ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows that studios play an essential role in bringing into being all manner of aesthetic, affective and reflexive objects. It discusses cultural production of Richard Peterson, Pierre Bourdieu and Howard Becker. Becker's work on art as collective activity and art worlds is perhaps the most relevant and promising for people purposes, as it focuses on the interactive and cooperative practices and networks of people who participate, directly or indirectly, in the production of artworks. The book presents the specific epistemic-ontological problems configuring studio work requires to start exploring alternative conceptual repertoires that take beyond analogies with scientific experimentation and into questions of invention, intimacy and attachment. In all cases, though, the studio designates a more or less contained and bounded space shaped by, and shaping, distributed creation processes.
