geeks accidentally making net art: SXSW 2005

March 19, 2005

Type: discussion

Hi everybody on the rhizome list,

I just got back from presenting at http://sxsw.com/interactive/ ,
which is like the mecca of blog culture. People blogging their
notes of panel sessions in real time via wireless during the actual
panel sessions.

I'm always checking my referrer logs to see who is linking me, and
the links to my site markedly increased during and shortly after the
conference, much more so than at any other conference where I've
talked.

I could read reviews of my talk within the day, and by the second
day, late-coming bloggers were quoting the previous day's bloggers in
reference to the talk (meta-meta-meta).
http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&url=curt+cloninger

Strangest of all, on flickr, I could see what acquaintances did after
we parted ways. For instance, on Monday night, we left Molly
actively calling friends on her cell phone in hopes of finding some
people with whom to get drunk. And sure enough, here's a picture of
her in a Hilton hotel room late Monday night, bottle of whiskey in
hand:
http://flickr.com/photos/58944004@N00/6795021/
(too much information, really)

Walking down 6th street with a group of folks after lunch, Jason took
a snapshot of a groovy VW motorcycle and said "that's going on
flickr," and indeed, there it was:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkottke/6537310/

It all reminded me of the way Mark Stephen Meadows describes
non-linear narrative, in terms of multiple perspectives (a la
Rashamon). You have different people moving through the same space
and time, all documenting it from their own perspective, and in the
case of SXSW, it's all indexed and cross-referenced with meta-tags.
And because it's cross-referenced, I can alter my narrative path
through the event whenever I find a new path that interests me.

I can surf this "narrative" via several different navigational paradigms:
1. by event/time: what was happening on Friday night?
2. by location: what was happening at the opening night party at Frog Design?
3. by "narrator": of what did my friend nick finck take pictures?
4. by "character": how many pictures are there of Jeffrey Zeldman?
5. by subject: where are the pictures of beer bottles?

What arises are convergences of interest. For instance, lots of
people took a picture of this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/booboolina/6701812/
http://flickr.com/photos/jmcnally/6530732/
http://flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/6581935/
http://flickr.com/photos/58944004@N00/6794855/

and lots of people took (lots of) pictures of her:
http://flickr.com/photos/sirepaintball/6689824/
http://flickr.com/photos/somedirection/6879388/

One blogger described how people would just walk up to CSS jedi Eric
Meyer and have their picture taken next to him, without even asking,
as if he were mount rushmore or something.

You even have people posting comments at flickr asking "who's that
guy on the left?" And then the guy on the left will post and say
"oh, that's me."

What makes it the least bit interesting is that I was actually there,
so I keep coming across locations, events, narrators, characters, and
objects that were somehow related to my personal experience. And the
time-shifted, cross-referenced database allows me to expand my
personal experience (locationally and temporally) into perspectives
previously not possible. For instance, I ate dinner with so and so
at such and such a restaurant – what did so and so go and take
pictures of after that meal? who took pictures of so and so? who
else ate at such and such a restaurant? what did they take pictures
of after their meal? In some cases, you can even see the same dinner
party from multiple diners' perspectives.

What "net artist" has yet devised such an elaborate real-time,
idiosynchratically mapped, network-centric, cross-indexed, databased,
multi-user, open-source, multimedia, semi-virtual/semi-physical,
socially networked performance? It's psychogeography and flash mobs
and democratized media and dyspanopticonization and several other
buzzwords you might care to muster (or coin). But really, it's just
a bunch of bored blogging geeks at a 4-day conference. Yet another
form of outsider net art.

Imagine if the events, locations, narrators, characters, and objects
were the least bit interesting to anyone other than those who were
there!

cf:
http://www.technorati.com/tag/sxsw
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/sxsw
http://www.technorati.com/tag/sxsw2005
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/sxsw2005

peace,
curt