Critical Parliament
Project out-line:
Critical Parliament will be a 20 month development project conducted on and through the WorldWideWeb, constituted by a constantly evolving online archive of textual works responding to the ever-growing conceptual interest in expanded notions of art, curating and curating-as-art. These works will be freely submitted and then judged (through open election) by any registered site user. Supplemented by 10 commissioned works, www.CriticalParliament.net will be an openly available resource whose content and content-providers will benefit form the constant critical re-appraisal of their practice. As a model, Critical Parliament will be a trans-disciplinary arena where the endless variety of fields that affect our understanding of curating can relate through a system that will be available to be copied, in-keeping with the philosophies of open-source production and information sharing.
The project will have 4 central elements (i-iv);
i) Through research and commission an open-source computer programme will be authored that will allow networked users to register and up-load media files into the pending folder of a shared database which can be streamed and viewed on the internet. The programme will then present a mini-referendum template, in which each user will be allowed to vote to keep or remove each submitted file in the database. After a set voting period, the programme will calculate the result (whereby each member gets one vote and all votes are equal) and then perform the appropriate behaviour according to the majority consensus; relegate those files dismissed to a trash folder, and promote those chosen to an approved folder. Therefore the networked user-group have collective authority over the content of the database and have equal access to representing their own work through the database.
ii) This programme will then be applied to produce an online collaborative publishing platform: Production of the website www.CriticalParliament.net will be commissioned to provide a space where textual, digital works – theoretical, critical, artistic, or from tangential fields – regarding any expanded ideas about curating (as a form of cultural production) can be submitted, accessed and judged through the system outlined above. Anyone can passively view material on the site, but through a simple form on the site they will be able to register as a member. A membership profile with security privileges for the site will be emailed to their submitted address, and through this identity they will be allowed to submit files and vote on files in the database. All the functions of the database and website mentioned will be automated. Hopefully no user will need to feel preoccupied by any sense of competing for publication space, given that any file can be re-submitted, every file will face re-election after a set period, and so the database remains constantly both open and closed (unstable).
On the website, the computer programme itself and it’s source code will be freely downloadable.
iii) The project initiators will ‘gate-keep’ the website and it’s un-stable archive, watching particularly for system failures and abuses of the electoral scheme.
iv) 10 innovative people will be selected over the 20 month period – people who are thinking and working through expanded notions of curating – to each research and produce a new work for the archive. These commissioned works will be submitted and subjected to electoral approval like any other member’s contribution. Obviously the ‘success’ of the commissioned work at election will not affect the commissioned party’s bursary. These works are intended to set the tone of the archive, as a place for quality critical engagement not the whimsical comment which has become typical of immediate up-date channels like the WWW.
Contact Information
Questions to the Community
This is a model for a collaborative publishing platform that hopes to utilise the unstable nature of the network and be open (baring in mind that an opening on one level requires some closing on another). However, this model is not closed inot the scheme above, conceptually or practically. It would be great to hear ideas and criticism about; how practically this model might be realised (existing software, similar projects etc) and how this model might be better designed. I assume that the software this project aims to produce and use will be most relevent to debates around open business models, but of course it is not always wise to assume…..(Please use ’subject: Critical Parliament’ for email communications.)
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11 Responses to “Critical Parliament”
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For some reason my Contact Information doesn’t seem to have appeared with my posting ‘Critical Parliament’. So; Nick Thurston: n_thurston@hotmail.com / +447782849046
This model really is quite “open”…
Is the eclectic content just piling in or is there some sytem to divide up themes (ie Literature, Political Theory, Board Games etc etc)? Once the Critical Parliment website has got underway it could take users a while to find anything they’re interested in.
I like the idea of prioritising user interest to control site content. Is the reason that some things are simply voted off the site a size problem or is it to ensure that every item on the site is fascinating?
A reader rating sytem might produce a better results (from a user perspective at least) so that users can search submissions by “star allocation”; eventually the low rated items can slide into oblivion and be deleted by admin from the site.
You mention that you are watching for abuses, do they too need to be voted off the site?
If absolutley obnoxious submissions appear, submissions with offensive content, do they wait for the full voting period before they are removed or will there be some policy in place regarding this?
Is being voted off the only feedback that your contributers receive? Isn’t it possible with all of this enthusiastic programming, to create a comments thing so they can find out why nobody llike their work?
…and most importantly for all us hippy capitalists: how do you make any money?!
Most importantly, the tool which this project relies on (stage i of the project) would be freely available so any body of users could take it, apply to their own networked user group (on the internet or some closed intranet) and run their own publishing platform for any subject matter they wish. That’s where I imagine this project would have most relevence to OpenBusiness’ aims, and as a tool the project probably has it’s maximum commercial potential. (For instance, registration fees for users.)
However, as the tool would be first showcased – as Critical Parliament – the idea is to open up the opportunity to publish, and give you’re own specialism a chance to establish refenrce points with seemingly tangental specialisms, both in refernce to an umbrella issue (here curating).
So avoiding a segmentation of disciplines is important, but I like your idea about increasing the navigability of the archive.
