Building A Better Hothouse

If you put creative people in a hothouse setting, innovation will naturally emerge.

John Seely Brown, director of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) [1]

The collaboration of art and digital technology is one of the most exciting research trends of the decade. It has given rise to a rarified design discipline of fashioning new sites for innovation, new hothouses for collaborative projects. The major players are, of course, government, educational institutions and corporations, each with their own resources, interests and intentions. Universities house a broad array of specialists, for instance, while corporations have deep financial resources. Essential to the fertility of any hothouse is interdisciplinary collaboration that attempts to move beyond the narrow focus of traditional models of research. In practice, however, neither corporate nor traditional academic cultures have proven flexible enough to nurture the collaborations between software engineers, artists, designers, business people and social scientists that are needed for the design of ground-breaking new digital media. As a result, a number of new media programs in art schools have been created wit hout the traditional divisions between the academic and corporate worlds, [2] forming collaborative research and learning environments that attempt to bridge the gap between art and science first noted by C. P. Snow in the 1940s. "The clashing point of two subjects," Snow wrote, "two disciplines, two cultures--of two galaxies, so far as that goes--ought to produce creative chances." [3]

The movement to create new centers reflects the pervasive influence of Xerox PARC and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory as paradigms for collaborative digital media research. Xerox PARC is the quintessential corporate think tank, and, since 1993, PARC's Artist-In-Residence program (PAIR) has teamed practicing artists with in-house researchers who work with similar digital media. One of PAIR's goals is to influence PARC's research culture: "PAIR is a conscious attempt to boost, alter, nudge and in a minor way redirect the creative forces of PARC by providing alternative viewpoints, theories, personalities, and methodologies within the halls, offices, and long corridors and around the steaming coffee pots of the community." [4] These collaborations may indeed alter the corporate culture, but the artists remain outsiders, unable to directly influence research. The limitations of the PAIR model suggest the need for the development of collaborative opportunities in which artists do more than just use the facilities.

Similarly, the ground-breaking MIT Media Laboratory is a model worthy of further description. The progenitor of university-based, interdisciplinary research centers, the Media Lab first explored the potential for industry sponsorship. An innovative intellectual property policy that allows all corporate sponsors to share in the Media Lab's developments encourages free sharing of ideas, and has the added benefit of insuring that no single sponsor can unduly influence research. Sponsors also provide outside field testing venues for the Media Lab's research projects, which are organized into three large areas: "Digital Life," "News in the Future" and "Things that Think." [5] But although the Media Lab and Xerox PARC present compelling paradigms for digital research, fundamental questions remain about how to attract the best people, how to enhance collaboration, how to create new relationships with corporate culture and how to extend the lessons from research institutions to broader education. Three new instituti ons--a public university in Canada, a research center in Sweden and a corporation in the United States--attempt to answer these questions.

There seems to be plenty of funding available for new multidisciplinary media centers, but guaranteeing the future viability of collaborative research methods is a challenging proposition. Collaboration is seen by some as inherently inefficient because it relies upon the vagaries of interpersonal give-and-take. One wonders what Frederick P. Brooks Jr., author of The Mythical Man-Month, the seminal 1975 book on software engineering, would make of today's interdisciplinary collaboration. "Since software construction is inherently a systems effort--an exercise in complex interrelationships--communication effort is great, and it quickly dominates the decrease in individual task time brought about by partitioning," he argued. "Adding more men then lengthens, not shortens the schedule." [6] Brooks's software engineers shared the same background in computer science, and extrapolating to our multidisciplinary situation would send his graph of "men vs. months" off the chart. In the worst case, interdisciplinary colla boration can be actively counterproductive, the results less than the sum of the contributors, succeeding neither as art nor as technology. It is not enough to just throw artists and programmers together and expect results.

