Zen and the art of digital development

In the Zen contemplative tradition there are things called koans – impossible questions which are used as devices by meditators.  You’ve probably heard of a couple of them such as “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” or “if a tree falls in the forest and no-one is there to hear it…yadda etc”.

For the zen practitioner these koans are devices used to push the limits of the conventional mind.  The technique is that we ask the question, listen for an answer, recognise the answer and then ask again.  And each time we ask the answer becomes more nuanced until there are no answers left.

In the less esoteric discipline of arts administration there is also an impossible question – “what is the relationship between arts and digital?”.  However unlike a good zen practitioner rather than taking the first answer we think of and then just carry on with the inquiry, we tend to take that first answer – marketing – and think it’s the answer.

This is at best a lazy and at worst a misguided approach.  Because while marketing may be the first answer and worthy of our attention, the second and third and fourth are too.  Programming, co-creation, new behaviours, social, personalisation, new spaces, play.  And the rest.

The interplay between arts and digital is so rich that it is perhaps hubristic to limit our view to that which we are already so familiar and not look with fresh eyes and fresh minds.

Therefore perhaps we should genuinely take this question of arts & digital as a koan – and keep asking it again and again as an open line of inquiry until there are no answers left.

Then perhaps might we rightly call ourselves arts managers in a digital age.  Armed with a little less certainty and a bit more optimism in our not-knowing.