Collaborative Process

The nature of a new medium is the absorption of previous media and their contents. At least that is what seems to be one of the tenants of Marshall McLuhan's discoveries in Understanding Media. As startling as that claim might have seemed, how could it be otherwise? It almost seems to be a confirmation of how everything evolves and in the evolving morphs into something new and different. Time is the unfailing catalyst.

Yet add to that observation, an earlier observation of Hegel of the forces that shape history. He described culture or the historical moment as the thesis. A dialectical, opposing force, the antithesis, collides with the thesis, and from the ongoing collision and forced fusion, a synthesis occurs which replaces the older thesis, a new order, if you will.

From the standpoint of the artistic process and creation, both of these ideas seem central to the collaborative process. In some ways, we are always at the point of collaboration, of sharing ideas and materials, and in our mutual struggle and shaping of the new, we bring our work to a new dimension, a new discovery born out of our collaboration with the world.

Internet2 emerges as a process as much as it is a new medium. Its essence is collaboration for it is in the process of discovery of the other, acknowledging the other, incorporating the other, that our ideas emerge newborn and changed, transformed by the collisions of old and new, of a new medium leading us to discovery of new properties. We are unique in our separate cyber space presence and meaning can only emerge as we connect. The connection is a spontaneous eruption of a new, integrated presencing.

For purposes of this Blog, I2 is merely a metaphor for Internet Connectivity, for using the Internet to explore and exchange creative ideas, creating new sensibilities and new works through artistic, creative collaboration. Hopefully, in its ideal state, it will be less dependent on huge consortiums and more responsive to creative individuals who simply seek to work together in a mutual journey of exploration and creation.