http://www.awillcocks.com/wortex3.html

is up ...sort of.....

Having had several responses to my Wortex web page, the rather static nature of the way it comes across and the fact that it does not really take advantage of the way the internet is set up today is a problem. - for example the Wikkis is a place where where information can be edited by others, the self and information generated dynamically around the world of those connected. Basically all the Wortex is is a Photoshop document was the main reponse - so why use the internet instead of paper?

Looking at Wortex 1 and the way I defined my first page of the Wortex does not really explain what I am attempting to do. Content does not match function. Having done a Blog in Kavita Phillips class I found it a useful way of using the internet to show the public my art and research processes. This process opened me up to judgment and comments that not only affected the way I understood my work but perhaps helped others to see my biased flaws. It gave me and others a small insight into how I am influenced by other forms of media not only professional intellectual readings, but news, media or even a conversation with a friend. The information diverged as peopled responded. But what was also interesting and has been highlighted again with my use of the web page Wortex is the fact that even if you put it out there, information is only as good as the network that connects you.

I have had more responses about Wortex visually by people who would not normally read academic papers or even have access to them. It was suggested that they might start to understand what I done. They now have limited access, even if it was a simple visual skimming to what I had done and could revisit it in their own time. By posting on the web, I am allowing for some interesting conversations on the way I traced by intellectual processes that can not always be contained on paper- Perhaps like the statement on the wall that describes an artists work. In that sense the Wortex is my intellectual statement on the global wall in Academia?

So I know I have to redefine my argument about what I am attempting to do. I am not going to change the world of academia, (perhaps I could do that if I had another couple of years doing a PHD). I am not claiming that I need to create all the software, hardware or even research existing avenues of internet authorship need to facilitate the collaborative nature of the process of academia today. Collections of people are creating, testing and trying that now. But what I am interested in is opening up a multifacted approach to interdisciplinary studies and the research paper A paper that not only makes conclusions but is exposed in process. What I am trying to be a sort of modest witness kind of referencing. The Wortex concept is really about giving the general public access to the academic process and information. Not only access through writing but access to articles and information that can be better referenced or discerned. It is very difficult for those not in the industry of knowledge production to get access to quality research and papers. Even when published the results are not necessarily true. Or you have to be members of universities, societies, attend conferences of subscribe to endless magazines to find the relevent articles. So the Wortex was not about setting up a Wikki. I have seen work well, in the process of research and argument formation in several of Kavita Phillip's classes. But my several attempts at different web formats is a way of putting my process up onto the global market of the internet. Perhaps making it available to others.

I know my English is of a pretty insufficient in standard but I am working to produce more legible arguments with less run on sentences. I intend to use my blog as an ongoing daily documentation even for the final days up to defending my paper and the printing of the paper. The Wortex will end after 5 entries. They are the 5 arguments that support intellectually why I did the research and presented my projects in certain formats. There will be PDF's and other connections as well as language refinements, lots of pictures and hyperlinks.

As for the actual documentation of my art process - about how I created my projects - my discussion about the projects I have already set up a web site that connects you to some of the information. I will also be revisiting the projects by creating a hyperlinked story - like a diary linked so you can make your own narrative about how I went about each projects process.

I don't know if anyone realized but the wortex was also a pun. I essentially wrote a paper by referring to Foucault and the manufacture of authority through knowledge production, yet that was exactly what I was doing writing a paper about not only writing a paper but by posting it I am essentially exposing the problems inherent in my own work. Opening up to the public not just keeping it inside the intellectual industry that produce knowledge.

SOME COMMENTS

ange, i think what you are doing is fantastic, its the perfect format
for my 'visual' brain to access information, and the embedded pop-ups
are mirror actions of how information comes into my head - other
thoughts pop in while im reading about something else. I read the
whole thing and I find it interesting that the issues of authorship
are still up there as priority for University. As to your
frequent question in the second wortex re: is it ART - growing
chickens, maybe i could put my two kids in the gallery - they are the
best works ive made yet and it has to be ART because i am an ARTIST.
ha. catching up with tim this weekend and i look forward to hearing
all of what you two got up to. talk soon. keep sending, al

Things to consider when assaulting paper...


To be blunt, I see paper as superior to pretty much all other media yet
produced, for one simple reason: it persists. If a thing cannot be found,
or 'read' when it IS found, it might as well not exist. The Dead Sea Scrolls
were found, and as shitty as they are, reveal information (if not exactly
knowledge, eg. revealed idiotic Essene washing rituals).


> you might need firefox to see it

Case in point. Which version?

Can I read it in 2017? 2027? 2047?

Can you today read many things produced electronically in 1997? 1987? 1967?

NASA has lost the entirety of data collected from many early space probes
because the media rotted away, and only a handful of archival technology
companies still have operable machines that can read "universal" 800bpi and
1600bpi reel tape that was in use for decades, once...


In a large view, today's stuff isn't really much different than how 100, 500,
1000 year old plays, performances, song, etc are "lost", even when we recover
some recorded record of it. There's a lot of contextual subtlety (some of it
subtle as a train wreck) that's simply not recorded.

WWW? This too will pass.

Of course for school purposes new media is assumed up front to be
automatically good, but it's pretty much ephemeral, so it's good for
momentary communication, cultural stuff like organizing, but inherently lousy
for things to persist. Tom