Spinflow Series::Tracing the Spiral of Inspiration

One of the things I love about this interview with Anders Clerwall is his candor about the discomfort he finds in collaboration. I had no idea he felt that way since his first musical response to the mere suggestion that Road Node 101 needed a theme song arrived within twenty-four hours.

It is the immediacy of the impulse and action that particularly interest me.

Anders easily mentions every major emotional point upon which folks typically get hung up in trying to climb into the collaborative process. The good news is that there are exercises to get over these nasty barbs of ego, expectation and control.

As with all the interviewees so far, my only question to Anders Clerwall was, "Tell me about the moment you knew you would act to create something for Road Node 101."

Making media with remote subjects involves a great lot of interviewer flexibility since everyone's got a different setup and level of technical capacity. Because I wanted Anders' fresh, unedited response, we settled how we'd record his side of the conversation before the question was mentioned. Anders chose to videotape his answer without me 'there' except to the extent that we kept an iChat channel open between us. Needless to say, once he said he was about to set about recording, I kept my iChat mouth shut so I shouldn't risk ruining a good take.

Anders also chose the method of transmission of the compressed / unedited interview, and that choice was to upload the footage via FTP to one of his own hosts since his firewall settings had changed and he was unable to connect to SpinXpress without effort. Aw! I hate when that happens.

It makes sense that in the event of even a scant bit of frustration users will default to Plan B, or Plan C, or invent another plan altogether. Most important throughout the collaborative process is to maintain FLOW.

You'll hear behind the interview two versions of the Road Node 101 Theme song; a first draft and the finished version, written by Anders Clerwall and eventually performed with Max and Alex Ward. These musical elements were originally shared with SpinXpress to great effect. When it works, it works.

After our recent collaboration using SpinXpress Joel Carner wrote, "I love it! I love it! The interview is great...and I love SpinXpress, that we can view the viewos and share online will help collaboration efforts everywhere!"

I'm just saying.

Begin the Spin::Collaboration as Vortex::The Economics of Curiosity & Affection

More than the basic idea of collaboration, I'm in particular search of the moment when a creator knows they will, and indeed must be part of a project. The goal is to quantify and qualify and process toward reproduction of the phenomenon.

Part of that process includes the idea of commerce, albeit human commerce.

That said, I'm not sure it's possible to artificially reproduce creative inspiration to act. Instinct tells me that either the lightbulb will turn on or it won't. The impulse to act has as much to do with timing as anything. Some are better at creative group inspiration than others, notably Spinflow's own Michael Verdi, BottomUnion's Eric Nelson, and Susan of KityKity.

 

For this series, I begin by revisiting Road Node 101 and the many folks who collaborated to make the project a joyous success.

Today's offering is an interview with Joel Carner, who is Node 101 Heidelberg, and for the last two decades, an ex-pat American painter / IT guy in Germany.

The October 2005 Road Node 101 was conceived at the same time as I committed to attend VlogEurope! 2005, though I didn't realize until I'd landed in Amsterdam that the Node Trip had actually begun with VlogEurope.

The collaborative process with Joel began with an awareness over time of his enthusiasm for and commitment to vlogging and VlogEurope. Working together moved further toward reality by virtue of a shared aesthetic and the fact that we both wanted to arrive in Holland a week early and found it expeditious to share living space.

Human commerce. Having invested significant time and energy in getting to Amsterdam, proof of concept was established long before we met in person.

Timing. Enthusiasm. Convenience. Affection. Aesthetic.

Clark ov Saturn.

Bre Pettis.

Watch the interview HERE.

Passion @ Vloggercon

Finally got to meet old friend and supporter Markus Sandy in person at Vloggercon. We fit like old comfy shoes and tee-shirts. No surprise there.

Markus introduced me to Dave Toole and company, including J.D. Lassica, whose "Darknet" haunted my dreams throughout Road Node 101 v. 2.005 as I traveled to VlogEurope! and up and down the eastern seaboard of North America in search of vloggers extant and to-be.

One of the first things Toole asked was, "What are you passionate about?" He asked me this not once, not twice, but probably half a dozen times over the course of the three weeks spent in San Francisco. Began to think Dave is serious about expediting and following his and others' passion around.

Was honored to be part of the "Mashups and Remixing for Vloggers" panel at Vloggercon with Dave, and toward that, fashioned a collaborative work on the subjects of passion and videoblogging that was to include as many of the community unable to attend the conference as possible. Wanted folks apart to feel integrated. By all accounts, the plan was successful.

Within a day or two, nearly a dozen folks responded with clips.

Darned near instant gratification.

And lots of surprises.

Have you guessed by now that my answer to Toole's question about passion was this: I'm passionate about collaboration.

So, here I am at SpinFlow on a mission to explore the what, how, where, when, why, and who of the collaborative experience as it relates to making digital media.

My first and only marriage was based upon collaborative principals and only when those principals fell out of balance did we think we were better apart. My ex studied collaboration with one of the best collaborative poets on the planet, Kenneth Koch. And I studied collaboration with the husband.

And today begins the study anew with you.

What I'm most curious about is the moment of inspiration to act, and how our tools affect that action in the digital age.

As with most of my art-to-date, my presence here will also cover the intersection between art & commerce. More about that later.

Hello. My name is Jan and I'm passionate about collaboration.

Why is MySpace addictive?

I asked my 16 year old daughter why she finds the MySpace service so addictive.  She has some interesting answers.

At my company, Outhink, I'm working with both lightnet services like OurMedia and collaborative darknets like SpinXpress lately and so I am fascinated by what young people find appealing about new online communities.

I'll be participating on a Darknets panel with my good friend JD Lasica at SxSW soon, where we will be discussing the world of online collaboration and creativity.

Click the picture to view the video.