[-empyre-] Reflections on Cross-domain collaboration

[Anne Balsamo]

As Crane/Winet, Jon and I had collaborated on making art that revolved
around language and photography‹tweaking practices from journalism and
tabloid media to create narratives revolving around social issues, electoral
politics, film and pop culture‹and originally fueled by our perceptions of
American life under the Ronald Regan and GHW Bush administrations.  All this
was before we met technology researchers Dale and Scott at Xerox PARC and
the four of us launched a long-term collaboration, for PARC's PAIR Program
after a series of meetings that were a little like a job interview and a lot
like the Dating Game. 



I so much want to write about everything that is happening now. And the
reason I find recent events so resonant starts with the years that the four
of us collaborated on a series of art and technology projects at PARC. Our
collective goal was to engage the public in gallery settings, on the
burgeoning internet, in public spaces and through printed media. The mission
was to explore the channels of communication that existed in the mid-90s‹to
employ them to convey narratives about the world in which we lived and
create new arenas for dialog and discussion.  This was early Web 2.0, of
course, long before Twitter, Facebook.


As I reflect on my years-long collaboration with Jon, Scott and Dale, this
is what I think of: first we (by ³we² I mean the culture at the time)
muddled along designing new technologies‹originating social media. Then,
last year, consumer technology became revolutionary technology. The actions
of the Arab Spring, propelled by social media, transformed a region of the
globe. Activists deployed available technology and created a collaborative
space for organizing dissent.  At this time, the outcome of these
revolutions is uncertain, but the utility of their methods of communication
is unquestionable.  And this powerful shift in the media landscape, allows
me to think of the work we did together as a miniscule part of an enormous
cultural shift.  And from the standpoint of design, provides a vital and
renewable form to go with the function of our technological devices. 



For more thoughts on technology and activism check out this article in the
current Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was-facebook-respon
sible-for-the-arab-spring-after-all/244314/
<http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was-facebook-respo
nsible-for-the-arab-spring-after-all/244314/>