Collaboration involves more than just cooperation. One possible solution to the problem of communication is to train individual researchers in everything from art to programming to business, but this seems unrealistic. Some sort of specialization is necessary, but what kind? How can we make collaboration more fruitful? One answer is to generate guidelines for working in groups, the solution of a popular multidisciplinary course in virtual world design at Carnegie Mellon University. (Guidelines include "Let everyone talk" and "Avoid conflict at all costs.") [7] But in this there is a whiff of desperation, a sense that collaboration is simply a matter of managing turmoil. Another possible solution is to screen applicants based upon their interpersonal skills, as does the program in Creative Programming at the University of Gavle, Sweden. [8] But it is unclear whether or not removing the socially inept will really produce better research. A third, more promising possibility is to teach people to collaborate by educating them together, which is what the Technical University of British Columbia (TechBC) proposes to do.

It is not often that one gets a chance to design a major public university from scratch, and when it happens the educational community takes notice. TechBC establishes a context for equitable collaboration between Interactive Arts, Information Technology (IT) and Management and Technology majors by educating them together in a first-year foundation program, thus breaking down departmental divisions that can form early on. [9] Collaboration will occur on a project basis within each discipline in the third year and between disciplines in the fourth. Projects at this level will be generated by student, faculty and industry partnerships. Course structure also exhibits an interdisciplinary emphasis. Each course consists of three fiveweek modules that will be developed by the various program areas. Associate professor of Interactive Arts Ron Wakkary elaborates, "for example, our Animation II course will consist of modules developed by Information Technology and Interactive Arts.... In addition, all modules will ha ve interdisciplinary involvement on the part of the faculty during their development." [10] Tech BC is an experiment worth watching as the first class of students arrives this fall.

Establishing equality between art, technology and business students in a collaborative environment is essential for a number of reasons. It is difficult to bridge cultural differences if project participants are not on equal footing. Furthermore, immersing art students in a collaborative setting will challenge the traditional view of isolation as the standard working method for artists in our culture: they will learn to mediate between the group dynamic and their "artistic vision." IT students may discover and learn to value their own creativity through contact with art students. The grounds for good collaboration--empathy, common goals, some shared knowledge base, flexibility, mutual respect--are best developed through relationships, not by imposing guidelines, and TechBC appears to create an environment in which those relationships can be nourished.

The TechBC curricula also address the question of what sort of specialized education should precede collaborative efforts. The program in Interactive Arts relies heavily on theories of representation, cognitive and perceptual psychology and semiotics, in addition to drawing and other traditional design skills (courses include "Image Interaction: the Role of Visual Images" and "Cognition and Models of Perception: Social History and Theory"). The curricula were developed by advisory committees representing public and private institutions and unions, and reflect, according to Wakkary, "an interest in designing processes rather than structures."

Advisory processes also serve an important oversight function as TechBC defines itself as a site for engaging the business community. The university was created under an act of provincial legislature outlining a technology strategy for the province of British Columbia that mandates contributing to the economic well-being of the region. This charter offers opportunities, but also calls for caution. Engaging industry makes economic sense, and corporate participation in design studios can help students sharpen specific skills by imposing real-world constraints that may (somewhat paradoxically) enhance their creativity. But careful boundaries must be established. Besides issues of corporate welfare and the exploitation of student ideas, another more pragmatic concern is to avoid creating an educational institution that functions as an outsourced research and development department, and thus as subsidized competition for its own graduates. TechBC deals with some of these concerns in a strong academic freedom stat ement and a policy on intellectual property that leaves the rights to new developments with students and faculty. The advisory committees also scrutinize the development of new courses, helping to ensure proper insulation of the educational experience from corporate expectations.

Maintaining appropriate expectations by sponsors is also a concern of a new research institute in Malmo, Sweden. [11] Research director Michael Thomsen of the Interactive Institute acknowledges that corporate culture, with its eye on immediate marketability, is not always successful at recognizing and harvesting the best ideas produced by researchers. "If we were to let companies set the agenda, we would only be doing evolutionary, not revolutionary design work." Like TechBC, the Interactive Institute is the product of a governmental technology initiative. Early funding for the Institute was provided by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, though the Institute aims to eventually be funded by a combination of government and corporate sources. At present it consists of studios in Malmo, Stockholm and Gothenburg organized by research areas: "Space and Virtuality," "Narrativity and Communication," "Smart Things and Environments," "Emotional and Intellectual Interfaces" and "Play: Entertainment and Innovation."

