Edition 1

It seems a good time to reflect on recent innovations (and devolutions) and take stock of what the deal is with social design at this moment. Hopefully I will write something of this nature each year for as long as I teach the class. I am only going to get older and more naturally out-of-touch with youth-inspired innovation. This seems a good way to force myself be on the ball with current trends and best practices.

When I look back I know that SpiderWebShow was born of a hunch. I had a sense that there might be a way to gather and collate the disparate strands and to allow meaning to form as a result. I had a feeling that we might be able to tell a story in a new way and to allow that story the space to have ever changing narratives. I wanted to move forward and backwards through the story and to look to its left and its right. Ultimately I hoped we would be able to expose all the story making elements.

The original goal of the SWS was to build a "National Theatre" that made sense for the Internet age. Reading the original proposal, I felt that it was going to be actually very difficult to separate the project's artistic goals from their technical realization. Which is why I kind of asserted myself a bit more and said that not only was I going to write some code, but I had to have some sort of advisory role, helping the creators see the technical limits, but also the technical possibilities.