Creativity, Technology and Second LifeNelson Zagalo, University of Minho, Portugal

Universidade do Minho10 Oct 2012

Technology is “anything useful invented by a mind” (Kevin Kelly).

Art is the material result of anything aesthetic imagined by a mind.

Notes. For the sake of the construction of the arguments, will be using simplified definitions of technology and art.. We defend a perspective of the world based in evolutionary psychology (Leda Cosmides) in which people have evolved through biological and social selection, and in which people are accepted as not being a blank slate, being born differently and with specific intelligence orientations (Howard Gardner).

Why do we need to put Technology and Art together?

Creativity is the word of the XXI century, the word that defines major education, economic and social goals.

Creativity is commonly accepted as the invention of any new thing.

How then do we create the New?

Technology Art

Learn old workRuled

Focused

Technology

Emptying Old

UnruledUnfocused

Art

Learn Old workRuled

Focused

First phase Second Phase

Creating the new

Emptying Old

UnruledUnfocused

Learn Old work

RuledFocused

First phase

Second PhaseEmptying

UnruledUnfocused

common sense

difficult

easy

(Technology)

(art)

reality

hard

harder

Why is the first phase hard to achieve?Learn Old

workRuled

Focused

RequirementsLearn interacting with others (Watch, listen, interiorize)&Learn until master (Do the same thing over and over)

OutcomeMastery can come after 10,000 hours (~6 to 10 years) (Anders Ericsson)

The ProblemIt is not related to the time needed to mastering. It is a question of having the motivation to keep doing and learning till mastery.

Why is the second phase even harder?

RequirementsMastery (passed through entire first phase)&Go beyond the already Know

OutcomeTeach yourself to learn.

The ProblemFormatted mind to do the same over and over. After mastery, learning can never stop, thus we need motivation to keep learning.

EmptyingUnruled

Unfocused

We don’t have a problem with motivation to keep learning. We suffer of “avidity for pattern” (Edward Purcell) for information forming, arrangements that stimulate in us inferences, relaxing us.

We’re never satisfied until we find patterns. This is why we love storytelling.

What is the biggest challenge then?

Our “avidity for patterning” is a question of making sense of the world. But it’s not only done in terms of understanding it.

Whenever we face a problem our mind builds on top of the problem, we work with what is given to us. We build from it new meaning.

We are biologically rewarded when we find the solution for a problem on our own.

Understanding and Doing

DRIVE - Intrinsic motivationOur biggest challenge is then finding what Drives Us. This is the key for creativity. Find what in the world keeps us hunger for doing more.

We are mammals, and so intensely gregarious creatures. We crave to be acknowledged by our peers. This means that the intrinsic motivation, is something coming from inside, but that needs social reinforcement to flourish.

This means the most important is what we do, not what we think. We need to find what we do best, not what we think we do best.

Intrinsic motivation, Socialization and Doing

1. Creating technologies that facilitate creation by non-specialists.

2. Creating technologies that allow collaboration, sharing, participation and all other forms of socialization.

3. Creating technologies that primarily compensate effort through community acknowledgement and not financial retribution.

4. Creating technologies that permits and stimulates the DIY.

5. Creating technologies that foster self-discovery.

These are the ones we call Creative Technologies.

How to help finding Drives?

Creative technologies

Scratch

Sumo Paint

SketchUp

Second Life

AudioTool

Wordpress

Second Life - easy editors for non-specialists

Second Life - communication tools to socialize

Second Life – creating to be acknowledged by peers

First map: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Porto/66/160/117/All others: http://indidesigns.wordpress.com/beautiful-places-in-second-life/

Second Life – permit the DIY

By Applonia Criss slurl.com/secondlife/Laguna%20Arenal/148/50/23

Second Life - self-discovery, learn about own drives

Virtual Sculpture

Virtual Photography

Videogames

Virtual Film (Machinima)

Digital Arts

Virtual Fashion

Virtual Architecture

Programming (Behaviours, etc)

Business (Selling Virtual Goods)

To end…

On this subject, I’m finishing the editing of a special number of the journal Communication and Society dedicated to Creative Technologies. It will be available free during this second semester.

I’m supervising theses on the subject and we’re at Univeristy of Minho preparing a new doctoral program specifically on this matter of Creative Technologies.

Creativity, Technology and Second Life

Nelson Zagalo, nzagalo@ics.uminho.pt

B. http://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt

H. http://nelsonzagalo.googlepages.com

F. http://www.facebook.com/nelsonzagalo

Universidade do Minho