A Proposal...

"The promise of the [world wide] web was that everyone could publish, that a thousand voices could flourish, communicate, connect. The truth was that only those people who knew how to code a web page could make their voices heard. Blogger, Pitas, and all the rest [of the content management systems] have given people with little or no knowledge of HTML the ability to publish on the web: to pontificate, remember, dream and argue in public, as easily as they would send an instant message."

Rebecca Blood, Weblogs: A History and Perspective

AIMS

To explore the notion of blogging (internet web logging), its meaning and significance, through research and immersion in its community.

• What is a blog?
• Where did it come from?
• Who blogs?
• Why?
• What are the variations in content?
• Can these variations be classified?
• What makes a 'good' blog?
• Is the blogging community representative of the world as a whole and what effects do they have on each other?
• Where does blogging sit within theories of mass communication?
• What political/cultural power does the blog have?
• Where is it going?
• How can this aid me as a practitioner?

To engage in a dialog, through keeping my own blog and following those of others I encounter, that will define my role within the community - through elicited responses, I wish to allow my writing (blog content) to be influenced by others and, in turn, influence the writing (blog content) of others through my own dispatches.

• What is the difference between content management systems and where do I place my blog?
• How does this 'instant publishing' affect blog content?
• What am I giving/ what is my position within the community?
• How does my blog affect the community?
• How am I classified?
• What are the effects of the relative immediacy of response/feedback/criticism on blog content/my writing?

To further my writing practices as an artist through keeping a daily blog and following others?

• How do I select the blogs I choose to follow?
• Can I continue to build on the exploration of style and content that led me to be so prolific in my creation of textual work/performance writing at the exhibition at the end of the second year?
• How does blogging every day limit/expand my possibilities as a writer?
• What can I take from this experience into further written/performance based work?
• What are the precedents for art within the blogging community and within mass communication/correspondence as a whole?
• What technical skills will I have to acquire in order to elevate my blog above a standard template? (Do I need to ?)
• How do I obtain and then hold onto a readership?
• What happens if their is no feedback from my readers?
• What happens if their are no readers?
• How do I wish to comment on other blogs? Critical/personal opinion?

POTENTIAL STRATEGIES FOR BLOG CONTENT

A) There is a proliferation of political comment/opinion sites within the blogging community (at the moment, largely centered on Bush/Kerry and Iraq) as well as a high number of diarists. As it is my intention to write under an assumed fictional persona, that is created out of the writing and the feedback it receives, it seems prudent to adopt a recognized format such as these. It is not, however, my intention to cause insult through deception but merely to become a voice drawn form the collective voices of the community. This persona becomes a multiple personality, constantly evolving through outside input. Under the guise of a conventional day-to-day journal I would be drawn to different sites that I could collectively comment upon.

B) An unusual form within blogging is 'Footnoting', spearheaded (created by?) Geof Huth. He describes the form thusly;

"Footnotes to a nonexistent book, a series of observations, a novel without the plot, the autobiography of an imagination, linked poetry of the everyday world, an impossible goal."

These single lines of text could become the bloggers meme;

"meme n (mem): A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. From the Greek minema, something imitated, from mimeisthai, to imitate"

The Memes List

Bloggers use meme lists as impetus for their own daily entry. Could I use a footnote site as my impetus, writing the nonexistent companion page to the note? Perhaps a collaboration with the footnoter themselves could be sought or an amalgamation of sites' notes be used too draw into a single narrative?

POSSIBLE OUTCOMES/MODES OF DOCUMENTATION

• a blog with a following, that is linked to by other blog sites
• a created character or persona that can be taken onto future performance based work
• a bookwork of selected writings and conversations generated from the enquiry
• an annotated blog transcript, charting my course throughout his project including responses and evaluations to situations arisen
• public readings of selected excerpts

(I then went on to include a proposed time division, budget, health and safety risk assessment and an indicative bibliography to date. All assessment criteria, I'll cover them as and when.)