[-empyre-] An "other" view of writing, performance
Green Jo-Anne
jo at turbulence.org
Wed Oct 7 00:56:24 EST 2009
Hi Anna,
Actually, this feature is part of Networked. If you get a whole lot
of comments and want to make substantial changes to your chapter, you
would put up a new post. Once the new version is up, readers will be
able to compare it to the older version.
Patrick's chapter is set up as a wiki, not a blog. So one can revise
the text oneself (as a reader), and the revised version then takes
the place of the first version. Again, you can compare the various
versions side by side, just as one can on a wiki.
Jo
On Oct 6, 2009, at 12:01 AM, Anna Munster wrote:
> Interesting points about print. archiving and revision to text
> coming up here from Patrick and Jo. One point I'd like to raise on
> this is that the wikipedia comparison may not be the best one to
> Networked and that has to do with the technical architecture being
> deployed. Wikipedia has the advantage of being a wiki which means
> that it also allows for an archiving of its own textual history.
> While its true that events change its most recent text, it's also
> the case that one can return to older histories/archives of the
> entry at hand. In fact this is something I spend a lot of time
> pointing out to my students as one of its most salient features and
> I get them to spend time with which and what version of information
> they are using.
>
> I can't see this kind of feature on Networked up front. That means
> the process of changing its text is not a publicly archived one and
> hence the changes and differences are not available as part of its
> history to the public accessing it. The changes, then, are for the
> authors more than anything....
> Just something I thought I'd raise in terms of what/why one chooses
> to design with when writing in a networked context
> cheers
> Anna
>
> A/Prof. Anna Munster
> Director of Postgraduate Research (Acting)
> Deputy Director Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics
> School of Art History and Art Education
> College of Fine Arts
> UNSW
> P.O. Box 259
> Paddington
> NSW 2021
> 612 9385 0741 (tel)
> 612 9385 0615(fax)
> a.munster at unsw.edu.au
> ________________________________________
> From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-
> bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Green Jo-Anne
> [jo at turbulence.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, 6 October 2009 10:28 AM
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] An "other" view of writing, performance
>
> Hi Patrick,
>
> The other voices are not those of the authors; they're (hopefully)
> those of the "readers."
>
> The open history is meant to allow both unknown artists/authors to
> add their voices, and for the original authors to revise their
> texts over time.
>
> The present book is not the future book ... unless no one
> participates in updating and revising it. One of the most striking
> features of Wikipedia is how quickly history is revised as real-
> time events impact various texts -- a Tsunami wipes out three
> villages in Indonesia; the Indonesia page on Wikipedia is
> immediately and forever changed. Ted Kennedy dies; within moments,
> his Wikipedia page reflects his passing; tenses are changed; date
> of death is filled in.
>
> Networked can be this kind of book.
>
> Some parts of your essay will not change, because they are fixed in
> time. Sections that refer to a more recent past may change to
> reflect insights you've gained from critical distance.
>
> The print version is a big maybe. I don't see any reason to print
> the texts as they are. On the other hand, if people take the time
> to argue with and add to the original texts, the possibility of
> printing a version 2.0 and, later, a version 3.0 would be worthwhile.
>
> One last point. Some of these texts are inaccessible to many in our
> own community. It's not that they're illiterate, it's that the
> language is rather dense. One can admonish readers for not being
> intellectually sophisticated, or one can learn to communicate with
> a wider demographic. My personal preference is for the latter.
>
> Warm Regards,
> Jo
>
>
> On Oct 5, 2009, at 9:59 AM, Lichty, Patrick wrote:
>
> I have been quiet in the conversation (and on many of the lists in
> the last year or two) in order to listen more and talk less.
>
> It's very strange; some of the points that have been offered in the
> last week seem to be larger and smaller ones.
