Symbols

Possibilities for Massive Participative Interaction: including voting, questions, metaphors, images, constructs, melodies, issues, symbols (Part #11)

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This approach would emphasize the identity dimension through which the complexity otherwise held by issues, questions or metaphors is compressed into a symbol or image. The use of symbols has of course long been a characteristic of socio-political (and religious) identity -- as it is for individual identity. Symbols are of course used for voting in countries where the population is characterized by a degree of functional illiteracy.

Main issues include:

• whether a massive interactive process can ensure the emergence of more powerful enabling symbols -- or sets of complementary symbols
• how symbols (and parts of symbols) on the web can be appropriately linked (via hotspots) to content relevant to clarification of issues and actions upon them
• how distinct symbols (such as the logos of the various Specialized Agencies of the UN) can be interrelated to reinforce the sense of an integrtive approach to the often uncoordinated programmes that they represent.

Clearly many of the issues in the organization of this visual approach are analogous to those described above, notably with regard to images. One interesting metaphor for the exploration of this process is the mergence of Chladni patterns as a result of resonance amongst a multitude of (magnetized) particles -- giving the possibility of dynamically emergent symbols. Based on Chladni's work, photographer Alexander Lauterwasser captures imagery of water surfaces set into motion by sound sources ranging from pure sine waves to music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Karlheinz Stockhausen and even overtone singing.