diagramming innovation-scapes

8/11/2019 Diagramming Innovation-Scapes

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Diagramming Innovation-scapes

Pia Ednie-Brown

Despite having a somewhat overarching presence throughout our current culturaland economic policy documents, innovation tends to hover vaguely assomething new (to be profitably applied). A primary knot in the currentinnovation-reverberations is in the tie with information technology. Innovation has become virtually synonymous with IT: new economies and new technologies.Together theyre laying the path to the profitably new. Investment is being pouredinto IT laced initiatives, programs, schemes, institutes and centres withinnovation as expectation. As a magnet of interest and energy, the IT-innovationcouplet is characterised as the transformational catalyst of the coming-into-being(new) world.

This fever is a sweating out of a very significant rearrangement of culturalactivity. Or, perhaps more accurately, a recomposition. All layers of cultural actionhave been infused with a shift in rhythm and pulse. All sectors are feeling thepressures of adjustment and the innovation push is, amongst other things,symptomatic of a need for new tools with which to navigate these conditions.

In the October-November issue of RealTime , Terry Cutler, recently appointedChair of the Australia Council, discusses the need for a mapping of the arts. Thismap is needed in order to gather a reference point for moving forward 1; as a toolof navigation. But, he admits, its very hard to get a picture of that landscape. 2This picturing problem is shared by a number of contemporary initiatives formingpart of the innovation-IT hover. A clear picture definition seems to be pervasivelyproblematic, with cloudy cartography rendering policy pathways difficult to forge.The contours of the cultural terrain seem to have become quite blurred, somewhatturgid and Turner-esque; the becoming picturesque of policy, perhaps.

Cutlers recognition of the difficulties in finding or forming pictures isreminiscent of Barry Jones diagram of the Knowledge Nation, one which led hisscheme to be dubbed the Noodle Nation. In its attempt to broaden the concept of the information society, the Knowledge Nation policy proposal presents a wayof looking at those recompositions of cultural activity following IT infusion. It is

1 Dr Terry Cutler, Innovation: Maps and distribution [Interview with Sarah Miller, AlessioCavallaro, Linda Wallace and Keith Gallasch], RealTime 45 (October-November, 2001): 6. Alsoavailable online: http://www.realtimearts.net/ [accessed: 16.10.01]2 Cutler.


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presented as a new paradigm 3 which links together a diverse list of sectors of activity where: The common element is the ability to use knowledge to transformsociety, the economy and the environment. 4 The task of diagramming this schemais tantamount to attempting to represent the constituent relationships of asubstantial breadth and depth of the cultural arena, made more challenging because these relationships are not simply complex, they are of a new paradigm.While the lines linking sectors are presumably intended to represent flows of knowledge, its tangled complexity never adds up to a clearer picture of this newparadigm. Something primary is missing. As a diagram it fits into the modernist,functionalist, bubble diagram genre which foregrounds functional zones and theflows of some primary exchange: movements of, for example, people, mail, moneyor in this case knowledge or information. These diagrams are predicated upon adistinction between functional zones and exchange. They give a picture of therelationships between zones via flows of exchange between them. What theycannot picture for the Knowledge Nation is how this flow of knowledge is beingused to transform society, the economy and the environment. Thetransformational is left out of the picture. This did not escape Jones attention, forfollowing criticism of his spaghetti and meatballs diagram, he suggested that