>
> In regards to the idea of "other" histories, I am a classical Libra
> personality on this. The Networked book does create a salient
> metaphor by framing discourse within a medium and setting its
> processes upon it. In so doing, the project acts as a multi-tiered
> probe into technoculture, and sets up an alternate methodoilogy
> that suits the authors quite well. In regards to other voices; I
> might say that most of us are "regulars" to the New Media scene,
> and therein lies the conundrum, but unless someone wants to run
> with that, I will probably say that the 'otherness' of our
> discourse in the book is with approach and methodology.
>
> I also agree with Johannes that there are differing expectations
> amongst the creators of the project. Johannes rightly states that
> in the age where information is rising at an exponential rate, how
> does one validate the necessity for reflection on any text or
> another, or to digest the Networked Book and reply to it in the
> space of a month? This is parallel to what I am getting at in my
> essay, that in an age of information overload, artists and writers
> are forced to read index tags and use trending algorithms or that
> texts must be legible at the seventh-grade level, given the average
> literacy in the US (but I am being polemic).
>
> What I am also interested in regarding some of the ideas regarding
> performance and media. We can go back to the death of the author
> (barthes) and the text as performance, and the performance of
> completion in reading (Foucault), but I might be more interested in
> a performance of situation of discourse or habitus. The Networked
> Book responds to a culture, and tries to reflect upon it in a
> McLuhanesque marriage of medium and message. Perhaps the
> performative elements are the call to response, as well as the
> presentation of the propositional form of the book.
>
> Lastly, regarding history, I had a great talk witht he people at
> the Long Now Foundation regarding the Rosetta project, which is an
> archive of 15,000 texts of different languages etched into a metal
> disc. We live in a time where languages are being lost by the
> month, and as more media is being archived digitally (an inherently
> media ecologically unsustainable practice), I agree with the Long
> Now that we will enter a "Digital Dark Age", in which digital
> archives will either degrade, crash, or simply not migrate over
> decades. Therefore, i am very grateful, and appreciative that the
> book will be published after a year, as atoms trump bits every time.
>
> In regards to this, another family member (a tenured historian) was
> talking to me this weekend about her difficulty in writing a
> history of artists that were not dead yet, and that their context
> keeps changing over time. The traditional baseline for historians
> versus theorists is that one writes about those who are dead/long
> inactive, and the other not. While I replied that one merely has to
> localize their discourse (set a very tight context), her problem
> compared to the discussion here seems as if we are trying to write
> histories concurrent with the events, which is problematic to say
> the least. It is the greates exercise in control - desiring to
> control one's own historical context before the other historians
> get to you. But them one can look to computational culture and
> Engelbart's idea of the "bootstrap", or pulling together a project
> from the grass roots... I see what we are doing here as an
> important experiment to which any proclamations, or declamations
> about its rel
> ative worth will only be borne out in time.
>
> To refer to Johannes, who has time? Well, while I think there were
> expectations for the book to be a viral sensation, I am much more
> concerned with it being an importane experiment and good solid book
> on the subject, a tome that will sit on the shelf with proper
> gravitas, in a period early enough in the history of new media that
> it will demand attention.
>
> In my opinion, all one can do is to present a proposition that
> others will see, and hopefully that will resonate with others.
> Throw a log on the fire, and hope it burns.
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au<mailto:empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
> Jo-Anne Green
> Co-Director
> New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.
> 917.548.7780 or 617.522.3856
> Turbulence: http://turbulence.org
> Networked_Performance: http://turbulence.org/blog
> Networked_Music_Review: http://turbulence.org/networked_music_review
> Networked: http://networkedbook.org
> New American Radio: http://somewhere.org
> Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade_boston
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Jo-Anne Green
Co-Director
New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.
917.548.7780 or 617.522.3856
Turbulence: http://turbulence.org
Networked_Performance: http://turbulence.org/blog
Networked_Music_Review: http://turbulence.org/networked_music_review
Networked: http://networkedbook.org
New American Radio: http://somewhere.org
Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade_boston
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