About

The topics and essays on this site are mostly based on some past lecture materials. Where appropriate I have made revisions so they are more in keeping with the web environment and more digestible.  I guess they all represent projects I would like to build on. Deep & Difficult and Relevance are from two talks especially developed for the MA Image and Communication Programme at Goldsmiths College, London. The Objective Soul and The Last Ideology are both things I started to write and never quite finished, I suppose I had a feeling people would think I was miserable and negative.  Although they may seem a bit glum, essentially they both seek Utopia and say it is further ahead.  Happiness requires work. The Form of the Means and The Form of the Product are sections adapted from my PhD Thesis Modelling Creative Practice: Means of describing the constituents and circumstances of original thought and action with special reference to the use of computers in art and design.  Personally I'm not so happy with the thesis any more, it should have been much better! Still it's good in parts, copies can be obtained from the British Library if you want to look at more.  Bad Things about Computers in Art & Design is based on a fifteen minute presentation I gave at a 'Framework' debate at Birmingham Institute of Art & Design, rocking the boat and having fun. Throughout I haven't bothered too much about the niceties of academic writing, I can't stand the culture of referencing it has become.  All the same my acknowledgements to the great, good and indifferent who've made my mind what it is!   Brief descriptions and links are given below.

 

Art, Craft & Design

Deep & Difficult

When we try to come to terms with the problems of thinking and talking about personal practice...500 years of philosophy and ideology tends to intervene...and we talk complete rubbish...a particular type of rubbish though.  In Deep & Difficult an idea is developed that arts practice and art works can intrinsically involve multiple and contradictory meanings.

Relevance

A typical malaise in the life of any practitioner is that time or moment when you really can't see the point any more. Sometimes this is just a developmental stage, sometimes it can be seriously debilitating, turning creative work into an ugly chore. Relevance considers the fundamental issues of 'why' make, create, exhibit or communicate and also seeks answers about the chemistry of motivation.

 

 

Social Conditions

The Objective Soul

The talk for some time has been of subjectivity, of plurality. The other talk has been of information explosion, of connectivity. Put the two together and you have an annoyingly loud, intrusive and rude culture. In The Objective Soul there is an anticipation of a social reaction to the preliminary stages of the postmodern, post-industrial world, a reaction based on our finer sentiments.

The Last Ideology

It seemed at the end of the twentieth century that political ideologies like Communism and Fascism have been in some way 'proved' to be inadequate, monstrous and failed whilst Liberalism and democracy remain, benign, flexible, modern.  The Last Ideology makes the case that the internet in various ways reveals the failings of  Liberalism and 'modern society' in a way that was not possible before.

 

Arts Technology

The Form of The Means

An explanation and classification of technology and production processes in the arts and media and how these have become changed by new technologies to incorporate different models of production, reproduction and distribution.

The Form of the Product

How the evolution of cultural form relates to the evolution of technological means.  Also suggested classifications and definitions of the range of art forms that arise with new technology.

Bad Things about Computers in Art & Design

There was a time when it seemed necessary to argue the benefits and possibilities of using computers.  It led to a well entrenched rhetoric, a hype used to counter those who would not adapt or change.  Over several decades the hype became a creed, now, criticising the effect of computers on creativity produces outrage, astonishment and incredulity.  It is now time to redress the balance...in various ways computers are useless, interfering, obstructive...in other ways they are subversive, debilitating.