How can organizations in the fields of information technology, warehouse logistics, and artificial intelligence learn about and use artistic approaches? In this research, funded by the NRW Landesbüro für freie darstellende Künste, we explored in 2019 the question of how art can be effective in places far away from the Arts (in this case information technology, robotics and logistics). And furthermore, what kind of connections can be created here? We looked for experts of these fields and conducted interviews on the concepts of warmth, presence and inspiration. Afterwards, in the studio, we wrote and reflected on the exchange of ideas and created small performative actions.
We were moved by questions about the functioning and effects of effective-efficient systems in these areas, which are very foreign to us. How does effectiveness work? How can effective-efficient systems be described at all? On the other hand, we pursued the questions of whether art is an ineffective system and whether an “artistic effectiveness” can be described? And if so, how? How can art work in systems which deal with digital transformation and logistics? Why, and if so how, should companies in IT and warehouse logistics cooperate with us artists anyway?
The reflections on the interviews and then the evaluation (a filteringprocess) of the acoustic material, resulted in five terms that show the substance and potential of how (our) art making can be brought into conversation and exchange with non-art working sectors of society. Namely: Warmth, Contact, Presence, Pace, Space.
