A Collective Intelligence?

               A collective intelligence involves a kind of group decision-making. Not sure if this video qualifies, but it's the closest to a collective intelligence out of the other 'improv everywhere' videos on youtube, which I've already lost some hours to, so I'm going to go with what I've got. All of the 'improv everywhere' videos involve a social experiment of some kind. Most have a group of strange people go around a busy area, and engage in socially unacceptable behaviors while cameras capture the faces of confused onlookers. Whether its a spontaneous musical in a stagnant cafeteria, a classic movie suicide-talk-down scene - four feet off of the ground, or a massive no-pants subway ride, the experiments usually don't involve collaboration so much as a common agreement to perform the given task. Generally, neither does this one, because everyone in the group is likewise following directions. However,  some elements of a collective intelligence are at play here. Some of the dynamics of a collective intelligence can be described within the context of psychology and its theories of motivation in reference to the group setting.
                There are two basic types of motivation: learning motivation, and performance motivation. Learning motivation generally has us trying out creative possibilities for the sake of advancing our knowledge and competency, while performance motivation has us concerned about social comparison and self-validation. Correlated to the performance motivation is the n ach, or need for achievement. The higher our need for achievement, the higher our motivation to perform. There is another term, which I forget, that terms the direct correlation of the n ach of a person with the number of people that are with that person. As the group grows, so does the n ach and performance motivation of the person (a good illustration of this would be a speech, where pressure to perform increases with the size of the audience). Problem with this is, if a person's confidence in their ability to perform a task is low, then a performance motivation will be dramatically ineffective. For example, think about something you suck at. Imagine doing this thing that you suck at alone; no one is watching. You can do awful Christopher Walken impressions all day long because you're scrunched below the dashboard with your windows rolled up. Now imagine you have an audience. You let slip that you 'can sort of do a Christopher Walken impression', and your listeners demand a demonstration. Knowing that you wouldn't do this impression for people you do know, your confidence is low, and when you do exclaim 'more cowbell' it comes out a little Keanu Reeves-ish. The point of all this is that, in the video, the close adherence of the people within the group to the dictation of the "omnipotent" voice can partly be explained with psychology, and we can likely transfer that logic to explain the behavior of people within a collective intelligence. Maybe. :D

Creating Worlds

Humans are fascinated with fictional worlds. When our own narratives start to bore us we can use fictional places to discard our real life roles and assume new ones.  Sometimes we’d like also not to be on earth, and this is where virtual worlds come in. But what makes for a quality virtual place? Contrary to popular belief, great creations are rarely the result of genius (some might argue that George Lucas is a good proof of this); there are certain guidelines to making these worlds enjoyable to play in (along with tedious fictional-historical trivia that will likely be enjoyed by 1% of your viewer-base; not sayin’ it’s a bad thing). The blockbuster movie Avatar is an example of a property which was fantastic, though it didn’t encourage as much fan interaction as Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.  I thought it would be fun to look at it anyway, since it was successful in creating an immersive fantasy environment.  

                JRR Tolkien, the creator of the Lord of the Rings series of books and possibly the best singular maker of fantasy worlds in literary history, wrote an essay called On Fairy Stories which details the art of creating immersive worlds.  One of his major arguments from the essay is that a successful imaginary world has to be consistent and logical. In Avatar we don’t have to really believe in the giant blue people, but they become more credible for our movie watching experience if they are given a logical place in the world. All of the bits and pieces of the world should make sense in relation to each other. For example, on a planet with giant blue people it follows that there should also be enormous rocks floating in the sky. Blue people = gravity not that important. In a sense, the logic works. The azure inhabitants of Pandora (the planet’s name) share a similar level of strangeness with levitating rocks, the universe’s treehouse, the sentient hive-mind willow, etc. These elements have found a way to mesh within the Avatar universe. While it’s important to have all of your parts cooperating, it’s even more crucial to establish them early on, and to be totally consistent. From Tolkien:

“[A story-maker] makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside.”

The rules are the rules. Immersing yourself in Avatar requires some suspension of disbelief, but once the rules are accepted it is the responsibility of the product to maintain them. Once a continent loses its gravity it never gets it back. The sentient tree, which hasn’t been shown to possess vocal chords throughout the movie, shouldn’t suddenly acquire the ability to speak at the end (Just a quick aside: Does this explain why M. Night Shyamalan’s twist-obsessed films suck donkey-ass?). 

“It is precisely the colouring, the atmosphere, the unclassifiable individual details of a story, and above all the general purport that informs with life the undissected bones of the plot, that really count.” 

