About three months ago, I was transformed by a talk Sharon Ann Lee gave on redesigning success. Lee is a cultural trend analyst and author who runs “a think tank/studio on trends, culture and creativity.” Her talk has been buzzing around in my mind since watching it.  Lee recommends: 1) know your numbers 2) live in the power zone 3) create a poetic vision of your life.  Because a poetic vision serves as your North Star, keeping your heart/dream/life-purpose mission at the forefront of your mind and guiding decisions about what projects to take on, I’ve wanted to start drafting mine.  Well, today I did! I filled out the worksheet she emailed me and created my very first draft. Your poetic vision is a project that is in perpetual beta, constantly being tested and redefined, so although I need to work on it, I’m pleased that I now have a good first draft. [Note: I began drafting this post on January 9, 2012, which is the day I drafted my poetic vision.] 

Lee’s talk was also important to me in a long journey I’ve been on to reclaim myself as an artist. Identity, and how you think about yourself is so powerful. Though I liked drawing when I was younger and creating visual art, I didn’t particularly have more of an affinity for it than most children (though I think children are amazingly creative and artistic!).  I wasn’t labeled an “artist” by my family or education institutions nor did I think of myself as one.  The way I thought of myself as a “creative” person ebbed and flowed.  But more and more, bit by bit, I started thinking of myself as belonging in the Creative Camp.  Though I didn’t think of myself as a (capital A) Artist, I knew creativity was important to me and I just felt like I belonged with poets, artists, dancers, and other creative people.  Several birthdays in a row in my late twenties, I modeled my birthday parties after those a 5 year old might have, with coned party hats, and lots and lots of paper, magazines, scissors, crazyons, markers, tape, and glue spread out on a long table. The idea was to create an environment for people to create, engage, and connect with one another through art with no judgements attached - after all it was modeled and branded as a birthday party a 5 year old might have! There was no way to have “bad art.” The point was to have fun and connect and explore art-making.

In July 2010, I went (hesitantly) to a night for artists to work on something deemed artist liberation. The basic idea behind the evening was to work on the idea that art is important, that what we each were striving to do with art was important, and that while oppression against artists was damaging and hurtful — and real —  we could keep going forward with what we believed in.

I knew this group was very open and non-judgemental about who qualified as an artist, so though I decided to self-identify enough to go, I didn’t feel like a “real” Artist, and  wondered if maybe I shouldn’t be there at all.  It was amazing, and I had probably the first major breakthrough in beginning to think of myself as an artist.  Afterwards, I tweeted (lightly edited for clarity):

Inspired by artists and thinkers I met with tonight. Some thoughts I had: 1) Ideas are (one of) my medium. 2) The Internet is a giant playground 3) The open, social web *is* art & creativity, realized (and other stuff). 4) designing play & interaction is art making. 5) I love humanity.

I didn’t have to think of myself as a visual artist to be an artist.  Being an artist was a way of looking at the world, of being in the world, and interacting and influencing the world.  I could look at problems, I could look at situations, I could look at the wonder of the universe with an artist’s mind.  Lee’s talk took this idea that had already been percolating in my mind, and made it more real by describing the way she came to think of herself as an artist.

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Note: This post originally started as a comment on Jonathan Stay’s excellent piece, What should the digital public sphere do? I reference and quote a lot of his ideas. I recommend reading it first — not only because my post will make more sense — but because reading it will make your mind happy.

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The Digital Public Sphere

Thank you, Jonathan.  Your piece gave me a lot to chew on, and I appreciate the framework you laid out for what the digital public sphere should do.  Useful.  

I found myself nodding my head when you described your difficulty finding a name for the ecosystem of “journalism, social media, search engines, libraries, Wikipedia, and parts of academia.”  Recently, I got my MS in Information Management, the sister program to University of Washington’s library science degree.  Information science has a piece of the puzzle, but what I’m after understanding is much, much bigger. Midway through my program, someone on Twitter prompted me to think about the kind of degree I might design for myself.  I tweeted, “[I]t would probably be a cross of sociology, communication, information science, cultual anthropology, and design. Oh! And futurism!” I’d also probably add computer science and journalism to the mix.  All these fields are important, but don’t quite, as you say, “encompass the entirety of the public sphere.”

