In the text "The Random Universe" by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, there was a section that talks about telling a secret to one person
and passing that secret to one other person. Eventually everybody in this network knows, this relates to my project specifically
in regard to connections people have.
The text by Duncan Watts "Six Degrees of Interconnection" however, relates even more closely to my project. In the article, Watts
talks about the degrees to which people are related and the social network that is created by knowing other people. My project
aims to take advantage of this by mapping out connections of people and who they are acquainted with across the country.
In "The Art of Cyberspace" by Pierre Levy he mentions how the limits to what an artwork is and how it can be presented is ever-growing
and cannot be contained. In "The death of the Author" by Roland Barthes, Barthes describes how an artwork is manifested from the
life and experiences of the artist/author but it isn't necessary for the author to be known, or even alive, after the piece is created
for the piece to be enjoyed or interpreted.
Network Project:
Gabriel Poissant and I have mapped a communication network. We have called, texted, e-mailed, and facebook messaged people to find the connections needed.
We started with ourselves represented by the white peg, then used our chosen form of communication to contact the next person and asked them to refer us to another person.
We represented multiple connections in the same city by wrapping the string around the correlating peg once for each connection.
The outlier string that runs towards the bottom of the map is to Brazil.
The link ended when someone either didn't respond or refused to cooperate with us, we represented the end of the link with a red peg.
In total there were twenty-five phone calls made, twelve text messages sent, and three e-mails sent, resulting in forty-one total connections.
