Community building through the design of co-creative online workshops: emerging collaborative practices and social dynamics.
The concept of a workshop refers to an arrangement whereby a group of people learn, acquire new knowledge, perform creative problem-solving, or innovate in relation to a domain-specific issue (Ørngreen & Levinsen, 2017). In this round table session we will discuss the rulesets and social dynamics applied in different collaborative workshops within the context of Networked and Programmable Media (Cayley, 2009). We will share our experiences with three series of workshops organized in the past and current year, aiming to create platforms to socialize and build communities in the context of COVID19:
(1) Viral Imagina (imaginaviral.net) is a series of online brief workshops and art performances that have been taking place throughout 2020. The project has emerged as an independent effort to spread art language practices in digital environments for the global Spanish speaking community.
(2) Salutches (https://salutches.viniciusmarquet.com/) is an online platform for social experiences that aims to strengthen the community of students and researchers at LUCA School of Arts. Several workshop formats have been developed in the context of Salutches, among which Trueque (an online exchange of digital objects and services) and Pastiche (eclectic pedagogic experiments in collaborative creation).
(3) Blend&Bleed. An online symposium organized at LUCA School of Arts, addressing the concept of trans-reality: the zone of experience whereby a player moves seamlessly through various physical and virtual realms, brought together in one unified game space (Lindley, 2004). Blend&Bleed aims to initiate new collaborations between the fields of Artistic Research, Performance, Game and Interaction Design.
These workshops have been iteratively developed and tested, in the context of the Ph.D. projects of the first and third author, according to the methodologies proposed by Shön (1983) and Latour (2005), outlining a design cycle that integrates practice with theoretical reflection. The round table discussion will feature both practical lessons and theoretical insights gained in the research process. Each presenter will provide a short description of their experiences as workshop organizers, after which we will initiate an interactive dialogue.
