Say The Same Thing (STST) is an experimental art work which is designed as an evolving tool to better understand the mecanisms of creative collaboration on the Web. After testing the audience's response in multimedia projects we decided to focus on one problem at a time. Before getting into multimedia collaboration we need to understand what makes the audience participate. We designed STST as simply as we could so the audience would be compelled to submit a contribution. STST is composed of several phases.

    At the beginning STST was an open e-mail project. It was working as a chain letter. As we didn't want to make this chain too invasive, the way chain letters usually are, we decided to have the participants send only one message down the line to their closest connected friend. The problem was that the chain got broken very fast. Flower, Drunk, Wild, Angina, More, Modem and Finger One are examples of chain letters that we started.

    The second phase started with Finger Two. Finger Two works in a closed circle of e-mail. In other words, the message always comes back to the initiator. The fact that the initiator has control over the project by having to participate when his/her time comes is one advantage of the closed circle. The obvious problem is that outsiders cannot participate. Participants are added at their request. Finger Two is the STST phase that has lasted the longest so far.

    Finger Three is yet another experiment. Not using e-mail openly any longer but forms, in other word using only the Web from the participant's perspective, Finger Three is the latest experiment of STST. It is too early to decide if this option is viable but it certainly is working better than the first chain letters experiments.

    Triggering the imagination of the audience is the key to have it participate. Of course one needs to have an audience first.

    comments?




    Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 13:49:07 +0000
    From: Eric LoPresti (em_lopresti@pnl.gov)

    reference/explaination:
    There is a famous quote by Jasper Johns, which I am unfortunately unable to quote perfectly right now. Basically it goes like this:

    Take an object
    do something to it
    do something else to it
    '' '' '' '' ''

    to which (I think) one must naturally question: Object?

    nice work, I enjoy this site very much.

    Eric LoPresti
    em_lopresti@pnl.gov
    http://multimedia.pnl.gov:2080/staff/elopresti/art.html