas and water supply (4) Construction (3) Manufacturing (2) Mining (1) Agriculture ,forestry and fishing

400000

300000

200000

100000

0 1990

Figure 6

2000

2008

Chain-linked Real GDP of industries classified by economic activitied (Chair-linked).

9084.1; 1.8% 450.5; 0.1% 125448.8; 24.8% 126862.4; 25.0%

39962.7; 7.9%

30437.8; 6.0% 15038.7; 3.0%

63007; 12.4% 28202.3; 5.6%

Figure 7

(1) Agriculture, forestry and fishing (2) Mining (3) Manufacturing (4) Construction (5) Electricity, gas and water supply (6) Wholesale and retail trade (7) Finance and insurance (8) Real estate (9) Transport and communications (10) Service activities

68078; 13.4%

Chain-linked Real GDP of industries classified by economic activities.

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2004. The contents related market was estimated to be 13.8 trillion yen in 2008, less than 3% of total GDP (Table 3).

70000 _ I ･T digital_Game

60000

･

50000 _

・

40000 30000

・ T Games

20000

・

ｓ・ I

ｓ･

Video

10000 0 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Figure 8

Contents market (100 million yen) (Source: Digital Contents Association, “Digital Contents White Paper” (2001-2009). “Contents market” includes “digital” ones. As for contents market, the same data is used in this paper).

Contents market

Digital market

Table 3

Video

Music/Audio

47.834

17.800

Image

Music/Sound

21.953

14.335

Games 11.621 Game 11.621

Books/ Newspaper/ Image/Text 61.028 Newspaper/ Library/ Image/Text 11.056

Total 138.282 Total 58.965

Contents market 2008 (100 million yen).

“Engineers” and “artists” “ST” is spread over many industries, such as “medical industry,” “education,” “service,” “information,” and “manufacturing” (Figure 9). Engineers have increased until recently (Figure 4), but among them only “system engineers and programmers” increased (34.8%), followed by civil, electrical, mechanical, and architectural engineers (Figures 10 and 11).

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12,000,000

10,000,000

Workers not classifiable by occupation Production process and related workers Transportation and ommunication workers Agriculture, forestry and fishery workers Security workers Service workers Sales workers Clerical workers Administrative and managerial workers ST

8,000,000

6,000,000

4,000,000

2,000,000

Ag ric u

ltu Fo re re st El r ec Fi y sh tr ici er y ty ,g Co Min In as, ns ing fo rm hea Ma tru c t at n ion sup ufa tion an ply ctu r d co and ing m m wat W un e ho Ea ica r les tin tio ale g an Fi an Tra ns na d d n dr nc re spo ink t e an ail t rt ing r d p M ins ade ed lac ur ica es a , R n l, he acc eal ce Ed alth omm est uc c o at at are dat e Se ion an ion rv , le d w s Go ice a ve s n C rni elfa om ng rn re o t m p e o su en l t n ese und ppo rt ot wh s els ere erv ew cl ice he as s re sifi cl ed as sif ie d ot he rs

0

Figure 9

Breakdown of occupation by industry (2005).

1000000

engineers and technical workers

800000

Agriculture, forestry fisheries and food technicians Metal smelting technicians

600000

mechanical engineers, aircraft and shipbuilding technicians Electrical and electronic engineers Chemical technicians

400000

Architectural technicians

Civil engineers and surveyors

200000

system engineers and programmers Other engineers and technicians

0

1990

1995

2000

2005

Figure 10 Breakdown of engineers by industry.

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2.2% 3.5%

2.9%

0.8%

Agriculture, forestry fisheries and food technicians Metal smelting technicians

13.3%

mechanical engineers, aircraft and shipbuilding technicians Electrical and electronic engineers

14.2%

34.8%

Chemical technicians Architectural technicians Civil engineers and surveyors

3.1%

system engineers Programmers

10.9% Other engineers and technicians

14.3%

Figure 11 Breakdown of engineers by industry (2005).

On the other hand, “artists” increased steadily, with a rapid increase of designers (Figure 12). Artists in general work in “service” and “information”, but “designers” work in “manufacturing” and “wholesale and retail trade,” while “musicians” work in “education”.

180000 160000 140000 120000

writers and authors journalists and editors sculptors, painters and industrial artists designers phographers musicians actors

100000 80000 60000 40000 20000 0 1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

Figure 12 Breakdown of artists.

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Reconsidering the concept of the “creative city”: Theory and reality in Japan

300000

others Government not elsewhere classified Services not elesewhere classified Compound services

250000

Education, learning support Medical, health care and welfare 200000

Services not elesewhere classified

Services not elesewhere classified

150000

100000

Services not elesewhere classified

Information and communications

Education, learning support

Electricity, gas, heat supply and water Manufacturing Construction Mining

Information and communications Manufacturing

Information and communications

artists, photographers and designers

musicians and stage designers

0

writers and journalists

Finance and insurance Wholesale and retail trade Transport Information and communications

Wholesale and retail trade 50000

Eating and drinking places, accommodations Real estate4

Fishery Forestry Agriculture

Figure 13 Breakdown of artists by industry (2005).

Correlations and regression analysis16 In this section, taking 252 cities17 with a population exceeding 100,000, a correlation and regression analysis is performed. The basic statistics of these 252 city samples is shown in Table 4. Variables 1~26 are data from the “National Population Census” (2005), and are divided by the total size of the workforce. Personal income igures are based on tax data for each city, town, and village compiled by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications18 and the number of establishments is taken from the “Establishment and Enterprise Census”. The inancial capability indicator19 is the fraction of the necessary expenditures which can be raised by the city government itself; the remainder comes from subsidies from national and regional governments. The public halls and libraries data is from the “Social Education Survey” (2008). In general, a higher concentration of artists in certain areas can be observed than for most other occupations.

The correlations between variables is shown in Table 5. There is a strong positive correlation between engineers and the personal income/inancial indicator. Also a strong correlation is observed between artists and management specialists/clerical workers/personal income.

16 17 18 19

SPSS version 14.0 was used for analysis.

Special wards in each metropolitan area are included into the data set as one sample.