Information, empathy and collective action are ideas I think a lot about.  Given what I chose to study, I’m obviously fascinated by information. Regarding empathy, see my recent write-up up of Jamais Cascio’s excellent Guardian Activate 2010 talk on the evolution of the Internet and designing empathy-inducing technologies.  The About page on my portfolio site says, “the biggest and most consistent theme in my interests is the way technology is enabling collective action in new forms and on a scale we’ve never seen before.”  You’re speaking my language! However, after reading your piece, something keeps pricking at the corners of my mind.  It’s not a fully articulated idea (yet), but I think something is missing.  Let me try to explain what I think that is.

Art and Creative Expression 

In a word, art. And design, and other manifestations of creative expression. I think we can think of the public sphere more broadly than “a place for the discussion of shared concerns.” It’s also a place of culture creation, including art and beauty.  Now, I know that in your discussion of the digital public sphere you’re “not really talking about the art or entertainment aspects of media.” I get where you’re coming from. I do. I’ve written about deliberative vs collaborative democracy as it related to the Open Government movement. But as a thought exercise, imagine that we lived in a world where every single person was an artist.  That art was a fundamental part of human life, and was fundamental to the way each person interacted with the world and thought about herself.  Perhaps the identity “artist” wouldn’t even exist because it would be so normal and “just the way things were.”  I can imagine a world where art and creative expression would be baked in — inseparable — from the concept of a digital public sphere.

Well, from my view, we all *are* artists.  Never mind that this aspect of our humaness is more obscured in some individuals than it is in others. Or that we live in a society that doesn’t encourage or support our artistic abilities very well (or at all for some of us).  To be creative, to be artistic is to be human.  Now, when consumerism gets attached to “entertainment” things can get yucky. So I agree with you that certain elements and mechanisms of capitalist-based entertainment don’t fit into the idea of a digital public sphere. What I’m going for is the idea of people being actively engaged in creating art and being influenced by (I purposefully didn’t use the word “consuming”)  others’ art.  Art is, after all, one kind of information, one manifestation of or form an idea can take.  When we see an individual or group or culture engaging in creative expression, aren’t we moved? Don’t we feel more connection to and empathy for others? Doesn’t it “help us feel what it is like to be someone else.” Experiencing other people’s art is a way of knowing their story.  The tools we now have in the digital age (or whatever we want to call it) make it incredibly easy to create and share and evolve artistically as a society.  The kind of Internet-influenced creative expression we are now seeing is not some separate, “add-on” piece of our culture.  It’s part of who we are as much as our public policies are. 

As I began thinking about this, I debated the taxonomy of where art or “creativity for it’s own sake” should live. Internal dialogue: “Maybe it lives under Empathy. Wait, no, it should go under Information. What about Collective Action? Art can be part of conflict resolution…. [Etc.]” Right now, I’m thinking that it’s distinct enough to warrant its own bullet point.  I might change my mind about this, but that’s where I am now.

Why Does This Matter?

Why does this matter? Why did I take the time to begin writing a comment on your blog which then turned out to be long enough to become a post of its own? Because I think art is a fundamental part of social change. Of changing hearts and minds. Of reflecting our humanness to one another.  Art inspires! And in addition to good information we need to be inspired — both collectively and personally.  Creative expression is part of the grease that makes information usable, that helps us take one more step toward our fellow human beings. It makes us sob. Giggle. Reflect. Think. Create bonds where none existed. It wakes us up! And we need to be woken up. We need to cry and laugh and play and create and work together to manifest the kind of world we know is possible. Art matters in this process. And the digital public sphere enables this process of collective creative expression.

My experience on Twitter comes to mind when I think about the digital public sphere, and the role of creative expression in it.  Twitter has been a place where I absorb information and new ideas (sometimes mind-blowing ideas), meet and am exposed to brilliant people, converse and debate, and participate in (and read about) collective action of all sorts.  It’s also a place where I’m exposed to art and creative expression.  Where there are people being themselves, there is art.  One of the things I love most about Twitter is that I get to see the humaness of strangers, and sharing and creating art is one way that happens for me. One of my favorite Twitter bios says, “I secretly love you.” Another ends with, “PS. I love you.” I genuinely feel love for humanity when I’m engaging in the public sphere on Twitter.  (Most of the people I follow on Twitter are strangers to me, or started out as strangers).

I’m hoping that my thinking on this subject will become more precise.  Right now, this is more of an impassioned ramble about something I care about and am trying to communicate. (I’m hoping the process of writing will help me formulate and communicate my ideas.) One thought just occurred to me: play is a big interest of mine.  Maybe what I’m also trying to articulate is that the digital public sphere needs to encourage play which is distinct from — but very related to — art in my mind.

To everyone who’s reading this: thanks for hearing me out.  I’d love to hear your thoughts as well.