[iDC] Leave Any Noise at the Signal: Participation Art Online
Amber Frid-Jimenez
amber at media.mit.edu
Sat Sep 6 17:50:27 UTC 2008
I met Trebor Scholz in the Spring when he came to the Visual Arts
Program (VAP) at MIT to give a talk entitled "What the MySpace
generation should know about working for free." I invited Trebor to
give the talk as a part of Zones of Emergency (http://zonesofemergency.net
), a lecture series that I co-curated with Ute Meta Bauer, Director of
the VAP, where I am an instructor.
Prior to teaching in the Visual Arts Program I was a student of John
Maeda in the Physical Language Workshop at the MIT Media Laboratory.
Trebor suggested that I post my Masters thesis, entitled "Leave Any
Noise at the Signal: Participation Art Online." The thesis documents
experimental projects in the area of participatory media and social
engagement. An abstract and complete text (plain text) follow below. A
PDF with illustrations and diagrams of the projects can be downloaded
at http://amberfj.com/participation.
I hope the ideas below contribute to the conversation at the iDC.
Best Regards,
Amber
Amber Frid-Jimenez
Lecturer
MIT Visual Arts Program
Adjunct Professor
Rhode Island School of Design
(617) 486-9840
http://www.amberfj.com
http://visualarts.mit.edu/people/faculty/faculty_frid.html
http://zonesofemergency.net
http://urbanutopias.mit.edu
------------------------------------------
Leave Any Noise at the Signal
Participation Art Online
by Amber Frid-Jimenez
In collaboration with Joe Dahmen
Advisor: John Maeda
Readers: Ute Meta Bauer, Walter Bender
Submitted to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, School of
Architecture and Planning, in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Master of Science in Media Arts and Sciences at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. June 2007.
Abstract
Online participatory media holds the promise of activating otherwise
passive audiences by providing spaces that encourage creative
collaboration among diverse participants. The thesis traces the
history of participation in artistic movements and early networked
communication to contextualize a series of projects at the
intersection of performance and participation online. Projects include
WikiPhone, in which multiple participants collaborate on soundtracks
in real-time, modifying existing online videos; OpenBrand, a system
that allows participants to rewrite advertisements; Emma On
Relationships, a video blog inviting participants to call in for love
advice; and several other projects, exploring aspects of creativity
and collaboration. Commonalities within these systems are examined in
order to define design principles governing the creation of
participatory media, and to explore the potential of these systems to
effect social and political change.
Contents
* Abstract
* Chapter One: Introduction
o Motivation
o Contributions
o Structure
* Chapter Two: Background
o Definitions
+ Participation
+ Performance
+ Critical Collaboration
o History of Participation in Computation and Art
+ Early Networked Communication
+ Participation in Art: 1960 to 1975
+ Performance Art
+ Appropriation
o Contemporary Participatory Culture
* Chapter Three: Experiments
o Installations
+ Misty Dawn
+ Rain
o Online Participatory Art
+ OpenBrand
+ OPENSTUDIO
+ Mini and the Story of Tiny
o Online Performance
+ PLWire Telephone Tag
+ Emma On Relationships
+ Burak Hotline
+ WikiPhone
* Chapter Four: Analysis
o Playful Systems
o Design Axes of Online Participation
+ Introversed v. Extroverted
+ Goal Oriented v. Aimless
+ Event-based v. Sustained
* Conclusion
* Bibliography
* Acknowledgements
Chapter One: Introduction
In the past decade, online social communities and peer-to-peer
distribution models have changed the landscape of mass media. As
Russell, Ito, Richmond, and Tuters explain, in their book Networked
Public Culture:
Amateur and remixed music distributed over the Internet, fans
producing derivative works of fiction and art, marketers appropriating
the idioms of viral amateur culture, and bloggers jawing about the
latest news are all examples of, in the words of Hagel and Brown, ‘the
edge becoming the core,’ where amateur content is threatening the core
of commercial culture. (1)
The emergence of new methods for the digital exchange of media,
coupled with the growth in popularity of online social platforms,
represent a redistribution of power across society and geography. The
systems and tools in Participation Art Online question how this new
redistribution might affect creative collaboration online, and what
new forms of participation the changing landscape might make possible.
The projects described are variations on the theme of online
participatory media, defined as sites where participants contribute
creative content. The projects can be divided into two groups: stand-
alone networked applications that provide spaces for creative
collaboration, and a number of smaller experiments that test specific
aspects of the former. Networked applications include WikiPhone, in
which multiple participants collaborate on real-time overdubbing of
soundtracks from existing online videos, OpenBrand, a system that
allows participants to rewrite advertisements, and Emma On
Relationships, a video blog, which participants call for love advice.
In general, the smaller experiments focus on encouraging
participation, one of the main conditions governing participatory
systems.
Collectively, the projects investigate the intersection of
participatory culture and performance. This new online terRain, which
I call performative participation, holds dual promises:
1. Activation To motivate participants to take an active role in
the production of creative content
2. Collective elaboration of meaning To incite critical dialogue
about existing social and political arrangements (Bishop 12).
The broad goal of the projects is to open spaces of creativity through
which members can critique and rewrite culture as a collaborative
affair. Rethinking the present relationship of content creator to
cultural consumer transforms otherwise passive consumers into active
participants in the creation of culture, both individually and
collectively.
Online participatory systems are unlike other forms of interaction on
the web and are governed by three major axes.
1. Introverted v. Extroverted Introverted systems that become
microcosms of the outside world, in contrast to extroverted systems,
which draw material from elsewhere on the web.
2. Goal-oriented v. Aimless Systems that aim to achieve a specific
goal, in contrast to aimless systems whose primary objective is to
encourage the maximum amount of expression from the greatest number of
people.
3. Event-based v. Sustained Event-based systems that take place in
synchronous online encounters, in contrast to sustained systems that
unfold over longer periods of asynchronous interactions.
These axes represent extreme cases; in practice individual projects
fall somewhere between them.
Long before the technological advances that made participatory sites
possible online, artists sought to harness participation for social
and political ends. The thesis turns to the participatory art movement
in the 1950s and 1960s to ask how their idealistic strategies might be
updated to effect social and political change through online
participatory culture.
Motivation
The benefits of the shift toward participatory culture are partly due
to the democratic nature of participation, which depends on polyglot
contributions from many sources. The passive models of media
consumption of the past protected the authorship of media companies
who wanted people, “to look at but not touch, buy but not use, media
content” (Jenkins 138). As Lawrence Lessig argues, the new forms of
media creation challenge the sanctity of content, bringing with them
legal questions about the right to use copyrighted material (Lessig
18). The rise of peer-to-peer distribution and the growing popularity
of online social platforms for sharing information has mobilized those
people who would normally be passive consumers (Russell et al. 1).
Moreover, the exchange of ideas and creativity between many
participants sharing content amounts to valuable creative production.
Performance is one significant component of the rise of participatory
media. Participants performing in front of their peers on sites such
as YouTube often produce videos of little quality from the point of
view of a film critic, but it is undeniable that the grassroots,
creative impulse represents a powerful new force in media production.
In the words of online performance artist and comedian Ze Frank:
A lot of people are focusing on the content that’s being produced
right now. And I think it’s the wrong thing to look at. It’s actually
the pursuit and the perception change [that we should] focus on and
the thing to celebrate. (St. John 1)
As Frank points out, despite the wildly varying quality of the content
on participatory sites, these sites manifest a perceptual shift from
the idea of creative content as material to be consumed (e.g. in the
form of television shows or Hollywood movies) to an opportunity to
engage in amateur creation in front of an online audience.
These new forms of collaborative participation are capable of bringing
about social and political change. In political terms, the perceptual
shift toward viewing cultural content as something to be actively
created rather than passively consumed suggests an engaged public
actively participating in the determination of its collective future.
Politicians, more than most other members of the population,
understand the importance of direct, personal communication in
establishing a connection to constituents; all political speeches are,
in essence, public performances. Performance media on the web that
take advantage of peer-to-peer distribution and remix have great
potential as a political tool. Wallace, paraphrasing Jenkins, writes:
Politicians should not ignore the fun, frivolous side of the net
because the web enthusiasms of the young: games, online video,
machinima and mash-ups are the new online-tools that sooner or later
will be used for political purposes ... [Henry Jenkins says] ‘No
sooner is a tool put out than it’s taken up by citizens and turned to
political uses’” (Wallace 1).
YouChoose ‘08, in which politicians solicit video responses from
viewers on YouTube to influence voters, suggests that politicians are
well aware of the power of performance on these new participatory
sites. The projects described in the thesis aim to create critical
dialogue among participants around current issues, not for the purpose
of winning votes, but to arrive collectively at shared values.
Social theorist Jürgen Habermas describes the potential of
conversation through which a thoughtful public is enlightened:
The modern public sphere comprises several arenas in which, through
printed materials dealing with matters of culture, information, and
entertainment, a conflict of opinions is fought out more or less
discursively. (Habermas 430)
For Habermas, members reform their community through the free exchange
of beliefs and intentions without the restriction of dominance. By
providing a space for conversation, recent online participatory
communities hold the promise of forming groups who collaborate to
create political and social change.
The recent upsurge of online participatory communities represent new
territories within the modern public sphere. However, technical
innovations alone are not sufficient to change social and political
structures unless they are accompanied by commonly determined
objectives. Identifying common goals presents a major challenge to
participatory culture, due to the many discordant voices speaking at
once. As we will see in the Analysis section, a flat organizational
structure offering an equal voice to all participants accounts for the
appeal of these sites. The difficulty of organizing content created by
a multitude of otherwise disconnected contributors is comparable to
the arduous challenge of building consensus in a direct democracy.
Many contemporary participatory sites sidestep the difficult question
of consensus by eschewing any sort of objective all together, focusing
instead on generating high levels of activity (‘hits’), seeking
popularity for its own sake. While the projects in this thesis also
attempt to generate traffic as a necessary precondition of
participatory media, the larger objective is to ask how this traffic
might be mobilized to accomplish social and political reform.
Contributions
The contributions Participation Art Online fit into two categories –
artistic and technical. The artistic contributions of this project are
as follows:
* provide infrastructures for networked creative production, in
which artistic methods and performance techniques can be shared in
real-time and asynchronous collaborative environments
* inspire critical dialogue between independent content creators,
consumers, and companies
The technical innovations aim to:
* create collaborative online spaces for simultaneous performance
* enable participants to hear and respond to other participants in
real-time
* develop a networked application that allows participants to
modify streaming, video, audio and text from anywhere on the web
The projects described are intended to facilitate a shift that is
already taking place online. By designing and deploying software and
network architecture that instigates online participation, we will
begin to realize the social potential of collaboration in online
participatory media.
Thesis Structure
Participation Art Online is divided into five parts: the introduction,
background, experiments, analysis, and conclusion. The introduction
provides the overall motivation, the goals of the investigation, and
outlines the major contributions of the projects presented. The
background section defines key terms, outlines a brief history of
participation as it occurs in early networked communication, as well
as participation within the performance art movements of the 1950s and
60s, and gives an appraisal of contemporary participatory culture. The
experiments section provides detailed descriptions of nine projects
divided into three categories: installations, online participation
systems and online performance. The design and implementation of each
system is discussed, along with key concepts discovered through the
deployment of the systems online. In the Analysis section, the thesis
locates common themes linking the diverse projects, as well as defines
a set of design principles governing online participation. The
conclusion reviews the motivation behind the investigation in brief,
and touches on key issues raised by the projects, making a statement
regarding the future of online participatory media.
Chapter Two: Background
During the summer of 2006, a New York Times article about the online
persona Ze Frank described a scene typical of Frank’s Fabuloso
Fridays, in which he invited viewers of his daily video log to script
a weekly performance.
Mr. Frank thought that farming out his script would provide some
answers. Which explains why at 11 a.m. on Friday, June 9, he was
sitting before a video camera with freshly dyed red hair, wearing a
fake mustache, puffing a fake pipe and stroking a stuffed cat, sitting
in an armchair next to a globe, a rubber duck, two pieces of white
bread and a framed portrait of Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court
justice – an absurd array of props mandated by the script. ‘The meta
joke here is, see how hard you can shake the marionette,’ Mr. Frank
said between takes. ‘There’s a violence to it.’ (Wallace 2)
Like Frank’s work, which is based on the interactions between his
online persona and the contributions of visitors to his website, the
projects described in Participation Art Online are participatory in
nature. In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson identifies the potential of
the Internet to create niche markets for cultural products by tapping
audiences that were previously unreachable (53). Similarly,
participatory sites enable people that might not otherwise be aware of
each other to coalesce around shared interests or problems. Moreover,
such sites allow them to discuss these issues with others in a way
that can feel intimate and private despite being a public forum.
