About
“A networked book is an open book designed to be written, edited and read in a networked environment.” — Institute for the Future of the Book
We invite you to comment, revise and translate these chapters. Networked has been designed to incorporate your ideas into the existing chapters. Art in the Age of DataFlow: Narrative, Authorship, and Indeterminacy, Remix and the Rouelles of Media Production, and Re-Locating, are wikis. If you want to change or add to it, simply click on the “Edit Page” link at the top/bottom of every page. The text will appear in an editable window. When you save your changes, the page will immediately reflect them. Readers can then compare the various versions of each page, as one can on Wikipedia.
All of the other chapters are WordPress blogs with the CommentPress plugin. CommentPress — a tool that was developed by the Institute for the Future of the Book — allows you to comment on any paragraph individually. Simply click on the speech bubble next to the paragraph numbers on the right hand side. Your comments will be recorded next to the appropriate paragraph. You can also leave general comments in the “Comments for Entire Chapter” window on the far right. Over time, the authors may incorporate your ideas into the chapters themselves, in which case you will be able to compare the original version to the revised versions.
Thus, Networked is an open history designed to include your voice. Speak on.
Background
In 2007, Jo-Anne Green and Helen Thorington (Co-Directors, New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. | Turbulence.org) proposed Networked to Eduardo Navas (NewMediaFIX). Along with Sean Dockray (Telic Arts Exchange) and Anne Bray (Freewaves), they developed an application to the National Endowment for the Arts, which funded the project in 2008.
An international Call for Proposals was issued. It defined the project’s Goals and Objectives and invited contributions that critically and creatively rethink how networked art is categorized, analyzed, legitimized — and by whom — as norms of authority, trust, authenticity and legitimacy evolve. A committee of nine reviewed the submissions: four authors were commissioned to develop chapters that are now open for commentary, revision, and translation. A fifth — one of the runners-up — was invited to contribute. Networked is open to additional chapters. See Guidelines.
Networked proposes that a history or critique of interactive and/or participatory art must itself be interactive and/or participatory; that the technologies used to create a work suggest new forms a “text” might take.
We invite you to participate. You can comment on an entire chapter, but the CommentPress plugin also allows you to comment on individual paragraphs. You are also welcome to translate the chapters into other languages.
Welcome!