home - personal/political - professional

Strategies for Inventing New Genres

Acknowledgement: Deena Larsen and Noah Wardrip-Fruin have helped clarify the scope of this obsession of mine, and name it.

Assertion: New forms of art wait to be discovered, out beyond hypertext, computer games, and the other forms we have now (and have created in the last decade). The history of innovation suggests that it will take many of us experimenting fiercely in order for a few teams to create works that exemplify extraordinary new forms, which we can then all recognize, argue about, extend, and in general benefit from.

Project Description: It would be useful to start a discussion of strategies for innovation (from ours and related fields) and share practical ways that we might be able to bring the new art forms on more quickly. This might involve creating spaces where we could exchange brief case studies of inventing new genres and art forms, including strategies and conditions (or atmospheres) that effectively support new ideas.

Discussion questions:

• What can we learn from these case studies, and how can we bring these insights to new/existing institutions/groups?
• What are practical suggestions for developing and supporting new art forms?
• How can we leverage new ideas to create new genres?
• What is the role of theory in suggesting new types of practice?
• Can we systematically invent new artforms/genres?

Facilitator: Julianne Chatelain is a writer and human factors geek who has been working with teams of innovators in hardware and software since 1979. If you'd like to be involved in this project/discussion, let her know.

Last update: May 2003.
Original content copyright 2000 - 2003 by Julianne Chatelain.
Design by Hippogryph Enterprises.