Definitions
The Background chapter will look at the intersection of three terms:
participation, performance, and critical collaboration in art,
computation, and online social media to provide a brief historical
context of the projects.
Participation
This thesis defines participation as the activation of consumers in
the production of mainstream culture. I define consumer broadly, as a
consumer of cultural content. In the past hundred years, large
companies and conglomerates have dominated the production of mass
media. Historically, consumers have been given little power over the
production of massively distributed content. For example, television
is traditionally produced by large studios and watched by a complacent
public with little influence over its content. In contrast, video
sharing sites, such as YouTube and Revver, invite users to post their
own videos. I refer to this shift, in which consumers change from
complacent observers to take an active role in the determination of
content, as the activation of the consumer. This activation extends
beyond video production to include other forms of cultural production,
such as music, software, and journalism. The term used by industry
professionals to describe the material produced by activated consumers
is user generated content (UGC). I take issue with this term for
several reasons. ‘User’ implies a power dynamic between the user and
whoever is supplying the product, e.g. the relationship of drug user
to pusher. Furthermore, the term ‘generated’ reduces creativity to a
mechanistic ends-based practice that belittles the value of the
creative process as well as the content itself. Alternatively,
Professor Henry Jenkins refers to forces creating these new forms of
content as convergence culture. Specifically, convergence culture
refers to the integration of online participatory media with new
distribution models. Because this thesis focuses on participatory
media rather than distribution models, I will use the term
participatory culture to describe content created by an active public.
Performance
Performance is defined here as the real-time or recorded actions of an
individual (the performer) intended to be shown to another group (the
audience). Actions refer to utterances, speech acts and gestures that
use the body as the primary means of expression, as opposed to other
forms of creativity such as writing and drawing. Often the lines
between performers and audience are blurred, especially in
participatory art practices discussed in this thesis.
Critical Collaboration
Critical collaboration is a term that describes the exchange of ideas
that comes about through the interaction of people through the
creation of the work of art. Whereas interactive art consists of a
relationship between a human and a machine in an isolated encounter,
participatory art functions at the level of social experience,
bringing individuals into dialogue with each other through the
creation of the work itself, in its most successful manifestations.
The work of art in participatory art is this relationship between
participants. This kind of art opens a space for critical
collaboration, in which the public mediates political and cultural
disputes through the creation of the work of art.
Historical Context of Participation
Prior to its recent expression in online mass media, participation
characterized movements in the disciplines of art and computation.
During the late 1950s, the culture of participation led artists to
consciously redefine the relationship of performer to audience. In
computation, participatory system architecture was used to bring about
the possibility of large-scale collaboration. In both cases, these
shifts produced social groups with common interests that had a
powerful effect on the larger community of which they were a part. It
is instructive to trace the history of participation as it appears in
early manifestations in electronic media and in artistic movements in
order to understand its present day expressions online.
Two overlapping timelines describe the history of participation in art
and media:
1. Early expressions of networked communication
2. Artistic movements focused on participation and performance
After discussing the historical context of participation, we
will turn to contemporary examples in games and online performance to
provide the context for the experiments in the next chapter.
Early Networked Communication
One of the earliest examples of participatory systems online was the
bulletin board system, or BBS, which consisted of a terminal program
that connected people through a telephone line and provided practical
functions like downloading software, reading news and exchanging
messages. In addition to these practical uses, people used BBSs for
explicitly creative projects, such as writing extended stories by
posting one line at a time on a thread on a bulletin board devoted to
that purpose. These stories often developed over several months, and
call to mind the earlier projects of the Surrealists, who would gather
in physical space to create collaborative drawings that they called
“exquisite corpse” (Phillbrick 10). The members of BBS would also
gather at irregular intervals at physical spaces. These gatherings
were the early expression of an electronic network facilitating the
alignment of social groups around shared interests.
Artists used BBS networks to distribute ANSI art during the 80s and
90s, which was one of the most exciting uses of the network. Like the
better-known ASCII art, which creates pictures from 128 letters,
numbers and symbols, ANSI art was constructed using a set of 256
characters, known more commonly as extended ASCII (American Standard
Code for Information Interchange). Unlike ASCII art, which used
characters themselves to create images, ANSI artists used MS-DOS to
assign sixteen foreground and eight background colors to each
character in extended ASCII. These colors dithered the foreground and
the background, creating the illusion of depth. Looking at the
pixelated images now with the profusion of high resolution graphics,
it is hard to realize the impact that they had on their creators and
their fans.
The ANSI artscene became widespread as result of distribution on the
BBS networks. ANSI artists formed groups, whose names and aesthetics
were similar to graffiti crews operating in physical space. The first
of these was called Aces of ANSI Art or (AAA), which was soon followed
by others with street-ready names such as ACiD (ANSI Creators in
Demand) and iCE (Insane Creators Enterprises). The groups released
their drawings as artpacks (or icepacks in the case of iCE) on a
monthly basis, sometimes including over one hundred ANSI drawings
along with news and member lists. The pieces were only digital, which
created almost unbearable anticipation as the monthly installments of
a hundred or more drawings painstakingly scrolled across the screen
line by line. ANSI artpacks fostered a different kind of exchange than
physical works of art; group members appropriated each other’s code,
creating new collaborative drawings based on originals. Often this was
done amicably, but sometimes images were appropriated by other groups,
which caused long term and deep-seated feuds among different groups,
reflecting similar disputes often found among rival graffiti crews of
the same era.
An early example of ANSI art by Shaggy [of iCE, Insane Creators
Enterprises]. ANSI art was distributed over BBS networks in artpacks
of over a hundred hand-coded drawings. The members of the ANSI
artscene dowloaded the artpacks in monthy installments. Each drawing
could take several minutes to download scrolling down the screen line
by line.
The formation of creative subcultures within BBS networks testifies to
the potential of early networks to aid in the formation of new
communities around common interests. As an anonymous AAA artist
stated, “competition creates activity, activity creates a
scene” (Scott 2006). This statement echoes Bishop’s claim that
collective art projects create a social bond through “collective
elaboration of meaning” (Bishop 12). Although their subject matter was
not overtly political in nature, these content producers found ways
through limited computational networks to promote their ideas and
artistic beliefs. It is difficult to say if this little-known art
movement had any effect on mainstream culture. In the long run, their
aesthetic of low-resolution color graphics was overwhelmed by the
trend toward high definition graphics supported by electronics and
media industries. Nevertheless, their attempt to collect bodies of
work and distribute them virally through an early electronic network
foreshadows the recent popularity of online repositories and
distribution methods of creative content.
A collaborative ANSI art piece by Lord Soth, Deeply Disturbed, and
Shaggy of iCE. Often, ANSI artists borrowed each others code to create
collaborative works. Like a scroll, this drawing was viewed in small
sections, unfurling across the screen from top to bottom.
Usenet (USEr NETwork) is another early expression of an online
participatory social network. The system, which was invented by Tom
Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979, is still in use today in slightly
different forms, such as Google groups. By circumventing these
traditional channels of distribution, Usenet can be thought of as an
unrestricted forum for debate and informational exchange where many
sides of an issue come into view (Lovink 14). Usenet is a global,
distributed Internet discussion board where users post articles on a
variety of subjects. The articles are organized into news groups that
servers choose whether to publish. Usenet, like BBSs, are considered
one of the first online systems for collaboration and interaction. One
can make the argument that Usenet is an early expression of a more
democratic mode of media distribution when compared to traditional
distribution systems, which are often controlled by large corporate
entities beholden to powerful interests.
De Digitale Stad (DDS) (1994-2001) was another early attempt to
establish a social network on the World Wide Web. First presented at
Ars Electronica in 1995, the site, whose name was translated as The
Digital City was one of the first sites utilizing the web to create an
online virtual community. DDS was created in HyperCard and written for
Mosiac, the first graphical web browser. DDS was one of five
communities at Ars that year, which invited members to navigate from
place to place using the metaphor of the city. Based on the local
activities and commerce of Amsterdam, the DDS community of 15,000
members chatted in virtual cafés, met in town squares, built homes,
and buried the dead in a special cemetery. Strangely, the Digitale
Huiskamer or Digital Living Room project, a web page in which members
gathered to watch television together (Lovink 21), was one of the most
popular destination in DDS. DDS is an early example of a networked
community utilizing a graphical interface to explore architecture and
programmatic uses of virtual space. The designers of DDS hoped to
foster conversation among members of the community, with the outcome
of increased political expression.
Using the metaphor of a physical city, DDS was one of the first
graphical expressions of an online community. The screenshots above
show a few places where community members could gather – a post
office, a police station and a café. DDS garnered 15,000 members
during its hayday in the late 90s.
Finally, the free and open source movements are a paragon of community
feedback negotiating issues of ownership, authorship and version
control on a grand scale. These movements are mentioned here as an
example of a long-standing, successful example of participation to
build complex technologies cooperatively. The Linux kernel, GCC
compiler and the Apache web server all owe their existence to the
efforts of thousands of programmers and authors who work within the
open source community. These community arrangements produce software
and archives of astonishing complexity and scope.
These early trans-locative communication systems were elegant and
minimal (low-bandwidth) expressions of the potential of participation
and networked creativity. In addition to meeting a practical need to
exchange information, they were used for large-scale creative
projects. These include non-technical, creative endeavors, such as BBS
stories and the ANSI artscene, incorporating multiple people as well
as complex technical projects such as the GNU operating system, a
complete system built through open source collaboration. These early
networks and the uses that they inspired are the roots of contemporary
social software.
Participation and Performance Art
Twenty years before the ANSI art movement and collaborative BBS
stories and forty years before the current explosion of participatory
media online, the participatory and performance art movement of the
1960s investigated the potential of collaborative creation. The
idealistic nature of many of these projects, which sought to effect
social and political change, offers a unique perspective on the
potential of online participatory media.
Participation in Art: 1960 to 1975
In her book Participation, Elizabeth Bishop identifies participatory
art as having the following three motivations: activation, in which an
active subject is empowered by the experience of participation,
authorship, in which collaborative creativity is understood to emerge
from a non-hierarchical social model, and community, which “the art is
the restoration of the social bond through a collective elaboration of
meaning” (12). These categories are no less true of online
participatory media.
The work of many artists associated with participatory art movement is
idealistic, attempting to bridge a perceived divide between art and
life, and seeking to initiate critical dialogue among participants
about dominant social and political attitudes. Participatory art is
characterized by a feedback loop between system and participants,
which results in dialogue between participants. In contrast to other
forms of art making, participatory art pieces are not fixed, and
evolve according to the contributions of the participants.
Traditionally, the creation of art is wholly separated from its
consumption; the public views completed objects in a museum or gallery
setting. Unlike these traditional modes of the creation and
consumption of art, participatory art blurs the line between the
artist and the participants, whose actions create the piece. These new
modes of production and consumption change conventional notions of
authorship as well as ownership.
The desire to make active participants out of passive consumers of
culture is one of the hallmarks of the Situationists, an artistic
movement started by Guy Debord and others in Paris in 1957 (Ford 9).
As stated in one of their founding manifestos, Toward A Situationist
International, the Situationists sought to “awaken the audience from
an attitude of consumption to the construction of situations” by
disrupting everyday existence (Bishop 97). One of the Situationist’s
preferred techniques for bringing about this sort of activation was
détournement. Translated as somewhere between diversion, rerouting,
corruption and hijacking (Ford 36), détournement is the process of re-
presenting everyday ephemera, such as advertisements and other
cultural products, in new artistic contexts. These contexts can often
subvert the original meaning of the media in favor of a new reading
that calls the original message into question in “an extreme form of
the redistribution of cultural value” (36). Debord outlines the
objective of détournement in his manual For a Revolutionary Judgement
in Art:
Revolution is not showing life to people, but making them live. A
revolutionary organization must always remember that its objective is
not getting its adherents to listen to convincing talks by expert
leaders, but getting them to speak for themselves, in order to
achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of
participation.” (11)
Raoul Vaneigem and René Viénet were two artists active in the
Situationist International during the 1960s and 1970s whose pieces
made strategic use of détournement. René Viénet, in La Dialectique
Peut-Elle Casser Des Briques? (1973) superimposes subtitles and voice
on a popular kung-fu film, re-purposing it as a critique of French
politics. In La Survie Et Sa Fausse Contestation, Raoul Vaneigem
rewrites a comic so that it describes a dire situation in which
survival is reduced to economic imperatives (Ford 111). These pieces
demonstrate the broad Situationist desire to jolt people out of
complacency by activating viewers.
