This document summarizes Lisa Woods' mini thesis project on crowdsourcing. It discusses inspiration from quotes on the cognitive surplus and critiques of crowdsourcing. The document then provides examples of artistic crowdsourcing projects. Woods explores how crowdsourcing can be used to generate emotionally engaging forms or create social benefit. Her mini thesis project is called the (Un)writing Poetry Project, which allows people to create virtual "blackout poems" from digitized public domain books.

1. Mini Thesis Project // Lisa Woods
CCA MFA Design, September 17, 2012

2. inspiration
“ he cognitive surplus, newly
T
forged from previously
disconnected islands of
time and talent, is just raw
material. To get any value out
of it, we have to make it mean
or do things [...] we are also
the people designing its
use, by our participation and
by the things we expect of
[...] our new connectedness.”
—CLAY SHIRKY

3. critique
“ mphasizing the crowd
E
means deemphasizing
individual humans in the
design of society, and when
you ask people not to be
people, they revert to bad,
moblike behaviors.”
—JARON LANIER

4. Crowdsourcing is a process that involves outsourcing tasks to a
distributed group of people. This process can occur both online and
offline and the work is done by an undefined public rather than a
specific body, such as paid employees.
Although it can be difficult to crowdsource complicated tasks,
simple work tasks can be crowdsourced cheaply and effectively.
Some artists utilize crowdsourcing systems. In his project the
Sheep Market, Aaron Koblin used Mechanical Turk to collect 10,000
drawings of sheep from contributors around the world. Sam Brown
asks visitors of his website explodingdog to send him sentences
that he uses as inspirations for paintings. (source: Wikipedia)
WHAT IS APPROPRIATE WORK FOR CROWDSOURCING?
WHAT ARE CROWD LABOR RIGHTS?
IS CROWDSOURCING FUNDAMENTALLY DEHUMANIZING?

5. chris milk and aaron koblin
the johnny cash project

6. chris milk and aaron koblin
the exquisite forest

7. the long now

8. other inspiring projects
JOHNNY
SAY
CASH
COWBIRD SOMETHING
PROJECT
PROJECT
VIRTUAL THE OPEN ARCHITECT.
CREATORS FOR
CHOIR PROJECT
STREET
HUMANITY
MAP
WE FEEL NO RIGHT
FINE BRAIN LEFT
communal BEHIND civic
“ he culture in turn will determine how much of the value we
T
get out of the cognitive surplus will be merely communal
(enjoyed by the participants, but not of much use for society
at large) and how much of it will be civic.”
—CLAY SHIRKY

9. my area of exploration
I’m interested in exploring new ways in which
computer-mediated crowdsourced co-creation
can be used to generate emotionally engaging
forms and/or create social benefit.

10. my intent for this project
technology humanism
novelty aesthetic quality
feasibility resonance
accessibility
simplicity
crowd-sourced

11. my mini thesis project
the (un)writing poetry project https://vimeo.com/49583729
(Un)writing Poetry Project is a web-based tool that allows people to create
virtual “blackout poems.” Digitized books from the public domain (suitable
for all ages) are the raw material for the poems. All archived poems can be
browsed and shared in a myriad of ways.

12. thank you.