PUBLIC MARKS with search states

The International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) was formed in June 2002 with a mission to "facilitate the international coordination and collaboration necessary for the development and deployment of the tools, systems and organizational structures necessary to enable the international utilization of astronomical archives as an integrated and interoperating virtual observatory." The IVOA now comprises 17 VO projects from Armenia, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Europe, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Membership is open to other national and international projects according to the IVOA Guidelines for Participation.

karlcow said...

Fascinating and very interesting. I may add another law to your experiment, though it would have to be repeated again to see if it's working.

Law 3: A fractal pattern encourages participation.

A fractal pattern is simple enough that the gratification is direct. One can draw a small shape which already makes sense to the person. (I have participated!). But because of the self-structure of fractal pattern, one is participating to a bigger scheme. Sense of collective achievement with grand goals.

Once the structure is big enough, it becomes visible, organized and then it is an object of power, which in return is its weakness. (Colonial states versus Guerrilla/Terrorism). Wikipedia becomes so big that it fights for copyright or have editors censoring content.

Though I kind of disagree with the conclusion of blogs versus wikis. Blogs are indeed easier to maintain but would it be because wikis are not really object of the commons, aka, there is still someone owning the object, it is a property of someone in the end.

I wonder also if there is a density rule in action. A tribe in a large forest with free will to move as they please versus a piece of land with a lot of people. There is very little destruction when the space is infinite. Take the drawing above and imagine a space which is infinite (possible in digital space), would participant try to destroy the work of others or just go further away to do their own drawing?

May 20, 2009 1:50 PM

Trulia Snapshot allows you to browse photographs and details of properties for sale in the United States. Snapshot provides an alternative view of listings from Trulia and was developed in collaboration with Stamen Design. You can find more about Trulia and Stamen's work together in Trulia's new explore section.

In Join Or Die, I paint myself having sex with the Presidents of the United States in chronological order. I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated.

I approach the spectacle of sex and politics with a certain playfulness. It would be easy to let the images slide into territory that's strictly pornographic—the lurid and hardcore, the predictably "controversial." One could also imagine a series preoccupied with wearing its "Fuck the Man" symbolism on its sleeve. But I wish to move beyond these things and make something playful and tender and maybe a little ambiguous, but exuberantly so. This, I feel, is the most humanizing act I can do.

March 2009

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

nice ideas

This Site

presents conversation, ideas, and criticism in support of the New Museum exhibition Urban China: Informal Cities, a physical manifestation of the magazine Urban China which will explore notions of the informal (or vernacular) as they apply to the current urban situation in China and the United States. On view at the New Museum from February 11 through March 29, 2009.