REFLET Reflet is a collective input/output digital artwork. On the input side, it is created by individuals who post text and audio “slice-of-life installments” onto an animated virtual blackboard using a keyboard, microphone, mobile phone or other human interface device (HID). These installments then become part of the networked global Reflet system made up of independent sub-domains, hosted by structures (universities, libraries, arts organizations, social groups, etc.) or individuals. On the output side, this collective content remains part of this animated blackboard and can be displayed or viewed in various contexts: an immersive installation, a site-specific projection (hypersurface), an Internet site, a screensaver, on a mobile phone. Unlike a real blackboard, however, these posts are never erased as new posts are created; the older posts decrease in size in an ever-growing organism of thoughts. Both memory which can be read and a digital artwork in perpetual movement, each contribution is valued immediately by the existence of its visual or audible illustration in the forefront and then decreases over time. At the base of Reflet are the notions of freedom of expression, the role of individuals in making a collective whole, and intimacy as a private yet shared common process. As individuals contribute their personal thoughts and ideas into the Reflet system, a type of social network is created, similar in some ways to Facebook, MySpace, last.fm, in which independent sub-domains are linked to other sub-domains through a multilayered relational network. Reflet will exist on the Internet as an Open Source downloadable tool for computers and mobile phones, a network architecture platform with open-ended possibilities that can be implemented creatively by users. Reflet represents all the paradoxes, all the ambitions, all the utopias of the Internet.
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