User:Eleanorg/gradProposal/2012-09-18

The Dissolute Image

what

The Dissolute Image is a speculative, poetic hosting technique. It enables the distributed hosting of a banned image on the 2.0 platform/s from which it has been excluded.

The Dissolute Image is a single webpage in which tiny image files from across the web are embedded - eventually making up a larger image. Each participant is invited to post a single pixel (image file) on their own blog or social network account and to submit the URL where they've posted it. As more and more pixels are posted by participants, a recognizable image starts to emerge.

how

The Dissolute Image begins with a single image file which has been banned. A script first splits the image up into its constituent pixels, each of which is made into a database entry. Initially, The Dissolute Image homepage appears blank. Through another page on this site, visitors are offered a pixel which has not yet been 'adopted', and given the corresponding image file. When they have posted this image file (for example on their Facebook page) and submitted the URL, a note is made against that pixel in the database and the image file is embedded in The Dissolute Image homepage. If it is deleted from their Facebook page, the image will disappear from The Dissolute Image, and come up again for adoption.

why

This project sprung from an interest in 2.0 censorship, as an example of the problem with user-generated content being hosted on centralized servers beyond users' control. This censorship also raises the question of how community-controlled hosting should address this issue, and whether DIY hosts are in practice any more willing than corporate platforms to allow free speech at the expense of their own tastes or values.

The project's intention is to attract those who oppose censorship, and challenge them with the possibility that their solidarity may be supporting objectionable content. On a formal level, the project realized a long-standing desire on my part to deconstruct a cultural artefact to the smallest possible visual unit, and revel in the sheer scale of the painstaking endeavour to re-construct it. Thus, conceptually and formally, the project explores my wider concerns with democratic participation vs/and/as hierarchical power, the individual's role in the multitude, and the difficulties encountered in attempting to form consensus.

My working process more generally

what

I design and facilitate processes which invite participants to generate content, curate or edit content, or otherwise share ideas - while being challenged to encounter the ideas of others.

how

I usually begin with a topic of political/social interest, looking for cases in which certain ideological positions or problems are manifested concretely. (For example, the political issue of data hosting as made concrete in the example of photos censored from Facebook.) I then gather images, texts and hopefully conversations/interviews relating to this topic and keep these in a working journal, where I also record my reflections on the material gathered.

During this process, ideas for possible responses and prototypes emerge spontaneously. Often I put off actually realizing these, thinking that more conceptual work is needed first - or simply being lazy. But when I make a prototype, more specific practical as well as conceptual problems (sometimes solutions) become clear, as well as natural 'next steps' to build upon or refine the prototype. These prototypes also enable me to speak with others about my ideas, triggering associations in the people I speak with, and so enabling me to find more research material and/or resolve conceptual/practical problems.

why

now you're asking! (hahaha!)