JPS (2007), Personal Income Indicator, Tokyo. http://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/chiiki/SelectItemDispatchAction.do

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Variables as of 2005 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Workforce numbers Specialist and technical workers Science researchers Engineers and technicians Healthcare workers Social welfare specialists Legal workers Management specialists Teachers Religious workers Writers, journalists and editors Artists, photographers and designers Musicians and stage designers Artists Other specialists and technical workers Administrative and managerial workers Clerical workers Sales workers Service workers Security workers Agriculture, forestry and fishery workers Transportation and communication workers Production process and related workers Workers not classifiable by occupation Population Foreign population Personal income (thousand yen) Number of establishments Financial capability indicator Number of public halls Number of libraries

Table 4

No. samples

Mini

252

43667

4011489 158985.83 302825.73

252

5140

669045

23826.18

50005.26

248 252 252 252 249 252 252 252 249

10 660 1350 370 10 20 600 10 10

11860 180398 154844 28738 9622 21072 67798 6608 35531

464.84 6365.75 7083.41 1564.95 190.14 426.1 3595.08 266.35 430.11

1093.81 14794.48 12357.31 2317.83 646.96 1439.09 5635.87 530.25 2299.97

252

20

55491

880.73

3674.6

252

30

36096

601.63

2364.13

252

150

127118

1907.35

8307.31

252

210

60987

1971.85

4498.35

252

710

143203

4107.66

10047.86

252 252 252 252

6470 5010 3814 430

1015610 687429 446527 54504

34025.3 25205.41 16346.16 2702.24

74615.01 52393.41 33555.37 4445.2

252

70

20320

3326.1

3049.24

252

720

122449

5339.34

9501.77

252

6916

727594

40330.13

59923.69

252

100

136963

3777.31

10171.63

252 252 252 252 233 252 252

Max

Mean

SD

100462 8489653 333707.14 641443.82 188 198949 4748.51 14928.29 2661 5006 3469.95 423.83 2512 557107 15546.1 39258.6 0.33 1.65 0.82 0.24 0 217 20.56 24.5 0 221 5.58 14.38

Basic statistics.

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Engineers

Artists

Pearson Correlation

Sig. (2-tailed)

Pearson Correlation

Sig. (2-tailed)

1

0.094

0.138

-0.182

0.004

2

0.629

0.000

0.694

0.000

3

0.248

0.000

0.141

0.027

4

1.000

0.593

0.000

5

-0.480

0.000

-0.159

0.012

6

-0.332

0.000

-0.218

0.000

7

0.255

0.000

0.603

0.000

8

0.539

0.000

0.728

0.000

9

-0.111

0.078

0.081

0.200

10

-0.363

0.000

-0.229

0.000

11

0.582

0.000

0.945

0.000

12

0.578

0.000

0.960

0.000

13

0.470

0.000

0.890

0.000

14

0.593

0.000

1.000

15

0.508

0.000

0.687

0.000

16

0.210

0.001

0.534

0.000

17

0.643

0.000

0.751

0.000

18

0.193

0.002

0.486

0.000

19

-0.282

0.000

0.063

0.320

20

-0.074

0.243

-0.075

0.235

21

-0.480

0.000

-0.441

0.000

22

-0.395

0.000

-0.431

0.000

23

-0.383

0.000

-0.685

0.000

24

0.440

0.000

0.536

0.000

25

0.082

0.197

0.263

0.000

26

0.168

0.008

0.027

0.669

27

0.762

0.000

0.748

0.000

28

-0.612

0.000

-0.326

0.000

29

0.709

0.000

0.510

0.000

30

-0.236

0.000

-0.183

0.004

31

0.059

0.355

0.279

0.000

Table 5

Correlations. 1~31 follows the categories of Table 4.

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Three models of different sets of variables were prepared to explain personal income (Table 6), as it is estimated based on actual tax revenues, and considered as a representative index of each cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economic activities.

A well itting model could not obtained by taking the inancial capability indicator as a dependent variable. Model 1 includes all occupations with sub-categories of ST, model 2 includes all occupations, and model 3 includes all variables.

Stepwise regression analysis results are shown in Table 7. By Adjusted 2 R and signiicance by analysis of variance, all models are itting well. In model 3, the best itting model, personal income can be explained by variables such as inancial capability, administrative workers and management specialists. Artists are not selected as an explanatory variable. In model 2, clerical workers and ST are the main positive variables to explain personal income, while service and agriculture are negative. In model 1, engineers are an important positive variable to explain personal income. Musicians are also selected as one of the explanatory variables, although its importance is small.

In sum, a strong correlation between artists and income is observed; however, there is not much evidence that artists (other than possibly musicians) could contribute to high income of a city. Engineers also have a strong correlation with income, and to a degree they contribute to personal income.

It should be noted that other occupations such as administrative workers and clerical workers also contribute to income as well. According to the above models, it is dificult to single out the importance of artists in Japan.

R

R2

Adjusted R2

Std. error of the estimate

Variables

Model

0.930 1

0.865

0.858

157.906

(2)~(24)

Model

0.895 2

0.801

0.794

192.182

(1),(15)~(24)

Model

0.960 3

0.922

0.918

121.332

(1)~(31)

Table 6

Regression models (personal income).

Regression analysis of the same data set shows that the number of artists in sample cities might be explained by libraries20, workforce, and personal 20

Libraries have a strong positive correlation with other variables. However, further research is required to understand whether or not there is a genuine causal relationship to the number of artists.

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Variables

Standardized coefficients

B

Beta

Model 1

C

Model 2

Sig.

20.839

0.000

Collinearity statistics Tolerance

VIF

4

0.225

5.866

0.000

0.396

2.523

15

0.252

5.403

0.000

0.270

3.705

6

-0.081

-2.749

0.006

0.675

1.481

8

0.109

2.669

0.008

0.354

2.828

5

-0.100

-2.731

0.007

0.434

2.306

13

0.119

3.363

0.001

0.470

2.127

3

0.071

2.633

0.009

0.805

1.243

21

-0.131

-3.681

0.000

0.463

2.159

19

-0.115

-3.511

0.001

0.546

1.831

22

-0.109

-3.024

0.003

0.451

2.217

24

0.103

3.107

0.002

0.531

1.883

16

0.099

2.732

0.007

0.444

2.251

16.664

0.000

C 17

0.329

5.425

0.000

0.222

4.497

22

-0.203

-5.198

0.000

0.539

1.855

19

-0.232

-6.837

0.000

0.711

1.407

21

-0.266

-6.348

0.000

0.467

2.141

2

0.175

3.504

0.001

0.329

3.040

24

0.200

5.143

0.000

0.543

1.840

16

0.172

4.342

0.000

0.525

1.906

18

-0.180

-3.642

0.000

0.336

2.979

25.835

0.000

C

Model 3

t

29

0.408

15.403

0.000

0.520

1.924

15

0.214

5.881

0.000

0.276

3.623

28

-0.201

-7.969

0.000

0.575

1.740

8

0.121

3.765

0.000

0.351

2.846

22

-0.103

-3.981

0.000

0.548

1.826

16

0.119

4.155

0.000

0.444

2.255

24

0.076

2.936

0.004

0.550

1.817

25

0.061

3.010

0.003

0.888

1.127

7

0.065

2.393

0.018

0.488

2.050

3

0.046

2.200

0.029

0.824

1.213

5

-0.052

-2.057

0.041

0.569

1.756

Table 7

Results (personal income). C: constant. Variable numbers follow the categories of Table 4.

