Part of M21...
Team Consciousness: A Temporary Home?

Looking for other ways of creating/linking/measuring synergy

Introduction (headers in in grey this time)

• Artists and designers work increasingly in groups and use writing to support their practices.
• The ‘Team Consciousness’ project (TC) will use text to facilitate a field of shared knowing that is beyond text.
• It will strengthen group-aware collaboration by exploring the purpose and function of authoring, and co-authoring, within, and for practice.
• This research will be conducted by, for and with, academic, and non-academic stakeholders, practitioners, experts, drawn from leading companies and institutions.
• It will develop a digital team-oriented communication system that draws upon knowledge and tools from two existing projects.

1. 1) (AHRC-funded) Benchmarking Synergy within Metadesign envisages cross-disciplinary teams of specialist designers, economists, healthcare experts, etc. ‘metadesigning’ sustainable lifestyles.
2. 2) Writing Purposefully in Art and Design (Writing-PAD, or ‘W-PAD’) was launched with HEFCE funding and is an international network of over 40 Higher Education Art and Design (HEA&D) institutions that champion effective practices of writing within/for/through art and design practice.

Writing-PAD
Where commercial studio practice is outcome-oriented, creative, situated and collaborative, the traditions of scholastic writing are more truth-centred, often characterized by sedentary or solitary reflection (Wood, 2000). Although industry invests heavily in corporate effectiveness, co-authorship is undervalued as a cultural, team building activity (Wood & Nieuwenhuijze, 2006). Moreover, support ICT systems gives to readers is better than that for authors, and only offers rudimentary tools for managing the boundaries between text, and the many multi-modal types of cognition and communication, such as body language, etc.

Aims and Objectives

• To challenge the traditional boundaries between studio practice and text creation.
• To apply many of m21’s previously developed ‘synergy tools’ for writing and co-creative practices across disciplines and fields.
• (http://attainable-utopias.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=MetaDesignToolSelection)
• To increase the functionality and diversity of authoring, and co-authoring tools.
• To launch a new national, and international Centre at Goldsmiths, (‘The Team Consciousness Centre). This will serve both as a hub, and as a brand that denotes the project’s aims, and its objective i.e. an all-embracing synergy of people, technologies, training tools, software and environment.
• To find appropriate ways to monitor, evaluate, archive and benchmark the recording of complex human meetings that include many somatic and performative elements alongside textual annotation.

Research Questions

• How can we enhance responsible studio practices by transcending, and harmonizing with the relevant historical, and technological limitations of alphabetical text?
• How can we incorporate these workshop tools and methods into a ‘text+’ system that facilitates and sustains ‘team consciousness’ within an appropriate organization?
• How can we evaluate a working prototype that can be demonstrated to enhance collaborative problem identification and solving?
• How effectively might the above system contribute to the development of ecologically attuned, mutually sustaining communities?
• How effectively might the above system contribute to the development of these communities?

Research Context

• ‘Creative’ professionals have failed to be effective in creating an ‘environmentally sustainable’ world because we have poor methods for collective reasoning (Wood, 2007). Most acquire their understanding within a ‘two cultures’ education system that reflects both the Crafts Guilds, and the Monastic ‘research’ cultures (Schön, 1985). In 1960 (and 1970) the UK Government’s Coldstream Reports introduced a mandatory writing component onto an otherwise practice-oriented syllabus (Berg, 2007). This created unresolved tensions, despite the potential of writing within studio practice (Lydiat 2003). Others have explored the integration of studio, theory and educational support (Key 2005), the role and nature of assessment (Lockheart 2002) and the centrality of reflective practice (Raein 2003). Some have mooted alternative forms of writing (Edwards 2002; Marks 2003; Francis 2004), asked how writing studies might become better integrated (Roth 2004) and shown better ways for writing to be embedded within study practices (Garratt 2004). Some of our members have how visuals can be used in the teaching of writing (Lockheart & Barnett 2003), or looked at aspects of the writing process (Lofting 2003; Kill 2005) and the uses of IT (Cunliffe-Charlesworth 2004)

Research Methods

• The project’s will build TC tools, evaluate and develop them
• It will ascertain whether the extent to which these tools support Team Consciousness
• To build user-centred hardware systems and bespoke software whose development evolves by continuous testing ‘in-the-field’.
• To operate as an Open Design organization, under a Creative Commons license, with software made available under Open Source conditions.
• To build a digital recording system that tags video streams with ‘live’ text annotation, in parallel with images, and somatic data from consenting participants?
• To build a system that tags video streams with time-coded text deriving from voice-recognition software and other, somatic, input devices.
• To develop hand-held technology that affords situated, user-centred resources and support?
• To develop a digital recording system that tags video streams with ‘live’ text annotation, in parallel with somatic data from consenting participants?
• To develop an on-the-fly speech-to-text tagging of video facility

Outputs and Dissemination

W-PAD has 5 dissemination Centres in the UK and 1 in Scandinavia. It currently offers three dissemination modes:

• The Writing-Pad Journal (The Journal of Writing in Creative Practice)
• http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals.php?issn=17535190
• The Writing-Pad Network Member’s Wiki (temporary site: log-in permissions by request)
• http://attainable-utopias.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=JournalWritingCreativePractice
• The Writing-Pad Keyword Glossary: http://writing-pad.org/glossary
• The Team Consciousness centre at Goldsmiths (subject to its approval) will act as the main dissemination point for the tools of the Team Consciousness project.
• This will address a wide range of experts within its current membership, including: Language support staff, studio practice tutors, experts in dyslexia,
• We will publish our findings via books, articles, and conferences.
• http://attainable-utopias.org/tiki/teamconsciousness
• Relevant aspects of the project will be cited in our Synergy in Metadesign (m21) website, and on our Au website
• Our Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, co-edited by the PI (John Wood) and the named researcher (Julia Lockheart), will act as a further dissemination tool.
• This journal already has a wide readership both nationally and internationally.
• The Writing-PAD network will further serve to disseminate information.
• Writing-PAD conferences and symposia will be used to further the tools of the Team Consciousness project