Creation and Creativity
Department of Computer Science
Trinity College, Dublin
Ireland
The previous issue of Crossings saw the introduction of a newtype of contribution: the artist's work-in-progress statement. In thisissue, we incorporate artwork into the journal format with the additionof the featured exhibition. Whereas the work-in-progress statement describescreative work that is ongoing and as yet incomplete, the featured exhibitionpresents work that has reached a final form. Eduardo Kac's The EighthDay is our first such exhibition, and our presentation of Kac's workhere is a virtualisation of a physical exhibition held at Arizona StateUniversity in November 2001. Kac defines himself as a transgenicartist someone who works with genetic manipulation for artistic purposes and his exhibition features several synthetic life forms that havebeen genetically and/or mechanically engineered. Kac's exhibition and accompanyingstatement are provocative in more ways than can be summed up in this introduction,but suffice it to say that The Eighth Day implores us to think notonly about biology, ecology and genetic engineering but also about philosophicaland cultural issues raised by our use of technology for creative and otherpurposes.
At the centre of Kac's world is the Act of Creation. Many ofthe questions his work raises have to do with the creative act, the natureof the creator and the created and the relationship between them. Whenlife can be created as art, what (if anything) distinguishes life and art?If synthetic life forms can be called art, what about conventional (evolved)life forms? And on a more ethical and almost religious note, what are theresponsibilities of the creator towards the created? Matthew Causey's paperaddresses such questions, first by placing Kac's work in a number of criticaland historical contexts most notably the trajectory of late modernistart practices and then considering the theoretical and ethical implicationsof Kac's practice in terms of the concept of posthumanism.
Michael Cronin's paper explores the importance of technology and toolsas components for the development of humanity and argues that the toolsproduced by human beings constitute an externalisation of human memorywhich is indissociable from human language. Focusing on translation andits role in human society and culture, Cronin uses an example from post-apartheidSouth Africa to show how technology fosters the commitment to a multilingualsociety. For Cronin, translation relates both to the generalising movementof technology and the particularising drive of culture: while it opensworks that would otherwise be inaccessible, it also raises awareness ofthe cultural worlds which those unable to unlock the code of a specificlanguage cannot access. Despite the fact that Cronin's main focus is ontranslation, his observations have merit in a greater context. Underlyingthe idea of technology as vital for moulding humanity are questions aboutthe kind of humanity we are (and could be) creating and what ethical issuesthis awareness implies. These questions are not unlike those raised byKac's work in transgenic art.
Creativity is also the focus of Thomas Hylland Eriksen's paper.Using the authors Salman Rushdie and V. S. Naipaul, Eriksen links the multi-ethnicand technological revolutions in terms of their effect on creativity. Heestablishes a dichotomy between two modes of creativity: one based on multiplicity,diversity and the view that everything new is a (re)combination of theold; and the other on rootedness, coherence and a stronger belief in individualinspiration. He also observes that the structures of meaning developedwith new media tend to fall into the former category and that technologyof many kinds can be seen as an enabler for cultural mixing and hybridisation.These ideas resonate very well with ideas presented by Cronin that culturecan be seen as a force that separates and technology as one that unites.Indeed, Eriksen provides useful historical contexts for understanding,developing and questioning such a dichotomy.
Linda Candy and Ernest Edmonds address the role of technology in thecreative process in their discussion of interactive artworks and the processesthrough which they are developed. In their paper, the two authors covertheoretical as well as practical ground by proposing a classification schemefor interaction in art and presenting works by four artists as examples.Candy and Edmonds also share their experiences with an artist-in-residenceprogramme and discuss another type of interaction: that taking place amongthe participants (artists, technologists, audience) in a collaborativecreative process. The two authors conclude their discussion with thoughtson future technology for the support of the creative process and hencestrike some of the same chords that Cronin did in the context of translation:the identification of the tool as a crucial determinant in the creativedevelopment of the user.
The ethical implications of creativity emerge again in this issue. Thistheme has been visited before, most recently in Elisa Giaccardi's paperin Crossings 1.2 where she dwelled on the importance of ethicalresponsibility during every act of creation. Given Kac's work in transgenicart, it is clear that this perspective is as relevant as ever. Kac clearlyalludes to divine creation in many of his works, and The Eighth Day,which features the inception of a new world comprised of newly createdbeings interacting in a biosphere, takes the biblical parallel even further.The tone of Kac's work, however, is not one of megalomaniacal usurpationof divine power. The effect of his art is to provoke a re-considerationof the wider implications of human creative acts in the realms of art andscience, and to force an acknowledgment that such acts always come withresponsibilities.