What is and isn’t acceptable as content would be defined technically (by the limitations of the submission system) and I guess politically before the site is up and running, to level an equality of opportunity where everyone is equally aware of the terms of engagement. For example, commercial pornography should not be welcome I think. However the sysem can only realise its maximum potantial as a chace to speak for yourself if that chance is as free from censorial editorship as possible, so any ‘gate-keeping’ should never intrude on the automated right of publication granted to all users unless they contravene the code of acceptability, plus the porcess of up-dating should happen automatically so the system has minimum dependency on it’s gate-keepers. Ideally the voting user-group would monitor for misuses and dsimiss those offenders by first ignoring them, and second voting them off.
Data space isn’t the issue that motivates the electoral system . The vote is meant to be a critical declaration that hopes to prompt the author to revise their work. I think you got to the heart of the problem when asking whether this is feed-back enough. Maybe there needs to be some communication of the critique that has deemed the work ‘not welcome’ if the system of rejection/acceptance is to have positive revisory motivation for those authors whose work is excluded and included. Any thoughts on how this could be best done….?
Prehaps voter comments can be attached to the submitted file so that when the system looks at the votes if the submission is voted in and stays on the site the comments get deleted (or used as comments/discussion if this model is going to employ its users like that) and if its voted out the whole thing gets sent with comments to an email address provided by the submitter. This means that the creater gets some feedback and has more incentive to re-attempt with the submission. It is possible that this system will lift the quality of the work over time as it will work like a peer review process for the site leaving the site more highly regarded etc etc…
That’s a really good idea Hannah! I’m nervous about facilitating endless strands of discussion to each piece because they become too over-whelming to read retrospectively and too long-winded (not all feedback need be ‘critical’, but that is the point of this system; to provide another, more rigorous dimension to the debates taking place through the network which will compliment the more spontaneous email lists etc). However, it would make sense that a revisionary tool enables feed-back beyond the in/out dimension of inclusion/exclusion voting. Maybe with each vote, each user has the option of making 1 statement for example: One chance to give their verdict with all the detail they wish.
I would be hesitant about the implication that data returned as rejected has been criticised, but data accepted goes un-crticised, as if it were perfect. Maybe the act of making a critical response could some-how constitute your vote, or the comment is followed summararilly by the ‘in / out’ choice. Maybe everything should still be accepted provisionally, but there is no higher folder for acceptance. So everything remains in until it is nominated for eviction. These ideas would all require a very dedicated user-base. How have you found take up of the critical discussion system you’ve set-up here on OpenBusinessCC?
I can see the “open” bit of the model, but not the business element. Its not clear from the comments or the posting how this model is going to sustain itself? Is the aim to be a popular site and then to attract advertisment. Is it as banal? Or are there any other third party, or ancillary revenue streams, which can sustain such a complex website?
As a sharware tool the software developed would available to freely download and be altered to anyone who wished. The download would be primarilly sited on teh website of Critical Parliament, in part as a way of attracting persons from a p[rogramming perspective into the space ofdebate on curating. However, Critical Parliament would require third party strategic funding – much like Open Business CC. These are issues we’re working through at the moment.
What sorts of complexities should we expect in providing a user-driven content frame-work project like this on-line?
Be nice! Your community will only love you, if you love them. And keep it as simple and lean as possible….think through the information design and about incentives very carefully. Can you answer the question why people should participate in your project?
Hi again. Ive been moving house and off-line for the last while, so apologies for not responding quicker. Thanks for the tips Christian. The lean-ness part we had taken for granted – as few conditioning restrictions as possible with maximum scope and functionability – that’s partly why we wanted to be party to these types of dialouges. The fewer decisions one makes, the better they need to be because the more exposed their consequences will be.
The website would really need to gain respectability as a place where people wanted to be published. So on one level participants would want to disseminate the work they’ve done. Commissioning new works by significant actors within the discourse should set a tone of contribution quality but also bring a dimension of attractiveness; gain the site a reputation as the place to find exciting new work by established persons.
On another level, because of the revisory system, this opportunity would be most useful as a chance to share and then revise your work in / as kinds of editions / interminable versions. Hopefully regular contribution (both submitting and voting) will develop some degree of user loyalty.
In the first place there would need to be a sense of sympathy or affinity with the wants of this project to offer an open publishing platform. Without that, participants would likely feel un-easy about offering there work as both freely clonable and openly thrust forward for critique. The users would need to be brave enought to try the system, and probably have a personal practice driven by some sense of imminant critique.
If you’re interested in publishing literature and the future of the hardcopy book there’s a small discussion happening here.
The website is called “if:book, A Project of the Institute for the Future of the book”, and it examines issues that anyone interested in online literary publications might be interested in keeping up with. Nick, you might be interested.
After seeing so many music models on this site it would be great to hear from anyone who is currently doing any online galleries or publishing, what models they use, or have come up with, and what they think of Cory Doctorow’sapproach!
I agree with hanah. Some more voices would be great. It would be particularly good to hear from people who are publishing in a broad sense through the internet, in which I would include those streaming, podcasting etc, noises, images and interactive tools. The important connection is the intention to distribute and experience materials in / as their digital format. To explore how these relatively new formats might come to (re-)define electronic publishing. This is the perfect forum to go beyond traditional models of publication, and to investigate how digital data formats might be allowed to test their own limits, without being crudely mis-understood by the terms of print and paper publishing. The two types of publication are materialially, and therefore necessarilly, different – which is something that we might celebrate here rather than fear (as the publishing houses do).