Perhaps somebody could offer to design it as a moving, dynamic set of computerimages.5 New Paradigms involve new diagrams.The problems experienced by Jones and anticipated by Cutler have some

precedence in UK policy. Certainly their remarks on picturing problems echomapping difficulties in UK studies. As Scott McQuire has indicated in his paper,When Is Art IT?, Culters pronouncements for the Australia Council bears someaffinity with the Blair Governments Creative Industries initiative. Similarly, aline of influence from the UKs emphasis on knowledge economies can be trackedinto Jones Knowledge Nation. The tendencies therein stem from T h eCompetitiveness White Paper: Our Competitive Future - Building the Knowledge DrivenEconomy , published in December 1998, which locates knowledge, skills andcreativity as the UKs three most valuable assets and draws attention to the idea of clusters as the basis of economic development. This occurred in tandem with theestablishment of the Creative Industries Task Force in 1998. At the end of 1999, theGovernment set up a Cluster Policy Steering Group which commissioned a studyto map existing cluster activity. The outcome: Business Clusters in the UK: A FirstAssessment , was published in February 2001 and provides a reference point for theCreative Industries Mapping Document 2001 .6

In this Mapping Document cartographic conundrums are signaled in theMethodology section, where it admits that the complex nature of the creativeindustries makes scientific definition difficult, so there are still difficulties in

3 Barry Jones, Knowledge Nation Taskforce Report, Section 3: Introduction By The TaskforceChair, http://www.alp.org.au/kn/kn_case_020701.html [accessed: 28.10.01]4 Jones.5 Dr Terry Cutler, How the Knowledge Nation diagram evolved, The Sydney Morning Herald ,(September 26, 2001). Available at SMH web diary: http://www.smh.com.au/news/webdiary/2001/07/06/FFXCQMRU6QC.html [accessed:01.11.01]6 Creative Industries Mapping Document 2001 , Available at:

www.culture.gov.uk/creative/mapping.html [accessed 01.11.01]


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producing robust data which separately identify the creative industries. 7 Theproblem of finding robust data is repeatedly expressed throughout thedocument. The desired scientific clarity or robust definition in the measurement of landscape formations is proving difficult to attain. Similarly, in the BusinessClusters document, there is more concern over data. As the Chairman of the ClusterPolicy Steering Group, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, admits in the forward: Thereport is only a snapshot in time, and because of weaknesses in the public sourcesof data it is difficult to provide firm evidence on embryonic clusters. 8 The issuehas been seen as of sufficient concern by the Creative Industries Task Force to setup a Review Group to examine this problem specifically and report withrecommendations on how to provide more timely, robust data on the creativeindustries. 9

The real problem, I would suggest, is the clinging to scientific paradigms of analysis, particularly in mapping areas of practice that are far from limited to ordelineated by such paradigms themselves. The cluster concept, which operates asa basic modelling tool in all these studies, is seen to find both its strengths andweaknesses in its broad and metaphorical nature. 10 While its flexibility partlyexplains its policy-appeal, the idea is somewhat vague and elastic, and clusters

become hard to identify [and] have the discreet charm of obscure objects of desire.11 A quick examination of the methodologies through which clusters areidentified, and the consequently conventional industrial groupings that becomethe operating clusters, suggests that the flexibility of the concept is not being usedto potential. That obscure object of desire, the cluster, has been routed aroundthe potential of its concept.

In name, rhetoric and aspirations, a close affinity with this UK model isparticularly evident in the recent outline for the Creative Industries Cluster Study(CICS) by Richard Alston, Federal Minister for Communications, IT and the Arts,for which Cutler is one of a four member advisory panel. Just like the UK version,one of the key objectives of this study is to produce, as Cutler puts it, anintelligent, comprehensive mapping of the territory in a way that highlights theinterconnectedness of practice activities but also, if you like, the interconnectednessof various elements of the supporting infrastructure. 12 This mapping might benefitfrom developing some lateral approaches that might relieve some of the problemsexperienced in the UK.

