soufflés, trees and contexts

"Suppose you draw a picture alone in your room, or make a soufflé or write a song. Is this still creative? Only potentially."

This quote has amused me since I first read it a couple of days ago. It's from Keith Negus and Micheal Pickering's Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value. They try to explain how creativity is only realised when it is achieved within some social encounter (page 23). Humans do not create ex nihilo/from nothing and creative practices are part of a societal context, but I think I might answer their question with a yes: you can bake a soufflé alone at home, and it will be a creative practice. Or at least you would respond to your own creative act. Alter/Ego.

The quote is of course reminiscent to "if a tree falls down in the woods and no one is around to hear it- does it make a sound?"

Update: Negus and Pickering make no reference to Luhmann, but their argument is strongly similar to his idea of communication. To Luhmann communication is only factual as far as Ego, a receiver, creates an understanding from a communicated utterance (The Reality of the Mass Media).

working with qualitative data

What's the perfect time to do qualitative interviews for a research-project? Depends on how much knowledge there is about your research-theme? You need to do some reading and preferrably some writing to know what to ask for in the interviews? That's my experience. I started as a PhD-student in January 2004 (somehow that's almost three years ago, what happened with time?), and I did most of my interviews during 2004 and 2005. Should I have done follow-up interviews? I haven't. I'm still observing my informants through their online presence though. Qualitative interview-data are generally very rich, and I'm more interested in analysing the interviews I already have than go on and do more interviews.

However, I was somewhat worried about my latest article-in-progress. I wasn't totally convinced that the interviews would be useful for an article focusing specifically on creative practices. Turns out, they are.

...
An update on my computer/screen problems: changing the cable didn't help. I've connected my powerbook to a QUT-screen, covering the flickering screen of my own computer with a paper-bag.

party

jinna & oksana, busting a move
Originally uploaded by jeangenie.

Jinna is the sweetest and invited me to a Bollywood farewell-party she was arranging for Bao on Saturday. Oksana is the sweetest for letting me borrow an Indian-kind of outfit. As you can see from Jean's photos, we had a wonderful time. I took photos too, but I don't have my computer at the moment (see a sad story.

a sad story

"So you don't have a warranty or apple-care?"
"No, but I don't care, just fix it!"

I've been having trouble with the screen on my powerbook for at least a year and a half. It starts flickering, but I can usually fix it by pushing and pressing on the right places. On Friday however, the screen seemed to have totally given up on me. So now I've handed it in for service. I hope there's a problem with the cable, and not really the screen, and I hope to have my beloved computer back before too long. Please, please, please.

Funny thing is, after working for about 10 minutes on "my" QUT-computer, it died as well. Hardware-failure. Somebody from the IT helpdesk has already picked it up, until they figure out what's wrong I'm borrowing another computer.

edit:
This story is now truely a tragedy. According to Infinite Systems they have to change the LCD panel, making it very expensive to repair my computer: AU $1011! That's like the same price as functioning three year old powerbooks are sold for. RIP?

mymusic

The Gossip
Originally uploaded by Marika.

One of the best concerts so far this year has been The Gossip at Slottsfjell Festival in July. You know, really good as in "I'd like to buy their stuff". I did some searching and came across emusic - yes you can buy Gossip-tunes at iTunes Music Store, but I'm no longer big fan of their terms of service. emusic however is a subscription-based service, I get to download 40 tunes every month for the price of US $9.99. NO DRM. Trouble is of course, they don't have the occasional hits that I so crave for at times, but that's where iTunes becomes useful.

emusic has provided me with lots of quality-music since I signed up in July. Spank Rock, TV on the Radio, Camera Obscura, Maximo Park, Sufjan Stevens - to name but a few.

Gisle Hannemyr links to several web sites where you can legally download music without DRM.

my final phd-article

I'm so not interested in revising previous articles at the moment. Thinking and taking notes for a new article is much more tempting. I haven't even been sure what my final PhD-article will be about, but my plan is to kind of have a draft ready when I leave Brisbane just before Christmas. I have two alternatives: 1) My work so far slightly overemphasises the social aspects of being present online. The human will to create is hardly in focus at all. 2) Matters of privacy - important of course as users are more than willing to share private information online. And *ta da* I have made up my mind, as a visitor at QUT I shold obviously go for the first alternative. I'm reading Rob Pope's Creativity: Theory, History, Practice, which seems to be a pretty good place to start to get a theoretically solid understanding of creativity. Importantly one of Pope's aims with the book is to recognise that 'being creative' is, at least potentially, the natural and normal state of anyone healthy in a sane and stimulating community, and that realising that potential is as much a matter of collaboration and 'co-creation' as of splendid or miserable isolation (page xvi).

free wireless access in Brisbane

Noi Bar-Dining, 350 Brunswick Street, has free wireless access. They play good music too. And the food seems to be ok as well.

back to usual

Working in Brisbane is just like working in Oslo. This week I had planned to re-write the article deeply in need of a stronger theoretical framework and more compelling research questions, and I think I'm getting somewhere (btw there were apparently good things about the article too. According to one of the reviewers the interview data seems solid, my analysis of it is excellent, and I'm clearly familiar with the literature). And just like home, re-writing is extremely time-consuming. Well that's not very surprising is it.

