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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
Digital Media Tree this blog's archive OVVLvverk Lorna Mills: Artworks / Persona Volare / contact Sally McKay: GIFS / cv and contact |
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Tom Moody, Chris Ashley, jimpunk and abe linkoln were asked to participate as guest artist-bloggers on an academic listserv called empyre. The discussion quickly devolved into a catty battle about lists versus blogs. You can read the empyre debate (described by Bill as the "smouldering wreckage of a panel discussion") here, and the consequent 70-comment thread on Tom Moody's blog here. Very fractious.
Each has a very different raison d'être. Lists are for people with a specific interest to focus discussion on that area of expertise. Technical terms and advanced positions are a-okay, and it is refreshing for participants to assume a certain level of education in the topic area. Listservs are perceived to be more democratic than blogs, as the content is generated by multiple participants. Blogs on the other hand are written with the whole world as a potential, invisible readership. Posts tend to be in plain language, and threads are moderated by the blogger with an eye for the general, uinitiated reader. Blogs also have fewer technical barriers to participation. You don't need a client software, and you don't need to 'join'.
Personally, I am increasingly bugged and put off by the one-voice heirarchy of my own blog. But I like the default attention to audience, and I like playing a small role in the self-organising blogosphere. I also find the general level of respect for other posters/readers is higher here that it is on the listserv I belong to, where discussion frequently devolves into myopic misunderstandings, personal rants, and mean-spirited quips. The upside of the list is that, along with the crabbiness, there's wacks of informed people dropping good info into the pot.
Does anyone know of any successful hybrid examples where bloggers and lists have come together to share content (as opposed to meta-babble about the mode of delivery)?
Megan Williams over at cbc.ca/arts does a nice job describing Rebecca Belmore's installation, called Fountain, at the Venice Biennale. Sounds great!
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I'm going on vacation to a strange environment called the forest that doesn't have any telephone lines or wireless hubs. I am coming back sometime around June 11th, likely armed with jpegs of green leafy things and insects. Til then....