In Cutlers comments in the interview in RealTime , he appears alert to thedifficulties ahead. Interestingly enough, his words suggest that he may forego asearch for a good scientific cartographer. Rather, as he says, the challenge thereis to find a really good landscape painter. 13 While this may have been phrased assuch to fit the arts audience it addresses, other comments from Cutler would

7 Creative Industries Mapping Document 2001 , 3.8 Lord Sainsbury of Turville, Chairman of the Governments Cluster Policy Steering Group,Business Clusters in the UK: A First Assessment, Trends Business Research, February 2001.9 Creative Industries Mapping Document 2001 , Available at: www.culture.gov.uk/creative/mapping.html [accessed 01.11.01]10 Business Clusters in the UK:A First Assessment , Volume 3, Technical Annexes, (February 2001): 4.Available at http//www.dti.gov.uk/clusters/ [accessed 1.11.01]11 Business Clusters in the UK:A First Assessment.12 Cutler, Innovation: Maps and Distribution.13 Cutler, Innovation: Maps and Distribution.


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suggest it may be more than a throw away metaphor. In his short Business ReviewWeekly paper, The Art of Innovation, Cutler is quoted as claiming that: Creativeartists will be at the centre of these next revolutions, creating technology-enabledsolutions that, like all good tools, extend our human capabilities and horizons. 14Certainly, in dealing with the challenges ahead in his roles with both the AustraliaCouncil and the CICS, it may make sense to draw upon the knowledge andconcepts developed within the creative industries themselves.

Architectural discourse has recently found a renewed interest in diagrams. In itsrecent attention, diagramming has become not just a practice through which tonavigate or generate, but a practice that is in itself being navigated andregenerated. Diagrams are very significant representational tools within thepractice of architecture. Its diagramming habits are historically associated with thevalorisation of mechanisms of (intellectual/scientific) rigour and, later, witharchitecture as an ideological and/or critical act. Diagrams are a hallmark of thediscipline.

Architecture as a disciplinary practice, can be understood via Foucaultsanalysis of disciplinary societies where diagrams have acted emphatically as toolsof the machinations of discipline. In Gilles Deleuzes paper, Postscript to Societies

of Control, he characterises the shift from disciplinary societies to societies of control. Here, one diagram becomes another. Unlike the zoned, partitioned,disciplinary model of which one possible descriptor is the bubble diagram societies of control suggest quite different forms and compositions. The oldstabilities and rigidities break out into modulations and undulations; the stiffnesswarps and softens. The inspector is now nowhere to be found, being dispersed,multiplied and moving among a continuous range of different orbits. 15 AsDeleuze has suggested, this diagrammatic shift presents new dangers and thechallenge of finding new weapons. 16 Certainly, the contemporary battle cry isinnovate! New diagramming practices are one significantly called forinnovation.

Peter Eisenman is a late modernist architectural guru, one of the New York Five. His recent book, Diagram Diaries , traces out a curve through which thediagram as an instrument of a critical architecture has been forced, more or lessagainst its will, to succumb to something else. Eisenmans book moves sequentiallythrough over thirty years of work, mapping out the transformations that haveoccurred through his investigations which, more than anything else, interrogatethe possibilities for intensified criticality in architecture. This critical activity,mapped out and produced through diagrams, is understood as an ideologicaloperation. Toward the end of this text, he writes, I no longer feel compelled toinsist upon an ideological sub-structure in my own work. If one looks back on thework, historically, thirty years from now, will it be said that this loss of ideologywas a late period, a playing out of an endgame? Or will it be said that thispublication marks a new opening to something else, a freeing of the work from anideological necessity? 17 The fate of this ideological sub-structure lies in the fate of 14 Dr Terry Cutler, The Art of Innovation, Business Review Weekly , 29 June 29, 2001.http://www.brw.com.au/ [accessed, 29.10.01]15 Cutler, The Art of Innovation, 180.16 Gilles Deleuze, Postscript on Control Societies, Negotiations , 1972-1990 , trans. Martin Joughin(New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 178.17 Peter Eisenman, Diagram Diaries (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 207.