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income with strong statistical signiicance (Table 8, &9). It might be appropriate to say that artists per workforce might be one of the index of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economic vitality (Florida, 2002) but it does not necessarily mean that artists could directly contribute to economic development. The conventional view that the existence of strong economy with a large potential market attracts artists might better explain the strong correlation between artists and personal income.

R

R Square

Adjusted R Square

Std. error of the estimate

Model 1

0.982

0.964

0.963

1591.621

Model 2

0.969

0.939

0.938

645.268

Table 8

Regression model (artists).

Variables

Standardized coefficients

t

Sig.

Beta

Model 1

(Constant)

0.000

Tolerance

VIF

Libraries

0.610

23.585

0.000

0.218

4.577

Workforce

0.393

15.109

0.000

0.216

4.634

Public halls

-0.061

-4.913

0.000

0.933

1.071

Personal income

0.027

2.082

0.038

0.892

1.121

-10.926

0.000

(Constant) Model 2

-3.542

Collinearity statistics

Workforce

1.948

7.263

0.000

0.004

268.795

Personal income

0.220

8.297

0.000

0.381

2.623

Population

-1.027

-3.828

0.000

0.004

269.045

Financial capability indicator

-0.080

-3.008

0.003

0.375

2.666

Table 9

Results (artists).

Conclusion In Japan, the workforce has decreased slightly. Production, clerical, sales workers as well as specialists occupy a large portion of workforce, although diversiied. Stagnant real GDP is mainly due to manufacturing and service, wholesale/retail trade, and real estate, while the contents mar140

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ket is still in a developing stage, comprising less than 3% of GDP. Artist numbers, while increasing, are still marginal. However this does not necessarily mean that the Japanese economy has little creativity. Industrial and occupational structure is complicated, and “ST” work in many industries.

Even artists work not only in information and services, but also in education, manufacturing and wholesale sectors. In almost all industries, even those which are not necessarily classiied as “creative industries,” creativity and innovation have become essential. For example, the Toyota Motor Company, which is categorized as a manufacturing company, emphasizes not only the function of their automobiles, but also design and comfort to meet consumers’ demands. Furthermore, production processes and knowhow are protected by patents, and rapid industrial structural change has been brought about through creativity and innovation. Thus, it is not easy to deine which industries are creative and which are not. As all of the company’s workers participate in the well known “Kaizen” QC movement, it can be concluded that knowledge is the largest and most critical resource of industry, and every worker is requested to have knowledge productivity (Nonaka & Konno, 2003). In this sense, creativity is already included in almost all operations in industry.

In this paper, statistical data was analyzed. It is necessary to examine more closely how creativity contributes to improving the city, not only from an economic perspective but also from the standpoint of social welfare. It is certainly true that culture and the arts are important components of the city.

However, creativity in itself is not suficient to ensure prosperous development, and must be a part of more comprehensive and balanced policies for endogenous development.

References Florida, R.(2005). The light of the creative class: The new global competition for talent.

New York: Basic Books.

Florida, R. (2002). The rise of the creative class. And how it’s transforming work, leisure and everyday life. New York: Basic Books.

Kakiuchi, E (in press). Sustainable cities with creativity: Promoting creative urban initiatives: theory and practice in Japan. In F.G. Luigi, T. Baycan & P. Nijkamp (Eds.), Sustainable city and creativity: Promoting creative urban initiatives, Ashegate (in press), UK. Kakiuchi, E., Okuyama T., Yoshida Y., & Kawaguchi K. (2008). “The case of Tokyo”, submitted to Asia Paciic Metropolitan Development Forum Shanghai, China, 2-4 November.

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Landry, C. (2000). The creative city; A toolkit for urban innovators, Earthscan.

Nonaka, I., & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The knowledge-creating company: How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nonaka, I., & Konno, N. (2003). Methodology of knowledge creation (in Japanease). Tokyo: Toyokeizai shinposha.

Sasaki, M. (1998). Economy in the creative city (in Japanese, title translated by the author).

Keisoshobo.

Sassen, S. (1991). The global city: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton University Press.

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The creative professions: How the journalistic figure changes Chiara Migliardi

ABSTRACT

Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 – 10129 Torino. E-mail: chiara.migliardi@gmail.it

In recent years, creativity and its leading role in the development of a country had a relevant place in the agenda of numerous scholars. Almost in parallel, the importance of redeining the creative professions, along with their trends, has been recognized. Among all these professions, the journalist might be considered the one that experienced the most radical changes.

After having provided a contextual framework, the following article aims to introduce the two key factors which, since long time, are having a deep inluence on the journalist work. These technological and economic phenomena caused relevant problems to the press sector, currently forced to redesign its content and to seek new funding sources.

In this evolving paradigm, the proile of the journalist is increasingly blurred and encompassing many sectors. This could be explained by the fact that, for more and more demanding targets, news has not only to be found, but often to be unique, thus originating new ethical questions.

Keywords: creativity; information technology; profession; information skills.

The creative professions: Theories and features The concept of creative professions has been widely discussed by U.S. economist Richard Florida (2003). The American scholar provides a comprehensive theory based on statistical data which, although already criticized in several aspects (Markusen, 2006), is useful to understand which are the creative activities as well as their peculiarities. He speaks of “creative class”, Edizioni Erickson – Trento

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meaning a group of people who build value through their creativity, and whose main ability is to create new and meaningful ways.

