Creating a platform for future collaborations

I think it is essential to discuss if we want this project to become a platform – the most valuable think in order to achieve this is the Andy’s “fixnews” idea. Actually it could create a stream of news and links through certain keywords, which could be a base for an unlimited number of projects. The difference with data art is that you give the opportunity to the user artist or group of artists to utilize nodes that contain information and ideas while avoiding the confusion and the meaningless metaphors of the simple data repositioning. From my point of view I see this kind of action more as the “fluxus” and less than the “pop art”. I write that because at the first glance that repositioning of data could be confused with certain aspects that characterize “pop art". in practice most of the new media movements identify themselves with their technological idioms (data, virtual communities) and not with their conceptual context. What differentiates the work and the discussions we are doing here, is the context of a deep mutual understanding that a project is consisted by certain factors which are referring to the networks of politics (with the broader sense). That doesn’t exclude the self-reflection and the individual to the whole as most often we could face as an argument. It just avoids -because it is based to communication and exchange- the autism and the internal everlasting circles .

   the autism? --DirtyBomb

   the autistic behavior due to common academic art practises which 
   are based on obsession as symbol of the transcendental, etc. non
   communicative network...--alexxxx 

http://www.artcontext.org/act/05/ehes/pub/eicosa.swf eicosa

There are also other common interests such as the PhantomStrategy (channels) - a flux of projects ideas collaborators that it is very difficult to characterize,- firstly because of the differences of the collective and secondly by the repositioning of actuality in a different context which automatically points to criticism. As ikonatzis said once by the way of a joke “what is art? – the correct repositioning “!!

So I think that everybody agrees that our effort for the (OzoneWatcher, FixNews, and water/oil ideas) could be a platform for future development. I think that we should consider using as a base the FixNews stream and an interface that could be the triangle approach (2d 3d whatever) in order to enter to the channels. So after we finish our first three channels we have to release a documentation for other groups of how to utilize the channels (add links and get the streams).

We can also reconsider the idea of VirtualProtesting which is based mostly on the end users. Fred’s idea about a channel or a space for hosting (work text news) of the users is sufficient, but I think that we could integrate the participation of the users in every channel. Let’s say that it could be a term of the imaginary manifesto.

By the way what about a manifesto? – I have to admit that I am skeptical about manifestos, but from the other hand there a lot of things that could be mentioned inside o but also a lot of things that could be excluded , anyway I suggest that any information for the project could be named “user and end user guide to EHES” . But I still believe that it is difficult to form a manifesto. ???

I am waiting your comments disagreements

Alexxxx

not sure that phantomstrategy is the appropriate term. maybe enigma.

with regard to platform, i think this particular software requires a lot of discipline in order to make something that's not chaotic. already, it's getting a little disorganized, and so i wonder if its real value is in incubating the project rather than presenting it to the public. one thing that will probably come out of this, aside from clarifying our agreements and disagreements, is that we will be able to assemble some texts that reflect this discussion rather easily.

“user and end user guide to EHES” (UserGuide) is a fine alternative to a manifesto as far as i'm concerned.

one project that has some similarity to what Alexxxx is proposing (platform) is carnivore (galloway et al). in that case, though, it seems to me that the politics of the thing were quite nebulous. of course there were many voices involved, but i recall hearing someone recount that alex g. himself, when asked, said that he did not want the work to be seen politically (i'm paraphrasing grossly). anyway, i think that (at least in this american context) that sort of apolitical aura may be an asset to a group platform. i'm repeatedly struck by the degree -- in custom and behavior -- to which americans are reluctant to address political issues in everyday discourse.

one thing i know from experience is that you have to present a compelling context for people (strangers) to get involved. as a collective, i think we already have a great advantage over projects i've tried to get started individually. when people see others contributing, they feel they can join in, too. we will likely have to wrestle with the politics of individual glory in art and promotion if we plan to treat this as a platform. maybe the thing we should be doing is trying to map out the next four or five steps to take.

   DirtyBomb

I think it is logical to produce something seductive that can be used for attracting some funding. There are many ideas floating around here and if we do not focus, I fear we will lose momentum. I have other projects that I am working on, and so I would like to feel that things are moving forward even if I shift my attention for a few days or a week. There are a couple of possible funding sources in the "Opportunities" section. I don't know if it makes sense to develop proposals immediately, or to try to produce a prototype screen saver or something like that.