In La Dialectique Peut-Elle Casser Des Briques? (1973), artist René
Viénet superimposed subtitles and voice over on a popular kung-fu film
to re-purpose it as a critique of French politics, an example of the
Situationist practice of détournement.
The movement toward participatory art occurred in part as a response
to the rarefied work of minimalist artists whose art objects were
traded as commodities in an art market that was becoming increasingly
commercial (Goldberg 75). The term happening, coined by New York
artist Allan Kaprow in 1959, refers to a gathering of people who come
together for the purpose of creating an unpredictable ephemeral
‘piece.’ The constructed situations explore the objectification of
“mundane movements and play-related activities” (Spector 1). The
interaction between participants constituted the piece; these
interactions could not be easily bought or sold, which accounts for
the appeal to artists who desired to challenge the increasing
commercialization of art. Happenings often explored the notions of
exchange through the construction of elaborate spaces intended to
break the boundaries between art and life.
Raoul Vaneigem’s La Survie Et Sa Fausse Contestation is another
example of détournement, in which content of advertising or popular
media is rewritten according to new criteria calling the original into
question. In this case, Vaneigem rewrites a comic to describe a dire
situation in which survival is reduced to economic imperatives.
Nowhere is the shift from traditional modes of consumption and
exchange of art more evident than in The Store, staged by Claes
Oldenburg in an abandoned store rented by the artist in Lower
Manhattan in New York in 1961. In a month-long series of happenings
entitled Ray Gun Theater‚ Oldenburg filled the store with art objects
whose composition mocked the preoccupation of the art world with the
value of art. The Store was based on seemingly banal, but ultimately
telling exchanges: people who made a purchase from Oldenburg received
in return an inedible potato chip made of glue-caked muslin, or any
number of candy samples. (Spector 1)
Claes Oldenburg created merchandise, advertising materials and store-
front displays for The Store, the site of a month-long series of
happenings called the Ray Gun Theater. The Store conflates creativity
with commerce, foretelling the emergence of Pop art and its embrace of
material culture. The Store, Study for a Poster (1961).
The Store conflates creativity with commerce, in a way that presages
the emergence of Pop art, to which Oldenburg became a major
contributor. Ironically, Pop art’s embrace and incorporation of
consumer culture contradicted one of the principle motivation behind
participatory art, which sought to challenge predominant notions of
this commodification.
Artist Joseph Beuys’ 1972 piece, Bureau for Direct Democracy,
investigates the potential of art to initiate dialogue about political
structure. The piece forms a part of Beuys’ conception of the ‘social
organism as a work of art,’ in which dialogue among participants is
the piece itself (Bishop 120). In his manifesto entitled I am
Searching for Field Character, Beuys discusses another participation
piece:
Social sculpture will only reach fruition when every living person
becomes a creator, a sculptor or architect of the social organism.
Only then would the insistence on participation of the action art of
Fluxus and happenings be fulfilled; only then would democracy be fully
realized. (125)
The Bureau for Direct Democracy took place at Documenta 5 as a one-
hundred day live installation in which the artist discussed with
visitors how a democracy conducted through direct referendum might be
brought about in contemporary politics. Participants in the piece, who
were drawn more or less at random, joined the conversation, debating
the effectiveness of the piece as well as the political changes that
it intended to instigate. Eight-hundred visitors participated in the
piece over the course of one day. One could argue that the piece was
ineffective at bringing about real political change; the numbers of
participants, while high for a participatory art piece, do not
represent a large number in political terms, and it is impossible to
point to any major political change that came about as a direct result
of the piece. Nevertheless, the piece is an example of the sort of
idealistic political belief in the power of participatory art that is
a precondition of the work of Beuys and others. The work was
characterized by an optimism about the capacity of participatory art
to effect social and political change that is rarely seen in online
participatory communities.
Performance art
Performance art is related to, but distinct from participatory art,
which explores many of the same issues. Like participatory art, much
performance art during the 1960s was informed by the desire to disrupt
prevailing notions of how art is bought and sold, i.e. how culture is
consumed; and both often function “as an irritant, a provocative
weapon used to unseat a complacent public and its view of the value of
art” (Goldberg 73). In the desire to disrupt the complacency of the
art world, performance artists often moved away from the creation of
discrete art works in favor of something less easily reducible to
familiar terms. The nature of performance is temporal – when the
performance is over the piece is complete – further creating an
impediment to buying and selling.
If maintaining their material survival through the sale of art work
was not in the interest of many of the radical performers of the
1960s, what was their central concern? While it is impossible to
identify a single preoccupation among a disparate group of artists,
many performance artists looked to this new form to address the social
and political issues of the day in a direct and powerful way. These
issues included the war in Vietnam, violence in society, and feminism.
Performance was a highly personal, raw and direct new medium through
which these concerns could be explored with an eye toward effecting
change inside and outside the confines of art. Like participatory art,
performance art reimagines the relationship between artist and
audience by destabilizing the separation of the two, creating
memorable experiences through the direct presentation of edgy subject
matter.
Yoko Ono, a member of Fluxus, a loose artist collective based in NY,
was an important figure in performance as well as participatory art.
Her pieces often range fluidly between the two forms. In Cut Piece
(1964-5), the artist wrote an explicit set of instructions that
instructed members of the audience to use a pair of scissors to cut
from her body the expensive suit that she was wearing. The piece was
considered complete when the suit had been completely cut away. The
piece, which examined issues of sexual aggression, voyeurism, and
gender subordination in a direct way, bridges between performance and
participation because the participation of the audience was a
necessary precondition of the piece, making the audience complicit in
the act of undressing her (Haskell 91). The art existed at the
intersection of the performer (Ono), the tool (scissors) and people
(audience). The piece was performed in two locations: Kyoto, Japan and
New York, and its completion consisted of nothing but the set of
instructions and the subsequent interactions with the audience.
Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964-5) Instructions: First version for a single
Performer: Performer sits on stage with pair of scissors placed in
front of him. It is announced that members of the audience may come on
stage – one at a time – to cut a small piece of the performer’s
clothing to take with them. Performer remains motionless throughout
the piece. Piece ends at the performer’s option. Second version for
audience: It is announced that members of the audience may cut each
others clothing. The audience may cut as long as they want.
Performance artist Vito Acconci explores issues about personal space
in a different way. In Theme Song (1973), the artist attempts to
seduce the viewer in an intimate and perverse thirty-three minute
performance. The piece offers commentary on the loneliness of the one-
way transmission of broadcast television, where viewers’ responses
never leave their living room.
Appropriation
Appropriation is the method by which pieces of culture are clipped
out, modified and manipulated by artists within a different context.
The aims of this practice vary widely from artist to artist but the
form is widely practiced in contemporary art making, music, web
mashups, and current remix culture. The use of appropriation and
détournement by the Situationist artists is expressed in the work of
Martha Rosler, who deals with the intersection of quotidian life and
media. In her series, Bringing the War Home, the artist collages
images from the popular magazine Better Homes and Gardens with
pictures of soldiers in Vietnam, creating idyllic, domestic scenes
interrupted with soldiers, and drawing attention to the distance
between these two subjects in American culture. Rosler provokes the
viewer to consider the violence of war within the context and comfort
of privileged consumer status. This powerful juxtaposition brings
faraway political situations closer to our everyday experience.
Contemporary Participatory Culture
We have looked thus far at the early origins of participatory networks
online (Usenet and BBSs) as well as the changes that participation and
performance wrought on artistic practices in the 1960s. We will now
turn to participation culture, a term that I use to describe the
current widespread popularization of participation forms, as
exemplified by sites such as MySpace, YouTube and Revver. These sites
are centered around music and video sharing, both of which would have
been beyond the technical scope of earlier participatory systems.
These new constellations of interests lead to new forms of creative
collaboration and social groups, which are created as a result of
these activities. The text-based exquisite corpse stories of BBSs give
way to remix culture, in which small bits of information become grist
for the remix mill.
Participation art shifted the creation of the artwork from the artist
to an interaction between the artist and participants. Similarly, in
online participatory systems, art exists as the interaction of the
participants with each other through the tool that makes the
collaboration possible. The term we-dia, coined by MIT Media Lab
Director Frank Moss to describe the tools used in the creation of
online participatory culture, is reinterpreted by John Maeda to mean
broadly that Tool + People = Art in the online context. Professor John
Maeda envisions the change this will bring about in art in this way:
Imagine a future 15 years from now. An artist opens her show. It’s
completely online. But it’s powered by its visitors. It’s interactive
art – where the interaction itself is the art.
As a result of this change, consumers of culture are engaged in the
act of producing more desirable products, interactions and exchanges
through their participation in online social communities. In its best
case, this engagement can lead to the same sort of re-affirmation of
community among participants that Bishop mentions in the effects of
participatory art movements.
Two contemporary performers, Ze Frank and Jane McGonigal, make use of
the rise in popularity of participatory websites to make participatory
performance art pieces, which demonstrate the power and peril of these
new groupings. Ze Frank is a contemporary performance artist,
humorist, and composer whose online performance was mentioned in the
beginning of this chapter. The Show, in which Frank performed scripts
written by visitors to his web site, was a one-year piece consisting
of a daily video broadcast. As part of the piece, he acted out three
to five minute improvised monologues recorded in his apartment. His
witty performances combined world events with songs, observations, and
games.
A few months into the piece, his popularity growing, Frank began to
engage audience participation. During Fabuloso Fridays he acted out
different scripts written by viewers. Frank’s performance, in which
the audience controls the performer are an inversion of the typical
relationship of performer to audience. Frank extracts the potential of
the feedback loops possible in online participatory pieces. Becoming a
marionette controlled by his viewers, Frank illustrates the shift
written about by Jenkins, who describes the center (in this case, the
audience) folding in on itself. Frank’s work expresses the potential
as well as the perils at the intersection of mass media and
participation.
One of Frank’s contemporaries, Jane McGonigal, is a unique blend of
performance artist and game designer. Her work merges art with life in
a physical and virtual sense. McGonigal’s most ambitious project, i
love bees, is an alternative reality game (ARG) that takes players,
which she publicly calls agents, on a cross-media journey. Agents
search for clues on cryptic websites in an event-driven game that
consists of massive numbers of players distributed throughout the
world. As part of the game, agents surf the web, leave voice messages
from pay phones in dispersed locations, and meet in groups in physical
locations, partaking in impromptu and unscripted performances as part
of the game. i love bees intentionally blurs the lines between fiction
and life, bringing art closer to life in a manner akin to earlier
projects of participation and performance art. McGonigal claims that
this disruptive game play is motivated by the desire to open up
territory for new perspectives. Suspension of disbelief and the
willingness on the part of players to spend their own time and
resources are requirements to engage in the game with other players.
McGonigal defines her pervasive games as “performance-based
interventions that use game imagery to disrupt the normative
conventions of public spaces and private technologies” (McGonigal 1).
The games re-contextualize cultural iconography, bringing about
physical and virtual encounters between players in the game. Players
are invited to perform in an improvisational way to advance game play.
Jane McGonigal’s work shows the power of performance and game play to
engage massive amounts of players in virtual and physical urban
settings.
McGonigal employs the Situationist techniques in her pervasive games,
which tend to be disruptive in the spirit of détournement. Massive
numbers of people gather in urban settings to participate in
performances involving visually arresting objects. The hideous design
aesthetic of the games, which juxtaposes the homemade aspects of
personal blogs with terminal style graphics intentionally contributes
to the mysteriousness of the game, inspiring participants to follow
the bread crumb trail. The games change and evolve during game play,
creating a fluid feedback loop between the game and its participants
that keeps the game dynamic from start to finish.
Participation culture, whose roots can be seen in the participatory
and performance art movements of the 1960s, is now widespread on the
web. However, unlike its artistic and technical precursors, which
focused on specific responses to real issues, the most popular sites
cast their net wide, creating a general framework with the aim of
attracting as many people as possible. This approach has the effect of
creating a democratic forum embracing the widest possible range of
viewpoints, but can suffer from the lack of a clearly identified
objective beyond getting hits to generate advertising revenue.
Participation and performance art of the 1960s demonstrates the
possibility of using these forms to explore, challenge, and resolve
socio-political issues in a directed way. This objective is lacking in
much of contemporary online participatory culture. Contemporary
artists such as Jane McGonigal and Ze Frank suggest ways in which new
participatory forms can be harnessed to pursue specific objectives.