Otherwise I'm doing fine. Or I'm rather frustrated with Vodafone, Queen Street Mall, Brisbane for not being able to register my 30$ credit on my pre-paid mobile-account, but I guess I had to meet some kind of trouble (f***ing salesman said I'd have to come back to the Vodafone-store for a third time although they are to blame).

It's Friday, I've been here for about 10 days, and I seriously think I need to see a beach at some point this weekend - fresh, salty air.

conference highlights Friday

Vernacular Creativity
Originally uploaded by Felix42.

Daniel Skog gave a very interesting presentation on Friday morning. His PhD-project is an etnographic study of the Swedish online community LunarStorm. He emphasised that technology shapes social interaction, and referred to one specific redesign of the functionality of LunarStorm as a case to illustrate how the social outcomes of technological design cannot easily be predicted.

John Hartley's key-note was of particular interest to me as he focused a lot on young people's creative use of social technologies. Fun and lively.

I looked forward to the panel Jean Burgess was leading - 'Creativity and its discontents: critical perspectives on the cultural economy of new media'. Jean focused on vernacular literacy, emphasising the importance of creative and expressive competencies of individual users (competences that are far from 'natural'). 'You push the button, we do the rest' has become 'we provide the buttons, you do the rest' (hm, she rephrased the Kodak slogan, but I'm not quite sure I remember how she rephrased it).

I had my own presentation on Friday, in the same session as Arne Krokan and Darren Sharp. It was ok, at least I really tried not to put too much content into my allocated 22 minutes. I hope my new conference-friends did not feel obliged to come and listen though, thanks for showing up! Darren works with Touch-related research questions, he should get in touch with Timo (and vice versa).

Conference dinner: very enjoyable
Drinks after conference dinner: fun
More drinks in Valley with Denise Rall and Jean: serious fun


Technorati tag: aoir2006

conference highlights Thursday

I had done my pre-conference homework, browsing through the presentation-abstracts and marking the sessions I wanted to attend. I'm not going to write a summary of all the presentations I enjoyed - it would hardly be very interesting for anybody else (though it would be a good opportunity for me to recapture the conference).

A few highlights though: I met Jaz Hee-jeong Choi on Wednesday, and I was happy to see that she was presenting in the first session I'd marked of as interesting. Jaz talked about the multimedia blog system Cyworld which has a very dominant position in South Korea. Very cool, and Jaz has a pleasant way of presenting. She's funny too.

I also liked the 'social uses and consequences' panel (12.45-14.15) about citizen journalism and user-generated content. I have somewhat reluctantly used Toeffler's concept of prosumer (producer + consumer) in my own work, but I might consider using Axel Brun's concept of 'produsage' (production + usage) instead. He later told me he wanted to avoid the consumer-aspect all-together. Otherwise the panel sort of confirmed that my own thinking is very much in line with how others think about active and producing audience.

Congrats to Anja Bechmann Petersen for receiving the award for the best graduate paper! I know from her previous work that it was probably well deserved. Anja presented her paper 'Internet and cross media productions' in one of the final sessions on Thursday together with Oscar Westlund. They both gave very well structured presentations. Anja's PhD-project has similarities to my collegue Ivar-John Erdahl's PhD-project, as they both study how media organisations work to produce content for different media platforms (both of them indicate a general lack of using the potentials of the Internet).

Technorati tag: aoir2006

sunday in West End

Conference is over and I've moved from fancy hotel to cheap, yet quiet and clean, hostel where I'm going to stay for the next couple of weeks, until I'll move into a nice Queenslander on the 14th. I have finally found a place with a close-to-free (2 AUD) wireless access, at Leif's Art Gallery and Café in the West End. The lack of free hotspots in Brisbane is surprising I think. In all other ways, these days have been very pleasant, and I've met lots of wonderful people. I might do a quick summary of how I found the conference tomorrow. For now, I'll just enjoy my coffee and the calmness of Leif's Café.