The Institute is characterized by a high degree of structural flexibility. Chartered as a limited company, yet functioning as a research center, the Institute is able to establish relationships with companies that a purely academic institution could not. Furthermore, the Institute is able to assemble a broader range of researchers, including those from non-traditional backgrounds that lack the usual academic credentials. Although many of the current researchers are Ph.D. candidates at Swedish universities--with specializations ranging from Danish literature to theater to computer science--there is nothing in the structure of the institution that would prevent a recent high school graduate or entrepreneur from participating as well (and in fact the potential of the Institute will be fulfilled when such a diverse group is involved). This flexibility allows the director to tailor positions to the specific backgrounds and needs of researchers.

The Institute is in the process of working out the precise nature of interdisciplinary collaboration on a studio-by-studio basis. A director and creative director working in tandem oversee the balance between art and technology in the "Narrativity" studio, and the first project called for the researchers to create an "entrance piece." The idea, according to Thomsen, "was to use the piece as an 'object to think with' in order to create a common language and vision." A further effort seeks to extend collaboration between studios: "We are also beginning to see the studios build up separate competencies, and we are working on ways to benefit from each other by defining inter-studio teams and by free exchange of researchers on a project basis." Meanwhile, the directors continue to wrestle with the core issues of effective collaboration. "The researchers have all come to the studio to do multidisciplinary work and be inspired by the other disciplines," Thomsen says, "but they have brought with them the ideals and standards of excellence from their respective fields." One of Thomsen's challenges is to identify and enlist new peer groups that can provide valid sources of evaluation for interdisciplinary research.

Common ground for the Institute's researchers can be found in the design methodologies that inform their work. The Institute explores areas in which Sweden excels such as user-oriented design, social responsibility and Scandinavian design traditions. Products of a strongly egalitarian culture, Scandinavian designers learn to ask beneficial questions. (One need look no further than the number of sociologists running research centers to grasp the social science bent of Scandinavian digital design.) One source of inspiration is the design concept embedded in Work Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts (1989) by Pelle Ehn, director of research at the School of Art, Culture and Communication, Malmo University. The methodology set forth by Ehn seeks to extract the tacit knowledge of end users of new technologies. As an example of this process, the "Space and Virtuality" studio redefined the construct of the "control room" by observing and interviewing operators of industrial facilities. The development of a hand-he ld digital device--used to remotely execute the functions usually performed in the centralized control room--allows operators to range freely and to take into account a greater number of operating variables. Ehn's principles even informed the design of the Institute's studio facilities at Malmo.

The Institute is still quite young, but it appears capable of fulfilling its mandate to provide interdisciplinary research opportunities in Sweden. The model of the Institute is of further value to other institutions currently being formed. Accepting government and corporate funding raises an immediate question--how to preserve independence while maintaining the sponsors' interest in collaborative research processes. As the Xerox PARC book suggests, it is sometimes difficult for a corporation to evaluate the products and processes of its own research center, and to set the best priorities. [12] To cultivate this support a research site must develop an environment that fosters revolutionary relevancy. If the research is not revolutionary or if it lacks relevancy it may become difficult to retain the support of sponsors, particularly politicians decrying the use of public funds for "frivolous" research. By this touchstone the Interactive Institute looks promising, as it combines a model that provides enough in sulation from sponsors to do revolutionary work with relevant design methodologies that are rooted in the experience of people in their daily environments.

While both TechBC and the Interactive Institute rely upon the support (and possible instability) of government funding, C5, a new corporation of thinkers, presents a uniquely American alternative by staking out the border between academia and the marketplace. The brainchild of Joel Slayton, director of the CADRE Institute in San Jose, CA, C5 is composed of a group of academics and artists who aim to "make contemporary theory a demonstrable product." [13] Clients thus far include the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, which commissioned a work for its "Shock of the View" Internet art exhibit and several toy companies that have expressed interest in C5's surveillance research.

