Soi Manifesto One
Soi Manifesto One
Preamble
This is the first manifesto of creative group Soi Transnational. Its mission is to encourage more creative production by testing methods to produce, present and promote creative projects. We are not concerned with launching creative careers, but preparing people for creative lives. Lives in which they can pursue their passions to the limit of their abilities and to see those abilities pushed further than they imagined possible.
To do this Soi deals with
People who want to create
Principles to guide creative development
Projects which create something and build confidence and capacity within the creator(s).
Soi is content agnostic. It does not tell you what or why to create, but offers you ways to support your creativity.
Principles
The four basic principles of Soi are
01 Treat Method as Medium
Disposable Manifestos
How you do something is a creative process. Your methods themselves are works of art. Many people treat problem solving as a secondary act. They want to avoid problems as much as possible,but innovation comes from overcoming unexpected problems.
When you treat method as medium you are not only applying the method, but you are able to present it. When you are able to do that you are able to consciously reflect on what you are doing, adapt, improve or abandon as needed.
To do this we propose using disposable manifestos short written statements that describe your project, process and/or intention.
02 Iteration
Accelerate Mutation
“Would you like me to give you a formula for… success? Double your rate of failure… make mistakes. Make all you can.” –T.J Watson, the founder of IBM
To learn from your mistakes you have to first make them. If, like many creatives, you are seeking perfection in what you are working on, you may spend too much time while frustrating yourself.
We believe that lots of small projects are the best way to build the confidence and skill to succeed at larger work. No matter what art form you work in, it’s important to find a way to “sketch”. Small projects with a definite finishing date allow you to make mistakes, learn from them and move on.
In Soi there are two basic rules
Always be working on something.
Correct the mistakes of the current project in the next project.
03 Reflection
Automatic Biography
Artists struggle with archiving their work. They may exceed at making it, and those that experience the work might be moved by it, but the work itself, or a record of it, gets lost.
The reason work does not get documented is simple, people don’t know how or when to do it.
For this reason we build documentation into the creative process, though we take it one step further. Not only a record of the work, but a record of the process from conception to production through final reception.
We promote basic methods to help creatives document their work and process and we encourage everyone to imagine each piece of art as three distinct works:
The intention (why it is being made)
The production (how it is being made)
The reception (the final work and how people react to it)
Reflection should not be an afterthought, but an ongoing creative process that inspires more work. Automatic Biography is a playful and productive strategy to build reflection into your process.
04 Collaboration
Stories of disappointment, abuse and theft are common in creative collaborations. The model of compensation within the arts is a preindustrial form of feudalism full of court intrigue, privileged benefactors and a lot of people working for “exposure” or "experience,”–that is to say working for nothing.
Good people carry on the worst practices because they don’t know any alternative. Almost worse than the poor compensation artists receive is that many people never receive credit for the work they do.
Soi is concerned with addressing these issues in ways that are simple, sustainable and that scale.
We offer a model of organizing creative groups, called pods.
We focus on roles not titles - A Role is for the duration of a project - Roles must be negotiated, consensual and recognized through consensous.
- Credit is established before the project begins.
Projects
A project is the process by which a creative work is made. Any project has roughly three basic phases and involves three separate audiences, something can be learned from all these.
The Three Phases and Audiences
While these phases are present in all projects, they are not always in order. Being aware of what they are can help you learn from them.
The Three Phases
Conception: Where you decide to do the project and what the project is.
Production: How you do the project.
Reception: How an audience responds when the project is complete.
The Three Audiences
In general there are three distinct groups that engage uniquely with a creative work. Sometimes the same people are in multiple audiences, but understanding the audience experience within a group gives a lot of useful insight. The three basic audiences are:
The people who thought the project up.
The people involved in completing the project.
The world which engages with he completed project.
Parts of a Project
Conception
Conception is the process by which you decide to make something and clarify what it is. It can be as simple as saying “today I’m going to make a painting” or it can be as complex and ambiguous as” I want to make a visual work that deals with the difficulties in communication between languages."
Conception involves intention, though the intentions can change at any point within a project. Capturing the ideas during the conception phase can help reflection, seeing if you are successful in realizing a specific intention, or seeing how a work evolves into something different.
Production
This is how something gets done. It is the most dynamic phase of a project, where mistakes can happen and be learned from. It’s where intentions are challenged and the work gains a life of its own.
Reception
When the work is considered complete and experienced by those outside its production we call this reception. At this point the work stands on its own and gains a new life within the reactions of those who experience it.
Conclusion
Soi exists for artists that want to create more, that want to have useful records of their creation/process and who want to collaborate in ways that are fair and build confidence/capacity. This document is the first in explaining Soi philosophy. Future documents will go further in providing examples, case studies and completed works.
