in re: some comments emailed to me on the previous post: there are aspects of buttons that I love, and some I’m critical of. This, for me, is an ideal condition.
Years ago while studying musical composition with Charles Jones we were discussing a work we had both heard the night before. He said “the intention of any work is to reveal ideas that lead to the next piece, as there is always a next piece. Any work is as much about now as it is about later – and trying to say everything in such a way as to make any future compositions redundant and pointless is really an attempt to end art.â€
Looking at some moblogs it occurs to me that the often minimal nature of the postings: an image, maybe with a word or two underneath, reveals the web itself as a shared thought object. Clearly to get to the point of viewing someone’s posting a series of actions and technologies must be engaged (going online, surfing, etc…), and each of those technologies and actions caries with it various ideas and understandings. Media, in other words, as an ensemble of actions. Meaning as a form of associations in the mind structured around the image/sound/text of the posting – of course this model exists in many other areas of experience. The mind of the beholder is always a constellation of associations/ideas/experiences present at that moment – the image/text of a specific posting an invitation to try different relationships with the things in mind – or at least that’s the way I chose to think about it.
If the mobile web with its tiny screens and awkward keypads induces us to limit our discourse to an exchange of slogans which are intended, just like an ad campaign, to mean/signify only one, clear thing to “everyone†then the promise of an expanding field of integrated connections suggested by the web at large will be reduced to a cliquish, severely limited landscape of buzzwords and icons – a channel that only plays ads, a trip to the supermarket, and little else. Clearly we can choose to be so much more than that, and we have the tools in our hands, right now, to make experience so much more interesting – to create models of human interactions that may be ever more accurate representations of our authentic experiences, to develop forms that expand our conceptions of online/offline, etc., but we may have to fight to maintain those potentials – and we should bear in mind that we tend to train to the medium. If everything gets overly simplified and too narrowly targeted and the tools we use are designed to facilitate that goal then we will become what we the tools we haul around with us can do, and we will have missed a tremendous opportunity to develop along a trajectory of a more vast integration and a deeper empathy. Instead of becoming increasingly more alike we will develop a greater ability to understand, respect and explore the ways we are similar. How the subtle variations that exist among different cultures expand our understandings of ourselves – not separate us. I digress.
I’ve been thinking about creating a work that might make the web of associations more explicit – creating a Bohm type dialogue using the tools of the mobile web (there are many forms “dialogue†and David Bohm was not the only person who explored it [the linked article was a collaboration between Bohm, Donald Factor and Peter Garrett]. The general idea is a practice that explores the ideas of collective intelligence through the technology of the spoken word, Bohm wrote a great book on the subject and the linked essay I find very useful). The general idea is to create a database of participants and introduce a topic – a general topic, that would go out via email and sms, and to encourage participants to think, to take their time, and to allow whatever associations come to mind to remain suspended and available, and to share those associations with the collective when they feel a correspondence between their association and other ideas introduced into the dialogue. The text, sound and image capabilities of cellphones provide participants on the move a way to contribute associations/content derived from their immediate location: text, image, sound – whatever they feel corresponds with the emerging content of the dialogue. The dialogue could go on for long periods of time (as the traditional dialogues often do) and could coexist with whatever else is happening in each of the participant’s local lives, as periods of silence are common within dialogue. Users could upload text, image, sound, from wherever – desktop, or mobile device, and would receive all of the content from other users. The idea is not to have a discussion (Bohm makes the distinction between dialogue and discussion [and it’s semantic relationship to concussion/percussion] clear), but to create a constellation of associations that would be as much about the topic as the relationships of the group to each other and the participants to their local environments. An exploration of the local as a focal point of the global, and the global as a complex form of shifting associations and relationships.
How does the general topic and the series of associations it generates from the geographically dispersed group reflect/resonate with the local experiences of the participants? Are the activities of the geographically dispersed group somehow simultaneously rooted both “there†and “here� How might this practice relate to investigations in context awareness? Ever read anything on the static universe theory? Here as a site of profound integration. Here as the only place we ever are.
I’m developing this project now and should begin some trials this month.