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Happy New Year to all AACORNERS! New year, new project: Beeing a member of this community now for one and a half year, observing it for longer, knowing a part of the people personally and getting the emails about new memebers I ask myselfe: Is this a community? Where does it begin and where end? What constitutes a community, especially a web-based global one? So I thought, its time to run a little project about what is happenig here. I call it THE COMMUNITY, and it is basically an email-chain, which is supposed to go through every member. You find the details below. THE COMMUNITY is a double play: It uses AACORN as a case study for a contemporary way in which these kinds of communities build up and develop their own narrative, ideas and rules. On the other hand it indeed does that within AACORN, it works with this very act as a community building tool. So wait, till the project hits your email account but concerning your input, you could already waste some thoughts... Given the number of apprx. 160 members and the 3 days granted to everybody to react and pass on, it could be next week or in a year, that it hits you. I will post quotes from incoming texts as teaser on the - so far - not used forum of the website, a PDF with the same content as below should be ready for download. Thanks for your time! And I am sure, that we will get an exciting result for all of us out of it. Keep in touch Schrat The Community Henrik Schrat, 2005 Shortcut: You get some lines, which you are to continue with a story of 1700 2300 keystrokes. The story should deal with your interest in the community. Take the list of acting persons and hints into account. You have 3 days time to pass it on. During this time, search already for someone who comes after you, by asking persons from the list if she/he has the time and is able and willing to participate. You are the tutor of your follower; you have to make sure that it works, and then gets passed on from there. Pass on to him/her: * 2 3 lines text, where the next text bit can start from (with the list of acting persons) * Thelist of AACORNERS, where you have ticked off your own name Mail to [log in to unmask] * Yourtext * An image * Three statements * The name of your follower Context The project The Communityı tries to catch the emergence of a loosely connected, globally scattered community with partly shared interests in art and organization. Started by David Barry as an academic email network called ACORN (Art, Creativity, & Organization Research Network), it began to take on its own, still very fragile life. Through email, the web, and some meetings at conferences it is beginning to emerge. A website exists, even if not much frequented, but now and again email discussions pop up and die out. The Communityı tries to get hold of this process and the people involved. It initiates a process which could give this very moment of coming-together a face. It could become a guide book for a strong communityto-be or could be a snapshot of a process, of a not yet existing community which is drifting apart again after that. The Communityı is a double play: It uses AACORN as a case study for a contemporary way in which these kinds of communities build up and develop their own narrative, ideas and rules. On the other hand it indeed does that within AACORN, it works with this very act as a community building tool. The project All centers around a story, written by the ones who are on the books of the network. Itıs again the old game: one starts to write a story, passes his last lines to the next person, who continues and so on. There are a few rules and guidelines for this. At a fixed point the process stops. In addition to writing this story, there are a four more requests: 1) Please, give a quote which reflects the context of what the community is about. 2) Please suggest a rule or recommendation for a community like this. 3) Please give a criterion for including people in the community. Please give a criterion for excluding people from the community, or for not letting them in. 4) Please mail an image which best visualises for you what this could be all about. Procedure: The process is kicked off by the artist, who starts to write a story and sends the last few phrases to another person from the network, whom he has asked before if she/he is able and willing to participate. This is the procedure: You ask somebody from the network (look at the address list) if she/he is able and willing and has the time to take part. Itıs voluntary. Then you are in charge and you are to take care that your follower does the job and finishes it within a maximum time of three days and passes it on. If your hoped-for follower is too busy at the moment, on holiday or whatever, choose somebody else. The movement has to go on. A list of the names of the Aacorn members gets mailed around with it, where the ones who have already taken part are already ticked off. The texts should be somewhere around 2000 characters long, and just the few last lines get passed on. There is a list of acting personsin the story, important objects and hints for the set. You can add things to the list. It would be advisable to check the list, if you start to write, for persons you could use in your bit. (like in a theater set: George, a fat old man, smoking cigars. Doris Greenfeld, a 25 year old carrier focused academic, etc. etc.) When you are done, please mail your text piece together with the four other things and the name of your follower to [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> . Result? The text will be collected, and for the EURAM conference in next May in Oslo, where some of the participants are likely to meet, a first version will be produced, as a PDF or as printed matter. In the chat board of the AACORN website there will be a thread about this project. Excerpts from the incoming texts will be posted as teasers. Depending on the interest of the AACORNERS and the speed they work with, it can run between 6 an 18 months. It will made public and available in a well laid out PDF format, or, if enough people join, as a printed version.