#technogenic

As uni students, we are always encouraged to be creative and to ‘think outside the square’. However, when reading Andrew Murphie’s editorial this week, I began to think: does this ‘square’ really exists for us anymore?

The expansion of new media technologies has made ‘thinking outside the square’ unavoidable (Murphie, 2006). We are now, more than ever, thinking transversally which, as week five’s readings described, means thinking across multiple ecologies. Institutions and practices are continually reforming as “new lines cross between older disciplines, older fields, older cultural practices” (Murphie, 2006). Therefore, I am starting to think that this ‘square’ of the socially structured industry frame no longer applies.

Andrew Murphie uses the example of the music industry being affected by changing perceptions and processes involved in transversality. The recent ‘Youtube Symphony Orchestra’ performance at Sydney Opera House was a prime example of how the music industry is blurring the lines between different ecologies. The orchestra was the world’s first collaborative online orchestra, being formed primarily by auditions on Youtube. Over 100 musicians from 33 countries came together to participate in a multimedia performance involving large projections of the musicians on the outside and inside of the Opera House (see video).

Another industry that has developed new ways of thinking across different ecologies is the fitness industry. The ‘Cross Fit Games’ involves Cross Fit members from all over the world uploading weekly fitness tasks onto the website in order to qualify for the finals of the international fitness competition. Fitness blogs, recipes, fitness research articles, photos and videos are collaboratively added to the Cross Fit website, forming an online fitness community.

These examples demonstrate ‘technogenic’ events, in which occurrences are made possible by the changing uses of technology (Murphie, 2006). Events like music auditions or fitness competitions are no longer happening in the ‘real’, but are now taking place in the ‘virtual’. I see this as a major shift in thinking in order to facilitate opportunities for greater creative collaboration. Industries are not dying, they are more alive than ever before!

Sources:

Murphie, Andrew (2006) ‘Editorial’, [on transversality], the Fibreculture Journal, 9 <http://nine.fibreculturejournal.org/>