The Conversation - Part 1
Author of this post: Andy Polaine Rick Bennett | About Blog Authors »
The following post is the first part of an ongoing conversation between guest authors Rick Bennett and Andy Polaine, friends and partners in Omnium – a research group of academics, designers, artists, programmers and writers who work collaboratively (and from different countries) to explore the potential the Internet allows for what they term – online collaborative creativity (OCC). We asked Rick and Andy to explore the topic of online collaboration through a collaborative online conversation. Stay tuned over the next few weeks (or months?) as this unique meeting of minds unfolds:
In 1998, on a grey autumn afternoon in London’s Soho, Omnium’s founder, Rick Bennett, came to visit me at Antirom’s studios to tell me about a project he was developing called Omnium - The Virtual Design Studio. Antirom was a new media collective that I co-founded along with several other designers, developers and artists and was based on the collaborative, non-hierarchical structure used by the über-creative collective Tomato, our friends and landlords.
Significantly Rick and I both come from backgrounds in film and television either by training or profession and the idea of working online in a collaborative group towards a unified goal resonated with this experience. As I explained the way we worked and collaborated at Antirom and the importance of a second, digital layer of communication, it became clear that the Virtual Design Studio could move from the theoretical pages of academic papers to something real.
That digital layer of communication was important at Antirom because many of us were often either working from home or travelling for clients, guest workshops, lectures and performances. Sometimes the communication was e-mail, other times via some form of instant messaging and bulletin boards. That layer of communication existed even if we were sitting next to each other in the studio, so that when we were overseas we still felt plugged into what was going on. It was and remains and important social glue.
All of this now sounds quite quaint in the age of social networks and the vast array of communication options now available. There is, however, an important lesson that we learnt very early on. These kinds of collaborative communities are anything but ‘virtual’ and the word was soon dropped from the Omnium projects.
Although now we would trendily call it an online community, that first project formed a very real community, many of whose members traveled to Australia to meet each other in the flesh. For Rick and I it formed the basis of a friendship and professional collaboration that continues even though we are, once again, living half a world away from each other.
Throughout the time we have spent collaborating together we have spent many hours in conversation, mulling over future directions and strategies, discussing online education, collaboration, culture and, of course, design’s role in the world. Some of the most interesting conversations have been the informal ones over a beer (or two) and we’ve often thought it would be great to share these outside the often dry pages of academic papers. Thanks to the kind invite from Notes on Design’s Johanna Lenander and Jacqueline Khiu, we can. What follows over the next few days is a largely un-edited conversation between the two of us. We hope you enjoy it.
ANDY: So, Rick, since we first met ten years ago, the whole idea of collaboration online and online collective action has become pretty commonplace. I remember the first project felt very novel in the way that we were working and the content, the outcome of the brief, etc. felt much more secondary to the process. For me, now, it feels like we have come around the other side - maybe to where we always wanted to be - where we don’t have to think about the technology so much anymore, but can get on with design proper. What do you feel has changed and what have you learned over these years?
Another question is the one about whether people need to know or have worked with each other beforehand or not for a successful outcome? I still feel unsure about this - some projects definitely work well when people know each other and I’m not sure the technology makes much of a difference here. It’s always good to work with people you know. On the other hand, collaborating online really allows you to meet and work with people you’d never have met otherwise. The Creative Waves Visualising Issues in Pharmacy project, for example, was quite successful in that regard.
VIP ’07 was the first fully online international education initiative designed to link students and teachers in Pharmacy and Graphic Design departments from universities and colleges around the world.The project challenged a diverse body of students and educators and professionals to address important global health issues by producing detailed research reports and subsequent visual communication campaigns for implementation in specific local hospitals and health centres in Kenya, Africa.
But maybe it was because it focussed on a specific issue, something that the Omnium Creative Network suffered from not having. What are your thoughts here?
