Viral City

VIRAL CITY

VIRAL CITY

is a study of viral Internet media through the lens of urban analysis. VIRAL CITY documents and celebrates the moments when a viral system motivates real events or constructions.

Liam Turkle in collaboration with the Office for Collaborative Sustainability

PART I: RESEARCH (A) MEME MAPPING (B) SIMULATION MAPPING (C) NARRATE AND CATALOG

PART II: PRACTICE (A) COLLABORATE (B) COOLSURF WORKSHOPS (C) COOLSURF FARM

EYEBEAM 2011 Fall/Winter Residency Project Proposal

PART I (A) MEME MAPPING: Create a book of drawings cataloging viral media (memes) on the Internet.

OBJECTIVES: (1) Take screenshots during Internet research.

(2) Catalog the network of images borrowing from conventional urban analysis techniques.

(3) Develop a formal language for understanding viral urbanity.

(4) Be recursive. Take the diagrams created in (2) and add them to the set of images from (1). Repeat step (2).

Above: Ontology map created using open-source software developed at TUFTS University.

Below: Precedent modern and post-modern urban analysis techniques - Louis Kahn’s traffic diagram (left) and Kevin Lynch’s analysis of Boston.

PART I (B) SIMULATION MAPPING: Create a book of drawings cataloging simple generative patterns. This is a controlled experiment to find methods that allow the User to creatively modify a computerized algorithm.

OBJECTIVES: (1) Investigate though open-source programs a typology of generative patterns.

(2) Identify the points when the system stops evolving and gets caught in a pattern loop.

(3) Develop a catalog of second order operations that will disturb the existing system and promote pattern diversity.

Elementary Cellular Automata are 1D algorithms with simple rules.

It is a binary pixel map that is turned on or off each generation based on the value of neighboring pixels. The result is a 2D pattern as the rules play out.

PART I (C) NARRATE AND CATALOG: I am interested in understanding a network that is simultaneously content and structure. I will synthesize my analytic findings using a narrative I construct and the narrative contents of viral media.

OBJECTIVES: (1) Synthesize a set of operations and rules that can be seen as a toolbox or an ontology for future work.

(2) Synthesize a set of narrative imagery that are structurally important to the logic of the ontology.

(3) Present the findings in a dynamic way that retains the entertainment value of a meme.

Above: The Jacquard loom uses binary punch cards to describes whether warp is woven above or below the weft. This is the basis of early binary computing. Below: The 2000 Election Crises is an example of a content / structure event; as content it was culturally significant viral narrative as structure it revealed a new interpretative methodology in the reading of binary code.

PART II (A) COLLABORATE: Engage COLLASUS, the collaborative network that I have been producing work within.

OBJECTIVES: (1) Understand how a viral urbanism can promote growth within a contemporary collective.

(2) Explore the collective network that Eyebeam fosters.

(3) Give up my authorship.

COLLASUS, The Office for Collaborative Sustainability, is a collective network of artists and designers that I create my work within. The proposed thesis came out of my work with COLLASUS, and I think benefits strongly from a collective authorship.

PART II (B) COOLSURF WORKSHOPS: Lead class in Mumbai and New York.

OBJECTIVES: (1) Plan and teach a 3 week course on screenshooting as a narrative photography.

(Scheduled to remotely teach a course at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai with COLLASUS.)

(2) Synthesize class content with the context of PART I. (3) Explore other potentials of teaching through Eyebeam.

Screenshot from a successful pilot class we taught in Mumbai in March on screenshooting.

PART II (C) COOLSURF FARM: Develop a series of screenshot instruction booklets to promote opensource making, a long term memory for exceptional found content.

OBJECTIVES: (1) Catalog a list of DIY projects that are innovative, inexpensive, self-sustaining and realizable.

(2) Create a graphic system to make the information understandable as a resource.

(3) Secure a venue to deploy COOLSURF FARM.

(currently working with an independent P.O.D. printer in Portland, Oregon and plan on securing space at the New England Organic Farming Assoc. conference.)

I am fascinated by the myth of John Henry, though the steam drill was stronger and never tired, Henry had a geological sensibility that allowed him to think outside of mechanical normativity. Perhaps this is an image of a technological singularity, not the collapse of civilization as we know it, but something far more personal.