David O Reilly

three months old but hey I like it.

The purpose of a baldy chicken's cutting edge.

I'm always genuinely surprised when I hear talented and gifted people bemoan the proliferation of innovation, as if there could somehow be such a thing as too much innovation in any area of the arts ?

Here in Ireland business is being induced to develop an innovation culture, the state has even created its own dodgey financial instrument the 'innovation voucher'.

Technology literally touted as a trouble proof tarpaulin, or tonic has seen us asked to innovate our way out of the recession or depression or whatever the end of the material greed machine is being called this economic weather. Apparently it's part of our personal civic duty to innovate, surely no one would or should reject this national rallying call to innovate ?

Last evening I listened to a very eminent theater practitioner do just that, to the applause of fifty intelligent people - the newly appointed professor espoused it's rejection. I knew better than assume myself befuddled and begrudged among a bunch of learning Luddites. The thing was, the gentleman in question wasn't exactly complaining about innovation itself, he was acutely observing the overuse of the 'innovation vernacular', the dullard use of innovation as element of a revitalized marketing mix within the commodity centric culture in which we myopically lost ourselves in recent years. The vanish oxyaction of clinical 'innovation application' threatening to obliterate the relevance of Beckett's stain on the silence.

The very idea that such a high percentage of productions lay claim to being 'cutting edge' is more a line of lament regarding the state of theatrical imagination and cultural conformity than any rejection of innovation.

I wholeheartedly agree that innovation for innovation's sake is as apt as being armed with a bag of baldy chickens in a pillow fighting contest - while there may well be some conceptually obtuse connection, and as a tool the bag will no doubt be effective to some degree, the whole idea is fundamentally wrong, essentially devoid of any understanding, spirit or connotation of the word 'Play'

By all means do new things, even do old things in new ways, but only when these are required, only when they serve a purpose. Purposelessness simply shouldn't enter into it ? should it ?

Which conveniently brings me to some recent work of the very talented game artist friend of mine Mr Kevin Martin. Kevin has worked on some of the top selling UK console games in recent years, This example is some of his private work and is of itself a case for some innovation to occur at Youtube in respect of improved resolutions and file size accommodations, enjoy and as ever draw your own conclusions as to the purpose of my including it here.

A little bit of complex creativity

I recently finished reading M.Mitchell Waldrop's 'Complexity - the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos' which obviously isn't a book that I'd try to condense into a short and somewhat impulsive blog post like this.

Yet just as, for many years now, Physicists have been fascinated by James Joyce's Ulysses, particularly quantum physicists, other writers, digital writers and creative individuals, like myself, have been drawn towards string theory and complexity theory.

Concepts of emergence and intelligent design now inhabit traditionally humanistic realms, multi-modal and interdisciplinary research fields merge and encourage a curiously productive cross pollination of ideas. Which all sounds terribly waffly I know, tell you what why don't I just show you this video I only recently discovered from Oisin Prendiville and Michael Higgins

History of the internet - nicely techy & visually crisp

Found via twitter & P2Pnet.net I like this because it actually has a nice tech info level.

Melih Bilgil, a German Visual Artist from Mainz, created it using 'Picol icons. (available here)

Pretty cool story of how the net evolved.

Sir Tim Berners Lee fans might have something to say about it though.

Digital Homage or Theft ? Blu's original and innovative work a sign of the times ?

I found the image above on richard pettingers blog via google. It's funny but it might also be a visual metaphor for the advertising journey taken by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe - well all except the bit in the bottom right hand box.

After seeing their advert/insert on my telly, I was more than slightly reminded of an earlier post of mine here before I remembered that I'm not actually a British tv license payer, I got an urge to fire an email or snail mail off to the BBC.

I wanted to offload a diatribe about ownership of ideas, the unattributed regurgitation and repositioning of someone else's work, the blatant theft of craft, all those utterly repugnant additional activities that a genuinely creative individual finds utterly repulsive; weird worming around the potential theft using semi-complex language, justifying by deflection, the usual mechanisms of evasion such as denial by omission - If I don't say it up front, then it might be missed and I might get the kudos for this iinovation.

I'm interested in such things, I did explore that very idea in one of my own digital fiction works called : Bob Casio's Dead Cameraman - a hopefully obvious reference to Boccaccio 's seminal work. (it looks old, it looks badly designed and its meant to for perhaps not immediately obvious reasons.) I even set up a blog back in June of last year where I might further explore those ideas about theft or homage... occasionaly I post to it.

Now the thing is this, I happen to become aware that Chris Reed and Gerel Orgil have both written excellent blogs on this very same subject so let me just direct you towards their posts which explore this question in a perhaps less emotive (& therefore less potentially actionable way).

Mechanical Mindfook

Stolen From Paddy Donnelly, who borrowed it from Youtube:



Summer Glau in the Sarah Connor Chronicles, now this mechanical German Lady at the end, Should I be worried about the evolution of my affinity to female metal.

SHUT THE FUNK UP (S.T.F.U.)

I made this three years ago now....


Shut the F.U.N.K. (Fairly Unneccessary Negative Karma) UP from clevercelt on Vimeo.

Digital Wrting Down Under

Fans of Douglas Adams' BBC series ( which imho merely kidnapped rather than captured a percentage of the humor in the four books in his trilogy. yet developing in that flawed process a pretty slickly comedic distinctive screen style - derived from radio !) and anyone interested in digital writing as a potential career (in which we can fail miserably but make that miserable failure the basis of a phoenix like comeback - well I hope we can, that's my plan anyway. Enjoy

Digital Dinosaurs : Sure but how long could you last listening to the Irish experts ?

I could survive for 60 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Sure but how long could you last listening to the arts council's new media 'experts'.

I've just spent over two years of my life researching just this sort of stuff while studying for my recently awarded MA in Creative Writing and New Media - I remember a very wise man once telling me that if I wanted to know what was really going on in the new media world today then I should ask my kids - (10, 15, 19) I must say the Arts council's definition of 'expert' and that of my kids' appear to somewhat differ: more bog roll than role call of Irish experts - residue of the old celtic dot bubble web 2.0 new media property porn hype crush thing, spectacularly mispromoted and mostly misunderstood by naive pr bandwagoneers, as thee idea that we all need to hear what they are seeking to communicate. wisdom it aint.

- Anyone who has blogged using or about new media obviously has something to say on the matter - in a similar vain to the assertion that almost everyone has a novel in them.. and in most cases it should stay in them. So tell that to me and another 100,000 plus over at http://www.nanowrimo.org/ so that's democracy for you, free will, but will anyone really last the whole day listening to these experts ?


I think I migh have another go with that other dinosaur.