Disonancias

What results have been obtained to date from the collaborations that took place within the DISONANCIAS framework?

This perfectly natural question is asked with increasing frequency, and it is not simple to answer unless we first run through the general aims of this platform, its system of functioning and the specific objectives that companies, research centres and artists previously set themselves. Nor must we forget, when evaluating and classifying the results obtained, that, since the project is innovative and, furthermore, specifically deals with innovation, the non-achievements (failures?) form a fundamental part of the achievements (successes?).

DISONANCIAS hopes to stimulate avenues capable of innovating modes of innovation in organisations whilst promoting new territories for the development of the arts. It seeks to propel processes and changes of attitude linked to the development of the values necessary for individuals and organisations to be stirred by a vocation for innovation. That is why a research-based collaboration project is developed with the purpose of arriving at a prototype, which is not necessarily understood to be a tangible element ready to be produced in series form or as an artistic artefact, but rather as a formalisation of a concept, a process, an idea for a product, a method or an organisational model with a greater or lesser degree of operational precision.

So it is important to determine beforehand where the artists and companies are trying to arrive at, what their expectations are and, insofar as dreams have their importance for innovation, to identify what seems feasible within the time frame established (whilst not interfering with the nature of DISONANCIAS, in the sense that it is only the start of an R+D+i project or line of action both for the host body and for the artist).

Only one edition of DISONANCIAS has come to a close (10 collaboration projects) and we are still developing the joint investigations for the second edition (with another 9 projects) and, consequently, it is too soon to obtain definitive conclusions given the insufficient time perspective and the small number of joint research projects that have as yet been developed.

It is worth recalling that the collaborations during the first edition only lasted for 6 months (9 during the second round). This short time period, when an investigation is underway, is only a point of departure, so it is quite usual for the tangible effects – in new processes, products, services, methods, technologies or organisational models- to make their appearance months or years later (we must remember that the average length of an R+D+i project in companies within our milieu is between 3 and 5 years). Moreover, and this is probably the most important thing, the most profound effect produced by DISONANCIAS is associated with changes in the people who have taken part in the programme: in their ways of working, of perceiving their own working and research praxis, of establishing priorities or strategies, of tackling the design or marketing of their products…; and such changes are very personal and hard to assess in the short term.

Another added difficulty in carrying out a first evaluation of results is the confidentiality of some of the projects, which are not made public due to the express wish of participant companies (this actually applies to the DISONANCIAS organisation itself, and is specifically envisaged as an option within the contract framework) if it is anticipated that their dissemination might jeopardise future viability if the marketing stage is eventually reached.

Nonetheless, we will attempt here to establish a basic typology for the results, basing ourselves on the experiences of the first edition, and also on what can already be perceived from the second. This would allow us to gain an overview of the entire extension of the curve of tangibility, ranging from purely intangible results (ideas or changes in attitude) to those that are most classically tangible (final product designed):

- the process as experience: DISONANCIAS promotes the development of new creative processes based on the interaction between different actors and is an example of the internal application of the logics of the experience economy. Thereby, a company’s products and means of production are transformed into implements for the construction of creative experience, while the installations and the entire set of actions and organisational processes form part of the experience. For some of the host bodies, experience of the process (the knowledge acquired, the feelings, emotions, sensations undergone…) more than justifies their participation in DISONANCIAS independently of whether or not other results are achieved. It is a result registered in terms of emotional capital.
At this point let us quote the Swedish collective AESWAD, whose members wrote the following in the DISONANCIAS catalogue: “AESWAD does not pursue the utopian idea of educating those involved, but seeks to open a window of reflection within their routine”.

- the change in people: DISONANCIAS lays stress both on the way individuals develop activity, and on how they perceive it or the process/product/procedure within/with which they are working. This relation with agents different to those encountered in their natural setting is unquestionably what leads people to question the established, their value perceptions, to discover their own unsuspected creative capacities, as well as those of their team, to view the improbable as feasible…
As we said above this part of the results is the most tricky to assess. Our own perceptions of the matter apart, we will cite Erlantz Eloizaga, from EUVE, who writes in an evaluation report on his participation in the previous edition of DISONANCIAS: “It is not enough to evaluate the material result of the project, for it is also necessary to look at the very process of enrichment of the staff involved in the project. For this reason, DISONANCIAS proves to be a very interesting programme for all companies that are after a new perspective on their processes of creation and innovation. (…). The results of this programme are obtained above all at a personal level, and accordingly the benefits that are obtained, or the lack of them, will depend directly on the individuals involved in the project and on the attitude they demonstrate towards it”.
In general this change in the people who participate in the process, which is also the product of a creative experience and of the positivisation of conflict, occurs in parallel with the introduction of new ideas.

- the introduction and development of an idea (including designing a more or less elaborate prototype), and which may be connected with:

* changes in work processes: generally a participatory and collaborative aspect is reinforced, with the actual workers from the company (LANTEGI BATUAK, TECNALIA), or with a group of people who are not directly related with the company (the inhabitants of a city, as is the case of EUVE and its mobile cultural museum in Bilbao);

* the prediction of future scenarios and the anticipation of needs members of the general public have in their daily life, providing responses previously unimagined within the company (FORMICA);

* new values associated with the product, this being considered to be an element endowed with attributes able to constitute an experience for the user (in the case of KAIKU, developing the idea of food as a tool for social communication);

* the representation of ideas or concepts that help the host body to visualise them in order to better work upon them: in TECNALIA’s case, with a model for sustainable urban development; or, where EL CORREO was concerned, with an installation that integrates formats and contents from the different media that make up the Group (press, web, television, radio).

* new applications for technologies or materials developed by the company (LANIK, ALFA ARTE, DORLET, IMAR);

* new products or services that answer a company’s needs, without them being directly connected with technologies or activities that it has been developing to date (SARKIS-LAGUNKETA, POLO GARAIA).

- a catalogue of ideas: in this case, the artist acts as a mediator, and dynamics arise in the company which culminate in a host of proposals, a catalogue of ideas. This occurred with DAISALUX; according to its director, the process that commenced with the Swedish collective AESWAD opened up lines of research for 5 years.

- the communicative impact: DISONANCIAS pursues objectives of innovation, but also stimulates expansion in terms of communication, both inside the organisation (catalysing effect of a team, motivational stimulus through introducing freshness and demonstrating that it is an adventurous organisation…) and outside of it (reinforcement of an innovative stance, association with values linked to the arts…). In the same way, encounters are sparked off in the participant bodies, possibly leading to collaborations in the future.

In the first edition of DISONANCIAS, no “scientific” study was carried out concerning the development of the collaborations. However, for the second edition, we commissioned YP, a team from Barcelona, to perform an analysis. Using logs, which both artists and the company representatives involved in the research fill in, and interviews, they are making an exhaustive assessment of all the processes. This study will be made public in October 2008.

Another way of tracking the processes that are underway is to access the blogs that have been set up by some of the teams, particularly those of TECNALIA + Ania Bas, and of POLO GARAIA + Mariano Maturana and Consol Rodríguez.