Making is Connecting

Purchased for research On Instagram. Published by polity. On a great subject (creativity as a meaningful social act) so I was sold.

= Biblio Deets =


 * Gauntlett, David 2011. Making is Connecting: The Social Meaning of Creativity from DIY and Knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Polity. Cambridge.

= Content =

Introduction

 * Making is Connecting because (3):
 * 1) "You have to connect things together (materials, ideas, or both) to make something new"
 * 2) "Acts of creativity involve, at some point, a social dimension and connect us with other people"
 * 3) "Through making things and sharing them in the world, we increase our engagement and connection with our social and physical environments"


 * Contrasts web 1.0 and web 2.0 (5-7)
 * "At the heart of web 2.0 is the idea that online sites and services become more powerful the more they embrace this network of potential collaborators" (6)


 * "Sit back and be told culture" -> "learning has become a process directed by a teacher, whose task is to transfer nuggets of knowledge into young people's minds" (8)
 * "A body of knowledge is input into students, who are tested on their grasp of it at a later point" (9)


 * In 2010 -> Americans watched 4.5 hours of TV a day / Brits watched just under 4 hours (10)


 * FETISH -> "In Freud, a fetish is basically about unconsciously overcoming anxiety through attachment to particular objects. In Marx, the fetish describes the way in which we forget that the value of a commodity is a social value, and come to think of it as independent and real" (11)

Definitions of Creativity

 * CSIKSZENTMIHALYI ->"Creativity, at least as I define it in this book, is a process by which a symbolic domain in the culture is changed. New songs, new ideas, new machines are what creativity is all about. ... According to this view, creativity results from the interaction of a system composed of three elements: a culture that contains symbolic rules, a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain, and a field of experts who recognize and validate the innovation" (14)


 * "The point is that creativity is widely dispersed and, more importantly, is one of the most central aspects of being human" (16)


 * "Creativity might be better understood as a process and a feeling. In this way of looking at it, creativity is about breaking new ground, but internally: the sense of going somewhere, doing something that you've not done before." (17)


 * WHAT THE BOOK IS AND ISN'T -> "This is not, though, a set of case studies about particular craftspeople, artisans, bloggers, and YouTube-makers" (17) -> That's my job

Philosophies of Craft

 * Quote from Peter Dormer (art critic) -> "The separation of craft from art and design is one of the phenomena of the late-twentieth century Western culture. The consequences of this split have been quite startling. It has led to the separation of 'having ideas' from 'making objects'. It has also led to the idea that there exists some sort of mental attribute known as 'creativity' that precedes of can be divorced from a knowledge of how to make things." (23)
 * Sennett discussion
 * "Whilst 'fine art' is more dependent on hierarchies and elites, upon which it relies to validate the work, craft is more about creativity and the process of making at a vibrant, grassroots level: proud of its grounded, everyday nature, and not insecurely waiting for an artworld critic, collector, or curator to one day say that it was all worthwhile" (25)
 * John Rushkin discussion
 * William Morris -> "Morris's battle was fought on two fronts: first, to prompt a transformation of society, via grand and revolutionary plans, this necessarily having to happen at a point in the future; but second, to modify and disrupt things, in the here and now, by inserting finely produced material objects, and ethical working practices, into a society accustomed to 'shoddy' products and exploitative factories" (37)
 * Then Shirky

Craft Today

 * History of the Arts and Crafts Movement
 * Gustav Stickley in USA
 * Stickley "included his designs and working plans for furniture, metalwork, and needlework in [his] magazine" ergo "Stickley invented, or rather revived, the concept of 'open source'" (48)
 * Then Whole Earth Catalog -> Then Whole Earth 'Lectronic Linkup (WELL)
 * Then Zines -> "Amy Spencer notes that zines are more like gifts than commercial products, since they are done for love not money, and argues that unlike mainstream media, the mode of their production is inspiring for readers- showing that you don't have to accept the given culture, and can create your own instead" (55) -> [Is A New Day's Work a Zine?]

Flow

 * "'Flow' describes the experience where a person is wholly engaged in a task, to the extent that time passes unnoticed, and they forget about demands external to the task, such as the need to eat or make phone calls. ... Csikszentmihalyi reports that this experience is common to all super-creative people whom he has interviewed - but it is not exclusive to them. The 'flow' experience is presented as being desirable for, and attainable by, anybody as they go about their work" (75)

Web 2.0

 * "Web 2.0 applications which encourage people to make and share things are not very specific tools, as such, but are broad platforms. The world 'platform' is both the technically correct term for this kind of thing, but also the right common-sense word to describe the kind of stage which they offer for creative performance. Platforms of this kind tend not to assert a preference for particular topics of styles of material. Rather, they encourage users to express their creativity in whatever way they choose - within a particular framework, and general type of content" (88).


 * Gauntlett Schema of Web 2.0 ::


 * 1) Framework for Participation
 * 2) Agnostic about Content
 * 3) Fostering Community


 * Gauntlett then looks at "Motivations for Making and Sharing" but these are treated very cursorily. He cannot give definite answers on this because he has no user responses save his own ideas


 * "For some platforms this is reasonably straight-forward, because the amount of effort is low, and the social rewards and connections make it worthwhile. So Facebook, for instance, only requires simple and momentary inputs (adding a status update or a link or a photo), and in return you get to be part of an active social network..." (96)


 * "Preserving Memories" thru blogging (100)


 * "People spend time creating online content because they want to feel active and recognized within a community of interesting people, and because they wish to express or display aspects of the themselves and their interests" -> "the theme of recognition comes through a little more strongly than anticipated: people want to lay down signs of their existence and their ideas, and they want this to be noticed" (101)

Social Capital and Communities

 * BOURDIEU summary -> " He wisely observed that this could not be explained by economics alone, and developed a model based on cultural capital, and social capital, as well as economic capital. Cultural capital refers to the way in which people would use cultural knowledge to undergird their place in the hierarchy (most easily pictured as pretentious displays of middle-class taste). Social capital, meanwhile, refers to the advantage gained 'by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition'" (132)


 * "social capital is not necessarily 'owned' by the individual but instead arises as a resource available to them" (133)


 * Types of Social Capital drawn from Bowling Alone
 * "BRIDGING social capital draws people in, and embraces diversity, making links between different people and different groups."
 * "BONDING social capital, on the other hand, is more exclusive, tying people together who are already similar or have interests in common" (139)

Conclusion

 * Five Key Principles (220 - 226)
 * 1) A new understanding of creativity as process, emotion, and presence
 * 2) The drive to make and share
 * 3) Happiness through creativity and community
 * 4) A middle layer of creativity as social glue
 * 5) Making your mark, and making the world your own

= Notes =


 * Part of At Cambridge