From this deinition, he recognizes two levels of creativity: the irst, called “super-creative core”, constitutes a higher stage of creative work, and it is characterized by the production of new forms or new solutions that are easily reproducible and widely adopted. Scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and novelists, artists, actors, designers and architects, as well as the aristocracy of thought of modern society (writers of not-narrative texts, publishing executives, representatives of the cultural landscape, researchers, analysts and columnists) are part of it.

It is very important to specify that, in addition to solving the problems, these igures are also able to simplify or lighten them up.

Beyond the core, there are the so-called “creative professionals”, to which a range of knowledge-intensive tasks is assigned, such as high-tech, inancial services, legal and healthcare professions, management. The latter are responsible for solving problems by drawing on a sophisticated system of knowledge and they are generally involved in activities where they must apply or combine classical approaches to adapt them to a new situation.

Such people make use of a lot of discernment and occasionally experience something completely new.

Florida limited the research to the usefulness of creative economic growth of the cities and recognizes the importance for each individual of the where-to-live choice (Florida, 2008); nevertheless the role played by creative people is of great importance to the entire society. In the ‘90s, Robert Reich (1990), calling them “symbolic analysts”, credited them with the role of mediator, endowed with intellectual capacity of processing symbols, simplifying reality into abstract images. These images can be rearranged and communicated, and inally transformed back into reality.

Among the creative professions, one in particular will be analyzed in depth: the journalistic one.

The figure of journalist: Some considerations The journalist is someone who “gives people the information they need to be free and govern themselves” (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2007) and in the classiication proposed by Richard Florida, it its into the nucleus,1 also 1

See in this regard the table from Florida (2003).

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The creative professions: How the journalistic figure changes

with art, design, entertainment and sports. In some respects, however, the journalist was also very close to the deinition of “creative professionals” (Casalinuovo, 2009). In fact, they represent a sort of “terzus genus” exercising an “applied creativity” and combining creative lair and rationality, subject to rather strict rules and schedules, imposed by editorial constraints and publishing timetables.

In addition, to better understand the nature of the business profession, we should refer to the placement of the sector to which it belongs. The classiication of the World Intellectual Property Organisation WIPO (WIPO, 2003), which focuses directly on the inherently commercial nature of creative activity, put the press in the core copyright industries or in those industries involved in communication and sales of works protected by intellectual property, along with literature, music and theatrical productions, motion picture and video, radio and television, photography, software and databases, visual and graphic arts, advertising irms and companies managing collective rights.

The level of creativity recognized to journalist and its industry is therefore high, but both are being studied in recent years and analysis, as protagonists of some great upheavals.

State of the industry According to a study by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism of the Pew Research Center (2010), the printing industry is going through one of the most critical periods since its inception: the newspapers, including online, recorded a loss of revenue 26% during 2009, a number which brings the total losses over the past 3 years to 41%, and even if the economy should improve in 2010 are expected to further cut.

The dificulty the industry faces (which largely explains the drastic decline) is twofold: the irst issue is of economic nature, following a global crisis that erupted in 20082 and whose consequences have also spilled on printing; the second one, which is of technological-structural nature, can ideally start with the advent of the Web, and its further development, Web 2.0 and new technologies.

2

Although it started about the second half of 2006 in America with the bursting of the housing bubble, the crisis becomes especially palpable in 2008, when the Lehman Brothers company declares bankruptcy.

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0 daily sunday

-2

Percent decline

-4 -6 -8 -10

Sep. 09

Mar. 09

Sep. 08

Mar. 08

Sep. 07

Mar. 07

Sep. 06

Mar. 06

Sep. 04

Mar. 05

Sep. 04

Mar. 04

Sep. 03

-12

Year Figure 1

Newspaper circulation, percentage declines.

Economic critical issues The losses are enormous in the press sector and the crisis in advertising spending is threatening both large and small newspapers. Revenues for the printed newspaper fell by 23% from 2006 to 2008, to inally reach a negative 26% in 2009 (see Figure 2).

However, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interesting to notice that losses vary according to the medium. As can be seen from Figure 2, the local TV networks in America had a signiicant loss on advertising revenues (26%), even more relevant than that of newspapers (print and online combined: 24%).

Online has also met for the irst time since 2002 a decrease, but some groups are moving in positive directions. Search engines and aggregators like Google, will grow by 3% and nearly half of the advertising budget (48%) is expected to target them.3 3

According to a research conducted by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism of the Pew Research Center on the state of news media in America (2010).

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The creative professions: How the journalistic figure changes

Retail

National

Classifield

Print total

55

Revenue (in billions of dollars)

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5

Figure 2

2009

2007

2005

2003

2001

1999

1997

1995

1993

1991

1989

1987

1985

0

Daily newspaper advertising revenue.

Percent growth in 2009

5 0 -5 -10 -15 -20 -25 -30 -35 Cable

Online

Networ

Audio Magazines Newspapers

Local TV

Media Sector Figure 3

Change in ad revenue by medium.

Cable television is the exception: the turnover of the three main players (Fox, CNN, MSNBC) is in fact increased of 5% in 2009 thanks to the fees and the growth of the public.

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In America, the editorial boards continue to reduce their staff (in 2009 about 5,900 full-time contracts were not renewed), while in 2008 20,000 employees had been dismissed.

Instead, focusing on the particular Italian situation, from 2000 to 2009 the amount of newspapers sold in Italy fell by 20 percent (6 to 4.8m).

Moreover, a whole generation of journalists is on the way of retiring.4 Advertising investments decreased by 25% from January 2008 to the same month of 2009. Both the ordinary newspaper and the free press acknowledged a sharp decline (by 23.6 and 26.9 respectively) and only the Internet increased by 3.5%.5 These igures allow to understand why one of the most urgent concerns of information and media corporations is to establish what percentage of the revenues lost during the recession could be recovered and how.

And for those editorial boards that are pioneering multimedia, the Internet is not, so far, suficient to ensure economic security. If, by one side, advertising funding decreases, by the other side the consumer will not pay for something that has been free until now. For instance, the majority of Americans (82% well) is said not willing to pay for visit bookmark information and, in the case additional fees were imposed, it would search the news elsewhere.

Besides these economic issues, other changes and dificulties of a more purely structural and technological nature come, in some cases closely interconnected with the irst ones.

Structural critical issues: The effect of the Internet and new technologies Technological changes foster the emergence of new media, so nowadays printed press and television are no longer the only sources of information: new ways to exploit the Internet and mobile phones are modifying the interactions between the users and the news.