This thesis will follow their lead, proposing frameworks that have
predefined intention.
Chapter Three: Experiments
In the Background chapter, we looked at various precursors of the
participatory movement online. BBS, Usenet, and the participatory art
movement of the 1950s and 60s all contextualize the functioning, as
well as the potential, of these systems. The Experiments chapter
contains work exploring online participatory spaces directly. Before
we get to those projects, we will look at several physical art
installations that investigate many of the same issues.
Installations
Installations can be interactive, but interaction differs from
participation in at least one significant regard. Interactive art
generally presupposes a machine with which the participant interacts –
in most cases, this machine is the art. In contrast, in participatory
art, the art is the interaction between people that occurs as a result
of the system. The collection of relationships formed among
participants is both the distinguishing characteristic and necessary
prerequisite of participatory art. Rain is an example of an
interactive piece that is not participatory in this sense of the term.
On the other hand, Misty Dawn is a physical installation that is both
performative and participatory. Both of these installations are
experienced in physical space, where design elements include the body
and gesture. These different parameters suggest valuable new
approaches to the design of online spaces.
Misty Dawn
Misty Dawn is a video installation developed with Philip DeCamp during
the fall of 2005. Misty Dawn was installed in the Joan Jonas
Performance Space at MIT in December 2005, at Art Interactive, a
gallery in Cambridge, MA in February 2005, and at the MIT Media Lab,
at a presentation for filmmaker Michel Gondry in April 2005.
Interaction
The custom software of Misty Dawn utilizes real-time image
segmentation, superimposing video recorded seven seconds in the past
onto video captured in real-time. The video software is an integral
part of the installation; it consists of a projected image opposite a
sofa and coffee table set, and is intended to evoke a domestic living
room. A camera concealed in the coffee table points toward the sofa,
recording the motions of gallery visitors who sit within the camera’s
field of vision. The physical setting of the piece invokes a place
where socializing occurs within a private home, so that would-be
performers would feel less self-conscious as they interacted publicly
with the piece. Visitors see an image of themselves projected on the
screen in front of them in which the time-delayed foreground is
layered on the current video to produce a doubling effect. The piece
creates an uneasy spatial relationship in which viewers interact with
versions of themselves seven seconds in the past.
Technical specification
The program, written in C++, processes video input from a camera with
an adaptive algorithm that can distinguish between the foreground and
the background of the scene after approximately ten seconds of
analysis with a steady camera shot. Following this analysis, the
system continuously subtracts the background of the frames seven
seconds in the past. The process produces a real-time video output in
which the active foreground figure seven seconds from the past is
superimposed on the present frame in its raw form. The real-time image
segmentation generates fluid interaction between the actual person and
her projected images.
Results
Misty Dawn explores privacy issues raised by surveillance in an
artistic context. Moreover, the piece deals with issues of body,
memory and gesture, as viewers are confronted with images of
themselves in ways that disassociate them from their own body in a
public setting, which has the trappings of private, domestic space.
Composing the piece suggested that interactive art can also be
performative, requiring people to perform as a precondition of the
piece. Misty Dawn confronts people with their own image in a public
setting inspiring a number of different reactions. The piece inspired
performances on the part of some and caused others to shy away
completely. Because the installation allowed the rest of the viewers
in the gallery to see the current reaction to the system without the
superimposed image, we were able to observe people’s behavior with the
system. One person sat for a long time in front of the piece without
talking and moving while others used the system as an opportunity to
perform in front of the group that gathered around the piece. One
woman occupied the audience’s attention for a ten-minute unrehearsed
performance with the system. Others interacted with each other,
attempting to synchronize their movements so that their real and
delayed images on the screen would dance together, or hide behind each
other.
Misty Dawn makes use of a Brechtian interruption of chronology to pose
questions about identity and memory. The method of the piece calls to
mind aspects of the work of filmmaker Michel Gondry, who visited the
Media Lab for several days shortly after the piece was completed.
After spending an hour interacting with the work and discussing its
meaning, he maintained that the piece successfully investigates
questions of identity by using a visual doubling effect and went on to
suggest that the piece might be even more effective were it to
incorporate an audio component, which would allow participants to
converse with themselves seven seconds in the past. We wondered
together how the incorporation of audio in Misty Dawn might change
speech, and whether the incorporation of audio in the piece would
simply result in chaos or meaningful self reflection.
Regardless of the possible future addition of audio, Misty Dawn was
considered a success in inspiring impromptu collaborative
performances. Negotiating the conditions that would help people who
were not otherwise performers become comfortable enough to act out in
front of other people foreshadowed the preoccupation with barriers of
entry that also govern the lasting relationships enabled by online
social communities.
Rain
Rain is a sound installation developed in the Spring of 2006 with
Philip DeCamp. The piece was part of Sound Around, a series of
immersive sound installations and performances, performed in June 2006
at the Media Lab. A second iteration of the piece was also installed
in the Lewis Music Library at MIT in January 2007 as part of Silence
Into Sound, a series of audio installations curated by Tod Machover.
Collaborator DeCamp and I were interested in the spatially orienting
potential of synthesized sound. Rain was made as a response to two
questions:
1. How can we compose a synthesized space suggestive of a physical
space that we cannot see and that never existed?
2. How does sonic experience relate to memory, aesthetics and
visual communication?
In addition, Rain can be thought of partly as a response to Misty
Dawn, whose soundless video led to questions about the potential of
audio to capture memories. Looking into the relationship between the
spatial characteristics of sound and participatory culture was a
challenge as I am primarily a visual artist and had never done any
work with sound.
Interaction
Rain synthesizes the sound of Rainfall on a virtual 3D environment. On
a Rainy day, Raindrops produce millions of tiny sounds from every
direction. Together, these sounds create a sonic map of the
environment that allows us to sense the objects around us – the
location of nearby buildings, the edges of overhangs where streams of
collecting water fall to the ground, and pedestrians walking by
holding umbrellas. Rain explores the spatial and contextual aspects of
sound by synthesizing the sound of Rain in a virtual environment. The
piece required the design and development of a compositional tool for
the purpose of a physical and aural installation. The tool, which
enabled others to participate in the creation of the synthetic
Rainfall, was an integral part of the installation.
Technical specifications
The software behind Rain is custom Java-based program. The Rain
simulation software models the geometry, material composition, and
moving objects within a space in order to adjust accurately the sound
of each falling Raindrop. The resulting sound piece is composed of
more than a thousand clips of individual drops of water on skin,
metal, wood and an umbrella. The system uses a floor plan to establish
where each drop of water is placed in the imagined space, and on what
type of material each drop of water falls. The red lines drawn through
the plan above represents the path of a sprite, an object that passes
through the synthesized space. Physically, the installation consists
of an array of four speakers set up in a 12 x 12 x 12 foot
installation space. The sound of Rain fall is localized, separated
into four channels and sent to a Firepod which in turn delivers the
audio to the corresponding speaker.
Rain was a successful interactive art piece. It was not, however,
participatory. I include Rain because it demonstrates an important
difference between interactive and participatory art. In Rain, people
interact with the system, composing their own synthesized Rain. The
installation requires very little on the part of participants; they
merely use the software to create a specific sonic experience. The
piece requires no performance on the part of participants and has an
easy-to-use graphical interface; these lowered barriers of entry
ensure high rates of participation. The ease of use comes at some
price, however. Even as Rain participants engage an a direct way with
the piece, there is little in the way of social interaction between
participants. Unlike Misty Dawn, in which transgressive performance
inspired conversation and laughter among those gathered around the
piece, Rain was a more solitary experience. Generally, participants
came in, used the piece quietly for ten or fifteen minutes, and left.
The lack of social relationships created by the piece highlights the
difference between participatory and interactive art.
Online Participatory Art
In contrast to the physical installations of the preceding section,
which use technology to foster interaction between people and machines
in physical spaces, online systems facilitate people interacting in
virtual space.
Several definitions will clarify the work discussed below. Online
social systems coordinate interaction and communication among multiple
people. These include software that facilitates specific relationships
and exchanges between people, in a myriad of areas, such as in
commerce, education, creativity, friend networks, and dating. Sites
that are participatory by nature encourage people engage in specific
ways. As is the case with participatory artwork, we talk about online
participatory art pieces existing at the intersection of the system,
in that they are created by the artist, and require the engagement of
the audience (in this case, online) with it. That is to say, if there
is no participation there is no ‘piece.’
The online communities created around successful participatory sites
can lead to meaningful dialogue, affecting more than just online
spaces. That said, the space of online participatory media is uneven
terRain that can be difficult to navigate. Garnering attention on the
web is unpredictable and can be frustrating; predicting how people
will behave when testing new modes of communication in an online
environment can lead to immediate failure. When visitors do not show
up, it is often difficult to say exactly why a site does not generate
the hits that were expected. Moreover, when the medium is the
communication between people, the designer’s job is even more
difficult. In a sense, the artist attempting to generate online
participation is akin to an advertiser who is constantly trying to
comprehend how or why people will not pay attention to their new
product. Often finding the right approach is a matter of trial and
error.
Despite the unsavory advertising comparisons, the online mechanisms
within which people congregate to communicate in a free way online is
an important step toward mobilizing these new constellations toward
social or political ends. When an online participatory site is
successful, the feeling of having helped individuals gather to express
themselves around common creative interests makes the enterprise
satisfying in its own right.
OpenBrand
I developed OpenBrand with Kelly Norton, my colleague in the Physical
Language Workshop (PLW), along with Media Lab Director Frank Moss, and
Time Warner liaison Peter Meirs during the annual Simplicity prototype-
athon in January 2006. Six months later, we showed a working prototype
of the system to a room full of Time Warner executives at the Time
Warner Building in NY. OpenBrand is an ongoing collaboration with Time
Warner and Johnson and Johnson to develop a new open marketing
strategy in which consumers have a voice in advertising content and
product development.
OpenBrand is intended to enable public contribution to online
advertising by allowing consumers to re-configure banner
advertisements and share those modification with a community. Banner
advertisements are the typical form of visual advertising on the web
in which a portion of a given web page is devoted to a paid
advertisement. OpenBrand utilizes a custom script to enable consumers
to post text comments on banner advertisements, using Greasemonkey, an
open source scripting layer written for the Firefox browser. The text
comments posted by visitors are displayed just below the ad and are
saved to a central database on the PLW server at MIT, becoming
publicly viewable for all those who have installed the script. In
addition, the comments are linked to a forum where participating
companies can respond to them. This forum acts as a new costumer
service model where the companies have the opportunity to converse
with their consumers.
The project grew out of the Organic Marketing discussion, in which
students, sponsors and faculty discussed how marketing can be more
‘humane.’ This approach was a response to growing resistance among
Media Lab students to sponsors mining their work for ways to broadcast
marketing messages to consumers. Characterizing humane marketing
precisely is difficult, but through conversation we identified trust
as the key issue. With the complex profusion of identities and
relationships online, trust has become a scarce commodity – something
that advertisers are just beginning to realize. Traditionally, a one-
way transmission was the only way for an advertiser to get their
message to a consumer. This strategy does not work as effectively
online as it did in older media forms, because it is invasive and
inspires little trust where the value of trust is a premium. In
contemporary participatory culture, the advertiser competes for
attention in a landscape of bloggers and amateur content creators.
Instead of focusing on how to transmit messages about products to
consumers, the question that companies should be attempting to answer
is: what do consumers think of my product? OpenBrand creates a
structure for consumers to voice their concerns in an unfiltered way,
and for the companies to listen to them.
The dialogue between advertising companies and consumers is a feedback
loop that makes it possible for consumers to transform products, or at
least, the way they are marketed. The desire to activate participants
that might otherwise be passive consumers is inspired in part by the
Situationist projects discussed in the preceding chapter. The
reappraisal of the Situationist project to develop a system that, in
the last analysis, will be used to sell products, is no small irony
given the Situationist’s general disdain for consumer culture. After
all, the advent of culture defined increasingly by consumption was
just what the Situationist were fighting against. However, the
Situationist International oversimplified a complex issue in service
of their polemical argument. Instead of viewing all consumption as
meaningless operation of market-driven culture, OpenBrand, which is
one part provocation and one part marketing strategy, asks how we
might change the way consumption occurs to make it a meaningful
activity for all involved.
