[-empyre-] question about online writing
Green Jo-Anne
jo at turbulence.org
Sat Oct 31 02:37:03 EST 2009
Hi All,
Anna's point about the "shared project" prompts me to add that, for
us, the sharing began more than two years ago at the organizational
level. We were never in this alone; the project has 4 partners
(though, regrettably, two of them have been absent since the project
launched).
This month's discussion on -empyre- is the result of one platform
lending its resources to help another get on its feet.
We also have a committee whose members were selected based on
discipline, geography, and language, as well as their affiliations to
other organizations. Our hope was that they would bring their own
networks to the project. So far, some have, some have not.
One of the chapter proposals implied that it would be bringing a
ready-made "community" to the project. It was one of the reasons it
was chosen, but it has not delivered.
We had an open competition.
We made the criteria for selection as inclusive as possible.
The "book" is available for free.
It is under a CC License that allows anyone to re-publish or remix
the chapters/translations as long as they're properly attributed and
not for commercial purposes.
There are at least three more chapters in the works: authors who want
to experiment with collaborative writing and other tools are free to
do so.
Finally, I'm excited to announce that The Immediated Now has already
been translated into Chinese (I'm hoping to make it available on
Networked by the end of the weekend).
Warm Regards,
Jo
On Oct 29, 2009, at 6:02 PM, Anna Munster wrote:
> Many thanks to Marco and Adam for their comments about the
> differences and shades of writing models vis a vis cathedral vs.
> bazaar. This brings me to an issue or two about the 'bazaar', which
> is essentially a marketplace (albeit one that has gone through many
> different political/historical/cultural economies).
>
> I have never been comfortable with the model of the bazaar as an
> alternative to the cathedral even if metaphorically it provides a
> great critique of cathedralism! This is precisely because it
> implies (and has been taken up most obviously via the ongoing
> discussion of the 'gift economy' in information societies) as a
> great place where you can 'trade' ideas, where you can get and
> strike a 'bargain' etc.
>
> The bazaar as it has most popularly entered new media discourse and
> culture is about the marketplace of ideas, labour, business etc.
> It's all through Shirky for example. I don't find this provides
> much of a 'model' for collaboration either quite frankly. It's
> deeply rooted in utilitarian economics and thinks about
> collaboration as what I give to you, I get back in some other form.
> Altruism explicable due to ultimate individual gain....
>
> Maria mentioned the shift from atomised and solitary subjectivities
> of writing to distributed and collectivised subjectivities and
> sited Chris Bowers experience of blogging. But I'm not convinced of
> a generalised shift to collectivity via new media precisely because
> of the continuity of the marketplace as an organiser of many of our
> modes of online exchange (or at least as an account and ground for
> how and why we exchange).
>
> But what Marco has also pointed to is somewhat different and I
> guess is also something Adam you are suggesting comes up around
> specific community produced FLOSS books, and that is the 'shared
> project'. Brian Holmes wrote about this in relation to the
> differences between networks, swarms and the creation of 'micro'
> worlds. (http://multitudes.samizdat.net/Network-swarm-
> microstructure). he argues that a shared ethico-aesthetic horizon
> must be present to go beyond 'network' or 'swarm' and to actually
> give coherence to self-organised groupings together of people via
> distributed networks. For me this is what differentiates and makes
> something collective.
>
> This incidentally is what I as also trying to talk about when I
> spoke about the cosmological or 'world-making' dimensions of such
> projects as ShiftSpace and the whole shift to using Firefox plugins
> among artists/designers/developers that we see going on with much
> networked art and design right now in my chapter. Perhaps Marco
> this is also what you meant by networking also involving a
> community of practice?
>
> best
> 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 adam hyde
> [adam at xs4all.nl]
> Sent: Friday, 30 October 2009 1:40 AM
> To: Marco Deseriis
> Cc: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] question about online writing
>
> On Wed, 2009-10-28 at 21:56 -0400, Marco Deseriis wrote:
>> Hi Adam, :-)
>
> Hey Marco :)
>
>>
>> So I want to ask you a question. In your experience with the Floss
>> Manuals Foundation, how many times have you noticed that the
>> workshops
>> you run are actually driven by a shared project? In other words,
>> do you
>> think that the "HowTos" can create communities *beyond* the
>> hackers and
>> the technologists (who, by definition, are interested in rules and
>> practices of manipulation) or do you think that in the case of art,
>> activism, design, architecture, and even the hard sciences the
>> sparking
>> motivation has to be external to an interest in
>> pragmatics-for-its-own-sake?