On a typical day, for example, nearly half of the Americans keep themselves informed through a number of platforms ranging from four to six, and about 61% search online news, a number that justify the second position of Internet, right after television as a source of information, and before the printed newspaper.

4 5

Reported by Enrico Pedemonte in an interview dating July 9, 2010.

Nielsen Media Research: advertising investments in January-March 2009 listed on the website of IAB Italy (2009).

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Furthermore, over one quarter of adults accesses the Net via mobile devices and PDAs.6 A new environment is arising, due to the combination of several technological developments: firstly, social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace) and blogs made the news a social experience, where people use their personal networks to ilter, evaluate and react to information. Secondly, the connectivity of portable devices transformed the news search in an operation wherever and whenever possible (so that it has also been deined media-snacking).7 The audience becomes, from a mere spectator, a real actor. In a recent article, Rebecca McKinnon (McKinnon, 2004) speaks of a new form of interaction, where the journalistic selection of events worthy of becoming “news”8 takes place between equal, where each one is a “node” of a network that becomes stronger and stronger as individuals involved in the communication process coincide with the public itself. She deines this complex communication system an “information community”.

The interactivity achieved via Web 2.0 and, in recent years, via its follow-up, the Web 3.0, thus opened the possibility of new ways of providing information: the irst sites of giornalismo partecipativo or “citizen journalism” were created (the year 2009 saw a signiicant increase of the citizen reporters9 activity). The so-called “citizen journalism” or “grassroots journalisms” (Gillmor, 2004) is characterized by a relevant participation of the readers as well as the publishing of articles “pro-am”, originated from the collaboration between professionals and amateurs.

Internet and new technologies seem also to change the core values of journalism. According to a study conducted in America, most executives of newspapers (and broadcasters) is convinced that the Net is altering the journalistic ethics and often alarmingly; only 40% is convinced that traditional values are undergoing to change. It ‘must be pointed out, however, that this study does not take into account the opinions of the public and especially that old values can be replaced by new ones, equally valid.

6

7 8

9

According to a study by PEJ and Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project conducted on 2,259 Americans in a first stage, and using Nielsen data on user behavior on the Internet in a second stage.

In an article on “Wired” magazine, Nancy Miller (2007) talked about it in the “manifest for a New Age”.

The “newsworthiness” corresponds to the set of criteria, operations and instruments with which the apparatus of information carries out the task of choosing from an undefined and unpredictable number of events a finite amount of news.

Data obtained by the Pew Project for Excellence for Journalism (2010).

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In any case, it is undeniable that these novelties in the use of the network, the increasing content sharing and values changes that they seem to convey, affect the journalistic igure, in some cases questioning even his utility.

New roles for the journalist The extension of coverage and the critical issues faced by the sector require dissimilar interpretations of the journalistic profession.

The proliferation of media and the various versions of the same event that they make possible, along with the resulting widespread awareness of the initeness of traditional journalistic vision, make the receiver carry out by himself the practice of comparison and control. The practice of comparison, typical of the journalistic work (Sanchez, 2006), moves from the professional to the reader or viewer.

The fundamental pact, once at the basis of the journalistic system, seems to have changed. The past experienced a relationship of functional nature based on systemic trust (Sanchez, 2006), that means journalism was an expert system (Giddens, 1994) which allowed to gather data on real life and to classify them in a priority order, given the credibility of the whole journalistic apparatus. Nowadays, the existence of multiple processes reconstructing reality from many sources forces the reader to a personal remediation, which paradoxically appears to lead him to a more contradictory relationship with the media â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a relationship varying from distrust to need to trust.

All this seems to point out a lower value of journalistic mediation; the fact that many of the functions performed by traditional newspapers will disappear and be performed by ordinary citizens on the Internet,10 seems to underline the same conclusion.

In reality, however, the exponential growth of information makes more necessary a igure able to ilter and wisely reorganize the information.

As opposite to common belief, ignorance is not diminishing (Kelly, 2010): although it is true that the information represents the entity spreading at the higher speed (10 times faster than any other natural or artiicial world element), it should be remembered that every answer brings new questions and innovative technologies, such as telescopes and microscopes,

10

Reported by Enrico Pedemonte in an interview dating July 9, 2010.

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allow solve several doubts but also to “spying in our ignorance”. As a matter of fact, ignorance is that gap between questions and answers, and as it grows between two exponential curves, also increases exponentially (see Figure 5).

Questions IGNORANCE

Answers

Figure 5

Kevin Kelly – The expansion of ignorance.

There is too much information and not everyone have the ability or time to reprocess it, that is why a igure of mediator appears to be still necessary, even if it is not yet foreseeable whether or not that igure has to come from a purely journalistic training (Kelly, 2010).

Although there are some factors essential for democracy requiring the work of professionally equipped journalists, the current status quo seems to redeine the necessary tools and skills.

The characteristics of the journalist-mediator are in fact different and his professionalism seems now something that must be constantly demonstrated. A journalistic ield that appears as a dense network of exchanges and interactions between distinct but equal actors (McKinnon, 2004) — each one representing special interests and peculiar logic of action — it requires a more advanced communication and technology qualiication.

It is often pointed out how they should learn to interact with the public and be skilled in audio and video post-production.11 Adding the fact that the user will be willing to pay for a “unique” content only and he/she searches news by topic or events, not necessarily going through the major news 11

Enrico Pedemonte from an interview dating July 9, 2010.

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organizations,12 it is evident the need to develop a visibility that allows to build and maintain a reputation, a personal â&#x20AC;&#x153;brandâ&#x20AC;? conveying a coherent and unique identity of the communicator.

Drawing on this, the journalist appears to be endowed by another mission: with respect to an increasingly demanding public, he is no longer simply supposed to identify a story and report it, but to deine its positioning13 through a proper strategy, similar to a marketing strategy.

In reality, the issue of positioning a newspaper came along with the advent of the irst newspapers on the Internet, referring to a comprehensive framework of editorial policies able to turn the newspaper into a welldeined catalyst of symbols and meanings (Sorrentino, 2006).

But today this argument has even greater relevance. The journalist or the editor of Web 2.0 seems to be skilled to make in editorial choices able to gradually transform his information website (being it a blog, an aggregator site or an example of participatory journalism) in a symbol generator, embodying a particular way of looking at, describing or judging the world: an interpretive framework useful to interpret events and give meaning to them; or to discuss a niche topic. The current success of the oficial website of the Wall Street Journal is a great example of the importance of this issue.

