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Mobile Bloggers in the Arctic Circle!
Moblog As Live Cultural Documentary
It will be a mobile media event. A journey into culture. An international live forum and gallery for the potentially millions of web loggers (Bloggers) around the world. Umeå University’s HUMlab will undertake a new form of cultural documentary. It is to be centered on the 399th Sámi Winter market at the town of Jokkmokk in Lapland in the far north of Sweden. . . . Between 5 and 8 February 2004 the town of Jokkmokk, situated 40kms north of the polar circle in Sweden, hosts a market that has its origins in the very beginnings of modern Europe. Hundreds of sellers of crafts, makers of art, keepers of tradition, and the curious, the tourists and the locals gather together in a winter festival celebrating the culture of the far north of Sweden, particularly the Sámi people. Public attendance in recent years has been around 30 000 visitors to the town in the vast pine forests. . . . Bloging the 399th Jokkmokk Sámi Winter Market will present the blog format as a live culture documentary. It will be a mobile gorilla style operation where our multinational team of four bloggers (Swedish, American, Australian) from the HUMlab will interact, engage, estimate, depict, interview, film, record, review, entertain, experience, listen, view and search through three days of the 399th Sámi Winter Market (founded 1605). One of the bloggers is performing at the market playing didgeridoo in a multi-cultural band playing world fusion music with members from England, The United States, Sweden, and Sápmi. The blogg will be spontaneous in content but planned in format by the experienced team at HUMlab, a unique computer laboratory at Umea University where interdisciplinary content is considered important. Where the traditional humanity subjects are transformed through contact with digital culture and technology and vice versa. . . . During the festival the blogg will be running 24 hours a day for three days (although there may be quiter times in the early hours of the morning) and comments can be posted from anywhere in the Blogosphere. The festival itself is on Central European Winter Time, one hour forward from Greenwich Mean Time. It promises to be an exiting cyber experience with great potential for development in the future where roving bands of independent media-ists stream their global adventures out along the World Wide Web.

blog blob and meet the blog team

One of things we are trying out with this project is the affordances of new social tools (not usually associated with blogs). We have this little blob (works on PCs with Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher) which tells visitors how many people are looking at the blog page right now (only pc/IE5.5 or higher visitors are counted). It gives you a sense of other people being there with you (something you do not normally get with web pages). Also, the blob has another counter - listing the number of people that are in a chat room that associated with the blog page. A simple click and you will find yourself in the chat room. We have had quite a few meetings/discussions there today. Voice conversation is also possible. The operating principle seems to be flocking behavior - i.e. if there is someone (or several people) in the chat room others will join as well. Having used this tool for some now I am beginning to feel that it adds social depth to the web page - I have my on my own web page as well but I am usually the only one there. Doesn't make for a lot of flock behavior.

posted by Lorenzo 1:36 PM