Perhaps this is what distinguishes the kind of properties that create life-long fan obsessions from those that are scarcely forgotten, but rarely so loved. 

DeviantART as Public Sphere

As defined by Jurgen Habermas, a public sphere is:

“the virtual space where the citizens of a country exchange ideas and discuss issues, in order to reach [an] agreement about 'matters of general interest'" ([Jurgen] Habermas, 1997: 105)

By that definition, we can reasonably identify this site as an example of a public sphere in which visual ideas are exchanged. The website, named DeviantART, is a virtual space where pro artists and wannabes gather to share and critique their artwork. As “the world’s largest online community of artists and art-lovers”, DeviantArt should provide a (somewhat) representative sample of the (probably teenage) world’s ‘matters of general interest’ in terms of visual art. The ‘issues’ are ‘discussed’ using visual rhetoric. If you were to view the current front page and compare it with a -useful- sample (i.e. I couldn’t tell you how many) of previous popular postings (tacky alliteration FTW) you might interpret the ‘visual exchanges’ as correlating with the day’s art and social trends. 

"Simpsonzu" by Space Coyote on DeviantART

For example, in the above picture we have a visual representation of the rising popularity of japanese anime in the world of cartoon fans. This image works because anime has entered the cultural consciousness of America. Now, imagine if shows like Naruto and Avatar hadn't reached a large audience here. A Japanese-style interpretation of The Simpsons wouldn't really be relevant because it would be too unfamiliar. In another case, if this was modeled after the Dilbert cartoon strip, that might be funny in a random-humor sort of way, but it wouldn't make sense to our youth culture which is largely unaware of the Dilbert cartoon series. In this way images can represent the cultural trends of our society, and by extension the public sphere which both influences our culture and is motivated by it.  

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Youtube Identity and Concept Art

For most, Youtube serves as a poor excuse to put off doing those urgently important things we owe to ourselves and everyone we know to do. We can delight ourselves by watching a sneezing panda while the stress from that unmet deadline manifests itself as a stomach ulcer. There are also good reasons to be on Youtube, or at least that's what I tell myself. One such self-delusional reason to be on Youtube is to learn about concept art. I personally cannot draw very well, but the resources are just irresistible. Here's one guy who can teach you about the subtle differences between male and female noses while also helping to alleviate your insomnia.

An hour of video is uploaded to Youtube every second of every day, adding up to about a decade of video uploaded daily (says this article). Given that, a concept art teacher trying to gain an audience on Youtube has some work to do. First order of business, what might attract viewers to your channel?
If you are teaching art, you have to assume that most who would click your link are interested in learning techniques or in finding something visually stimulating.

An entire blog could focus on the various techniques of getting exposure on the internet, but I want to focus a little bit on how you can keep your audience once you get it. On Youtube, this means getting subscribers. Once a viewer hits that subscribe button they are subject to all of your future uploads until they choose to unsubscribe for some indiscernible reason. What makes someone want to subscribe? This is where your Vlogging identity becomes invaluable. The clip I inserted above, featuring the Youtube personality sinixdesign, is a fairly good example of what you'd be attempting to do. I subscribed to sinix because he is reliable and consistent. Earlier when I said I couldn't draw very well, I may have implied that I don't actually use these tutorials, which is true. When I have more time on my hands I do plan to devote some days to improving my skill so that one day I might draw something that actually gets the intended reaction (i.e. not uncontrollable laughter). Sinix is a resource that I will come back to because he can teach me how to draw whilst keeping my attention.

Rhetorical Response Remix

There are a lot of ways to be memorable, too many to detail here, but I think these are a good three to start with. Watch this video and witness the power of weird.

The Misconception of Copyright

Copyright was originally intended to promote creation, and for awhile it worked the way it was supposed to. Now it is part of a system that largely ignores the small inventor and promotes the big company.  My opinion is that it no longer serves the function of encouraging new creations. At best, copyright extends the life of already successful products for the benefit of the publisher, more-so than for the benefit of the original author of the work. How does this factor into the benefit of our nation? That question assumes that our government still functions to support our nation, the only reason it exists. Yet, and this line of thought is for a different blogger to expound on, it seems that the congressmen of our government are as individualistically driven as the people they govern. 

When it comes to supporting the creator copyright needs to be less protective. That might seem counter-intuitive, but creators only need to get their product out into the world where a sufficient amount of acknowledgment can happen. Once this feat is accomplished, copyright no longer has a function to serve in this one's humble opinion. 

This video does a great job of explaining the irrelevancy of copyright to the individual creator.