Thesus at a Glance
Introduction:
Bridge between cyberspace and e-commerce. Why Buckminster Fuller as a main prism to overall narrative? The Information Personae online software agent as a result of research. Tetrahedral form.
SECTION I: BREAKING WITH TRADITION
Chapter 1: Network Artist: Emergence of a Media PersonaWhat is a network artist?
Synergetic Webbing as a Happening. Buckminster Fuller was a network artist working in the analogue age. He is a predecessor to artists who span many disciplines, cannot be easily categorised, and work with network computer technologies. His work has had profound influence on artists and philosophers who laid the foundation for conceptual and theoretical issues of importance to contemporary art and technology.
Buckminster Fuller: Anticipatory Design Scientist, Performer, Networker. Influence of Margaret Fuller (and Emerson), New England Transcendentalism. Fuller and Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, John Cage, Black Mountain College. Conceptual art, Happenings, Fluxus, Performance art. Marshall McLuhan.
Chapter 2: Network Art as a Third Culture: Between the Sciences & the Humanities
What is the context?
Buckminster Fuller was very aware of the "Two Culture" divide that C.P. Snow articulated. He was in contact with C.P. Snow and worked consciously to bridge this gap and help create a third culture. Artists today working with technology are in dialogue with both scientists and postmodern humanists, and occupy a fragile space fraught with dangers.
The Sokal incident, Leonardo Da Vinci, Fuller and CP Snow. Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend. Murray Gell-Mann and that Something Else. Paradigm shifts. Frank Malina, Billy Kluver, EAT.
Chapter 3: Distributed Authorship: Emergence of Telematic Culture
What is telematic culture?
The Geoscope is a project that Fuller never completed and could easily be seen as a predecessor of telematic art and even CNN. It was conceived at the same time that satellite technology was being launched and ARPANET initiated the beginning of a networked age, or global village. Artists start experimenting with communication technologies as young hackers play games on MUDs and MOOs and lay the foundation for distributed authorship.
Sputnik and the Geoscope. ARPA. John McHale and the World Resource Inventory. Expo 67. Telematic Arts in the late 70's, early 80's. Roy Ascott, Jacques Valle, planetary network, Mail Art, MUDs and MOOs, Curtis Pavel, CyberPhunks.
SECTION II: BUILDING MANY WORLDS
Chapter 4: Distributed Identity: Phantom Captains and AvatarsWhat is online identity?
Fuller's idea of the "Phantom Captain" as articulated in 1938, could easily be transposed to the contemporary idea of a cyborg. Through multi-user games people start assuming multiple personae, which are described as Avatars. How do Eastern and New Age concepts work in relation to a corporate culture as technology becomes big business, and many assuming power are yesterday's hippies and left wingers? Bodies INCorporated is a project that was developed to address these issues and some observations are made after three years of development.
Fuller's Phantom Captain, Cybernetics, Hiltz, etymology of a Avatar, postmodern ideas of multiple identities, Cyborgs, the Palace, World chat etc. Case study: Bodies INCorporated.
Chapter 5: Information Overload and Database Aesthetics
What is a database aesthetic?
Starting with Duchamp, conceptual artists have commented on the commerce and the institution of the museum by using archives, collection, and databases. In the age of information overload, issues of categorisation, organisation, storage, and retrieval become paramount. Artists on the net are in a unique position to address these issues while the construction is in progress.
Fuller's Chronofile, Vannevar Bush's Memex, Duchamp, conceptualist working with archives, databases, collections. Warhol's time capsule, collection, Digital library projects, Archiving the Internet. Bodies as databases.
Chapter 6: Network Communities and Attention Economies What are networked communities?
Community building is related to commerce, used in a broader sense to include not only monetary values but also knowledge exchange. Artists working on the net already have a community, and conferences act as places of physical contact. But as our sphere of influence expands by using communication technologies, our time becomes more scarce.
Buckminster Fuller's World game. Online communities and electronic commerce. Howard Rheingold. Kevin Kelly's network commerce, Collective Intelligence. Our relationship to Time, Internet time and emergence of "Attention Economies." Artist communities on the net and the possibility of new models of commerce for .net art.
SECTION III: INFORMATION PERSONAE CONSTRUCTION
Chapter 7: Information ArchitectureWhat is Information Architecture?
As the idea of network is expanded outside of the Internet, so the idea of information extends out to include architecture of ideas. Broader idea of information architectures include our own bodies, our communities. DNA, molecular and cellular structures.
Tensegrity of organisms, Kenneth Snelson, Donald Ingber's architecture of life. Topologies. Discovery of the Buckminsterfullerene. A quick look at self-organised patterns, Gaia theory, autopoietic networks. Overview of efforts to visualise network topologies.
Chapter 8: Construction of a Mobile Online Agent: Information Personae
What is an Information Personae?
The Information Personae addresses issues brought up in the previous chapters: software designed by artists working in the context of art and science, a form of telematic art, allowing for a distributed authorship, creating distributed identity. It is a database aesthetic, a basis for building community based on the economies of knowledge exchange and utilises information architectures based on Buckminster Fuller and molecular and cellular structures. Technical information on the agent construction.
Revisiting Douglas Englebart's ideas of collective intelligence. A brief overview of agent technologies available currently, from primitive search agents to advisory agents and multiagent systems. Technical overview of the Information Personae agent prototype. Conceptualising systems for visualising topologies, tracing information flow, introducing hyperbolic space and consider Time.
Chapter 9: Projecting Many Futures
What are the many possible futures?
The last chapter is divided into three parts. The first follows what happens after the discovery of the third carbon molecule, the Buckmisterfullerene and how it is critical in future development of nanotechnology. The second part briefly describes beta-projects of scholars I collaborated with that will be utilising the Information Personae technology, both conceptually and practically. The third section describes three projects which I am planning on further developing in the future.
Jeffrey Bada, Luann Becker, Robert Poreda's discovery of buckyballs trapped in a meteor from outer space, 1.85 years old. Buckyballs and Buckytubes and nanotechnology, Dr. Sujio Jijima, Alex Zetl. Camillo's Memory Theatre by Mark Meadow and Bruce Robertson; Proxy: Faculty Subjects, Strategic Interests and Celebrity Agents by Robert Nideffer; Data Mining Bodies, Community of People With No Time and Network Art Marketplace (NAM) by Victoria Vesna.
