Blogs, blog art and the network
Anne Helmond
Mostly It Happens At Night: Event 2. January 11, 2009. Amsterdam.

Part I: From homepages to blogs

Documentation of the self: Personal homepages
My personal homepage in 1996

Documentation of the self: Personal homepages
My personal homepage in 2001-2002

Features of the personal homepage
• Fairly static and closed self-referential environment
• Content stored in one place
• Based on the unit of the page
• Required HTML knowledge

The introduction of blog software

Reverse-chronological order: latest on top

Automatic indexing by search engines

Default settings show the hidden network

Constructing identity online: The blog
• [...] blogs as sites for identity construction and self-invention and
have underlined the unruly multiplicity of the social identity online
(Paasonen 2002: 22).

First draft of a blueprint of Web 2.0 data flows from one single user

First draft of a blueprint of Web 2.0 data flows from one single user

Features of the blog
• The blog is a database
• The blog is not a closed environment
• Based on the unit of the post
• Focus on freshness and links
• Reverse-chronological order
• Does not require HTML knowledge (unless...)

Default settings show the hidden network

The Life Cycle of a Blog Post, From Servers to Spiders to Suits — to You
© Wired/Infographic: Build

Part II: Blog art

Different types of blog art
• Blog as portfolio
• Blog as collection of the distributed self
• Blogging (network) experiments

Blog as portfolio

Blog as collection of the distributed self

Blogging (network) experiments
• Technique (JODI - http://blogroll.jodi.org/)
• Form (Seth Keen - Videodefunct)
• Network (Jonathan Harris - We Feel Fine)

Technique: Jodi - Blogroll

Form: Videodefunct - Pedestrian

(In)visible network: Jonathan Harris - We Feel Fine

Networked blog art

The blogger is no longer alone in the dark
E-mail: anne.helmond@gmail.com
Blog: www.annehelmond.nl