[Nettime-bold] GRID UNLOCKED

[Harwood <Harwood@scotoma.org>]

GRID UNLOCKED ----------- Matthew Fuller

9 = 32
Nine(9) is given its name from the difference in the number of years of healthy life expectancy from birth between a
woman born in Jamaica in 2001 and a woman born in Sweden in the same year1 ; the length in months of human gestation
regardless of where you're slotted in the market of freedom; or the number of jellied eels it takes to change a light
bulb?
Numbers join things in ways that are absolutely arbitrary, but at the same time, they provide some of the most concrete
and supple tools that we have for talking about things and relations between them.  Their palpable abstraction is what
makes numbers useful: 9 groups = 81 archives  = 729 maps = 6561 images with 59049 links to any of the 2125764 files on a
server.

You on the guest list?
What would a nice friendly artist want to do with what people who run computer networks call permissions structures?
Underlying Nine(9) is a complex sequence of rules for who can do what to what: change the contents of an archive, add
text, make a link.  Instead of 'free expression' which embeds its laws in vague secrets, here, the lists of what you can
do are up front.  It's a bit daunting, filling in a Nine(9) archive. Perhaps the software is aimed at people with the
most experience at form-feeding, those of us who keep the welfare state well nourished with our lives; people who shift
from one regulatory zone to another without a lawyer in tow?  Those forms, they lower the blood sugar a little.  But, it
being a program, you got to love the upgrade path potential.

Linker
Nine(9) is, in some senses, a reversion of an earlier programme by Mongrel : Linker.2 This is a stand alone programme
that is used offline.  It is usable only if you have the programme and the files provided by the maker of a particular
map.   Nine(9) takes the basic principles of Linker, extends them and moves them onto the web. This makes it more
generally available.  It means it doesn't have to rely on running on a particular kind of operating system.  It does
mean you need an internet connection to use it, at least for now.

That Nine(9)
That Nine(9) is on the net also has distinct advantages in the way it makes different kinds of connection occur. When
you make a map, it's possible to link to a file in another map.  Linking is a normal part of the function of the world
wide web.  The difference with Nine(9) is that the underlying software makes the link, but also uses it to make a
connection between you and the other map's maker.  An email is automatically sent notifying them of the use.  Multiple
layers of connection run through Nine(9), they form its underlying principle. Links are made by users, by people who
make the maps, but also automatically, by the software.

Shuffle
Each Nine(9) map has nine spaces for images to be included.  Along with the structure of permissions built into the
software, this is one of the constraints around which it is organised.  Nine images is enough to tell a story, but few
enough to make you choose which of them mean enough together to be worth combining.  Shuffling pictures, arranging them
into sequences, making connections.  It's difficult to take one photograph which takes upon itself the function of a
masterpiece here, three's a crowd.  Even if one or two of your photos doesn't work on its own, it will get mobilised by
conjunction with others.

Random fandom
How do these patterns of images make of themselves anything more than what you'd get by random collision out of an image
search engine?  Some of them don't.  It takes skill to be truly random.  In Nine(9) archives, thing work by clusters, by
association.  They can be boring as well as brilliant.  That's permissible.

Software and Autonomy
If something has autonomy to the extent that it is able to exist separately from its representation, the extent that
images and systems cannot be imposed upon it, how autonomous is a user of Nine(9)?
It's not quite as simple as saying the rules are up-front, users choose the software they want.  Not all the software
that could be made gets made.  Nine(9) belongs to a current of software which aims to put what is missing somehow into
view, part of the way this is done is by being clear about what it demands.  But it also operates with others by opening
up a gap between the applications and companies  that economically and conceptually dominate software and the spaces and
processes by which software might develop.
A piece of software doesn't guarantee you autonomy.  What it is, what it's mixed with, how it's used are all variables
in the algorithms of power and invention that course through software and what it connects to.  Mongrel designed Nine(9)
to be used primarily in workshops and in collaboration with others.  The conditions by which users come to the software,
what previous computer skills they have, whether they can use an image editor to make pictures to include in Nine(9);
the way in which the workshop is run; the reputations and usability of the space it's being held in; all these things
connect to and shape how well the software can be said to work.

Collaborative data
A further way in which Nine(9) generates more room to maneuver is because of the stuff it is made of.  Nine(9) is a
combination of, XML parsed as HTML; Perl scripts; image manipulation and formatting tools such as Imagemagick and the
Gimp;  and a MySQL database.  HTML is the basic way of organising the structure and style of web-sites.  Perl is a
scripting language which codes how the data is processed and arranged.  MySQL organises the data so that it can be
retrieved. 
All of these elements are used not only in Nine(9), but also contribute to a growing mass of resources available online
that are used, shared, changed and developed.  Copyright, where it exists, gets bent out of whack.  Otherwise, code runs
like the river of lemonade down sugar rock candy mountain: it's a free-for-all.  So long as you don't fancy cherryade
instead.  Coding gets easier and, with attention, it gets better.

Word knots
Any text that is fed into Nine(9) is filtered by the computer.  The program looks for words that are shared across parts
of a Nine(9) map or - depending, of course, on the permissions structure - across archives. The words appear as links to
another appearance of that word, or a variant of the word, a plural for instance. 3   On a normal website, links are
hard-coded.  That mean that they have to be specifically chosen to operate as links.  In its use of text, Nine(9) allows
links to occur as a natural outcropping of their commonality of usage.  This doesn't mean of course that the same ideas
are linked together.  People might use the same words to say different things. The messy richness of words and the
unsane rigour of computer logic mix here to trick each other up, make new conjunctures.

fuller@xs4all.nl (matthew  fuller)

http://9.waag.org
http://9.waag.org/Info

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