[-empyre-] shared canvas annoyance, wikis, blogs.

[Jill Walker <jill.walker@uib.no>]

> in relation to text i don't know of anything that does this. i know 
> software that lets me take someone's keyboard entry (ie what they 
> type) and i can control colour, size, etc. but i don't think any of 
> the systems let me manipulate the words you type as words.

Wikis allow this. Not sure if you can do it in total real time, or if 
there's a tiny lag while the document saves my amendments before you 
can amend them.

http://twistedmatrix.com/users/jh.twistd/moin/moin.cgi/WhyWikiWorks
is a Wiki page which both explains what the point of wikis is and 
since it itself is a wiki (made in a wiki?) it demonstrates it as 
well.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?OneMinuteWiki
Quickly explains the concept and lets you try it out.

Bill Seitz has a weblog that's really (or also?) a wiki at 
http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/ThinkingSpace

Here's a nugget I found in a long page about wikis 
(http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb2.pl?WikiLog ) THere are heaps of 
links in here so go to that site to follow them if you want. This 
relates a lot to the community/individuality stuff we've been dipping 
in and out of:

> [W]ikis are worse than WebLogs at encouraging communities. First, 
> they are user hostile, which doesn't help. Second, they are deeply 
> bizarre. WebLogs look like newspapers, wikis don't look like 
> anything (at first; the analogies are interesting). Third, most of 
> the learning curve isn't explicit like the TextFormattingRules, but 
> implicit like the CommunityExpectations; after all, most of the work 
> of a wiki is done via CommunitySolutions. Wikis are too much work 
> and too confusing.
>
> Also, I think the collectivism of a wiki grates against the 
> individualist North Americans that populate the internet. Let's not 
> forget that wikis grew out of Smalltalk culture and consequently 
> rely heavily on (pseudo-)Eastern philosophy. Indeed, until recently, 
> one of the strongest metaphors on WikiWiki was Wiki:WikiMaster, 
> alluding to Zen mastery. I think the SoapBox metaphor that WebLogs 
> wrap around fit more into the deeper social roots of the internet 
> than wikis. On the other hand, from what I can tell, the Japanese 
> MoinMoins are doing really well.
>
> I think you've hit the nail on the head. Wikis are bad at creating 
> individualistic community.

But back to shared canvases:

> enhances performance? i think that's a different or not quite there 
> question. i don't understand the point to be about enhancing 
> performance if i understand enhance to be 'improving' existing forms 
> of performance. i take it to be about new forms of performance, or 
> at least letting performance explore some new ideas/problems and 
> also i guess develop a new medium (distributed collaborative 
> realtime polymedia performance).

As someone who's sat and watched shared canvas performances in a 
net.art cafe with projections on all the walls, I can say that this 
stuff can be incredibly boring to watch. Wallpaper. Perhaps it can 
also be fascinating. But I suspect the fascination is in the 
participation and that perhaps performance is not the right word. I 
think the collaboration between artists is wonderful but that the 
artists are speaking (expressing) to each other, not to the audience. 
Watching other people's MOO conversations without participating is, 
likewise, deathly dull.

Now if you let the "audience" participate too, then you'd be 
approaching networked art.

One of the reasons I like blogs is that they don't a priori shut out 
some of the readers defining them as "audience". Anyone can start a 
blog. ( sign up at http://www.blogger.com - it's free and will take 
you five minutes) Quite possibly, reading blogs without blogging 
yourself is just as boring as watching other peoples' shared canvases.

Jill

PS if anyone has experienced other people's shared canvas or 
videojockeying activities as really and truly interesting, do tell 
me. Maybe I've just had bad luck.
--

Jill Walker / Dept of Humanistic Informatics / University of Bergen / 
5020 Bergen / Norway
http://cmc.uib.no/jill
jill.walker@uib.no