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the diagram which has come full circle from the strategies of reading to the tacticsof visceral experience. At the same time, the diagram seems to disappear from the built work it becomes more or less a virtual entity, rather than being madeexplicit in the projects. This is because the diagram becomes more of an engine inthe projects rather than something which transforms itself into a physical reality. 18Eisenmans diagramming practices disappear into the projects and out of sight,such that the diagram is present within but no longer explicit. These later projects bear a definite formal shift from offset grids and bent rectilinearity to sinuouscurvilinear geometries. Like Jones noodles, the diagram as a (critical) thing in itself seems to no longer make sense for a new paradigm in composition. Diagrammaticswould seem to be flailing in the outside of (scientific) discourse while squirmingon the inside of cultural recomposition. While useful diagrams become elusive,they have perhaps only disappeared from the modes of attention that disciplinarityis predicated upon. Architects and policy makers may have to actively engage in areinvention of diagramming.

Policy makers are, after all, architects of a kind. Both practices invent strategiesthat would tend toward outcomes pertaining to a set of values and aspirations.Architects and policy makers must negotiate a complex set of parameters in the

process of invention and each faces similar navigational challenges. If the map hasdisappeared into the landscape, the characteristics of this emergent terrain is fairlydemonstratively indicated by Eisenman: a place in which the critical is no longerprimary, ideological sub-structures are abandoned and there is a move fromstrategies of reading to the tactics of visceral experience. Sounds like physicalimmersion, as if the map is now scaled at 1:1 and the science of cartography isreworked through contours drawn from direct, embodied experience. This calls formodes of representation, analysis and mapping that highlight movements otherthan, for instance, flows of money, goods or services; movements that draw fromnew sources of data. We require temporally based diagrams that can begin toaccount for the transformational and emergent, which appear to be crucialmodalities of the new paradigm. Flix Guattaris final book Chaosmosis wasdedicated to outlining such a paradigm in which he locates a primacy of theaesthetic power of feeling. As he writes:

The aesthetic power of feeling, although equal in principle with the otherpowers of thinking philosophically, knowing scientifically, acting politically,seems on the verge of occupying a privileged position within the collectiveAssemblages of enunciation of our era. 19

There is not the room here to develop this argument in more depth, but I wouldsuggest that Guattaris proposition and related work by those such as BrianMassumi 20 has a great deal to offer to our current cartographic conundrums.Developing newly articulated modes of representation may very well draw upon 18 Eisenman, Diagram Diaries , 208-9.19 Flix Guattari, Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm , trans. Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis(Power Publications, Sydney), 101.20 Of particular relevance here are Massumis forthcoming books, Parables for the Virtual: Movement,Affect, Sensation (Durham and London: Duke University Press, forthcoming) and A Shock to Thought:Expression After Deleuze and Guattari (London and New York: Routledge, forthcoming), both set forrelease in early 2002.


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the temporally based representational capacities offered by digital imaging.However, all the software sophistication in the world speaks in limp tongueswithout transformative concepts to move with and modes of practice (ormethodologies) that keep their potential alive.

This issue of diagramming is not a side issue; modes of representation shapepotential engagement. As Leibniz has written: a soul can read in itself only thatwhich is there represented distinctly; it cannot all at once unroll everything that isenfolded in it, for its complexity is infinite. 21 If companies have become souls, assome would have us believe, they are certainly not yet reaching far enough intotheir infinite depths to unravel the scientifically unfathomable into distinctrepresentation.

No matter what dictates are put in place by economically oriented regimes,cultural/industrial practices (creative or otherwise) will be less likely toprofitably flourish through policy shaped by concepts and strategies out of tunewith the new paradigms they seek to address. Policies that effectively work withthe new economic, cultural paradigm will need to be more than simply supportiveof innovation, it will need to have the courage to be innovative itself. This, I wouldsuggest, might begin with thinking through, testing and transforming concepts

developed by practices that are well versed in the aesthetic power of feeling.

21 Gottfried Leibniz, The Monadology (passage 61), trans. Robert Latta (London: Oxford UniversityPress, 1951), 251-252.

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