The barriers for consumer participation in OpenBrand are very low. The
system requires no performance on the part of participants, and
entering text is easy. Posts are entered in an asynchronous text
format that has been familiar to people since the advent of the BBS,
and posts can be anonymous, which further lowers the barrier of entry
to participate. Various incentives exist to use the system. In
addition to the possibility of improving products to better suit one’s
own needs, the system allows participants to talk back to advertisers,
or engage in the catharsis of simply vandalizing the advertisements
that assault us daily. The wealth of sites devoted to consumer
reflections on the quality of products (CNet, Epinions, and others)
offers ample evidence that consumers tend to engage in this activity
even when the only likely incentive is to warn or encourage other
consumers about products. Needless to say, giving up valuable ad space
while also making themselves vulnerable to critique could discourage
many advertisers from implementing OpenBrand. However, in practice,
the possibility of instilling trust in the consumer outweighed the
initial suspicion with which advertisers approached the project.
Having the courage to implement OpenBrand would make it clear that a
company trusts the consumer and values her input enough to enter into
an unfiltered, public conversation. Normally, when we think about
trust in advertising, we ask how the marketer can gain the trust of
the consumer. OpenBrand turns the problem on its head, asking instead
if the marketer trusts the consumer enough to put the marketing
message in their hands.
OPENSTUDIO
OPENSTUDIO is an open-ended experiment in creativity, collaboration
and capitalism that explores new economic models for the creation and
exchange of digital media. The system couples a simple drawing tool
with an economy composed of artists, curators, dealers and viewers.
Members create drawings using a light-weight Java webstart application
and save the drawings in their individual repositories on the PLW
server. Members then buy and sell those drawings in an online community.
The system was designed and built by a team of researchers in the PLW
including Kelly Norton, Brent Fitzgerald, Burak Arikan, Annie Ding,
Kate Hollenbach and this author over the course of four months. Our
work was built on research conducted previously by Carlos Rocha, Noah
Field, Marc Schwartz and others as well as countless undergraduate
researchers who worked on the project from 2003 to the launch in 2007.
OPENSTUDIO was launched one month after it was announced at the AIGA
conference in November 2005. Initial entrance to the system was by
invitation only with new members given one hundred buraks, the
OPENSTUDIO currency, at the time of joining. During its first few
months, a core group of PLW members and their friends were actively
producing and trading drawings. In the Spring of 2006, we implemented
a viral invitation system, where each new member could invite ten new
members. The site was opened to the public one year later in the Fall
of 2007. We received an immediate spike in membership, when the site
went public.
Collaboration and authorship
The OPENSTUDIO community interacts primarily through the exchange of
the drawings that members create in the system. When a participant
buys a drawing, the buyer is encouraged to build on it, creating a new
piece whose connection to the original is visible through a
transparent authorship system. The transparent authorship, called
‘provenance,’ allows for an open environment of collaboration where
all contributing parties can see clearly the artistic transformation
of the piece. By formalizing the act of appropriation inherent in
digital works of art, OPENSTUDIO legitimizes derivation and
appropriation, an essential component of creative production in
networked online communities. Within a few weeks, members began to
exchange drawings with the understanding that any buyer could open the
drawing and alter it however they saw fit. This type of exchange
confirms ties between members of the community.
Tags and reputation
Online galleries bring individual recognition to members, who display
their drawings and those of others before an audience of online
community members. OPENSTUDIO members can tag drawings with a word or
set of words, using a system called ‘artsonomy.’ The set of tags
associated with an individual’s original drawings forms a description
of the kind of work the artist makes. Likewise, the set of tags
associated with an individual’s collection (the pieces she buys and
displays in her gallery) forms a description of the kind of work she
collects. In some instances, members have used an uncommon tag to
create an informal meta gallery. For example, Ben Dalton uses a +
symbol for his tag designating pieces that he likes. His mark travels
with the piece even after he loses his association with it. Other
members have also adopted the + tag, associating them with Ben and his
collection of work. In addition to bypassing prescribed ownership
models, these members bond through the creative use of the system. In
this way, members find unique ways to form alliances that were not
intended in the original design of the system.
Open Economics Confirms Community Values
One of the main objectives of OPENSTUDIO is to investigate how
creativity affects economic exchange through an online community. To
satisfy this objective, we implemented a simple economic system
resembling an art market. Each transaction in the system is saved in
the member’s profile and made publicly viewable. This open banking
system allows other people to see their own buying habits as well as
those of others. The open transaction system is coupled with an list
of social connections between buyers, sellers, and exhibitors on the
profile page, which lists social groups and tracks them as they
evolve. These social groups reveal informal or formal collaborations
between members. In the strictest sense, collaboration is mediated
through the monetary exchange of bits of finished drawings. The
attempt of some members to form larger institutions like museums
reveals an interest on the part of members to form larger and more
powerful subgroups within the system.
Using a currency that exists only in the system has several
advantages. First, it lowers the barrier of entry to buying and
selling. People may feel more inclined to be active in a system where
they are not spending their own money. On the other hand, the value of
the currency is proportional to the time invested in the system. The
valuation of the burak aside, developing our own currency enables us
to build systems in a way that would not be acceptable given real
world implications. For example, we were able to experiment with
transparent system revealing all transactions and monetary attributes
of members. It is still a question how an open banking system would
change the interactions of members in a system. We took the view that
the system should reveal as much as possible publicly about each
participant, including the value of each transaction as well as the
account balance, total volume, revenue, and expenses and profit. The
decision to make as much data as possible public knowledge was made to
see how members might behave differently under conditions of
transparency.
Openness and Unexpected Collaboration
Creating a system that allows for creative collaboration among members
was the second objective of OPENSTUDIO. The openness of OPENSTUDIO
encourages collaboration and play among its international membership.
The flexibility of the system allows members to act in ways that we
did not foresee. In addition to making the drawings using the Draw
tool, members used the system to create advertisements, write
contracts, and communicate intimate messages through publicly visible
drawings. The community has the spirit of participatory art where
members are asked to contribute to a collective expression. Designing
a system to encourage derivative drawings and open economic exchange
were the motivations for naming the system ‘OPEN’ STUDIO.
Technical Specifications
OPENSTUDIO is a complex system with many interdependent parts drawing
on the research of many people involved in the project. I will touch
only briefly on the components to give an overview of the complexity
of the system. The community activities are centered around a web
application built with Ruby On Rails, a popular framework for
developing online community-based projects. The web application is
seamlessly integrated with SMPL, PLW’s flexible communication protocol
written in Java, to manage saving and retrieving documents from the
document server. The system also uses a high-speed renderer, written
by Kelly Norton, to deliver images at a wide variety of display sizes.
In addition, the system has an API that we use to mash up the site
with other sites. This will be discuss this later when I talk about
the Burak Hotline system. The Draw application is a simple vector
based drawing application developed using the Treehouse client
framework. Treehouse, the predecessor of OPENSTUDIO, is the client
side code base for OPENSTUDIO.
Mini
Mini, an application originally intended for deployment within the
OPENSTUDIO environment, enables people to create 8-, 16-, 32-, and 64-
pixel icons from images automatically downloaded from the Internet. I
built Mini in 2005 during my first summer in PLW with the help of
Philip DeCamp, whose expertise in hacking Google was critical to the
deployment of the system. We based the program on work done by
previous members of the PLW. Mini was my first experiment in designing
tools for visual expression. The project inspired Tiny, a
participatory project developed by fellow researcher Brent Fitzgerald
and Luis Blackaller for release on the web, which is described in
greater detail below.
Interface
The idea behind Mini is simple. The tool works by querying Google
images in search of a term entered by the user. The system
automatically generates icons of the first 800 images as a result of
the query. The tool gives rise to several extensions. Old Standard is
an extension of Mini that functions as a local art installation using
the iMac array in the PLW. Old Standard uses 200 words from the
Fleshbot website as query terms to perform a Google image search. The
resulting images are then automatically iconized and displayed in a
grid on the iMAC array. Old Standard acknowledges that a large
percentage of the content on the Internet is posted by the porn
industry. It was important to me to draw attention to this part of the
Internet because the PLW uses online culture as the starting point for
research. A second, sanitized version of Old Standard allows users to
draw a pattern, like an American flag, and then fill in each section
with iconized images from the search. For example, to fill in the
stripes of the flag, you might use the query term ‘blood’, ‘apple’ or
simply ‘red’ and Old Standard would automatically queries Google and
fills in the strips with icons of the resulting images. To fill in the
white stripes you might query ‘clouds’‚ and so forth, until the final
image was completely filled in.
Technical Specifications
Mini uses the Treehouse client framework and the SMPL framework to
save documents to the document server. The search function tricks
Google into thinking the query is coming from a Firefox browser. The
Old Standard implementation does an automatic query using 100 terms
from fleshbot.com, a popular online magazine devoted to pornography
and online sex culture, in order to automatically generate icon that
are displayed on the 9 x 9 array of iMacs in the PLW.
Results
In Mini, participants generate icons merely by querying Google. A
similar project called Tiny, launched by PLW members Brent Fitzgerald
and Luis Blackaller, garnered 10,000 hits in a one-month period,
attesting to the participation levels that low barriers of entry can
create when coupled with intelligent design. Tiny’s entry barrier is
even lower than that of Mini. Written as a Rails/AJAX application,
Tiny makes drawing small pixel icons anonymous and easy. Using a web
interface to make black and white icons, Tiny requires only a ten-
second commitment on the part of the participant. The resulting icons
are creative and sometimes indecent, offensive or humorous. Even
within the limits of a 13 x 13 pixel icon, people are able to conduct
conversations through the system. In its own modest way, Tiny
testifies to the potential of massive visual collaborative expression.
Online Performance
The following experiments explore performative media through the use
of the telephone to contribute content to the web.
The telephone
The purpose of using the telephone as input device for content is
twofold. First, the telephone requires people to make public
statements using their own voice and second, it lowers the technical
barrier of entry. In the words of artist Kelly Dobson,
The telephone offers an extension of our voice. It is an extension
of ourselves and it overlaps, blurs, and allows us to mix together.
(Dobson 36)
The telephone is a familiar technology for sharing intimate moments,
stories, opinions and reactions. Using our voice instead of text can
strengthen emotional connections, add entertainment value and lead to
more intimate community ties.
These experiments use the telephone to explore barriers of entry.
Using a familiar device makes contribution easy, but the low technical
barrier to entry is offset by the raised emotional or performative
barrier as a result of asking people to broadcast with their voice. It
takes a confidence to speak before the indeterminate audience of the
web – the call could be heard by thousands or no one at all. Either
way, the prospect of calling sites on the Internet can be daunting.
Because broadcasting your voice using the telephone turns the device
into a performative medium, this raises the social barrier of entry.
The experiments investigate whether lowering the technical barrier of
entry works to entice people to engage in online performance. Except
for nationwide conference calls, phones are normally used as a private
or intimate mode of communication between two (or, at most, three or
four) people, not as a tool for broadcast.
PLWire Telephone Tag
PLWire Telephone Tag invites visitors to the PLW website to use their
telephone to leave messages about objects they see there. The system
was designed and built on the new PLWire site in the summer of 2006
shortly after the new site was launched. PLWire Telephone Tag allows
visitors to the site to express their opinion about what they see
there, potentially opening up a dialogue between visitors and members
of the PLW who administer the site. PLWire Telephone Tag functions
like text commenting on a blog, except that the comments are sound
files called in by telephone instead of text. The system uses
telephone tags in keeping with PLWire, which functions as a text-free,
visual blog for projects done in the PLW. The site is set up so
members of PLW can post videos, graphics, and links as modules, or
mini-windows on the site.
Interaction
Visitors call the PLWire telephone line, which is revealed to them by
clicking on a telephone icon at the top of each video module on the
site. A recorded voice prompts callers to enter in the unique four
digit code for the object that they would like to tag. The first digit
corresponds to the datatype, e.g. 0 for video, 1 for graphics, etc.
The following three digits auto-increment to ensure a unique code for
each module. After entering the appropriate code, callers are
instructed to leave a seven second message, which is automatically
associated with the corresponding object and posted on the site.
Visitors can listen to all messages for each object by clicking on an
audio icon at the top of each module, which plays the audio tags
automatically in reverse order, with the last message received played
first. The objective of the system is to open up a space for dialogue.
Public visitors to the web site can leave messages offering advice,
critique or opinion about what they experience on the site. The hope
is that contributions by phone would inspire comments that were at
once intimate and expressive.
Technical specifications
PLWire Telephone Tag system employs Asterisk, an open source PBX
(Private Branch Exchange), and a telephony toolkit, which is free to
download, working on top of PLWire, a Ruby On Rails application. An
Asterisk server routes telephone calls from an outside VOIP carrier to
the PLW server. The Asterisk server is configured to run on the PLW
server. After registering with the external VOIP carrier, the Asterisk
server waits and receive all incoming calls. For each call Asterisk
launches a RAGI (Ruby Asterisk Gateway Interface) to communicate with
the Rails application. The RAGI process runs as its own server and
enables callers to interface with the PLWire web application
framework, which means that RAGI allows people to access information
through the data models defined in the Ruby on Rails application.
