Imagineering Civilisations: June 2010

Making Space and Place with Social Engineering and the Dynamics of Digital Cultural Renewal

The Creative Industries, that is – the forms of culture which the majority of people now use and through which they understand the world (radio, television, video, cable, satellite, records and tapes, books and magazines) supports a culture of digital social activity that creates and sustains social value and meaning [Florida 2002]. The cultural institutions of the press, publishing, digital and print media, cinema, radio, television and the record industry, are no longer marginal or minor [GLA 2000-2008]. But, in themselves and in their frequent interlock and integration with other productive institutions [visual and performing arts, music and film industries] - are parts of the whole public social and economic organisation at its most general and pervasive [].
The privatisation of pleasure driven by basic economics has become a fundamental issue challenging the traditions of civic, municipal and public cultures []. Principally, because in their wake is a burgeoning legacy of fragmented public cultures. Therefore, as the Creative Industries irrevocably transform the practice/production and dissemination of Art and the meaning of culture, within this framework, lays the potential for the Creative Industries to act as an agent of cultural diplomacy to explore differences and appreciate commonalities.

By their very nature, these industries engender a cultural democracy and are symbolic of a democratization of art antithesis to the traditional inequitable social judgments of cultural objects and aesthetic values [Lewis 1990]. The established value system merely transmuting the public intervention of subsidising that which is precipitated by commercial failure [Lewis 1990]. Worth is merited by recipients according to an art’s inverted unpopularity (traditional forms of high art). Instead, of equating popularity with cultural value, the support of the Creative industries should inform the pursuit of aesthetics truly innovative or dynamic.
The popular culture is more than a “majority” culture ruled by the lowest common denominator. It can be exciting, innovative, and enriching - providing popular involvement is nurtured and stimulated so that it provides a thriving basis for diverse cultural developments. Aesthetic value and public intervention can be pursued within this framework of the public domain. So as to create cultural democracy – a society in which people are free to come together to produce, distribute and receive the cultures they choose. Consequently, promoting both art and communities ignored by the dominant culture with the aim of fostering a causal platform of respect and co-operation.

Within this lexicon of research, (popular) Culture is taken to mean the social activity that creates, communicates or sustains social value and meaning. While Art is that cultural practice which involves the creation of specific and definable objects. Whether as a traditionally recognised discipline such as a play or musical score; or contemporary permissible forms such as video. In other words Art can now best be defined as “creativity”, that is – the meaningful production of original works [Hartley 2005].

The “New Age Artisan’s” ascent to the forefront of making contemporary space and place in cities at a time of global neo-liberal economic policies asserts the repositioning of culture as understood in the light of the Creative Industries [Florida 2002; Oldfield 2010]. The dialogue between culture and the Creative Industries has uniquely articulated the subtleties of space and place. In turn, the appropriation of the lifestyle and values of the artist and cultural practitioner is spurred into specific spatial and cultural identities.

The legacy of the artist/ artisan inhabiting the precariousness and insecurity the neo-liberal economist inflicted on industry remains postulated as the aspired working model expected of the developed economy and culturation [Florida 2002; Oldfield 2010]. Neo-liberal work practices inherited from the digital artist in their speculative attempts to secure commissions gives rise to the idea of “space as art” as a concept which refers to the topography of modern technocrat labour governed by contingency, participation, causality and compulsory flexibility [Oldfield 2010]. In short, far from being the peripheral representation of urban enclaves dotted with Internet cafes, production studios and new galleries [Sandhu 2009].

The egalitarian desire to increase self-agency over the means of electronic production and create platforms for our creative capacities should shift the emphasis from product to the creative process in the disciplines of the Creative Industries. A sophisticated approach, using the “Arts” as stage in a process to promote the values of social pleasure, diversity, and creative expression in a vital sense. The social and cultural value of the Creative Industry (CI) thereby imputed as a consequence.

That is, the artist as a revolutionary, unifying catalyst to the existing discourse regarding the integration of the Creative Industries as a spatialized platform to promote communication between cultures in the public realm in the cityscape. At its most rewarding, this notion suggests that the fabric of community combines ideas for life and technology with the artist’s sense of purpose, creative expression and character. Creating a society in which people are free to come together to produce, distribute and receive the cultures they choose gaining expression, personal fulfillment and quality of life in an enjoyable ambience in which to meet other people and have a pleasurable social experience.