   DirtyBomb

We should try to create a very simple prototype with the ideas

 and the programation we have here. Perhaps we should use
 what we have now i mean the 3D map with triangles and the
 hurricane flux looking for a way to send some news on the map. 

(It is true like focused Vero that we should go further in a more critical way to show the globe but it is more secure to distort something running well by parameters we can define later.) > job we could do here: creating a screenshot of the combination between hurricane flux and globe map...how to feed the globe with news.

 We could use some altport datas flux and TBO flux for starting. After that 

we should see how to articulate the ozone hole with the sphere interface and have to define the tools of ozone hole which is the space of combination between news and people (this part is esencial and has not been discused a lot). > suggestion: make two simple ozone holes in the screen saver globe linked to a specific part of fixnews to discus about ozone place and what sort of tools we should develop to create sense between datas flux and the globe. If we could get the Alex last colored globe in flash format we could start to move it and ues various screenshots to search for a screensaver aspect. I wanted to point that about distorting the globe it could be better to start by a realistic perfect globe like we have now and distort it with time and information flux, it should be more impresive for the users and more subversive for the "seduction" aspect. We could imagine that after downloading the beautifull perfect world the ball start to distort day after day.

FredAdam

HaukEye and DirtyBomb discussed the possibility of making the screen saver more passive, and concentrating the effor of interaction on the web sites. This may be necessary if we find that the screen saver software doesn' allow interaction easily.

I was thinking for the interaction within the screensaver that we could face the problem of the platform referring to security issues within xp and windows in general. The unix architecture seems ok but in xp - 2000 ? it could be easier to have a screen saver to be controlled by a simple .ini file (numerical resources through the web containing information for users or sample text..) and a link to the web -?

I will create the animations of the globe today , I agree with the vero approach of a distorted globe but if we have an opportunity to solve a globe with maths we should prefer it.

!!!important!!!

 First of all happy birthday to me. 28 yesterday. While i went to a small lake in Greece

for a seductive birthday. I met a person from an ngo "Antigone" called Nasos Athanasiou.(the seduction stopped here) This ngo is the Greek branch of the European monitor for human rights(not Helsinki monitor). I knew this guy from some immigration articles. He and his team is involved with ecological research in collaboration with green parties from Europe.

 I made a discussion with him about the project and our general intensions and he

was very interested to give us material. (there are not a lot of ngo's and collaborators in Greece and that's why he was very enthusiastic). I said to him that I had to discuss with the rest of the group about that and that we are very interested to have articles and research that is belonging to them.

 They are not politically guided from any particular party (that is important) but in

general they are belonging to the left centre political position. So what are you saying? the only think that they want is a link or a mention.??

 Except from a link to the fixnews and whatever else we can do with that i had an idea

that is controversial with the approach of the flux of information.

 Let's say it permanent (or constant or Stable) news the idea is based on the memory

based news.

 For example a political party that is doing the worst thing at the start of their 4year duty.

Kyoto . They are expecting that the people will forget their actions and that nobody will maintain the dynamic of opposition for four years. While we are playing with the flow of information we are partially participating in the memory based situation. I am suggesting to maintain a channel with permanent news that we could moderate according to major OneWayStreet (Benjamin) events such us Kyoto, final financial reports for the hurricane, lost trials between industry and ecologists etc. What are you saying?

alexxxx

I agree that we are near to form an appealing proposal,with some nice (seductive) visual prototypes. From my experience the problem with the proposals for funding is that we cannot form a single proposal for everybody for some cases we need to substract things reffering to more serious problems and add more "funky/funcy" material and vise versa. So i am suggesting to write something which is separated in small paragraphs which every part could be easily included or excluded.

alexxxx

i agree with the memory problem issues, and this is central to my thinking about why we should address environmental issues in the same framework as critquing the news system.

as for the proposal idea (small paragraphs), i think in a way we are already building that here, but we could make some language specifically for proposals. i agree this is a good idea. also we would need some descriptions of each participant, C.V.s for the new members, etc.

DirtyBomb

following some discussion with Hauk, i've begun to think more about the ways that the wiki forum can be used in FixNews. to this end, i have worked on the http://www.artcontext.org/act/05/fixNews/filter/ New Channels section, adding a small-image upload feature, and linking the new articles back into this forum. the nature of web links leads me to believe this is constructive, because they don't last, it is better to keep some record of the articles online here. people may wish to quote from the articles and include that content under fair use law in our own database. links to the original source are still provided. secondly, the main info about each story is stored in a database and can be accessed for the OzoneWatcher screen saver, or for other projects.

DirtyBomb