PLWire Telephone Tag system requires the operation of seven servers:
one Asterisk server talking to a remote VOIP server, one RAGI server
to interface between the telephone call and the Ruby On Rails
application, one Apache server, two Mongrel servers to split the load
of incoming requests from the web application, and a Mysql database
server. This was my first realization of the complexity behind
networked systems especially when they integrate old (telephone) and
new (online social) technology. Every server crashed at least once
during the first week of deployment; keeping them all functional over
the life of the system presents a major technical challenge.
Results
PLWire Telephone Tag investigates the possibility of creating dialogue
between visitors of the site and PLW members. The goal of opening up
the PLW website was to break down the exclusivity of the group and
engage critical discussion around projects, leading to collaboration
with people outside the group. In practice, the system received fewer
calls than I had hoped for. We will discuss the reason for this in the
analysis section. PLWire Telephone Tag received 65 calls since its
deployment in September 2006. It would have been nice if the site felt
like a crowded room of strangers, but the call rate was too low for
PLWire to feel rich with new voices.
Burak Hotline
The second telephone-based project, entitled the Burak Hotline, is an
online application added to OPENSTUDIO. Burak Hotline tests members’
willingness to call and leave a message on the Internet. The
application was launched in January of 2007, several months after the
launch of PLWire Telephone Tag. The parameters of the system arose in
response to the relatively low call volume generated by that system.
In contrast to PLWire Telephone Tag, which provided no outward
incentive for people to call the system, the Burak Hotline rewards
calls by OPENSTUDIO members with buraks, the currency of OPENSTUDIO.
The only other way to earn buraks is to make and sell drawings, which
is a time-consuming process. In contrast, for a short time investment
(under two minutes), callers could make up to 100 buraks, depending on
the quality of their phone call.
Interaction
A text advertisement on the front page of OPENSTUDIO announced to
members that they could earn buraks in exchange for calling the Burak
Hotline. Members who are already logged in click on a link in the
announcements section of the front page, taking them to the front page
of the Burak Hotline where they are given a phone number and a unique
code that corresponds to their membership in OPENSTUDIO. The Burak
Hotline offers a simple three-step text instructions explaining the
system. The instructions read as follows
1. Call (617) 606-4278 and enter your code: 039
2. Tell us why we should give you the Buraks.
3. Listen and rate your message and others.
The site consists of only one other page, which was a table of calls
received and an interface to rate calls. After members call and leave
messages explaining why they should receive buraks, the calls are
logged on the site for others to rate. Callers can choose to be
anonymous (the calling interface gave callers a chance to mask their
names). All calls automatically receive five buraks. Once the calls
are logged, they are subject to peer review through a custom star
rating system implemented on the site. The more stars a call received
from listeners, the more buraks are awarded to the caller. Each star
is worth one burak. Each call can be rated up to twenty times, and
members can call as many times as they would like.
Technical Specifications
The Burak Hotline uses the OPENSTUDIO API to access and change data in
the OPENSTUDIO database. To do this, I added a web service method to
the API to allow developers to add buraks to OS members’ accounts. The
web service allows other members of the group to create applications
and pay OS for their participation. Jun Sato, PLW member and Toshiba
researcher, used the web service payment method for his OPENSTUDIO
license system. Like the two previous systems, the telephone system
that runs the Burak Hotline uses RAGI and Asterisk to interface with
the Ruby On Rails and AJAX application.
Results
Within hours of launching the Burak Hotline, OPENSTUDIO member Dara
Kilicoglu emailed me, concerned about how the Burak Hotline might
effect the OS economy. I was able to convince him in a few emails that
the Burak Hotline was good for the OPENSTUDIO economy. The following
is a transcript of the conversation
2/6/07
hello amber, i know hotline project from burak. he told me and i
liked it very much. but i don’t like the idea of giving people buraks
generated outside of the studio. i believe burak for OPENSTUDIO is
different than burak for hotline and you can’t add them together.
because they belong to different economical systems processing buraks
will cause inflation in the OPENSTUDIO. previously burak was thinking
to transfer STOCKMARKET buraks to OPENSTUDIO and i was strongly
against that idea for a similar reason. finally i was able to convince
him that the idea was wrong and bad for OPENSTUDIO people. as an
OPENSTUDIO creator/developer final decision is yours. i just wanted to
share my ideas with you. thank you for your time. +D,
2/6/07
Hi Dara,
Thanks for your response. I appreciate your thoughts and feedback
on the project. I thought about inflation quite a bit before launching
and discussed it with an economist here who felt that small scale
inflation while a project is getting off the ground spurs activity. I
think anything that gets people to be active in the OPENSTUDIO
community is a good thing. Performance, like drawing is an important
creative activity. Adding a phone-based system to OPENSTUDIO (or as a
os add-on) is a way to invite the members of the community to express
their creativity in a different way. Is audio less creative than
drawing?
Right now, the Burak Hotline is only open to OS members, so it is
not like giving buraks to people outside of the system. I think of it
as an extension of the studio. I hope you are convinced that the Burak
Hotline is a good addition, but I would be happy to continue the
discussion if you are not. BTW, I am a big fan of your drawings. Amber
2/6/07
hello amber,
1. i am totally convinced that ‘Burak Hotline’ is a good
addition to OPENSTUDIO. it is breathing. i loved it. will people be
able to tag or better to audiotag the audio? for me audio is as
creative as drawing. i love music. i love sound. it’s very abstract
when you form things with it. peer to peer audio trading would be so
much fun. i would like to spend some of my buraks for buying some
audio recordings. how do you plan to extend it?
2. thank you. i am a big fan of your drawings too. i also love
your paintings too (i saw them on your site.) really nice series.
have a wonderful one,
dara
2/7/07 Glad you like my drawings. One more question though: Why
haven’t you called the Burak Hotline? Amber
2/7/07 amber hi, my reason for not calling ‘Burak Hotline’ is very
personal. actually i am really dying to call Burak Hotline BUT i
didn’t mention before that i am sick for a week now. my voice exactly
sounds like a robot modulated with sawtooth waveform. but i will call
tomorrow morning. inspiring the visual community to work with audio
image shouldn’t be hard. you mean inspiring to experiment? actually
not just visual community anyone can be inspired to do audio stuff. if
the tool is simple and fun and also served in a social environment...
many of my friends from OPENSTUDIO are not coming from visual
backgrounds. i know them from istanbul and i know many of them havent
done anything visual before OS in their life somehow they like to be
there and draw. keep on advertising the project. i am %100 sure that
it will rock! +D,
Dara called the system two days later. He received an overall rating
of 4 stars to earn him 80 buraks for his call.
Morgan Sutherland, another OPENSTUDIO member, called 11 times on the
March 5, 2007. He experimented with narrative, sound, film clips and
outright begging. He made a total of 274 buraks for his calls.
Overall, the Burak Hotline received 35 calls, 22 unique calls from a
total of 171 members who visited the site. 12% percent of members who
visited called the system since it was launched on February 3, 2007.
Emma On Relationships Call-In Show
Emma On Relationships (EOR) is an online call-in show featuring a
series of short videos hosted by Emma Lindsay, a filmmaker, as well as
a Computer Science (Course 6) major at MIT, who works as an
undergraduate researcher in the PLW. The project was developed in the
Fall of 2006, with ongoing series of episodes released every few weeks
during the following Spring, and is currently gaining popularity due
to links connecting it to the popular sites YouTube and MySpace.
Japanese translation was done by Toshiba Researcher Jun Sato, and the
cast of EOR includes Emma’s collaborator and ex-boyfriend, Chris
Bisignani, who now maintains the web site, her current boyfriend
Eugene, her brother, and other MIT students, mostly undergraduates.
Interaction
EOR consists of a website that hosts short videos made by Emma. After
watching two- to four-minute videos, viewers use their telephones to
leave messages on the website for Emma or the rest of the cast. In
typical episodes, Emma interviews her friends from her room at Senior
House, a dormitory on the MIT campus, about issues such as sexuality,
gender and fertility. Each episode is centered around a single
question, such as “How do Average Guys Get with Hot Girls?” or “Should
You be Gay?” and the calls are accessible to anyone who visits the
site. Emma’s attitude toward these intentionally inflammatory subjects
is deadpan, and the conclusions that she draws from the comments of
her friends often fly in the face of conventional logic. For example,
the best way to get with a good-looking girl, Emma tells us, is for an
average guy to pursue more than one at once and not tell any of them
that they are attractive. Emma answers questions in short video
responses that are also posted to the site.
After each episode is posted, viewers call a dedicated telephone line
to leave messages for Emma or other characters in the show. Callers
typically ask questions that they have about the show. Their messages
frequently flirt with the edges of decency. Visitors can listen to all
messages, which are immediately publicly accessible on the web site.
Emma responds to messages through a short one minute ‘video response’
episode addressing callers concerns directly. Often, her video
responses to various individual callers are more provocative and
interesting than the original show itself. In response to a caller who
asked about abstinence as a form of birth control, Emma clarifies her
religious beliefs, uses sock puppets to demonstrate sexual positions,
and offers her unorthodox opinion about the statistical
ineffectiveness of abstinence as a viable method of birth control. Her
candid remarks and the responses they inspire suggest the power of
traditional modes of communication when used in concert with new form
of conversation, by telephone, web and video.
Technical Specifications
Like PLWire Telephone Tag, EOR is a Ruby On Rails application that
interfaces with an Asterisk VOIP telephony service through a RAGI
server. The Ruby On Rails application supports multiple episodes,
multiple casts of characters and their corresponding audio messages
and video responses. When visitors call the site they hear the
following prerecorded message as garage-band style music plays in the
background:
Hi, welcome to Emma On Relationships. This is Emma. Leave a
message for me or one of my friends. To leave a message for me, press
1, for Chris press 2, and for Jamie press 3.
Callers choose which episode and which cast member for whom to leave a
message. Telephone messages are immediately routed to the site through
the RAGI interface, so callers receive instant feedback that their
message has been recorded and can be heard publicly.
Results
The aim of EOR is to create a medium in which participants’ comments
build a feedback loop, something which was largely missing in PLWire
Telephone Tag. Over the course of four months, EOR received 241 calls
out of 2,408 visits, or roughly a 10% call to hit rate. Momentum is
picking up for the site now, so it appears likely that the site will
continue to receive calls as Emma makes new episodes and the show
grows in popularity. The calls that she has received have varied from
thoughtful questions to sexually explicit suggestions to a request
from a Red Hat journalist interested in writing a story about the
show. An anonymous source made the following comments about the call-
in show after trying out the system, “Talking is much more intimate
than typing, so there is a built-in inhibition to participation. And
calling to comment on how average guys can hook-up with hot girls is a
lot to ask.”
EOR is a provocative forum that incites the audience to become a
public part of the performance. The sexual content emphasizes the
intimacy of the telephone and web interface. Qualitative results
suggests that intimate subject matter raises the barrier of entry
while the technical barrier remains low. Many of the callers so far
have been from Emma or other cast members’ groups of friends, so this
is likely to have increased the call rate. It will be instructive to
see how this affects the system as it grows beyond these established
social networks.
WikiPhone
The last system that we will discuss is WikiPhone, an experiment in
online collaborative audio performance. The aim of WikiPhone is two-
fold: one, to develop an online environment for the fluid creation,
composition and exchange of audio, and two, to formulate a new set of
design principles for participatory media enabling creative
collaboration.
WikiPhone was developed in the Spring of 2007 with Philip DeCamp. The
networked system blends performance and composition, allowing
participants to create soundtracks collaboratively online. WikiPhone
is designed to stream popular videos and news clips from YouTube,
which multiple participants remix with audio contributed via telephone
calls to the system. The audio data from these calls is recorded and
added to the existing pool of data from which participants can compose
new remixes in a real-time networked performance. All contributed
audio is available to all participants during the performance. The
system encourages participants to borrow the techniques and content of
others freely by allowing them to listen to and see how other people
compose. The performances and remixes form a conversation among
participants engaged in a single creative virtual event-space. In the
best case, the creative dialogue resulting from this playful game-like
environment can serve as cultural critique in which participants
gather and rewrite the content of clips to reflect their own interests
and desires.