This is the physicality of the space between two cultures marking the intersection of each. An architecture as proposition to tangibly engage the individual in the cultural other with the person and the personal by activity and activity systems (concrete expressions of culture). The proposed site of learning is elevated to an agent of personal expansion, cultural citizenship and social cohesion, with the production of the [indigenous] Arts as the driving vehicle of this social centre. This architecture so encompasses the act of new cultural signifier for this era in the shift of the production of arts; culture and the economy by its programme of activity intended to effect an agenda of communication across borders and the sharing of knowledge and information impacting the discourse and relation between cultures.

In a wider urban context, there is a need to address the nature and interaction of the spaces between buildings to engender the necessary social interaction on the street to foster safe, creative urban neighbourhoods. Facilitating the community as “performance” and engendering a feeling of “centeredness” rather than the artless fragmentations as previous. Thereby creating communities with functions that are culturally relevant to the geographic locale they are situated.

Alternate realities for the sympathetic integration of the commercial and political aspirations of the Creative Industries must therefore be explored, while maintaining and fostering a delicate ecology of “urban community” within the public domain. To implement this strategy requires a specific architectural response of integrating the necessary factors for successful CI communities in a holistic urban context. Mechanisms by which to ensure the creation of diverse, socially inclusive, innovative environments must be identified. Digitally sympathetic processes of media as a tool of planning and design can and should be developed. In the space of architecture, film, video and other media can be an appropriate instrument to identify instances and opportunities of locales that would benefit from regeneration and to envision the cultural and creative programmes appropriate within an area. The opportunity now also exists for multi-media to be the principal device to develop and integrate proposed cultural events as a method of valorising and integrating territories into the urban context.

This literary work will therefore conclude with the preparation of drawings and real artefacts as an exercise that will inform a formative approach to promote reflection on the underpinning [political] approach taken in future art and culture lead masterplanning regeneration exercises in the cityscape. In an effort to preserve the built environment for those most affected – the residents; and guard against the causality of homogenized urban grain at the expense of unique territorial character.

This discourse locates itself between the predicaments of culture technics and inhabitation. It predicates an attempt to address the question of whether architecture can be used as a medium for cultural diplomacy 1? That is – “is it possible for architecture to be an agent to emancipate societies from culturism as they re-define themselves in their consciousness and to each other as precipitated by the phenomenon of the Creative Industries?”

This premise underpins the design research investigation underpinning this body of work. The framework intends to initiate unique responses to meet the needs of the artisan in the Creative Industries in a neo-liberal economy, which ofttimes lay bounded by the tension of architectural paradox and conundrum.

The discernable impact the Creative Industries on global economies and society is the apparent fragmenting of spatial networks [Mitchell] within cities and the relocation of social exchanges from the physical to the digital agora [Markham, Carter].

By critically embracing McLuhan’s [1964] assertion that media constitutes an environment and city as “medium [Kittler 1996], the discussion proposes to ascertain an appropriate understanding of the social transitions occurring because of the Creative Industries. To inform the investigation of how architecture can influence the spaces that the Creative Class occupies in a role as cultural ambassadors.
Social interactions in cyberspace embodied in reality is attested by phenomenology, Creative and Cultural Theories, theories of place‐making and substantiated by ethnographic case studies of existential phenomena. Providing a sound conceptual framework within which to examine the implications of digital trans-cultural communication for architecture.

Special attention will be paid to regional variations in how different creative industries function vis-à-vis business and cultural policies, globalization and the strategic role of creativity in the creation of physical and virtual dimensions in which people interact. The hypothesis is posited that an understanding of the intrinsic factors of the Material economy, knowledge of media, public diplomacy countering cultural animus, economic growth and communications theories is necessary to understand and identify the dynamics of cultural renewal in the context of the inevitable technocratic re-definition of cultural values and norms arising from the shifting precipitated by the Creative Industry to establish how these can relate to architecture.

Finally, it is argued that the transmuting of culture into digital objects of art and translating them into key elements of architectural cultural identification can tangibly connect the cultural other, promoting learning and understanding of the unfamiliar [culture] through adoption and adaptation.
The scope and power of smart technology underpins an emergent architectural model that would advance a primary embryonic strategy to appropriate culture. A humanistic technological determinism directs towards a model typology that tests the feasibility of new mechanisms for the redemption and the redemptive work of the artisan in a considered architectonic digitally interactive and immersive environment. Conjecturing an inference and possibility towards an ethnoscape – a site of learning where the artist and the artisan studies, lives and works as a way to encourage and diversify the approach to cultural diplomacy.