This also applies to authority. If in the past it was attributed to the journalist (and therefore listened) a priori due to his afiliation to a corporation,14 it is becoming something to be achieved and built gradually.

In such a context, where it is essential to stand out, it comes out the question of what ethics (practical or ideological) should direct the journalist is posed. If objectivity itself is no longer perceived as an attainable goal (Sanchez, 2006), to which ethical perspective we have to refer when selecting and reporting an event?

The answer is becoming more and more urgent, since the danger is to be concerned only by merely commercial interests: relying heavily on advertising may shift the focus of the articles from information to popularity, since the publisher on the Net can see exactly which webpages and which subjects are more popular among users, thus being potentially driven to act not as a journalist, but strictly as a marketing manager; on the other hand, 12

13

14

According to Rosenstiel research conducted by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism of the Pew Research Center on the state of news media in America (2010).

In marketing, positioning means the need for any producer of goods to identify what kind of market and customers and how many they address.

Enrico Pedemonte, from an interview dating July 9, 2010.

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the reader’s loyalty to newspapers could lead to a recurring proposition of contents of little relevance to the community or of low quality. Although, as noted Enrico Pedemonte15 «relying just on the readers is an utopia that almost no-one can afford» and with particular reference to the Italian case «those in Italy who neither have readers nor advertising sponsors (many small newspapers, for example) have to be supported by state funding or pre-bend of strong powers».

Therefore, the journalistic profession is constantly in progress, and that seems to outstand the traditional classiications. In addition, it belongs to the creative professions, but the evolving situation often leads to consider forms of journalism even those sites that, instead of creating content exnovo, simply reproduce them in new ways (the Hufington Post site which did so much to talk about itself, is the most relevant example).

In the end, more accurate criteria(already shortly pointed in this article) should be proposed, in order to take into account the numerous facets and nuances brought to this profession, to different extent, by the above mentioned economic, technological and value changes.

References Casalinuovo, M. (2009). I professionisti della creatività. Tesi di laurea magistrale, Politecnico di Torino.

FIEG. (2010). Evoluzione vendite medie quotidiani. (http://www.ieg.it/documenti_item. asp?page=1&doc_id=173).

Florida, R. (2003). The rise of the creative class. And how it’s transforming work, leisure and everyday life. New York: Basic Books. (Florida, R., L’ascesa della nuova classe creativa. Stili di vita, valori, professioni. Milano:Mondadori, 2003).

Florida, R. (2008). Who’s your city. Canada: Random House of Canada.

Giddens, A. (1994). Le conseguenze della modernità. Bologna: Il Mulino.

Gillmor, D. (2004) We the media. Grassroot journalism by the people, for the people. Cambridge: O’Reilly Media.

Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2001), The Elements of journalism. What newspeople should know and the public should expect. New York: Three Rivers Press. (Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T., I fondamenti del giornalismo. Ciò che i giornalisti dovrebbero sapere e il pubblico dovrebbe esigere. Torino: Lindau, 2007).

IAB Italia (2009). Nielsen Media Research: Gli investimenti pubblicitari nel periodo gennaio-marzo 2009. (http://iab.blogosfere.it/2009/05/nielsen-media-research-gli-investimentipubblicitari-nel-periodo-gennaiomarzo-2009.html).

15

Enrico Pedemonte, from an interview dating July 9, 2010.

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Malinconico, C. (2010). La stampa in Italia 2007-2009. Rapporto presentato alla Camera, Roma, Italia. (http://www.tafter.it/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/la-stampa-in-italia. pdf).

Markusen, A. (2006). Urban development and the politics of the creative class: Evidence from the study of artists. «Environment and Planning», 38 (1 ), 1921-1940.

McKinnon, R. (2004). The world-wide conversation. (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/blogs/ gems/techjournalism/WORLDWIDECONVERSATIONWEBVERS.pdf).

Miller, N. (2007). The Minifesto for a New Age. (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/ snackminifesto.html).

PEJ (2010). The state of news media. An annual report on American journalism. (http:// www.stateofthemedia.org/2010/).

Sabadin, V. (2007). L’ultima copia del New York Times. Roma: Donzelli.

Pedemonte, E. (2010). Intervista rilasciata il 9 Luglio 2010.

Sorrentino, C. (Ed.) (2006). Il campo giornalistico. I nuovi orizzonti dell’informazione.

Roma: Carocci.

WIPO (2003). Guide on surveying the economic contribution of the copyright industries. (http://www.wipo.int/copyright/en./publications/pdf/copyright_pub_893.pdf).

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Interviews

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Interview to Pierre Jean Benghozi Aldo Buzio Professor Benghozi teaches at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, where he directs the centre for research in Economics and Management. He has published numerous essays on the economics of industries and cultural heritage and modern systems of managing them, based on intellectual property rights. A second area of research is based on information and communication technologies by analysing the organisational and economic models, strategies and financial movements. We interviewed Professor. Benghozi at the lecture for the Masters at Work organised on World Heritage by the University of Turin, Politecnico di Torino and the ILO International Training Centre.

Creativity represents a very interesting issue because it’s considered as a key asset for innovation and economic development, that’s why the argument is so discussed at the European level.

Present debates are strongly focused on the inancial crisis and the international market fragility. Do you think there is a relation between what’s going on in the inancial market and the creative economy? Somehow does the crisis represents or did it represent a turning point? Does it inluence the creative class and the cultural producers?

Yes and No. The irst argument is given by the fact that now we are experiencing so many changes but it would be hard to clearly identify if they were caused by the inancial crisis or by an almost simultaneous technological revolution. It’s not easy to analyze the changes in the cultural industries’ world and link them with speciic economic movements. Once explained that, if we want to answer yes, there are some possible argument in favour. First of all we can notice how much the cultural consumption increased during some speciic periods, like economic crisis or wars. It was true in the ‘30 just after the 1929 big depression; it was equally true during the II World War, when the cultural sector was working well. Probably, at a sociological level, that’s caused by a need for new ideas, going towards easier activities against the tragic ones of the reality. The second argument for a positive link could be to consider that in a crisis situation there is a Edizioni Erickson – Trento

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strong need for new solutions, creativity and innovation could appear as eficient ways to overpass the dificult periods. This works both for cultural industries and for the pushing of creativity into the more classical industries.