RICK: To answer your first point about online collaboration and any change in our attitude over time in working this way, in many ways I personally still feel strangely ‘new and cautious’ to the whole experience. This may sound very strange to you hearing me say this having run and been involved in so many online projects since 1999. However, I don’t necessarily mean I have had bad experiences, quite the contrary, but that despite being wonderful in many ways working online collaboratively does not come perfectly naturally for me still. In terms of teaching online, I have had some of the best experiences of my teaching career and the surprising results that our formal academic online courses through COFA Online have given us never fail to amaze me. I think what still feels slightly uncomfortable in many instances online IS the technology. In most cases, things like navigation and user comfort still fall short and my personal belief right now is that many online communities are unwieldingly too big. You referred to the OCN, the online community we both formed together to make some contribution to more socially aware causes, and its apparent failure over time. I personally feel it got too big and unmanageable and people lost an identity within it. I know we talked about this many times and since starting the Omnium Outreach Projects in its place I have found far smaller online communities for certain projects to be far more workable and productive. We can talk more about this later hopefully as these are the projects that I am most focussed on right now and probably the most rewarding things I have done in a long time.
Andy, you have laughed at me and mocked me many, many times about my ‘computer iliteracy’ and I have usually used the only retaliation I know in such instances in calling you a ‘nerd’ and a ‘geek’ (or other things not printable) - but in truth I think there may be something in this difference between the two of us (and therefore in the wider community). I did not use computers until the mid 90s (being already in my mid 30s) compared to you who was probably messing with the new technologies in your teens. I have not really thought about this situation quite so much before (until you asked me here) but I do think this is inherent in my caution. I still do feel that I have to rely on too many other people (usually my Omnium staff) to be able to do the things I need to do. We both know only too well the “digital natives and digital immigrants” reference and I feel, as one of the immigrants, this still affects me.
At this point I remind you of the comments made by our good friend and influence John Warwicker (tomato) in the late 90s when he observed we were living in a new and revised world - a world far more connected and plural - and in particular referring to digital technologies as adding a complexity to our lives that should always be seen as additional ways of doing things and not replacements. I think this is vital in understanding the points you made about working with others (whether online or not) and whether or not people should know each other first. Your comments sum it up in fact, that there are many ways of doing things and each have their advantages and disadvantages. In the same way there are many technologies available to use and its a matter of finding ones that best suit the purposes of what you are trying to achieve. Choice is a key ingredient and don’t get me started on the sad situation that still exists in most e-learning circumstances. The Omnium Software® that we now use for all our projects and courses is constantly upgrading to adapt to various needs and has been for ten years now and I still feel that my own computer iliteracy is a great bench mark for the design of this technology - if I can use it, anyone can use it!
An installation from the latest Omnium Outreach Project [re]frame - manila. It specifically aims to assist a local collective of women embroiderers (PML) from the town of Lumban in the province of Laguna in the Philippines.
I tend to agree Andy, that a creative online community needs to have clear objectives and aims and not be too loose or large and cumbersome. We are learning all the time the many facets of forming a good and productive community and the whole issue of online communities for productive purposes is an ongoing work in progress. The two Creative Waves projects we ran were highly successful but as you know they took massive organisation and facilitation.The more recent Omnium Outreach Projects I have been involved with, especially the [re]frame manila project, have involved both online and face to face collaboration and the outcomes are stunning and real.
To conclude this first interaction, I hate typing and I wish the need for this could be eased for online collaboration. We have already started using MP3 files for communicating in our networks and I think the next few years will see verbal and image communication flourish to the point we don’t need to type. But, Andy, its been over a year since we met in person and I do find that those times are when we really get the planning done for new things we wish to do … so in essence I feel that there are now so many ways of working and communicating together now and as Warwicker noted, the technology gives us added options - but at the same times often makes things more complex. Horses for courses I suppose!
To throw a question back at you … I know we have had many talks about many things over time and two of the most interesting I have heard you talk about are “the tyranny of upgrades” regarding software and technology as well as the “future of universities” and there relevance in todays online and technology laden society? Your thoughts?
