TRAVERSING NETWORKS OF COMPLEXITY FROM DATABASE ARTWORKS TO CONTEMPORARY NETWORKED PUBLICATIONS Digital Abstraction | Jacobs University Bremen | 08.05.2015

Florian Wiencek Amanda Starling Gould Jacobs University Bremen Duke University

IN HOWFAR IS DIGITAL ABSTRACT?

DIGITALITY AS ABSTRACTION

Photo as human-perceivable image

Same photo as computer-interpretable code => encoded in jpg format

the photo consist of computable binary code on the machine level

MULTIPLE LEVELS OF ABSTRACTION

DIGITALITY AS ABSTRACTION

= Examples of layers of abstraction =

+ database as abstraction (Manovich)??

image displayed on a computer screen, using the software Preview on MacOS X 10.9; the window is resizable

Histoimages by Fanny Chevalier. Source: http://www.aviz.fr/histomages The software and interface determines how the user can interact with media data.

MULTIPLE LEVELS OF ABSTRACTION

Screenshot of the V2_ Knowledge Base

LEV MANOVICH “ABSTRACTION & COMPLEXITY” (2007)

The new image of our increasingly complex world is “the dynamic networks of relations, oscillating between order and disorder – always vulnerable, ready to change with a single click of the user” (Manovich, 2007, p. 352)

NETWORK SOCIETY (CASTELLS) COMMUNICATION NETWORK IS CENTRAL FOR THE SOCIETY

Submarine Cable Map http://www.submarinecablemap.com

Submarine Cable

THE IDEA OF THE NETWORK IS CENTRAL!

Network: A system of relations or connections between nodes. It is an open structure that can develop further through adding or deleting nodes.

IDEA OF THE NETWORK EXAMPLE INTERNET / WEB

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Web 1.0: Network of Documents

Web 2.0: Network of Data

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Web 3.0: Network of Semantics / Locations / Things

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NETWORK(ED) ECOLOGY Networks build up an ecology. They overlap, flow into other networks. There is interaction between different nodes the networks or between networks. No element in a network and no network is an island.

A network ecology is also an ecology formed and shaped through networks (physical or other) and networked thinking.

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WHAT DOES ALL OF THIS MEAN FOR PUBLICATIONS?

PUBLICATION IS PART OF A NETWORK(ED) ECOLOGY…

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… and is itself a INFORMATION / DATA NETWORK

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HYPERMEDIA SYSTEMS – NETWORKED PUBLICATIONS

Memex – Vannevar Bush –1945

XANADU – Ted Nelson – 1960 (ongoing)

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DATABASE: META-NARRATIVE OR CULTURAL FORM •  the database is the underlying principle and structure of most new

media objects (Paul 2007, 99)

•  databased projects at meta-narrative – a narrative about a dataset •  arranging information available in a database allows to trace

its subtexts, tease out potential stories told within a given data-set

•  datasets can serve as means to learn something about a dataset itself, a topic or points of views it represents through the emerging meta-narratives about a culture and available subtexts within the database

•  BUT: Lev Manovich: database as cultural form does not have logic of a narrative but of a collection •  “database represents the world as list of items that it refuses

to order” (Manovich 1999/2010, 68) •  a narrative creates a cause-effect trajectory of seemingly

unordered items or events.

Image: Fernand Deligny

As a case study, the Networked Ecologies project puts our interrogations into artistic/critical practice as we are thinking "through, with and alongside" (Hayles, 2012, p.1) the theoretical and scholarly implications of layered digital abstraction, complex dynamic networks, and scholarly rigor as they are applied to innovative digital publication.

NETWORK ECOLOGIES

NETWORK ECOLOGIES: THE PROJECT

The project began with two main guiding questions:

1.  How can we create a rigorous digital scholarly publication? 2.  How can the curation and design of a digital publication be a tool

for discovery and critical (re)thinking?

Image: Fernand Deligny

NETWORK ECOLOGIES: THE PROJECT

1. Networ(ed) Ecologies Blog

2. In-Person Symposium

The project first needed content

3. Call for Submissions

4. Network Ecologies Art Exhibit

...and we have a lot of content, in myriad formats

Here is a linear accounting of our content and this is only a fraction of it.

NETWORK ECOLOGIES: THE PROJECT

Essay

Comment

Symposium Video

Timestamped Tweets

Image Documentation Slides / Charts of presentation

Keywords

...and that content, when its relations are mapped, looks like this:

…and this is just one essay.

NETWORK ECOLOGIES: THE PROJECT

NETWORK ECOLOGIES: THE PUBLICATION FINAL PRODUCT

The Network Ecologies Digital Scalar Publication will be unveiled in its beta stage Fall 2015.

http://scalar.usc.edu

SCHOLARLY DIGITAL PUBLICATION

Scholarly digital publication brings together the complex acts of archiving, curation, editorializing, and design. In the Network Ecologies Project we are doing all four:

1.  Archiving both digital and non-digital content 2.  Curating (qua networking) multiple transmedia forms from

multiple authors from multiple disciplines...into a coherent whole 3.  Editorial: As digital editor, I am not only choosing the content and

how it will work together but am working closely with my design partner (Florian) to think content WITH design.

4.  Digital Design work: As design editors, we are designing (qua authoring) the pages, the connections, and the navigational paths that a reader will take through that content. We are authoring the reading experience.

We are also creating (& facilitating & capturing) Complex Dynamic Networks

1.  between content and design 2.  between authors and collaborators 3.  between scholarly & professional disciplines 4.  between media forms 5.  between scholarly publication and innovative design 6.  between (Scalar) paths and pages

SCHOLARLY DIGITAL PUBLICATION

SCHOLARLY (PUBLICATION) IMPLICATIONS OF LAYERED DIGITAL ABSTRACTION

We recognize the acts associated with scholarly digital publishing - archiving, curation, digital design, and editorializing - to be both abstractions & concretizations.

Individual elements are first abstracted from their contexts to be concretized and combined into a complex network with a shared structure.

SUMMARY

A digital publication contains several layers of abstraction

1.   digitality itself => everything becomes information / computable data

2.  a publication becomes an information network and a database but also networkED (part of a larger network)

3.  a digital publication is abstracting and concretizing – or in other terms de- and re-contextualizing – information nodes of its content (like a database)

4.  the publication follows rather the logic of a collection than one coherent narrative

QUESTIONS? YOU WANT TO FOLLOW UP? GET IN CONTACT!

Florian Wiencek

Email: florian.wiencek@googlemail.com

Twitter: @austrianflow

www: www.florianwiencek.com

Amanda Starling Gould

Email: amanda.gould@duke.edu

Twitter: @stargould

www: http://amandastarlinggould.wordpress.com