For example cars’ industry uses much more the design, gastronomy tries to adopt creative processes, in the way products are assembled and cooked.

Creativity is considered as the strategic factor in the industrial world but also for public institutions and public policies, where creativity represents a resource for the public action. This argument is strongly linked with the issue of creative cities and cultural policies for development. another possible motivation could be the incentive, represented by crisis, for people to focus on themselves, a way to fear modernity that take people to look to safe values and a consequent growing interest for cultural heritage. People appreciate more goods which values are already demonstrated by the existence among time. These three arguments don’t change the existence of a strong crisis in the cultural sector, showed in the music sector for example. A strong transformation of the cultural sector’s business models has just created a depression in the music, book, newspapers, media, performing arts. Those sectors are facing a hard crisis despite of the global discussion about creativity, in the traditional sectors there are big dificulties, faced also by the cinema industry. This ambiguity is correlated with a deep revolution into the cultural sector, the spectator’s expectations are very high but the income doesn’t go directly to the cultural producer. It passes through the communication technologies. People pay for the television, the television licence, the mobile phone and then money goes to contents, but the value chain has changed a lot. This explains why from one side we have the impression that things are going well and everybody discusses about creativity as an economic strategically dimension and from the other side we can’t see the same positive transformation in the real cultural industries.

Does the creative class react differently compared to other economic sectors? Is there a different reactivity speed?

The reaction is pretty similar, the creative class just faced before a reduction in the consumer expenses and public sponsors. This is clear now in France because since some months ago both the national and regional government and cities have made an expenses’ strong reduction. For example in occasion of the national music fest, that’s going on in these days, many cities decided not to pay for big public concerts but to incentive small 158

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events by amateurs, this is a clear solution for cutting the budget. Some big festivals are facing many dificulties because there is no more sponsorship. In second place I don’t believe in a homogeneous creative class, we must distinguish between underground and upperground. The irst one has always faced many problems, not only in recent times. The ones who are entering into the professional sector every time have many dificulties because they are not able to accumulate projects or to have a decent life thanks to their activities. The adjustment comes from a more dificult life for the artists who are on the borderline of the professional life and from a part of the creative class, who also have other normal activities, that exit from the artistic production because it’s no more possible to live with unstable artistic incomes. There is a semi-structural transformation, which is comparable to a shrinking class. The adjustment is played at a collective and individual level and this is a quite traditional phenomenon, Faulkner and Anderson made a similar analysis in the ‘70 for the cinema professions in Hollywood. We are not just looking at industries iring employees but in the creative industries ield there are many remuneration models different from the one of intellectual property right, it also facilitate the existence of the underground structure.

Do you think this analysis could work for the whole European area?

My impression is that we are talking about a diffused model, this is like a paradox in the debate between creative economy and crisis in the cultural industries. Recently, in an European congress that took place in Barcelona (about the future of cultural industry), a representing person from the European Commission was there to introduce the European white book. That’s a sign of a strong open debate but in Europe we can’t notice a reaction to the crisis from a cultural viewpoint. The discussion is going on about creativity, cultural industries and creative cities but there isn’t a real cultural policy, apart from a stronger political control, like it happens in the French experience. My impression is that, in this critical situation, both the government and the producers mostly inance what is assured to be economically successful and not revolutionary for contents and opportunities. The way in which this sector is maintained, in France and maybe also Europe, is driven by a bureaucracy approach that takes everyone to repeat similar actions. Every country has the same public policies for cultural industries and the best practices are everywhere similar. Glasgow, Paris, Bologna all 159

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take over the same creative city policy. We can argue that these very bureaucratic policies produce uniformity, going toward the opposite concept of creativity, with a system of homogeneous practices and players adopting similar strategies, like cultural heritage valorisation, festival, performing arts inancing… There is no more difference between the programs adopted in Glasgow, Roma, Paris, Torino and everybody is using the same recipe.

Going on with the discussion about the relation among public policies, in this period we can notice a strong contraction of the public inancing to culture in favour of social sectors. What’s your opinion about? Could new technologies represent a solution?

The public attention is strongly increased also considering the sponsorships’ reduction of the last months and culture is still considered as a possible development’s resource. For example, during the opening ceremonies for the new museum in Metz, a branch of the Beaubourg in the east France like the Bilbao museum was for the Guggenheim’s one, Sarkozy declared that French are able to invest billion of euro in culture because it’s a way to create value. There is an ambiguity in the consideration for culture as an economic development engine, from one side, and, from another side, funds reductions are made in the cultural sector in easier ways compared to other sectors. The new technologies’ development in this ield clearly appears as a solution for a less expensive cultural heritage valorisation, trying to achieve more with less resources. Maybe technology allows to conciliate the industrial investment, for example inancing the digital broadband networks, with the cultural investment, because they enable a wider distribution of the cultural contents. Thanks to a bigger impact on economy, there is a new consideration for technology like something useful for culture, no more just sponsoring festival or artists.

Has these phenomena create a change in the creative economy approach, from an individualistic consideration to a collective one, more oriented to social networks?

I think there is a strong difference between an individualistic and a collective creativity’s model. Forms of creative networks have always existed, also in the Renaissance period paintings were not just associated to a single famous painter but many other people were standing behind him, constitut160

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ing the atelier. Painters were turning around Europe for meeting each other and learning new techniques. The idea of a creative network has always existed but now the scale is completely different, the actual networks are much bigger and the members are many more. The structure itself changed a lot, there aren’t just similar subjects anymore but participants have now heterogeneous characteristics. The network’s governance is slightly different because the relation between producers, editors and creators changed due to the presence of a new technological organizational structure, bigger investments and consumer’s related branding models. Creative networks are in a way also useful to catch consumers into speciic projects. The second important aspect is the change occurred in the remuneration model, contemporary production is a collective action where the producer runs the initiative and different creative contributions join together according to the copyright model for remuneration. This uses to happen in many more ields and places, also where the “editor” model is still working. This difference could be hard to explain but it has a strong inluence.

Looking at creativity and cultural heritage, UNESCO for example, could a mutual inluence exist?

