The permanent marks
scatter their utterance
like crickets or bats,
subject to skip and
flights of sound
rounding a corner.

I've been long cured of the illusion that starting a blog or other networked accretion will translate into productivity for a writing project. Still, I'm always eager to break out of isolated author mode and take things public. With that in mind, I'm posting a link to NowWriting.

I envision this wiki as an article in terms of chunking it for work prioritization, academic weight and such. I think of it as nothing like an article in terms of its composition process. I hope to write on it in a number of ways: cobble on it over the next couple of months in blog-like fashion; spend some time refining and extending pieces; go fungal with links to partial ideas that might be dumped or expanded; see if anyone jumps in to add or change ideas or foci. I honestly only know for sure that I want to toy with the idea of enacting rather than describing an emerging and converging kind of writing.

I've enjoyed fidgeting with the wiki software. I'm struck by the way that composing wiki text feels closer to the raw HTML coding of the early 90s. It's very liberating to link when the urge hits. Going back and changing, though, is tougher, I think. The naming of files when the link is created runs counter to the provisionality and fluid form that should be part of this kind of project. In any case I'll be pushing this around for a while and welcome joiners.

Jeff made a post about memory and the fit between blogging and reflecting with pleasure. In that spirit, I offer two items. The first is from my personal collection, an official KGBS CB Radio Guide. I actually sent off the SASE to have this thing mailed to me--must have been 1977. The second is a link to my own television memory item. No comment.

Faculty life seems to bounce between creating and grading assignments one moment and reading and writing professional texts the next. Activities move back and forth from teaching to research with the frantic energy of a flickering flame. When the movement is broken, it’s usually some administrative logjam (or, worse, bit of minutiae) to be gotten unstuck. So, what a joy it’s been to be working lately on a new school project, advising the English majors and their student organization.

Most departments have a club or association for their undergraduate majors. Ours has languished for several years, and I’ve been given the reigns. I quickly decided that we could use some social networking software to facilitate the group interactions. I’ve learned a couple of things.

First, there is no substitute for behind the scenes organization on the part of the members of a group. This is not new information, but it’s always helpful to have the knowledge reinforced. Setting up meetings, tracking down keys, sending e-mails, taking notes, following up—all the usual managing must be in place before anything happens. Fortunately, there is an untapped reservoir of interest among our majors; (many) students want more than just to take courses; they want to make connections, share their love of literature, learn outside of the classroom. So, we’ve got the baseline organizational structure and personal investments in place.

That means that building the social networking site has been more fun than I could have imagined. I’m always glad to tinker with technology, but it’s much more rewarding if a group of people use what you make. I’ve spent the last few weeks taking my relationship with Drupal to the next level; we’ve moved past that glowing-get-to-know-each-other stage, spent some time in the I-just-don’t-think-this-is-going-to-work-out stage, and seem to have settled into the boy-I-wish-I’d-known-about-some-of-these-quirks-but-I-guess-I-can-live-with-them-and-I-sure-feel-comfortable-together stage.

The main focus has been adding community-building modules to create the social structures. At first I focused on things like the birthday module or the avatar module, little touches that add a community feel to the site. I put up an events module/calendar to share information about readings and such. I then set up the organic groups module—a set of tools that allows the creation of sub-groups on the site—you can limit access to blog postings to members of a group, post group-limited announcements, and send messages to group members. My thinking was that the practical groups and events modules would be the most useful.

But then, earlier this week, students in my first year seminar complained that it’s difficult to read all of the postings and comments on the class blog without being able to attach a face to a name. Enter the avatar module. Why I didn’t think of this earlier, I can only attribute to thinking that the face-to-face time we had in class each week obviated the need to add the community-building measures to the class site. My bad. The avatars on the class Web site have gone up more quickly than those on the SOUL site. The students then asked to have their pictures appended to their postings and comments, which I set up.

I’m glad they set me straight, because I’ve been trying to study ways that the studio teaching model that I favor might translate into online spaces. I guess, though, this pokes a hole in my theory that working with the English majors organization was a break from the usual routine; my dabbling with the majors site quickly bounced into the classroom; and now it seems to be moving back toward scholarship. Fickle flame.

I saw this video detailing Jonathan Coulton a couple of weeks back on the N.Y. Times and just had a chance to read through the related article. I like the way the piece illustrates media transformations through examples of viral musicianship and alternative modes of interacting. The combination of DIY recording, Internet distribution, and second Web social promotion has clearly had an impact on the way music gets made and shared. I like the way the Times puts it, “This confluence of forces has produced a curious inflection point: for rock musicians, being a bit of a nerd now helps you become successful.” Coulton’s “Codemonkey” is a perfect example. The number of YouTube entries for the song is impressive and you can hear how the song itself resonates with lots of inner geeks.

Beyond making me want to cheer for Coulton and his online crew of viral fans, the article makes me think about the way these transformations might also play out in other contexts. A big concern pointed out in the piece is the breakdown of public and private lives wrought by extending the artist into the social Petri dish of the Web: “In many ways, the Internet’s biggest impact on artists is emotional. When you have thousands of fans interacting with you electronically, it can feel as if you’re on stage 24 hours a day.”

Clearly the level of public transformation is not as extensive, but similar concerns can be raised about all kinds of activities as they move toward the 24/7 mediation of the Web. I’m thinking of even the added exposure that teachers or students experience as they become posters, bloggers, participants in online culture. Really we’re looking at new kinds of rhetorical situations in which boundaries must be constantly broken down and re-established. Relating the experiences of Tad Kubler, guitarist for Hold Steady, the piece points out that “Kubler has cultivated a skill that is unique to the age of Internet fandom, and perhaps increasingly necessary to it, as well: a nuanced ability to seem authentic and confessional without spilling over into a Britney Spears level of information overload.”

None of this is that surprising, but it is interesting to see the kinds of decisions artists now make about how they compose their public persona. But there’s one more layer to the piece that complicates things even further. It’s not just that these new modes of being public have created a kind of supercharger for voyeurism that complicates artist’s lives. The environment actually pushes back in a way that alters the basic paradigms of art and creativity.

For many of these ultraconnected artists, it seems the nature of creativity itself is changing. It is no longer a solitary act: their audiences are peering over their shoulders as they work, offering pointed comments and suggestions. When OK Go released its treadmill-dancing video on YouTube, it quickly amassed 15 million views, a number so big that it is, as Kulash, the singer, told me, slightly surreal. “Fifteen million people is more than you can see,” he said. “It’s like this big mass of ants, and you’re sitting at home in your underpants to see how many times you’ve been downloaded, and you can sort of feel the ebb and flow of mass attention.”

Again, some of this is evolutionary change—it's not that different from anticipating and adjusting compositions for either an addressed or evoked audience. But some of it does represent a shift. The artist is no longer working in supposed isolation; now literally bombarded by feedback mechanisms, the artist and the composition are shaped more forcefully than ever by listeners and viewers.

But there is an even bigger shift. Much of the creative production for the larger phenomenon of artistic projects is now off loaded to the crowd. The online crew churning out Codemonkey videos, remixing and amplifying the work of artists like Coulton represents a serious shift in how creativity happens. At this point, I doubt that those who study composition have begun to consider all of the implications for such social creativity. I wonder if these developments can be used to leapfrog some of the hangups in place already when it comes to formalized writing instruction and creativity. Compositionists are quite keen on the social. Perhaps that fancy for the social can be used to smuggle the creative back into writing classrooms.