Contemporary critical and mercantile jargon employed by C5 testifies to the conflation of theory and product. The first sentence of C5's prospectus sets the critical tone: "Advances resulting from intra-theoretic reductionism have resulted in the exploration of unique models in which cascading and parallel considerations of hyper-structuralism and contextuality are significant." [14] Slayton proves himself to be equally conversant with the marketplace. "We want patents, copyrights, and theoretical products. And, if there's a revenue stream, we want the money." [15] Although there is something amusing about the way in which C5 engages in excesses of critical cant and commercial lust, one has to wonder if everybody gets the joke. Admirers in academia gush over the way in which C5 "debunks" and "subverts" the corporate model, [16] even as the company pitches its work on surveillance topics to the department of Defense.

Although Slayton has assembled a fascinating team and interesting research may emerge, C5 will probably tell us more about corporate culture than how to form viable research environments. When one peels away the veneer of hype, it is clear that the research structure differs only slightly from a typical university or corporate setting. Instead of seeking grants, each researcher is responsible for bringing in business. [17] And although C5 will clearly benefit from the collaborative energy of its researchers, a further problem is that the company could prove short-lived, as Slayton has expressed a desire to follow corporate logic to the IP0 and possible buyout conclusions. Though one would be cheered by the sight of a group of hitherto under-appreciated artists and academics retiring on their equity, C5 remains more of a gesture than a stable context for research, and it seems doubtful that it will outlast the current equity craze in this country.

John Seely Brown makes it sound so simple: "If you put creative people in a hothouse setting, innovation will naturally emerge." But, as we have seen, there are many ways to design a hothouse. The most successful research will be fostered by environments that address the challenges inherent in collaboration, and seek to build innovative and appropriate links to government and corporate sponsors. Digital media are uniquely adapted to the formation of new types of community that cut across traditional divisions of discipline, generation and nationality. We can then look forward to reaping the benefit of Snow's insight as artists and scientists advance--to use Pablo Picasso's metaphor in reference to his relationship with Georges Braque--like mountaineers tethered together, working their way up a peak. As scientists gain a new criticality and ask new questions, as artists commit to working in new forms, the result will be not just digital products that look and feel better, but more humane ways of engaging with technology.

SIMON NIEDENTHAL is assistant to the chair of digital media at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA.

NOTES

(1.) John Seely Brown, Director of Xerox PARC, in Craig Harris, ed., Art and Innovation: The Xerox PARC Artist-in-Residence Program (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), p. xi.

(2.) For a rough outline of many of these centers and programs see Bill Jones, "The Next Generation," in Artbyte (Summer 1999), pp. 36-74.

(3.) Harris, p. 3.

(4.) Ibid., p. 13.

(5.) See www.media.mit.edu.

(6.) Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975), p. 19.

(7.) See www.wonderland.hcii.cs.cmu.edu.

(8.) See Mark Ollila and Eva Carling, "Creative Programming: Merging the Artist with the Computer Programmer" in the Siggraph 1999 Conference Abstracts and Proceedings, p. 33: "Social and emotional competence are also judged in the interview, to make sure that an open and dynamic group process is promoted by the students accepted."

(9.) The TechBC curricula can be found at www.tu.bc.ca.

(10.) All unattributed quotations are from conversations with the author, August 1999.

(11.) The Interactive Institute mission statement, quoted from an internal memo: "The main 'deliverable' of the institute will be innovative and creative, interdisciplinary persons with an understanding not only of technology and art, but also of what it takes to bring new ideas to a larger audience." More information can be found on the Interactive Institute Web site: www.interactiveinstitute.se.

(12.) Stephen Wilson "Lost Treasures" in Harris, p. 194.

(13.) Leander Kahnev, "A Corporation of Thinkers," in WiredNews (January 30, 1999), p. 1.

(14.) More information can be found on the C5 Web site: c5.sjsu.edu.

(15.) Kahnev, p. 1.

(16.) Ibid., p. 3.

(17.) Ibid. "Each of the 12 founders is expected to develop business relationships and sales, the success of which determines compensation."

COPYRIGHT 1999 Visual Studies Workshop
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