Groundworks as a Pool in a Village where growing molds is crucial
Groundworks is a publication of A2RU: https://a2ru.org/groundworks/
I give my feedback to the detailed specifics to Veronika Stranich’s Summary separately (ask me if you want to see it)
However,
My comments reflect 40 years of “wasted” time volunteering in academic publishing for Leonardo and MIT press and Pergamon Press, ACM and other publishers
My definition of publishing is “leaving a trace’ for other human animals now or later to eat and think about and change their behavior for the better as a result.
Molds only grow if they leave goo behind: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780081005026000091
I have been involved with the A2RU Groundworks publication since it was conceived; I intend to keep involved as it evolves.
This last word, evolves, is for me crucial. Yes, we need 5-year plans to clarify our thinking and actions. However, the publishing world is changing on timescales that escape the 5-year timescale.
We have progressed from the stone age, the bronze age, the pencil and paper age, the print age and now the age of social media and AI,VR,AR, genetic publishing under way.
Eduardo Kac once published by modifying a gene of a plant with a text : https://www.ekac.org/geninfo.html
When I once met Steve Jobs he made the comment; did you know how long it took to invent the page number in books? a long time: https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/02/page-numbers-where-did-they-come-from-and-are-they-even-useful-anymore.html
A key strength of Groundworks is that it evolves with the group overseeing it, and the authors, reviewers and reader’s feedback.
Missing from the document is a project 5-year budget and sources of income plan.
You don’t earn money from podcasts the way you do from printed or digital journals.
Groundworks has benefitted from using multiple ‘modes’ of publishing including podcasts. Multimodal is the way human animals get external information to their bodies.
But a key thing that emerges from the following document is the discussion of ‘community building’. Hence the word “Village” in the title of this document.
I am part of a group that calls itself a ‘ciber village’, where we try to use digital feedback looks to create the equivalent of a medieval village, where you had to go to church to read a book.
This also takes time and money and willpower, persistence, resilience and compassion.
A major critique of ‘academic publishing’ is that it is a digital system where we publish by typing 1 (yes) or 0 (no).
The Pool publication at the University of Maine: http://pool.newmedia.umaine.edu/
The Pool is itself a collaboration of faculty and students in the New Media Department of the University of Maine, with a Groundworks like Village Council:
- John Bell, approach designer and release engineer
- Joline Blais, conceptual architect
- Margaretha Haughwout, sociologist-in-residence
- Jon Ippolito, conceptual architect, approach designer, and release engineer
- Matt James, approach designer and release engineer
- Jerome Knope, approach designer and release engineer
- Justin Russell, approach designer and release engineer
- Mike Scott, conceptual consultant and host administrator
- Owen Smith, conceptual consultant
It is a successful failed experiment led by Veronica aka Jon Ippolito. I suggest we reach out to the team.
The Pool offers a very different message. This online environment is an experiment in sharing art, text, and code–not just sharing digital files themselves but sharing the process of making them. In place of the single-artist, single-artwork paradigm favored by the overwhelming majority of studio art programs and collection management systems, The Pool stimulates and documents collaboration in a variety of forms, including multi-author, asynchronous, and cross-medium projects.
But articles were not yes/no published. You threw anything into the pool and the better stuff rose to the top of the table of contents, and the less good stuff sank to the appendix. Sometimes less good stuff became really good stuff 20 years later and moved to the top of the appendix.
The concept of gatekeeping in academic new media journals and exhibitions was studied and critiqued in detail by Monika Fleshman in 2005 https://www.academia.edu/624855/How_Gate_keeping_Systems_Work_in_the_New_Media_Arts?email_work_card=view-paper
I highly recommend a quick read.
The failed experiment of The Pool is maybe a steppingstone for Groundworks, but careful some stepping stones are mossy and slippery.
I was exposed by a journalist at the NY times to their learning to publish on cell phone screens; they coined the term “scrolly telling’.
https://www.wix.com/studio/blog/scrollytelling
Scrollytelling is a visual storytelling technique that uses interactive elements on a webpage to tell a narrative story. As a web designer, you present the information in a way that makes users experience the story as they scroll down the page.
The New York Times started scrollytelling as a form of journalism with Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek, which went on to win the 2013 Pulitzer Prize.
But this concept of digital storytelling isn’t limited to online journalism since every brand has its own story to share
This is only ten years ago. No page numbers and URLs that work with a click.
So what hardware will our intended readers use to read Groundworks ? We will never have the money or time to adapt Groundworks to every form of e-paper (VR AR).
I am trying to use scrollytelling rules to write this text but its harder than you think.
We agreed that AI needed to be discussed in 5 years, when things settle down (hah!). But at least asking authors to attribute their AI co authors makes sense to me. The version of the software keeps changing and the article too. And not just “I used AI in writing this text”. The version you use of AI software affects the final text.
So, to conclude I do think we should follow the proposed 5 year plan for Groundworks but be ready to jump into a pool when there is no rain. Better metaphor – in reservoir there is usually a dam. When there is not enough water it stops the drain. When there is too much, it lets it out.