Rupert Murdoch I Love You
From Collectivate Course Wikis
Development Plan for Rupert Murdoch I Love You
I am currently proposing a two day installation which is tentatively titled Rupert Murdoch I Love You. The intention of this project is to metaphorically illustrate the process of collaborative news production in a way that involves its participants in the collaborative collection and manipulation of content.
To accomplish this a meal is to be prepared in three stages by volunteers unaware of either the process or the final result. Ten unique volunteers will be needed for each stage. Each of these volunteers will only be allowed to participate in one of the three stages. Promotional materials will advertise the need for such volunteers and the times at which these volunteers will be needed. In addition to campus listservs and group promotional materials efforts will also be made to reach out to other communities (Buffalo Tribe, Nickel City Co-op, Allentown,etc.). All volunteers will be asked to bring any digital cameras, camcorders, and other devices that they possess with them and will be encouraged to document their expereince throughout the installation. The installation will begin on April 12th at 10:00. The first stage will begin at 10:00, the second at 1:00, and the third stage will commence at 2:00. Each stage will be respresented by a pile of oversized cards equal to the number of volunteers requested. These cards will have instructions on them and at the beginning of each round the volunteers for said round will be allowed to pick a card. Cards may then be traded amongst the volunteers. Before continuing on to the next round all tasks must be completed in a satisfactory manner.
The first stage is Collection. During the Collection stage the 'raw content' for the meal will be gathered. This will include procuring of ingredients and other necessary items. Transportation will be required for this stage and I am thinking that a rental van would be the best option. This would allow me to create the sort of improvised content-gathering community that typically comes into existence at the moment of relevant experience. A significant part of this project, of the experience / content, is the process of introducing the participants to other institutions (Lexington Food Co-operative, Nickel City Housing Co-operative, etc.) and ways of approaching food (organic food, raw foodism, etc.). I think that maintaining the volunteer group as a coherent whole, as opposed to scattering them to the four winds to pick up items from multiple locations, will help create the sort of unifying experience I am looking for. The van will leave from UB at 10:15, stop at the Lexington Food Co-op to pick up ingredients (which will already have been paid for), and then stop at the Nickel City Housing Co-op to pick up utensils, cutting boards, graters, food processor, dehydrator, etc. It will then return to UB.
The second stage is Transcoding. During the Transcoding stage the 'raw content' will be prepared for use. Fruits, vegetables, and other ingredients will be prepped. Much like the process of writing down the experience you wish to share or that of converting a video file to a web accessible format the 'raw content' that the volunteers have collected needs to be converted before it can be used. In addition to chopping, grating, and otherwise processing individual ingredients all necessary liquids (oil, honey, etc.) will also be measured at this stage.
The third stage is Re-mix. During the Re-mix stage the 'transcoded content' will be combined to form the three dishes that will compose the final meal. Each combination of ingredients will take on new properties that the individual ingredients did not have. This will be a raw meal - none of the food will be cooked. The 'transcoded content' will take on new meanings when it is made available to / combined with the content of other content producers, but the integrity of the original ingredients will not be compromised. The news will not be 'cooked'.
The final component of the installation is a lecture. It will be given at 6:00. I intend to use photo and videography of the three preperatory stages of the installation to continue the metaphor of cooking as collaborative production. This lense will help me illustrate my discussion of the issues/dangers currently facing collaborative media-makers. The final goal is to make the content accessible. The extension of the food metaphor, the unique experience each volunteer will take away, and the sense of immediacy / relevancy created using images captured only hours beforehand should all work in unison to accomplish this task.
The lecture itself will be informed by a variety of texts and relevant life experiences. The texts that I am currently working with include What We Want Is Free edited by Ted Purges, Gatewatching by Axel Bruns, Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History by Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz. I will not go into excessive detail here, but my goal here is to explore the arena of collaborative new production by asking the following questions: 1.What is to stop for-profit institutions from organizing content production in a way that offsets the current trend toward democratization? 2.How can participants be made accountable to their content? 3.What steps have the moderators of these new structures taken to control the number of content producing identities each person can wield? 4.What models of collaborative decision making do these moderators use in their gate keeping roles? 5.How do these types of decision making models affect the production of content? 5.Does a more decentralized media production model fragment the ubiquity of mass consumed historical experience? 6.What could the possible negative impacts of such a fragmentation be on the public sphere?
These questions will be actively revised as my research progresses, but I want to focus my energies on exploring cracks in the veneer of collaborative online news production. I am interested in what is currently complicating and will continue to complicate the democratic potential for this kind of production.
Comments: Have to focus on one issue, one case study, one or two texts. Establish the entire metaphor beforehand so that audience members and participants are able to get the full experience. As many visuals and as little text as possible. How to make people comfortable if I intend to create discussion for people not familiar with the project? A simple overview of collaborative online news production for the lecture might be a better idea than a more complex critique.