Stonemaps: a Slow Intentional Network for Collective Sentience
Symposium:
- ISEA2020: 26th International Symposium on Electronic Art
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More presentations from ISEA2020:
Session Title:
- The Ecosphic World: Expanded Encounters
Presentation Title:
- Stonemaps: a Slow Intentional Network for Collective Sentience
Presenter(s):
Abstract:
We present a framework to promote the formation of slow intentional networks with characteristics of gifting, dialogue, and collaboration. These networks are formed through the physical gifting of river stones that are hydrographically printed with maps and embedded with an NFC chip. When handed from one person to the next as a gift, a stone (through the scan of its NFC tag) opens a channel to its virtual network and asks the recipient to contribute to the intention of the network. This contribution can be of any type (voice, picture, text) and once gifted, becomes part of the collective knowledge of the network. The recipient is then tasked with gifting the stone to another. By introducing a physical stone as the mechanism for connection, this framework deliberately slows the traditional notion of social media networks and enforces a more considered personal, intentional interaction between the network constituents and their contributions. The intent is to blend the best of physical and virtual interactions towards deeper, more meaningful conversations that can collaboratively create, solve, and investigate – a kind of documented collective sentience, a network that can be deeply and reliably interrogated.