Interface
The interface can be broken down into two components: the Editor, in
which people compose pieces, and the Online Gallery, where
participants show the completed pieces.
The Editor
The Editor is a Java application that is launched from the site. The
interface consists of a video display and a series of audio tracks.
From the Editor, participants can access an existing project or
create a new project by giving it a name and a URL to an existing
YouTube video. To compose pieces in the editor, participants perform
the following five activities: watch, annotate, record, compose, and
remix. Although these often happen sequentially, they can be done in
any order.
* WATCH Participants navigate through the frames of the video
while listening to the original audio track.
* ANNOTATE Participants annotate portions of the video with text
subtitles. The subtitles function as directions given by the initiator
of the project to other participants. This is the only special
privilege given to the project initiator.
* RECORD A telephone number and extension is assigned to each
individual session and displayed in the interface. Participants call
the number to record audio of their own to fit into the track.
* COMPOSE Participants arrange recorded clips on their audio track
to correspond to the video.
* REMIX Members of the WikiPhone community can remix the audio the
audio contributed by any other participant in the project. Anyone can
choose to see what anyone else is doing and can incorporate sounds
from other participants’ track in their own clip by dragging in clips
from other members. Remixing can occur while audio is streaming into
the interface. Each version of the remix attributes the main author
and a list of contributors attached so that all authorship is
accounted for.
WikiPhone utilizes a flat structure to make the project space feel
like a crowded room in which the creation occurs fluidly among many
participants. While two or more people are in the ‘editing room,’
everyone can see who is present and whether others are actively making
contributions. No other video editor offers this model of networked,
real-time collaboration with streaming content.
Web Interface
The system consists of a minimal web interface that acts as a gallery
of completed pieces and gives access to the Java web start
application. From the central website, participants initiate new
projects, browse current projects and view completed collaborative
projects. Individual participants have accounts and, in the full scale
web application, will be assigned profiles, which will allow them to
receive credit for the pieces that they have worked on in a manner
akin to OPENSTUDIO. Members meet new people, make connections and
develop alliances within the community.
Technical specifications
An extensive networked architecture was required to accommodate the
fluid collaboration of the system. Philip DeCamp was the principal
researcher in this area and instrumental in accomplishing the onerous
and technically demanding task of system design and implementation. A
full discussion of the technical innovations in the project is beyond
the scope of this thesis, but the following description offers a basic
overview of the primary components of the system.
Networked Architecture
The server code consists of a command structure, a pipeline for
streaming data from the project server to multiple client canvases; an
interface to route calls from an Asterisk Telephony server; and a
relational database that organizes member accounts, projects and audio
and video meta data. A Java-based custom active record class handles
database management. The client-side consists of a command structure,
audio/visual decoders, and a mixing GUI that utilizes OpenGL for the
audio tracks and other interface components.
Streaming
The original infrastructure for streaming content from the web is one
of the most impressive accomplishments of the application. WikiPhone
is a networked application built for audio and visual streaming over
the Internet. It also uses a custom protocol for streaming audio
content from the server to multiple client canvases. This allows
participants to respond quickly to new content posted anywhere on the
web, although for WikiPhone, we focus specifically on streaming
content from YouTube servers.
Without the streaming architecture developed by Philip DeCamp, people
would have to download the video, edit it in a stand alone
application, and upload the new edited video in order to share it
online. Our system lowers the barrier of entry to edit video content
from the web, allowing participants to work along side of the video,
as it is streaming in from the YouTube server. The system was built to
accommodate multiple servers with the addition of a parser to obtain
the video URL from a given web page. By the same token, the streaming
interface routes the incoming audio from multiple telephones into the
interface real-time.
Decoder
A series of C libraries decodes FLV files and incoming audio from the
telephones. Decoders strip the meta information, accessing the raw
audio and video directly.
Results
An impromptu performance was staged with four actors from a local
college who used WikiPhone to reconstruct the trailer of Tennessee
Williams’ Night of the Iguana, using WikiPhone. The actors spent
several hours playing with the system before settling on a cut that
incorporated all of their voices in a comical interpretation of the
original film.
Overall, the comments were generally positive. However, some
participants questioned the relevance of using the telephone as the
primary input device:
I’m still not sold on using a phone over a microphone. As you
know, oftentimes nowadays mics are built right into the computer, and
the computer itself is becoming more and more of an extension of
someone’s person. Why go through the trouble of erecting a new
networked community with telephones when people are already connecting
through the Internet?
A point well-taken, although this opinion was contradicted by another
actor, who appreciated the easy access that the telephone interface
provided, claiming that “the phone is my favorite part.” After using
the system, all agreed that its most promising application is for
remixing political speeches.
The variety of systems described in this section look at participation
in a variety of performative, participatory sites online. The next
chapter will look at the factors governing participation online, which
we can draw from these experiments.
Chapter Four: Analysis
The projects that comprise Participation Art Online explore the space
of participation online from various perspectives. The Background
section looked at the roots of the participatory movement in art and
computation; in the Experiments section that followed, we discussed
experiments in participatory online spaces in order to better
understand how these systems function in practice. In the Analysis
section, we explore the commonalities among the projects. By outlining
the principles that govern online participatory space, we hope to draw
some general conclusions about the functioning of these spaces, the
incentives that inspire participation, and the behavior of members of
online communities. The objective of the analysis is to develop a set
of design principles that can be used as a point of departure for
further experimentation in the field of online participatory media.
Half of the experiments described in the previous chapter use the
telephone as the primary tool of expression. In PLWire Telephone Tag,
Emma On Relationships Call In Show, the Burak Hotline, and the
WikiPhone, participants contribute content to websites by calling the
site and leaving a voice message that is accessible online.
Implementing these systems has given me an opportunity to reflect on
the power of performance in online participatory media. An inherent
part of entertainment and media, performance creates potentially
meaningful interactions through the raw, intimate and playful
engagement of participants. However, designing systems that require
participatory performance is hazardous: performance requires a great
deal of courage on the part of the performer, which can discourage
participation. On the other hand, performing members and online
audiences alike respond positively to this style of participation.
Watching one person shrug off self-consciousness to perform can be an
incentive for others to do the same.
The other half of the experiments described are participatory but do
not require performance on the part of the people to engage with the
system. These projects include Rain, OpenBrand, OPENSTUDIO, and Tiny.
These non-performative participatory projects engage participants
through other creative means – drawing, creating soundscapes and
reacting to advertising in clever ways. Because performance is not a
prerequisite of participation, they are at once a less threatening and
a more familiar way for participants to express themselves without
leaving comfortable territory.
Playful Systems
One commonality linking the performative and non-performative systems
is play. Each project makes strategic use of play in its own way. Some
projects engage participants in competition using tools that reduce
expression to primitive forms. OPENSTUDIO, for example, features a
Draw tool that requires members to draw with a mouse or stylus. The
Draw tool registers human gestures in raw form, allowing no refinement
of the lumpy, misshapen forms after they are made. Moreover, the lack
of an undo function encourages members to accept accidents as a part
of the process of drawing. Drawing made with the Draw tool evince none
of the refinement of other popular drawing programs, whose control
points and bézier curves smooth lines and leave no trace of the human
hand that made them. In OPENSTUDIO, all members are subject to the
same limitations provided by the Draw tool, which makes it easier to
overcome self consciousness and diminishes their concern about how
their creations appear in the eyes of others. By relinquishing their
ability to control their output in the ways to which they are
accustomed, members must overcome their egos in order to operate
within the parameters of the system.
Similarly, Tiny reduces creative expression to a 13 x 13 grid of
pixels. Participants post the best icon that they are able to design
within those parameters. Competition is not formalized in either
OPENSTUDIO or Tiny, but outdoing other contributions on the site
provides a strong incentive for using the site.
The Burak Hotline limits expression through the use of the telephone
for a specific purpose. Asking members to call and tell the public why
they should receive buraks encourages participants to outdo previous
posts in order to be rewarded more buraks than other contestants. In
practice, nearly all participants resorted to comedy in an attempt to
beg for buraks.
The way play functions in the systems described above can be clarified
by looking at popular summer camp games. In games such as the potato
sack race or the dizzy race, children climb into sacks or spin in
circles before running to the far end of a field. These handicaps
remove natural ability, evening the playing field and diminishing
competition in favor of the collective experience of participation. In
short, play builds community, emphasizing empathy instead of personal
gain.
Another way play is expressed in the projects is through an irreverent
attitude toward serious subject matter. Bertolt Brecht noted that
inspiring empathy and pleasure through humor can be an effective way
to address serious concerns. In Emma On Relationships, Emma initiates
a conversation about relationship issues among college students. While
the tone is deadpan comedy, the issues discussed include birth
control, body image, and straight and gay relationships. Other systems
make it possible for people to rewrite serious content in humorous
ways. In WikiPhone, the content is political speeches and news clips.
In OpenBrand, participants rewrite banner advertisements, often using
humor to highlight the shortcomings of products and the way they are
marketed. Jane McGonigal, who describes play as “an embodied, social
and highly consequential ritual, always already grounded in the
practices of everyday life,” uses alternative reality games to inspire
discussion about issues, such as societal violence and oil consumption
(McGonigal 1). Engaging play can help us overcome our fear of self
consciousness, opening up a space of critical dialogue without the
fear of seeming ridiculous. Play can be used as a vehicle to discuss
serious subject in a fruitful way.
Design Axes of Online Participation
Looking at all of the participatory projects of the thesis together,
it is possible to identify three major axes pertinent to the design of
participatory systems. All participatory systems must negotiate these
axes, falling somewhere between these two extreme positions on either
end. The three axes can be described as follows:
* introverted vs. extroverted
* goal-oriented vs. aimless
* event-based vs. sustained
In practice, any participatory project will contain gradations of both
extremes, but identifying the extreme ends of the axes is instructive
as it tells us about the factors governing participatory systems. The
axes are not mutually exclusive – projects are governed by all three
simultaneously, and their intersections also provide valuable
information about member interactions.
AXIS 1 / Introverted v. Extroverted
Like a parasite to its host, extroverted systems depend on others,
while introverted systems survive completely on their own, without
direct affiliation to anything outside themselves. This section will
locate the projects along a continuum between extroverted or
introverted in order to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each
approach.
Extroverted
Participants in extroverted systems operate on content drawn from
sources outside the system. For example, the commentary of OpenBrand
is spread virally on existing banner advertisements across the web.
Likewise, WikiPhone streams content from YouTube and other sites,
encouraging participants to rewrite published content drawn from these
sources. Both systems give individuals power to rewrite content in a
public, unfiltered, creative forum, by creating a feedback loop with
outside entities. Often extroverted systems can establish a link
between big entities to small ones through this exchange. OpenBrand,
for instance, inspires dialogue between corporate advertisers and
individuals who rewrite their advertisements. WikiPhone disrupts
current modes of production by borrowing content from YouTube.
Extroverted systems implemented by others include Google Will Eat
Itself (GWEI), a popular example that acts like a parasite and takes
advantage of vulnerabilities in Google’s AdSense program, disrupting
modes of economic control. Mashups are also good examples of
extroverted systems, aiming to combine existing systems to produce new
entities.
From these examples it is clear that extroverted systems almost
inevitably raise copyright issues. Taking content from sites across
the Internet without permission makes trademark infringement a
constant danger. Opening up new spaces for creativity by exposing
protected content, these extroverted systems can redefine power roles
in the creation of content, activating consumers and raising important
questions about the ownership of information. Moreover, as
participants pull content from various sources on the web, they often
confront the topical issues that comprise the content. This engagement
in the world is another positive attribute of extroverted systems,
bringing to mind Habermas’ concept of communicative action, in which
members of a community join together in a debate centered around
published cultural material (Habermas 197). Extroverted systems can be
an effective way to create critical dialogue about topical issues
among participants.
Introverted
At the opposite pole of the axis are introverted systems, which build
communities that do not refer directly to anything outside of system
itself. Introverted systems are generally insular, as their name
implies, and do not latch onto existing communities. Introverted
systems are exclusionary by nature: even if they have an open
invitation policy, once members have joined, they are in and everyone
else is out. Although it would appear as if the isolation of these
systems does not offer opportunities for cultural critique, the
opposite is true. In many cases, the safe spaces of introverted
systems are ideal locations in which to engage in cultural critique.
