Belated notes from Birmingham

Last weekend I was at “Progression”, a seminar run by an arts organization named Vivid in Birmingham, UK.

I arrived at Heathrow, and felt happy to be in the UK, excited as I always am. I was rather sick with a cold, took the train to Birmingham, and checked into the Old Farm Hotel (which was super cute).

Unfortunately I sniffled and coughed and wheezed through most of the seminar day, which was at the University of Central England, but managed to deliver a talk about interdisciplinarity and systems. I showed some examples of how small changes to a system can result in radical new practices. This kind of “system tinkering” is, in my view, one of the most exciting types of creative practice.

I’ll share with you two of my favourite case studies that I spoke about. Some cowboys left some guitars behind in Hawaii in about 1792, and the result was Hawaiian Slack Key guitar playing. The cowboys didn’t leave behind any instructions on how to tune the guitars, so each person who picked up a guitar and taught themselves to play also learned their own individual way of tuning the guitar. These methods of tuning became highly prized, and musicians would loosen their strings when they put their guitars down, so no one could steal their tuning. Tuning styles were only shared within families, and this created a wonderful kind of family history, with some musicians able to re-tune their guitars and play in the style of their father, and re-tune again and play in the style of their aunt, et cetera. I thought this was a great example of re-examining a system, even though it occurred mostly by accident. Who says that this is the way to tune a guitar? I like the way that something that might be considered fundamental in music, the tuning of an instrument, also becomes part of an individual’s style of playing.

I also talked about Bumplist, which is a brilliant art project by Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Mike Bennett. It is simply a mailing list, but one where the subscriber list is limited to six people. When a new person is subscribed, someone currently subscribed to the list is bumped off the list. By adding this simple rule to a familiar concept, all sorts of revelations about human behaviour are revealed. Territoriality, passive-aggressiveness, and cheating are just some of the behaviours that result when you apply the laws of supply and demand to something as common as a mailing list. I am not doing this project justice with my description here. Think about the implications for a while, and go subscribe to see for yourself. Like the Slack Key guitar example, thinking about the fundamentals of a system, and changing them, develops the familiar into something quite new.

The rest of the day at the seminar was wonderful, expertly chaired by Sadie Plant. Simon Yuill was also presenting during the morning session, and gave an excellent talk on the subject of programming as practice. He related programming to markmaking, described its obvious lineage as connected to weaving, and basically related programming to any kind of systematic practice that occurs in creative fields. He spoke of a continuum, with notation at one end and drawing at the other. Programming as markmaking is more like notation than drawing, because notation is systematic and repeatable, while drawing is only realized in the process of its own making.

He was a really terrific speaker and I thought our talks complimented each other quite a bit. We had a great time in the chaired discussion.

There is so much more to say about the day, an interesting presentation about “mental interactivity” by Axel Roch, a presentation on a developing dance notation system by Matthew Gough, and ideas about how artists can use supercomputing applications presented by Gregory Sporton and Robert Sharl. I know these are just teasers, but have no fear – a book will be published in 2005 with full papers by everyone, and I’ll post here to let everyone know when the book is available.