The first installment, killer @pp ~ it's all t@lk presented by the ICA in London addresses the evolving issue of privacy with respect to identity in the milieu of email and networked databases.

Episode 2, open_source {an adventure in alterations} examines and toys with the psychological dynamic of "investment" in the worlds of open source software development and chat.

These contrasting cultures reveal ostensibly different aspects of engagement. What are the societal norms that govern and inform their structure? Open source software development has been called a hi-tech gift economy. It has dedicated participants and well-defined parameters of valuation: among them reliability, robustness, scalabilty, and forgiveness. Chat, on the other hand, is largely a token economy, often transient and noncommittal. Exchanges take place within myriad hit-and-run "niche-markets" where words as "currency" can obtain a haphazard value. Then again, gifts can be burdensome, seduction wears itself out, and tokens can lay a path to engagement.

open_source investigates these arenas within a meta-game labyrinth of ironic inquiry and advertising subtexts. This quasi-competitive environment includes live-chat, real-time graphical analysis of your "progress," mapping that may or may not tell you where you're going, and other signposts of gaming commingled with programmers' jargon and small talk vignettes. You may consider, evaluate, negotiate, and enact notions of self with - or versus - other. Does software design caricature social forms? Will your feature be my bug? The rules are unclear, but the clock is running. "Some restrictions may apply" and "prices may vary." What is the cost of your interest? Or is the question really, What's at stake in different economies of interaction?

Vivian Selbo is art artist and information architect based in NY. Her recent work includes killer @pp: it's all t@lk! the first part of an online project called partsofspeech; Vertical Blanking Interval; and Enclosed Caption Viewing. She also produced a portion of Predictive Engineering.2 by Julia Scher (The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco), InterNyet: A Video Curator's Dispatches from Russia & Ukraine (The Museum of Modern Art, New York),and was the interface director of äda'web.

Links


Killer @pp: Its @ll t@lk!
http://www.newmediacentre.com/
partsofspeech/

Vertical Blanking Interval
http://adaweb.walkerart.org/project/selbo

Enclosed Caption Viewing
http://www.slate.com/SlateGallery/
96-07-17/SlateGallery.asp

Predictive Engineering.2
http://www.sfmoma.org/EXHIB/scher/
jsindex.htm

äda'web
http://adaweb.walkerart.org

INTERNYET: A curator travels to Russia & Ukraine
http://www.moma.org

[ T O P ]