Transformative Copy

The ability to create an unlimited number of identical copies is a privilege of digital documents. What if that would not be the case, if each copy of a digital file would go along with some sort of transformation? This thesis examines the implications of such a scenario on information ecologies and map out the design space for a new type of decentralized authoring applications. The concept of the copy is inherently transformative, even if just as the transformation from “the One into the Many”. However, until the recent transition from analog to digital media, the perfectly identical copy was not possible, every reproduction resulted in transformation. While this transformation usually is associated with loss of information, it also creates new information, traces of an objects history. As a result of the ability to create of unlimited numbers of perfectly identical copies from digital files, this dimension of context information is lost - digital files do not have a history. In the course of this thesis, five examples were implemented that illustrate important properties of the concept of transformative copying, in order to propose a general framework for a sociable, transformative file format. They investigate two cases of transformation: First, transformation as a deliberate process by humans. A second dimension is transformation as an autonomous process, either in form of an imperfect copy or as a result of an objects age and usage, such as wear. Both points seem like independent cases, but in our scenario they are closely interconnected and inform each other.

Diffusion Simulation

The main objective of this project is to investigate how information, media and ideas change as they move through a social network. My first step was not an experiment, but an articulation of a diffusion model though a simulation. This model allows for an observation of a diffusion process within a network of nodes containing transformative power. It also illustrates the effects of different changes to the model’s initial conditions – as messages are passed around within the network, they become simultaneously transformed. The content of the message in this model is simply a color value. Every node involved in the process has its own preferences and the power to transform the messages exchanged according to that preference. The simulation described above aims to address several questions: - What are the relevant parameters in a diffusion process of transformable media? - How do different rules for propagation influence the sturcture of the resulting network? - How important are the color preferences compared to the network topology? - Under which conditions do color values in the network converge, and an “agreement” among the nodes can be reached? The general observation that can be learned from this model is that the shape of the network is more important than the individual color preference. The structure of the social environment determines the outcome of interaction to a higher degree, than the variety of individual preferences. By deploying very few parameters a big variety of diffusion patterns could be created, the liminal shapes of which have been described above. Network

Comment Flow

comment flow page
An interesting aspect of social networking sites is the variety of imaginative ways in which people construct a shared collaborative experience. Exchanging comments on profile pages, as an example, often goes beyond a simple statement of presence and evolves into improvisational and multi-faceted narratives and conversations that involve many participants. The sites were not designed a tools for collaborative improvisation, but still they are used for that purpose in many different ways. Observing the way in which comments are exchanged and information travels through the network tells us more about the social environment than the structure of the network itself. Comment Flow is a network browser that investigates how social networking sites are used as environments for collaborative creation. Comment

Infinite Animation

facebook app
After the previous stages of simulation and observation of transformative diffusion processes, the third step is the design of a system that deals with transformative copying of actual media content in a social network. Infinite animation is a system for creating animations in the shared space of a social networking platform facebook. Historically, the introduction of new visual languages in animation has always been tightly linked with shifts in the corresponding models of collaboration. The maturing of social networking platforms as a mass media and the variety of shared activities taking place on these platforms suggested that a similar shift could happen if these networks were more extensively used for collaborative creativity.

Roaming Whistles

“Roaming whistles” is a project about gathering and juxtaposing sounds in public space. Similar to infinite animation, the participants generate media files and pass them on to their friends for further modification. By using mobile phones as an interface for recording sound files, the situation for authoring media is quite different. With less attention resources and a limited interface on the one hand, and more engagement with the surrounding space on the other hand, the application requires a different approach. While infinite animation focused on the relationship between social and topical proximity, roaming whistles adds a third dimension of proximity, that of geographical space.