This document discusses the evolution of personal homepages to blogs and the rise of blog art. It outlines key features of personal homepages like being static, closed environments stored in one place, and requiring HTML knowledge. Blogs introduced reverse chronological posting, automatic indexing, and showed interconnections. Blog art took different forms like using blogs as portfolios, collecting the distributed self, or conducting network experiments. Some examples explored technique with Jodi's blogroll, form with Videodefunct, and invisible networks with We Feel Fine. Networked blog art highlighted the blogger is no longer alone but connected to wider networks and flows of data.

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

2. Part I: From homepages to blogs

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

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

5. 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

6. The introduction of blog software

7. Reverse-chronological order: latest on top

9. Automatic indexing by search engines

10. Default settings show the hidden network

11. 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).

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

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

16. 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...)

17. Default settings show the hidden network

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

19. Part II: Blog art

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

21. Blog as portfolio

22. Blog as collection of the distributed self

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

24. Technique: Jodi - Blogroll

25. Form: Videodefunct - Pedestrian

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

27. Networked blog art

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