It's lunchtime, and we've started to pull together a working site.
We're building it as lightweight as possible, so that it's quick to
develop, and easy to update and improve.
different projects flowing through the C4CC, and we need to give each
one a web presence. Our current plan is to use a Posterous blog for each project
(because it gives the non-geeks email posting, leaving them to get on
with their projects). We'll then have a project listing on the website
that links to all the different projects. It probably makes sense to
have them in date order, current projects first, and for there to be
an archive flag that marks them as finished and bumps them down the
page. Because we only need a few simple pages, and we don't want to get into
too much custom code, we're using Perch. It's a very lightweight
PHP-based templating system that lets you throw a backend on a static
website and make parts of it editable. Most of the site will build
itself (pretty much), and the projects page will only require a simple
custom HTML template to build the listing. When you're building a
website in a day, it pays to keep it simple and to avoid reinventing
everything. Now we're on our way to the Centre to meet the rest of the team and
find out how close our prototype is to the website they have in their
heads. ;)
A quick intro to @ihatemornings and @quitexander, who are cobbling together the backend of the website in Oxford using Posterous and Perch.
Mick Grierson is Co-Director of the Masters in Fine Art - Computational Studio Arts, BSE program in Creative Computing at Goldsmiths College in London. He's also very interesting indeed. Here's an audioboo from my chat with him this morning about the Centre For Creative Collaboration Website:
Goldsmiths are an ideal early partner in the Centre For Creative Collaboration as they’re already fairly focussed on interdisciplinary work, and as you’ll hear Mick explain as you listen to the Audioboo, they are already working on projects with some of the other colleges within the University of London and with UCL
Mick highlights the need for collaborative work, given the focus on delivering measurable output for the public funding that the department is receiving, which often just doesn’t happen without collaboration.
Also, computing of the kind that Mick and his department do lends itself to modular work - where different teams can share the load and do what they’re great at.
The limitations of funding are what makes a project like the Centre For Creative Collaboration so vital in the current climate - as Mick says, the relationship between tiny-but-deeply-significant ideas and observable outcomes that the funding bodies need to see to be able to measure the value are often found when people have time and space to throw ideas around, to experiment, collaborate and see what’s possible.
The neutrality of the Centre For Creative Collaboration makes it an ideal place for that kind of idea-development to happen. The range of interested parties will allow for cross-disciplinary involvement in a way that may rarely happen if left to the departments within the various colleges to organise.
Have a listen to the whole conversation with Mick for more of his thoughts on this.
Electronic and Digital Music is a great area in which to explore the value of collaboration - the very clear link between technical development and creative output, but also the difference between ‘public facing’ value and vital back-end development that’s harder to see the value in until someone either makes music with it or builds something on top of it that music.
In the audioboo, Mick disagrees with my suggestion that the development of the tech and the making of music are separate skills... He’s right, but proportionally, you have one person inventing something, and then 10s, 100s, 1000s of people using that tech and finding new ways of creating art with it - all of which leads inexorably towards the value of collaboration, or idea sharing, brain storming, mash-ups, shared APIs for computer stuff, hack days... all the kinds of things that can happen SO well in a space like the Centre For Creative Collaboration.
Have a listen to the whole chat:
