CAA Thursday Feb, 11: Ryan

Art in the Age of Dispersion

Michael Mandiberg, a member of the Eyebeam Art Group, spoke at a session I attended today called New Media: The Culture of Dispersion. He considered and shared his experience with The internet and sharing an invented idea or product.

One vocabulary word several of the speakers during the session used was: Snack. Snacks are quick instantly gratifying, interesting finds, like a site, video, picture or idea on the web. People who use services like Delicious or Digg bookmark snacks. It's sort of the like the internet is full of little ceramic figurines and when you find one you like, you take it and put it on your mantel to enjoy later.

Michael Mandiberg went on to explain how he considered success on the internet "being copied". You know your snack has reached its potential when people are imitating it and spreading it elsewhere. Snacks are not about financial gain, but about influence. You birth the snack and then let if go alone into the world in hopes that it will flourish without you.

Michael also spoke about open source software and objects. The term Open Source is usually associated with being "free", but it actually means the creators give out the source code used to build the product so you can alter and build upon the software if you have the knowledge. I never really thought of objects as being Open Source, but Michael shared several open source object projects with which he was involved. These were objects that could be built and altered by anyone who liked the idea.

Image at the top of this post is Micheals Bright Idea Shades Project: http://eyebeam.org/project/cfl