>>
>
> Many thanks for the points and the question. I think you are asking
> me a
> question that is beyond my experience to answer. I actually dont know
> much about the demographic of the project beyond those individuals
> that
> make themselves known to me or to the community. There are many
> contributors, and some quite regular, that I have never met and I
> don't
> know what their background is. I obviously can't speak then about the
> motivations of the majority of contributors because of this. From the
> small subset I do know, there are many artists involved, designers,
> educators, radio enthusiasts, free content evangelists etc. The
> motivations vary, as they would for any open & free content
> project. The
> most interesting motivations to me are those that sign in under a
> pseudonym - there is no hope in identifying them although they might
> make large contributions. What motivates them? I would love to know.
>
> To bring the focus back to the networkedbook - I find it very
> interesting that projects in FLOSS Manuals that are born by a
> community
> have a broader contribution base. There are a number of books in FLOSS
> Manuals that are 'born' by an individual. They are excellent books,
> but
> we have more that are of the same quality whose genesis lies in 'the
> community' or a small niche orientated group (we have more community
> written books largely because it takes a single author 5 months - 2
> years to produce a book that the FM community can produce in 2-5
> days).
> Those books that are instigated by an individual, and who could be
> identified as having 'an author', have _far_ less contributions than
> those that are created by community (this is my observation by
> anecdote,
> no metrics I'm afraid).
>
> It seems very true to me that if content wants to flourish in the
> bazaar
> it must be native to the bazaar. I believe this has a lot to do with
> mandate. Those that wish to contribute will feel more likely to
> have the
> mandate to do so if the book was created by community. Those coming
> from
> the Cathedral will be largely ignored because no one knows how to
> interact with them (this is an over simplification of course). This is
> why I find the NetworkedBook project problematic. It seems to be
> attempting to enter into bazaar space, but with Cathedral attitudes.
> Hence the form will be 'commented on' but not collaborated on. I
> personally think there is _much_ more to be gained by exploring
> collaborative content production than by exploring 'author -
> commentary'
> dynamics. However, I understand there are many shades and each to
> their
> own, of course.
>
> adam
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> Best,
>> Marco
>>
>> adam hyde wrote:
>>> i have a very basic question to the turbulence crew. I must first
>>> say,
>>> I'm not an academic so I would really appreciate a plain text
>>> answer and
>>> not have to use the postmodern dictionary to parse....
>>>
>>> ...what part of the Networked Book project is not replicating the
>>> politics and top-down processes of the established publishing
>>> industry?
>>> I see the mechanics as (slightly) different from what most
>>> 'publishers'
>>> use these days. But the fact that you 'use a wiki' or a blog to
>>> create a
>>> collection of long from texts does not seem to me to be tackling
>>> anything interesting. Comment Press I like, but this is
>>> interesting an
>>> out-of-the box plugin for wordpress. What are you adding to this?
>>>
>>> When it comes down to it, I think that the process inherent in your
>>> model is more conservative than most wikis since you have very
>>> clearly
>>> named authorial hierarchy such as "Lichty › Art in the Age of
>>> DataFlow".
>>> There still seems to be a very standard authorship model in place
>>> and
>>> you have not investigated how the networked environment can
>>> really break
>>> established modes of textual production.
>>>
>>>> From the long view, it seems you have a mistake of not knowing
>>>> if you
>>> are in the Cathedral or the Bazaar. Which is it?
>>>
>>>
>>> adam
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 2009-10-28 at 12:49 +1100, Anna Munster wrote:
>>>
>>>> I don't want to sound like a fascist here...but as moderator I
>>>> am supposed to keep people on topic on the empyre list as it is
>>>> a list devoted to particular topics by the month.
>>>>
>>>> The question has been raised about whether networks involve a
>>>> sustainable form of future energy. This is tangentially related
>>>> to the topic at hand insofar as reading/writing/making online
>>>> does involve consuming energy.
>>>>
>>>> However, I'd rather not have an explosion of comments about
>>>> networks and energy use etc in a topic where we are looking
>>>> primarily at networked writing/reading UNLESS there are salient
>>>> points to be made about the relation of each to the other.
