well Douglas, i seem to have struct a nerve there. i'm not going to address all your points, but here's some thoughts by way of a response.
1. i spent a bunch of time in the Cake Shop on Cuba St when it was running, which showed me that really interesting things can happen when you have an open space where different ideas can mingle. it was a great place to work and more importantly to be inspired to work further. 2. i left Wellington for a number of reasons. pertinent to this discussion was my growing sense that there were a whole lot people in the city, interested in similar things as myself, who worked in isolation and didn't share, not because they didn't want to but because (like myself) they didn't realise their work might be valuable to other people, and even if they did think it was valuable there was no established place to share it. the arts market in New Zealand is as far as i could tell lost in post-colonialism and so heavy with theoretical nonsense that i always felt it was impossible to approach it coming as i am from a position of having no formal arts training. i started organising events to try to rectify what i saw as a tragedy of lost opportunities. this was the point of the Bleep series of workshops, and although they were successful in doing what i was hoping to achieve, i quickly realised that without any infrastructure the overhead of effort was enormous, and that i was not cut out for organising events; moreover without follow-up the social aspect was quickly lost, and it was hard to make these follow-ups happen in an informal way. 3. the point is definitely not to hire a 'coordinator' and fill a clinical set of rooms with new pieces of hardware. of course that wouldn't work. the hacklabs i have seen that work, work because of the social aspect, and because of local patronage. they may have a bunch of very shiny equipment, or they may have nothing at all, but that's not what separates the good from the bad. when they work, they function as somewhere where people can go to be inspired by and to inspire each other. for 'ordinary' artists the gallery can serve this task, but digital art is so hopelessly underrepresented, and so much ink is spent on propping up the non-digital with impenetrable language, that for people like myself the gallery failed in that respect. when i put together Sounds Like Light, Lights Like Sound for the Fringe festival in 2007, i thought that because the work that i was making was coming from a more practical approach to artistic work, it was somehow lesser art, or perhaps not even art at all because it was so technical. these feelings are something that of course come from my identity as a New Zealander, but i know that if there had been a hacklab space in Wellington i would not have felt so isolated and confused about what it was that i was actually doing, and as a result i believe the work i could make would have been much better. that's what it means to me, and that's why i care, because i know there are other people back home dealing with the same shit i was dealing with in my head, and that since such a place would have helped me, it could help them too. d Douglas Bagnall wrote: > 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 > > > -- damian stewart | skype: damiansnz | [email protected] frey | live art with machines | http://www.frey.co.nz _______________________________________________ Ada_list mailing list [email protected] http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
