Damian wrote: > but, based on what i've seen in my travels, some of the most interesting > creative stuff seems to be happening in and around /hack/lab spaces: the > kind of spaces which put together, in one place, open-source enthusiasts > who want to spread the word, and artists who are interested in working > with new technology and want access to equipment, workshop space, or > just a social space to hang out with other likeminded people.
The reason for this, Damian, is that you are a media-lab/hack-space tourist. You find interesting stuff there because that is where you go, so you go there again and again. You are like an appreciator of pelicans who goes from zoo to zoo and says "all the most interesting pelicans I see are in zoos". The argument is convenient and circular. In actual fact, digital artists might not be "like-minded people". They might not be lacking in social spaces, or "equipment", or any of that, and they might not live anywhere near the centre of a main centre. And those who do fit this kind of collaborative tech-head profile are already doing it. Which is good (although, as far as I can see the only difference between one of these hackery spaces and other people's studios and practice rooms is the presence of a website and a written set of rules). > so, in my mind, the best, cheapest single thing they could do is > part-fund the formation of a hack-space or several hack-spaces, > strategically located in major cities. in Wellington, a small space > (Happy-sized) somewhere in the not-yet-gentrified bits around upper cuba > or tory st, or in newtown. This sounds dreadful. It also sounds like Toi Pōneke. The thing is Damian, this isn't a new idea. It comes round and round, and every so often someone acts on it. A coordinator is appointed and they immediately buy three top end Macs with just the right software for something, and they hire a space and there's a kitchen and foosball and a locked room for the cool macs which can be hired out for really cheap even though nobody knows what to do with them and the kitchen becomes grimy and somebody loses something (maybe stolen, maybe not) and nobody comes in any more and it seems like a terrible waste until a group start to use it for lan parties and they have fun for the final 6 months of the lease. Or perhaps more money is pumped in and the mistake of the old Macs is corrected by buying the latest model. Or perhaps it morphs into an incubator, or an internet cafe, or a therapeutic workshop, or a key sector institution that it would be somehow embarrassing to stop funding. Perhaps the key difference between here and Madrid and Vienna is not that we are few and poor, but that our country is just not an attractive hub for centripetally motivated people. Those cities draw moths like yourself, whereas our artistic immigrants are like slaters or cockroaches scuttering to the dampest hidden places. Without the churn of visitors, your super-hack-space will be left with the same old people that somebody went to school with, seeming like just another badly implemented badly fitting cultural import. It would be better for CNZ to let us self organise, *then* give us the money. Douglas _______________________________________________ Ada_list mailing list [email protected] http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