>>>>
>>>> Just a general note about the fact that I will moderate an
>>>> onslaught of off-topic posts IF they come!
>>>>
>>>> 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 Julian Oliver
>>>> [julian at julianoliver.com]
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, 28 October 2009 10:37 AM
>>>> To: soft_skinned_space
>>>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] a Question
>>>>
>>>> ..on Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 10:20:19PM +0000, sdv at krokodile.co.uk
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I may have missed this during the past month but has anyone here
>>>>> actually talked about the cost of networks and whether the
>>>>> network forms
>>>>> are sustainable ?
>>>>>
>>>> If there's something I don't grokk here it's the strangely time-
>>>> less,
>>>> willy-nilly projection of the term 'sustainable'. From when to
>>>> when and what to
>>>> what is sustainable?
>>>>
>>>> 'Sustainability' is a concept that refers to a temporary control
>>>> over energetic
>>>> decay that favours one or more (inter)dependent organisms.
>>>>
>>>> We live on a sphere in a void and we're breeding like rabbits.
>>>> Let's talk about
>>>> minimising inevitable harm (a 'sensible harm'?) rather than
>>>> invoking the myth of
>>>> 'sustainability' no?
>>>>
>>>> My 2 watts,
>>>>
>>>> Julian
>>>>
>>>> P.S For all the hair-dryers, needles, routers, castles, deep-sea
>>>> probes, Zaha
>>>> Hadids, Ikea bookshelves and false teeth made, it's my suspicion
>>>> that the Earth
>>>> has not grown any heavier and nor has it grown any lighter.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Julian Oliver
>>>> home: New Zealand
>>>> based: Berlin, Germany
>>>> currently: Berlin, Germany
>>>> about: http://julianoliver.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Anna Munster wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I'd now like to bring Anna Gibbs and Maria Angel into the
>>>>>> discussion, perhaps as 'other voices' and I've intro'd them
>>>>>> below. They aren't authorial contributors to Networked but
>>>>>> hopefully they might become contributors anyway!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm wondering if either of you might comment upon the question
>>>>>> of reading new media/networked writing. We've had a lot of
>>>>>> discussion the difficulty of reading dense theoretical writing
>>>>>> in online environments and hence of people participating in
>>>>>> the Networked project. Do either of you have any comments
>>>>>> about the screen (broadly speaking) as a reading interface and/
>>>>>> or the role and place of the reader in collaborative and
>>>>>> participatory writing?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> best Anna
>>>>>>
>>>>>> BIOGRAHIES
>>>>>> Anna Gibbs is Associate Professor in the Writing and Society
>>>>>> Research Group at the University of Western Sydney. A
>>>>>> specialist in affect theory, she works across the fields of
>>>>>> cultural, textual and media studies and her most recent
>>>>>> publications are in Cultural Studies Review, Interrogating the
>>>>>> War on Terror (ed Deborah Staines) and forthcoming in The
>>>>>> Affect Reader (eds Greg Seigworth and Melissa Gregg). A writer
>>>>>> of experimental fiction, she also collaborates with visual
>>>>>> artists and has recently curated an exhibition on Art, Writing
>>>>>> and the Book. She is currently working on a project about
>>>>>> Writing in the Media Culture with Maria Angel, and together
>>>>>> they have published essays in Literature and Sensation (ed
>>>>>> Anthony Uhlman and Helen Groth) and forthcoming in Beyond the
>>>>>> Screen (eds Joergen Schafer and Peter Gendolla).
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Maria Angel is a Senior Lecturer in the School of
>>>>>> Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney,
>>>>>> Australia. Current research interests include the
>>>>>> transformation of literary genres in new media contexts,
>>>>>> theories of writing, memory, and corporeality. She has
>>>>>> published essays in the areas of literary aesthetics and
>>>>>> visual rhetoric. More recently she has worked on the
>>>>>> convergence of theories of affect with writing and new media.
>>>>>> Her current collaboration with Anna Gibbs theorises the
>>>>>> emergent field of literary writing in digital media and they
>>>>>> are currently completing a manuscript At the Interface:
>>>>>> Writing, Memory, and Motion.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 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
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> empyre forum
>>>>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> empyre forum
>>>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> empyre forum
>>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> empyre forum
>>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> _______________________________________________
> 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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