Re: <nettime> hush: a response to crush: a response to crash

["Peter Lunenfeld" <peterl@artcenter.edu>]

>Could you please elaborate?  What is this "professional ethic" and how does it
>eliminate the "cognitive dissonance" an artist might experience working for
>wages in the current economic system?

Dear Doug --

What I said at the conference and reiterated in my recent post is that one
of the things about design pedagogy as opposed to art pedagogy is that
within a design paradigm, the creative individual is encouraged to develop a
voice within the context of commercial relationships. In other words, the
professional ethic of a designer -- which includes everything from a respect
for problem solving to the ability to work through iterations based on
feedback with a client -- does not preclude and actually encourages the
development of a specific creative voice. The motivations that drive this
voice may be substantially different than those of the artist who strives
for complete autonomy, but the satisfactions they engender are no less
vital. Of course, it would be naive and regressive to imply that there is a
one size fits all pedagogy, much less that the "right" methodologies will
transform working for wages into bliss, no matter "new" the economy. But,
and this is why discussions like this one are important, if we take
seriously the idea that we need to formulate new ways of thinking about the
relations between culture and commerce in this era of dormant oppositional
ideologies, then rethinking the de facto assumptions that creative
individuals must always chafe under the constraints of the market (the
"cognitive dissonance" I mentioned) is a topic we'll have to address. 

Peter Lunenfeld

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