For sure UNESCO is not outside the transformations we have just described, UNESCO is able to integrate all the leading viewpoints. UNESCO changed the deinition of the heritage to be protected including the concepts of urban cultural heritage, intangible heritage, networks. This clearly demonstrates that UNESCO is not apart in the debate which is going on in the academic sphere and contemporary UNESCO is close to the ield of public policies and cities management through culture and creativity. In fact every year the number of request for the UNESCO list about cities, heritage, environment increases a lot. Everybody is looking for the UNESCO brand for underlining the heritage’s signiicant characteristics and values. The picture described so far is a typical west European frame and for sure things are very different in developing countries, where culture has a completely different role. There is a part of culture with global characteristics, and especially music and cinema industries have same products all around the world, but on the other side culture appears to be a support for local traditions, which could take to some economic development. Two different kinds of culture exist and UNESCO actions could be very useful for improving the visibility and development for the second one.

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Interview to Allen J. Scott Aldo Buzio Prof. Scott is a worldwide renown geographer teaching at UCLA Los Angeles as well as in Paris and in many other courses and masters around the world. His work has analysed the argument of localisation of cultural industries and creativity, especially in rural areas. was applied in many books and researches to the case studies of Hollywood, Paris, UK lake district and other. We met prof. Scott during the first international workshop on Cultural Commons held by Centro Studi Silvia Santagata in Turin, January 2010. We asked prof. Scott about his consideration of creativity facing present society and its movements and he presented an innovative picture based on a deep knowledge and a viewpoint quite far from the classical ones.

The world economic crisis represents a big issue in the recent debate and it’s analysed from many viewpoints. Do you think there is a relation between creativity and the economic crisis. Does the crisis represent a turning point or has it somehow inluenced the present creativity approach?

I don’t see the crisis as affecting dynamics of creativity at all. Crisis is a relatively short term phenomena, whereas the process of creativity is an extended, deeply rooted process that changes and that is related, of course, to social structures and social pressures in various ways. But I can’t see this crisis has changed the ways in which creativity works within a society.

Do you think there were different reactions to the economic crisis between the, so called, creative class of people and the other economic sectors?

Not at all. For that to happen one would have to see, irst of all, some signiicant ideological shifts going on as consequence of the crisis. Apart from a growing scepticism about the more exaggerated trends and the effects you can see on markets, I don’t think we have major see change in the way people conceive their lives. I don’t think the issue of the crisis is likely to produce any change in terms of “ethic”.

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Approaching the issue of creativity, don’t you consider there was a shift from a single “creative man” to a network of creative people?

No, the way I would approach the question of creativity is irst of all to understand ”what is creativity?”. The asset of that, in my opinion, is that you have to theorize creativity as a social phenomenon. Creativity is mediated through the individual life, people have disposition that are more or less favourable to be creative in certain ways, but the forms that creativity takes are conditioned by the system of social relations between individuals. And according to psychological literature on creativity, most of this literature is saying that creativity is potentiated by the networks, that are mobilized as people do things like of thinking, innovating, learning, in concrete social situations. So the other point is that the goals of creativity are also social and historical contents and that the innovation itself has a relationship with the concrete historical circumstances. If we analyze the issue of innovation, creativity and economy, for example the question of creative cities, cities were creative in the nineteen century, but in a very special way. Nineteen century Manchester had a lot of creativity around the issue of textiles machinery, in the twentieth century Detroit had a lot of creativity around motor vehicle design and engineering, in Los Angeles today, or in other big cities today, there is a lot of creativity that is focused on the issue of the cognitive cultural economy , ilm production, literature, electronic games and so on…

These forms of creativity are not, in other words, a-historic, they don’t stand outside the low of the history of social life and what happened within it.

Concrete projects within concrete social situations.

In today’s conference about cultural commons you introduced the case study of the Lake districts in the UK. The idea of a creative territory, located in a district and not in big cities is quite far from the classical view of the creative economy and this could be very interesting in this framework.

In a way these regions are not creative, in the sense that their creativity is very different from the one in the city. In the city creativity takes the form of a Shumpeterian creative destruction, but in the kind of landscape situations I’m talking about, creative destruction is destructive; because irst of all you have to preserve the heritage. But there are other forms of creativity, such as the elaboration of symbolic assets of the region. What is important to me in the creative economy today is the way in which the dense centres or the 164

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Interview to Allen J. Scoot

urban centres of the cognitive cultural economy are articulated with these other form of consumption as landscape, tourist resources, natural reserves and so on as an element of the modern new cognitive cultural economy.

Not as the city versus the country, the urban versus the rural like the space of production versus the space of consumption, which are two very distinctive spaces with different logics. The logic now is a wider logic of creative economy and its integrated forms of production and consumption.

How do you consider the global landscape of creativity in relation with this glocal approach?

Of course there are national and continental differences, differences among North America, Europe, Asia and so on, but really these spaces are all increasingly articulated on a global level. The lake district in England now is not just a center of consumption for the English creative class but also for the American, Japanese creative class and it is becoming increasingly integrated.

Do you think that the growing social and environmental economy is a new form of creativity?

What is important is the fact that we move from the fordist economic system into the cognitive cultural economic system. It presents new forms of creativity which are presumably relatively more environmental friendly than in forms of fordist industrialization and of course the consciousness of environmental quality is more important. In this â&#x20AC;&#x153;compageâ&#x20AC;? around the world obviously there are institutional advantages of protecting environment and trying to re-utilizing the resources but I think I would understand that, just in terms of production and consumption, in the cognitive cultural economy, relatively to the forms of consciousness that are now becoming prevalent in the, letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s call it, creative class.

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Editorial Mario Ricciardi Dossier: Locative media Locative media: Patrolling the City Centered Festival Giulia Bertone Locative remediation: Connecting space and place, data and narratives Giulia Bertone Pervasive memory, locative narratives Gianni Corino, Duncan Shingleton and Chris Speed Reification of data Mike Phillips and Chris Speed Studies and researches: Creativity Crisis and clouds: New frontiers for the creative industries Massimo Riva Some initial observations on the EU Green Paper Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries Yvon Thies Creativity and cultures: Towards a 6th C for UNESCO World Heritage policies?

Paola Borrione, Aldo Buzio and Alessio Re Reconsidering the concept of the “creative city”: Theory and reality in Japan Emiko Kakiuchi The creative professions: How the journalistic figure changes Chiara Migliardi Interviews Interview to Pierre Jean Benghozi Aldo Buzio Interview to Allen J. Scott Aldo Buzio

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