June 11, 2003, 10.04pm • No comments (be first!) » • 718 Views

Future Retro-Active

Graham Meikle’s Future Active (which I just picked up) - on media activism and the internet - reads like a regression to my brain’s old stomping ground… nice 90s distinctions between “interactive” (the agora co-opted by remote control consumerism to now imply increase autonomy, not interaction) and “intercreativity” (Berners-Lee; the co-creation of ideas or product using through true interaction).

But more than that. This Brian Eno quote; a new-to-me, sparking outline of the real intercreative media:

The real word is ‘unfinished’. Think of cultural products, or art works, or the people who use them ever, as being unfinished. Permanently unfinished. We come from a cultural heritage that says things have a ‘nature’, and that this nature is fixed and describably. We find more and more in this idea that is unsupportable - the ‘nature’ of something is not by any means singular, and depends on where and when you find it, and what you want it for. The functional identity of things is a product of out interaction with them. And out own identities are products of our interaction with everything else.

Clearly, the postmodern collapse of the single, encompassing truths leads to a new nature of continuous production, renegotiation, reproduction and reassessment - this is the permanent state of being open.