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Three women form an artistic joint venture to re-define identity represented by social networking. Media artist, Erika Katalina Pasztor, the initiator of NoT, teamed up with designer, Dora Fonagy, and architect Judit Z. Halmagyi, to carry out NoT as an artistic experiment. According to their shared unhappiness about the schematism of identity related communication of creative works in the art, science and technology fields, they decided to develop an internet application with a new concept of identity. |
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We have lost directions in the high density of creativity. Recalling Bela Hamvas, Hungarian writer's thought, "we all are driven by the ancient passion of becoming one [... with something or somebody]". We all are looking for our ideal fellow intellectual partners with whom to create and share worlds. Identity representation is a fundamental criterion to be successful at this. Consumerism has its own significant effect on creativity - and so far on identity as well. Creating 'continually new productions' of design, research or artwork, while furthermore, seeing that the professional world is built on a utilitarian system of values, we are unwillingly forced to compete on the attention market for international acknowledgement and long-term survival. Identity becomes a core issue in our social world: corporate and personal branding is a key utility. |
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The NoT project reflects on these issues pulling into the picture a philosophical approach to identity inspired by the Dutch art critic and philosopher, Frans Jeursen. His statement [spoken during a walk in 2006] is the basic point of departure of NoT, namely, "I am not identical with the things I possess, with the people I know, with my identity card data or the brands (or objects) I use. I'm identical with my thoughts". NoT suggests that thoughts are strongly connected to each other, creating a network. My thoughts inspire and are inspired by other people's thoughts. There is a special space of flow of constantly moving thoughts, which have no important time and geographical attributes. In the Network of Thoughts one is identical with 'thoughts-nodes' necessarily overlapping another person's thoughts-nodes. |
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This was implemented with another inspiration coming from the Leonardo Educational Forum arranged in Prague on November 10, 2007. The moderators [Roger Malina and Annick Bureaud] - of this informal meeting of about fifty-sixty artists and scientists - asked all the participants to explain their burning questions in few minutes. Listening to people you might know or not, in an hour you had an overview of different minds and different motivations. The burning question is a compass of intellectual being, represents the focus of thinking and creation. |
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The NoT appropriated the concept of burning question [henceforth abbreviated as BQ]. BQ operates as a representation of an intellectual core, that which actually creates and forms a boundary of the thought-nodes of a person. BQ has a significant time attribute since a person's burning question may change from time to time. Storing this data for long term, a person can look back on his/her own thought-development, namely, how his/her inner history was built up will now be visible.
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In the NoT's first phase we develop an application to build a special personal website with a feature of uploading and visualizing thoughts. We are designing the data uploading process to be as a simple as possible, so those unfamiliar with technology or limited time for it may use it as well. A thought [entity] can be uploaded via a form and needs only a strictly short description and some cautiously defined tags. Later you [or with the help of an assistant] can upload additional materials [extra text, unrestricted number of images, videos, sounds] attaching it to a thought [entity]. Tags define the proximity of the thoughts: that which is visualized on the interface. But a person is not alone in the NoT, so if there similar thoughts of others are present, they will be visible as close entities on one's own personal website too. |
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| The project is under development. It will be premiered at the Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien in Berlin on May 9, 2008. |
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