“I can create ‘behaviour’” says Golan Levin, one of the exhibitors at Decode: Digital Design Sensations, an exhibition running at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London until April 11. The exhibition,  a joint collaboration between the V&A and onedotzero showcases the latest developments in digital and interactive design, from small screen based graphics to large-scale installations. Levin’s comment was made in an interview (transcript available in Decode’s accompanying programme) in response to the question, “What do digital technologies allow you to do or investigate that other design tools do not?”. For me, it really gets to the heart of the three themes of the exhibition:

Code as a raw material

interactivity

the network (as in digital traces)

As I walked around the exhibition, it was clear that people were fascinated by the exhibits, excited, laughing, talking to people they didn’t know already…..maybe not new behaviours in one sense, but fairly untypical of formal art exhibitions. And certainly, they were forging new connections, maybe developing new links outside their existing sphere of influence.  These kind of interactions and connections across contexts can be be the spark that ignites innovation – maybe a small, incremental innovation, or maybe something big enough to change a market, society or the world – who knows? That’s the beauty of complexity theory, which underpins much of my research, potentially large effects from small changes in initial conditions.  That is why it is so vital to fund the leading edge artists and groups who are able to to challenge us in ways that make us think and indeed behave differently – especially in the Digital Economy, as I know from my own work with Proboscis*.  Of course it is difficult to quantify that kind of contribution in straitened times, but we can and must do so.

In one of those quirks of timing, I came home to the fervour for the newly-launched  iPad on twitter.  My colleague Tim Greenhalgh suggests that the iPad will form a nexus between the liberal arts and the network and will change everything.  Whether that device is ‘the gamechanger’ or not, it’s pretty clear that the power to create content, move it around, enjoy it, in all kinds of ways is now out of the lab and into the hands of the public.  Let’s make sure our creative artists have the space they need to make that happen, as Levin suggests, through creating new behaviours.  And as  a researcher in innovation, I want to focus on value creation as new products, service and indeed behaviours emerge.

Footnote

If that last paragraph was about networking and interactivity, where does code as a raw material come in? Perhaps best illustrated by example.  In all the joie de vivre, beauty and colour of yesterday’s exhibition, I was perhaps most taken by a quieter work by Troika, Digital Zoetrope. I do see a lot of beautiful images as I love space stuff, Hubble, NASA and so on.  I love the different renderings.  I also look at fractals a lot, and i have seen interactive installations before.  A fabulous excess!  Troika is diferent, a monochromatic barrel with vertical, horizontal and diagonal typefaces rotating quickly, which merge into letters and words at speed.  It reminded me of Wender’s black and white masterpiece Wings of Desire, where Angels hear sense from the whispered thoughts of thousands in Berlin.  It made me think of two new friends I have made on twitter in the North of England.  It made me think we have joked of having a dvd film festival weekend of German, or film noir, together at some point.  It made me think I should do it soon.  Now, I may be giving an invited talk for one of them, a lecturer in the Performing Arts in early February.  Who knows what may come of that?

*makers of mischief, and pioneers of pie in the sky