Re: [-empyre-] archiving + preservation

[Kenneth Fields <ken@ccom.edu.cn>]

> >
>
> this is a wonderful project, as is Consciousness Reframed. i am 
> particularly
> interested in DAO's approach to collaboration, the development of the 
> dynamic
> media arts knowledge base + the issues of translation that DAO is
> [encountering/intersecting].

As CAW is probably aware, dynamic knowledge bases must have a 
sustainable community. To approach it directly, as I've done, is ok 
when you're around the computer science dept, but it is exactly what 
you shouldn't do when in the public domain. Interface and fantasy 
matter. Illusion is important for ontology making. that is why, 
immersion, involvement and sustainability were my early conclusions. 
And Mutes are more immersive than wikis. If you read the dao archives, 
you will see CAW announced as soon as I learned of it early in the 
year. I was very interested in what you were doing; though I didn't 
know how to extract the structure you were deriving.

-- I only learned this week that your xml file is available. Before, I 
was using a program called voodoo pad (Mac), which is a very lite wiki 
notepad which exports xml. I could cut and paste and markup the text 
easily, by clicking all the nice vocabulary. Instant nodles (sic).

The translation aspect (into chinese - I'm in Beijing) is more 
interesting still. Wiki words, or ontology classes can get pretty 
bizarre, LiquidTangibleThing, InanimateThing-Natural, 
BiologicalLivingObject . As chinese is character/pictorial based, it 
may turn out to be a less cumbersome language for ontologizing. The 
point however, is that concepts should theoretically be stable while 
the language/symbols that specify them do vary. Though there may be 
BiologicalLivingObjects existingExclusivelyInChina - that doesn't 
change the scope of BLO's. While 'things' get tangled in a 
progressively constrained network, the periphery is more likely to 
change and vary. I'm not too sure that your 2d matrix will show this. 
It might have to be 3d; it needs to be able to stretch out and dance in 
order to shake itself into positions of greatest potential for mutation 
when critical thresholds are reached.

How about practical uses of a digital arts ontology? Besides being 
fascinated by emergent images of concept structures, I was thinking 
that curriculum could be complexified. Curriculum could be a matter of 
navigating an ontology in a certain domain, while teachers become 
navigation guides. Education was modeled on the first car factories; 
education, at least starting in the digital arts, could afford 
individualized paths. More modular (one week in the WavePhenomenon 
Node) that is shared by visual and aural artists as well as physicists.

Ken.





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