creativity/machine

In response to the recent controversy around Günther Grass’s membership of the Waffen SS as a young man, John Berger writes on ethics and experience in The Guardian:

The denial of true reflection

[…]

These thoughts come to my mind as I read the macabre denunciations being levelled today against Günter Grass. About him as a man and about his great work as a writer, they totally miss the point, and might be dismissed as laughable, but, as an index of a certain recent moral climate in Europe, they are troubling. They are an example of moral judgments made in a carefully constructed vacuum of experience. They are what is left after the emptying out of lived experience, and they are a strident denial of what we know in our bones to be real.

via Charlotte Street

Tonight I wrapped up my Flickr interviews, which were the last bits of fieldwork for my PhD. I could have kept talking to people forever, because the whole process has been so rich and productive and interesting, and, well, fun, but you have to stop somewhere. I’m going to be saying this many more times in the coming months, but thank you so much to:

Mr. Magoo ICU

shanrosen

Cyron

Louise

David

yinyang

and

Melanie

I now am officially in thesis hell, to the extent that I have almost completely cleared my schedule between now and December and declined a whole bunch of other projects that I really, really wanted to do, and writing this post feels like a luxuriant waste of time. Let’s call it a birthday present, because I started creativity/machine around about three years ago, while in the very early stages of thinking through ideas for a PhD project on amateur creativity (and procrastinating about finishing my MPhil). Maybe it’s time to start planning a postdoc. (Only joking)

Interesting looking creative/locative/game project:

Snap-Shot-City

- A world wide urban photographic treasure hunt -
Anyone, anywhere in the world, can play!

Snap-Shot-City is an opportunity to participate in the global community by really experiencing the place where you live, with the people you share it with.

Become an artist for a day and interpret a scavenger hunt list of items into how you see and experience your city and your community. And share it with the world.

Thanks to Ben, I just found From Beirut to…those who love us. While I am trying not to drip ineffectual tears on my keyboard, I can’t recommend highly enough that you go watch it (BIG Quicktime file). Here’s the background:

This video letter was made on July 21, 2006 at the studios of Beirut DC, a film and cinema collective which runs the yearly Ayam Beirut Al Cinema’iya Film Festival. This video letter was produced in collaboration with Samidoun, a grassroots gathering of various organizations and individuals who were involved in relief and media efforts from the first day of the Israeli attack on Lebanon. It was also broadcasted at the Biennial of Arab Cinema, organized by the Arab World Institute in Paris.