GUMMO BUST AS NEW QUARTER, 2010
Sculpture
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Jogging will now enter an experimental mode of image distribution called Positive Feedback. This test in image exchange and viewer participation borrows largely from methods of thread self preservation observed on the message board 4Chan and from Norbert Weiner’s notion of self-regulatory feedback in his writing on cybernetics. During Positive Feedback, Jogging’s viewers will now be able to determine the rate and amount of content they receive according to their ability to disperse the most recently posted artwork on the blog. Dispersion, in this scenario, is defined as being what Tumblr calls a note– a like or reblog. Every time 35 notes are produced for the most recently submitted post, a new post will appear. This cycle will repeat itself based on however long it takes for the next lot of notes to accrue.
New work on Jogging will no longer be decided by roughly approximating a rate of production, nor by providing a standard daily serving. The demand for new art and/or willingness of viewers to engage Positive Feedback’s rules of presentation will wholly determine the rate at which new artworks are revealed. Hypothetically, this may result in two extremes: the end of new content on Jogging, or the infinite debut of new work at a rate similar to Aura Apocalypse.
While Jogging is currently in a transitional period towards featuring a majority of user-created content, it has not yet switched to primarily displaying outsourced production. We anticipate this moment will occur some time soon, as viewers become more aware of the aesthetic and conceptual interests set forth by the blog and progressively build upon them. In the future, more writing will continue to articulate these interests so that they may be used as a clear foundation for viewer production. It is not our intention to spawn a legion of visually similar works to what has been previously posted on this blog, but to educate and engage a viewing audience in a set of conceptual interests so they may holistically understand and push the boundaries of what we have previously defined Jogging as. There is no artistic genius– only maps for production that may be evolved by individuals or groups. Because we have chosen group production, it is our momentary responsibility to define a set of rules so that you may break them later on. This is the live process of viewers becoming Jogging and Jogging becoming its viewers.
We ultimately hope for the entire blog to become a self-regulatory process, allowing viewers the chance to both create content and vote on the relevance of that content to Jogging’s brand for inclusion. When this end is reached, Jogging will become the first artistic ‘being’ to be associated with an anonymous and endless number of identities– a form of production we feel makes the most efficient use of the possibilities our digital location provokes and is most relevant to the blog’s political aim of encouraging a decentralized system of distribution (and creation) for art.
In the mean time, we will encourage an admittedly less liberated form of democratic viewership through this experiment with Positive Feedback. Characterizing Positive Feedback as merely a promotional device ignores the fact that it is atypically laissez-faire for a blog (or artist) to allow its viewers the agency to decide its rate of production with no financial incentive. Jogging has foregone its ability to establish if it will continue to exist based on its viewers’ willingness to disperse new posts– a mutually beneficial, if not mutually suicidal gambit. What promotional aid does come from Positive Feedback’s 35 note minimum will hopefully encourage a wider audience and greater number of user submitted entries. The more viewers disperse Jogging, the more its content is created and decided by its own audience. We look forward to seeing what you will make Jogging become.