[ISEA2011] Panel: Talan Mem­mott – Cre­ative Com­mu­ni­ties: Nooks, Niches, and Net­works

Panel Statement

Panel: Creativity as a Social Ontology

This pre­sen­ta­tion looks at the for­ma­tion of var­i­ous cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties as they emerge through net­work prac­tices. Dig­i­tal art and elec­tronic lit­er­a­ture com­mu­ni­ties largely de­velop out of mail­ing lists, on­line ex­po­sure to work, and the for­ward­ing of links that oth­ers may find in­ter­est­ing. Over time, net­works of prac­ti­tion­ers begin to emerge based on affin­ity and how cer­tain work or prac­tice fits into the per­sonal on­to­log­i­cal priv­i­leg­ing. As such, com­mu­ni­ties are dis­trib­uted and ap­pear dis­junc­tive from the out­side, yet are in­clu­sive and con­joined by way of net­worked com­put­ers and aes­thetic/po­etic ac­cord.  Based on ob­ser­va­tion over the last decade or so of cre­ative dig­i­tal prac­tice, this pre­sen­ta­tion will look at trends and pat­terns of com­mu­nity de­vel­op­ment in elec­tronic lit­er­a­ture and dig­i­tal art.

  • Talan Mem­mott is As­sis­tant Pro­fes­sor of dig­i­tal media and cul­ture in the Dig­i­tal Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­gram at Blekinge In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy (SW) and an in­ter­na­tion­ally known prac­ti­tioner of elec­tronic lit­er­a­ture and dig­i­tal art with a prac­tice rang­ing from ex­per­i­men­tal video to dig­i­tal per­for­mance ap­pli­ca­tions and lit­er­ary hy­per­me­dia. His work is widely avail­able on the In­ter­net, and has been in­cluded in elec­tronic an­tholo­gies, fea­tured at fes­ti­vals and con­fer­ences, and been the sub­ject of nu­mer­ous crit­i­cal texts.  His cur­rent re­search in­ter­ests in­clude dig­i­tal po­et­ics, prac­tice-based re­search meth­ods, and dig­i­tal media ped­a­gogy in the hu­man­i­ties. Mem­mott holds an MFA in Lit­er­ary Arts/Elec­tronic Lit­er­a­ture from Brown Uni­ver­sity and is cur­rently com­plet­ing a PhD in In­ter­ac­tion De­sign at Malmö Uni­ver­sity, Sweden.