[spectre] Turbulence Commission: [meme.garden] by Mary Flanagan, Daniel Howe, Chris Egert, Junming Mei, and Kay Chang

[Turbulence]

October 30, 2006
Turbulence Commission: [meme.garden] by Mary Flanagan, Daniel Howe, Chris
Egert, Junming Mei, and Kay Chang
http://turbulence.org/works/garden

[meme.garden] is an Internet service that blends software art and search
tool to visualize participants' interests in prevalent streams of
information, encouraging browsing and interaction between users in real
time, through time. Utilizing the WordNet lexical reference system from
Princeton University, [meme.garden] introduces concepts of temporality,
space, and empathy into a network-oriented search tool. Participants search
for words which expand contextually through the use of a lexical database.
English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into floating
synonym "seeds," each representing one underlying lexical concept. When
participants "plant" their interests, each becomes a tree that "grows" over
time. Each organism's leaves are linked to related streaming RSS feeds, and
by interacting with their own and other participants' trees, participants
create a contextual timescape in which interests can be seen growing and
changing within an environment that endures. 

The [meme.garden] software was created by an eclectic team of artists and
scientists: Mary Flanagan, Daniel Howe, Chris Egert, Junming Mei, and Kay
Chang.

[meme.garden] is a 2005 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.,
(aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with
funding from the Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support
from the PSC-CUNY research fund.

For more information about Turbulence please visit http://turbulence.org

Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director
New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org
New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856
Turbulence: http://turbulence.org
New American Radio: http://somewhere.org
Networked_Performance Blog: http://turbulence.org/blog
Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade