User:Eleanorg/Journal 1.3
14 April
So here we are at 1.3. Too many ideas for projects and not enough time.
In prototyping I'll be developing the 'adopt a pixel' project and hope to have it actually working by the end of term, with a database.
Now I have to think about Radical X and where I want to take it. Came up with a rough proposal for a project to do this Trimester, on hosting - the distributed, physical archive of censored works. Realised that if I go with this, there is a clear theme developing in Radical X. All projects will have explored the question of solidarity vs consent; how people with conflicting interests accommodate one another.
So the proposal I wrote was this:
Proposal: BodyBook will facilitate the creation of a distributed archive of images censored from Facebook because of their 'bodily' content (nudity, breastfeeding etc). Participants will be invited to contribute images that they have had removed from their pages by Facebook admins, and the BodyBook website will match them with other participants who are willing to "host" the image for them. Participants will be encouraged to interpret "hosting" in a broad sense: from hosting the image literally on their own server, to physically carrying it with them - provided that the host have bodily guardianship of their chosen image. The BodyBook website will provide an index of this physical archive.
And that leaves me with a list of questions that need answering:
- Why Facebook specifically, and could attention be drawn to the problems of censorship/hosting by widening the net somewhat?
- Do hosts get to see the images they're adopting, or is it a surprise/ blind promise?
- How to make it interesting/rewarding for participants? How to invite their creative input - designing the storage devices; making images specially for it (in which case need to adjust original specs for images)?
Actually funnily enough, I just took a pause to download some music and had to move to yet another pirate bay mirror, as each one seems to get blocked. I find this whole process fascinating - how the 'taken down' page then links to alternate mirrors. How could I make this Rad X project relevant to this more scary form of censorship, instead of just highlighting the obvious fact that FB doesn't like breasts? Is it even relevant to sexuality and if so, how? Or does it fall outside the scope of Rad X?