Examples of introverted systems include OPENSTUDIO, which establishes
a closed community where members experiment with ideas about
creativity and economics. Because of its isolation from the rest of
the web, community members are free to experiment with many of the
issues that extroverted systems face, such as copyright infringement
and the value of art. Its relative isolation does not prevent serious
political discussions from occurring in OPENSTUDIO. These discussions
are carried out through the creation of content using the Draw tool
and the tagging system. Another system utilizing an introspective
approach is EOR, which uses a world of its own to take up issues of
sexuality and femininity safely. Finally, Tiny and the Burak Hotline
are introverted systems that provide a space for play without
concerning participants with outside issues. Even Tiny, whose 13 X 13
pixel grid would seem to preclude political expression, inspired a
heated visual debate when one participant began posting drawings of
swastikas and other inflammatory material.
Introverted systems often act as microcosms of the outside world.
Granting participants the ability to act in safe spaces according to
experimental rules allows people to define and test their own
identities, controlling their own reputations through their
contributions. At best, introverted systems can allow participants to
experiment with limited consequences in a safe community.
AXIS 2 / Goal-oriented v. Aimless
The goal-oriented vs. aimless axis describes whether the system takes
on a specific issue to generate directed dialogue about it (goal-
oriented), or simply tries to generate a broad range of content
without dictating the subject area (aimless). Even the so called
aimless systems are motivated by a higher order objective which is
usually to generate as much content as possible. In service of this
objective aimless systems often cast a wide net, rarely eliminating
submissions on the basis of content. The more narrowly defined goal-
oriented systems can be a productive way to generate dialogue about
specific social or political issues, but on the other hand, aimless
systems often lead to unexpected uses that prove beneficial. Both
approaches have advantages that will be discussed in the following
section.
Aimless
Like a honeycomb providing the structure into which individual bees
deposit honey, aimless systems supply the framework into which
participants contribute content. While aimless systems often must
privilege certain forms over others for practical reasons (e.g.
YouTube is primarily oriented toward video), they solicit
contributions from participants without a strong ulterior objective or
purpose. The designer of such a system has implicit power over
participants through system design, but this power is not expressed
through overt content selection. Typically, the organization of these
systems is flat, meaning that all participants within the system are
roughly equal to each other.
The issue most commonly raised in the design and implementation of
aimless participatory systems regards authorship. Authorship in
participatory systems can be described on two levels: authorship on
the part of the system creator, who decides to make an online
participatory space to begin with, and authorship on the part of the
participants, who contribute content to the system once it is up and
running. In aimless systems, contributors garner the most recognition;
the system designer generally remains in the background. By way of
example, the creators of YouTube, an aimless system, made their first
public appearance on the site only the day after it was sold. Aimless
sites create the feeling that the authorship of participants is more
important than the system designer because participants are free to
contribute material whose content is not overtly dictated by the
system designers.
Aimless systems tend to be democratic or flat, granting all
participants equal rights and powers. For example, in OPENSTUDIO, all
member have the same privileges, starting with 25 buraks and
accumulating more or less wealth based on their activity in the
system. Ideally, these systems function as a sounding board, in which
the contributions of participants point to the issues most pertinent
to them, rather than the system creator overtly imposing her own
priorities. Aimless systems are open-ended and can indicate the values
and beliefs of its participants through the content that they
contribute.
Goal-oriented
Goal-oriented systems are characterized by strong ulterior objectives
on the part of the designer, who seeks to address specific issues by
soliciting a narrow range of content from participants. This control
results in a hierarchical arrangement, in which the author of the
system expresses overt control or delegates this control to specific
participants, who then exercise it over others.
Like aimless systems, goal-oriented systems raise important issues
regarding authorship. Typically, these highly scripted projects
diminish the importance of authorship on the part of the participants,
due to the control that the system designer expresses over content.
This control can result in hierarchical systems that turn participants
into anonymous semi-contributors. For example, blogs establish a
structure in which a single person is in control of the content, with
all other contributors restricted to the role of commentators. Call in
radio shows, in which the control of the host is never in question
even as she invites participation from the audience, illustrates this
principle. Emma On Relationships has a similar distribution of power,
inviting participation through a limited commenting forum that never
challenges her ability to dictate the issues the show will tackle
next. Likewise, PLWire Telephone Tag invites outsiders to call and
respond to content posted on the PLW website, participating only in a
limited way. The hierarchical structure of goal-oriented systems may
function as a barrier of entry, as participants lack a sense of
control over the material to which they are responding. However, goal-
oriented sites rarely suffer from the formlessness that can affect
aimless sites. They are often effective methods of addressing specific
issues within a community.
The goal-oriented vs. aimless axis highlights one of the principle
difficulties of participatory media: making sense of a multitude of
voices. Aimless systems represent the truest expression of the
fundamentally democratic aspect of participatory media, in which every
participant is given an equal voice. However, it can be difficult to
distinguish intelligible speech from the many overlapping
conversations in a crowded room where everyone is speaking at once.
Goal-oriented systems differentiate the signal from the noise by
dictating the topic of conversation. Unfortunately, by limiting the
range of acceptable expression, goal-oriented systems short-circuit
the democratic potential of participatory media in exchange for
directing participants toward a clear goal.
An initially aimless site that arrives at objectives by examining the
contributions of the participants might be one way to negotiate
between the poles of the goal-oriented vs. aimless axis. This approach
has been implemented successfully in open source projects such as the
development of Linux, but has yet to be tested extensively in
participatory performance media.
AXES 3 / Event-based v. Sustained
The final axis refers to the way participatory projects exist in time;
either as short event-based actions, or in a more sustained,
continuing manner.
Event-based
Event-based systems require real-time interaction between people. The
roots of these systems lie in the happenings discussed in the
background section. The happenings were brought about by artists who
sought a direct and powerful artistic practice whose ephemeral product
could not be bought or sold. The events occurring in online
participatory space have a predetermined beginning, middle and end,
and take place over a relatively short period of time with expiration
dates, all of which distinguish them from sustained events on the
Internet, which often unfold over years and have no clearly defined
time-structure. Historically, most event-based systems involved
synchronous interaction between participants, but online spaces are
changing this by enforcing norms of asynchronous socializing. Rain and
Misty Dawn are traditional event-based exhibitions. Misty Dawn was
installed in a gallery for a fixed amount of time. The power of event-
based systems is in the collective -- many people come together to
experience the same event at the same time. Real-time systems lend
themselves to collaboration, as people create and react to the efforts
of other in a swift, intuitive way. WikiPhone attempts to capitalize
on the power of event-based systems by inviting people to collaborate
simultaneously from various locations. Event-based systems aspire to
function like physical meeting places, such as cafés, concert halls or
galleries.
The relatively short periods of time in which creation takes place in
event-based systems have the advantage of focussing the energy of
participants. However, because the memory of a significant event can
rarely match the experience of the event itself, the power of event-
based pieces often diminishes rapidly once they are completed. The
limited duration of event-based artworks was their primary appeal for
many early participatory artists, who sought to prevent the sale of
artworks as commodities on the art market. However, the same
ephemerality of event-based pieces make it difficult to develop
lasting relationships.
Sustained
In contrast to the fleeting nature of event-based participatory
systems, sustained systems operate over a long period of time,
unfolding through the unpredictable accumulation of asynchronous
interactions. Sustained systems intentionally encourage these
asynchronous interactions in order to provide a framework for
powerful, long-term relationships. All of the online experiments
described in the thesis are examples of sustained systems, except for
WikiPhone and Burak Hotline, which contain elements of both extremes.
For instance, OPENSTUDIO aims to create a community through
asynchronous interactions between people. The most lasting
relationships appear to have been developed through the exchange of
multiple drawings over a period of months. EOR is another sustained
system, in which participants return to the web site to view and
respond to new episodes. The Burak Hotline exists on the middle ground
of the axis between sustained and event-driven systems. The project
uses the lasting community of OPENSTUDIO in a semi-sustained contest.
Burak Hotline may have been more successful if it had been event-
based, such that members of OPENSTUDIO were only invited to call for a
short, one time offer, similar to a holiday sale.
Sustained systems can become stale, stalling out or withering away,
like any long-term relationship. However, sustained relationships can
also strengthen over time through the accumulation of small actions by
individual members. Deployed effectively, sustained systems have the
potential to create strong community through the agglomeration of
multiple asynchronous encounters.
It seems that the online spaces with the most potential combine both
event-based and sustained systems. This is the case with WikiPhone,
which is a long term sustained meeting ground for event-based
collaboration, offering the most potential for community building in
online spaces.
In this chapter, we have concluded that playful systems strengthen
ties between participants, building community. We defined three axes
and located the projects along each of them in order to develop an
understanding of the principles governing the design of participatory
media. By identifying the advantages of various approaches, this
analysis lays the groundwork for future research into participatory
systems.
Chapter Five: Conclusion
The creation and distribution of online content is changing. Remixes
and mashups are traded back and forth among participants in a
seemingly endless loop that at once bewilders and hints at the
potential of the new modes of creation and distribution.
From the trading of smaller and smaller pieces of information, the
next logical step is to network the act of real-time creation itself.
Instead of trading bits of completed creative capital, we will trade
information as we are creating it. The move toward collaborative
creativity will depend as much on participation from sources dispersed
across the web as it will on the software and network architectures to
support it.
Participatory media capitalize on the growing trend toward independent
production by formalizing the structure of participation among these
dispersed groups. Encouraging participants to contribute content to
publicly accessible sites occurs for various reasons. It can be the
purpose of generating traffic to the sites where content is posted,
for its own sake or for economic reasons, e.g. to sell advertisement
space on the sites generating the traffic, or for more idealistic
ends, such as providing new spaces for people to engage collectively
in the creation of culture, or providing spaces where participants can
gather around common interests, and engage in critical dialogue about
them. Perhaps it is possible that creativity and commerce could merge
in a way that would permit these activities to occur simultaneously.
At the moment, however, it would seems that the majority of online
participatory sites are focused more on generating hits than on the
more idealistic ends that could realize the social potential of these
systems. The participatory art movement of the 1950s and 60s
demonstrated that performance and participation can be a powerful
medium for addressing contemporary social and political issues. This
will only increase with the broadening of the base of participants,
from the small number of people that were engaged in the rarefied art
world to the millions of people that are online every day in
contemporary online communities, combined with recent technological
advances.
Although it is tempting to see online participatory spaces as the
manifestation of something altogether new, these spaces represent a
new location for an activity as old as human society: the collective
elaboration of meaning. Online participatory spaces are the
continuation of a public sphere where society mediates its disputes
and examines its values. We looked at a number of creative online
participatory projects. The projects explore the potential of these
new online participatory spaces by engaging with them directly,
providing frameworks in which members can gather to engage in creative
acts. These playful experiments establish participatory performance
spaces online where people can discuss and critique social and
political structures. We can distill the following design axes for
online participatory media from the experiments:
1. Introverted v. extroverted Introverted systems that become
microcosms of the outside world, in contrast to extroverted systems,
which draw material from elsewhere on the web.
2. Goal-oriented v. aimless Systems that aim to achieve a specific
goal, in contrast to aimless systems whose primary objective is to
encourage the maximum amount of expression from the greatest number of
people.
3. Event-based v. sustained Event-based systems that take place in
synchronous online encounters, in contrast to sustained systems that
unfold over longer periods of asynchronous interactions.
The hope is that the outcome of the experiments will lead to a better
understanding of the design principals governing participatory
performance online, in order to better capitalize on the powerful
impact that these systems can have as vehicles enabling social and
political change.
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Acknowledgements
This thesis is about collaboration, and it is fitting to speak of the
project itself as a collaboration. The thesis was written with Joe
Dahmen, whose intelligence and enthusiasm for the theory and practice
of participatory art were instrumental in formulating these thoughts.
Many of the projects were developed with my colleague at the Media Lab
Philip DeCamp, who taught me a great deal about technology and has
been a valuable collaborator as well as a good friend.
The artistic vision of my advisor and friend John Maeda is a constant
source of inspiration.
I would like to thank my thesis readers, Ute Meta Bauer and Walter
Bender for their inspiring conversations and feedback.
I am grateful to the members of the Physical Language Workshop at the
MIT Media Lab with whom I have shared creative ideas and work: Burak
Arikan, Kelly Norton, Takashi Okamoto, Brent Fitzgerald, Kate
Hollenbach, Kyle Buza, Luis Blackaller, Noah Paessel, Carlos Rocha,
and Henry Holtzman. To Lab friends: Noah Vawter, Kelly Dobson, Ben
Dalton, Hayes Raffle, Amanda Parkes, Cati Vaucelle, Josh Lifton, James
Patten and Tad Hirsch. To the professors who have guided me: Chris
Csikszentmihalyi, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Hiroshi Ishii, Deb Roy, Tod
Machover and Joe Paradiso.
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