p.68
Amtswalter were middle and minor party functionaries who were in charge of various affiliated organizations. A problem developed as a result of their inability to form orderly marches, as had other parts of Hitler’s army.

The “Organization Section for Party Rallies” had conferences to address this problem. Speers came on the idea of having their marches in the darkness, thus avoiding people seeing just how disordered this group appeared visually.

Speers prepared to have thousands of flags to fly above the rally with bright lights shining on them to distract attention away from Amtswalter. Not satisfied with these lights, Speers brought in ant-aircraft searchlights and beamed them into the sky above the rally. This created mighty pillars of light, a “cathedral of light”.

p.70
Speers was Hitler’s “chief decorator.” He really loved flags during this time.

Isolated individuals may in some cases form an organized crowd, for example, during a violent emotional national event.

p.4
Crowds possess some characteristics of the individuals involved, and others that are unique to crowds. This is like chemical reactions forming new bodies with different properties than the reactants. Unconscious qualities (racial qualities) take the upper hand. New behaviors arise from a sense of invincibility in numbers (leading to less restraint), and from contagion. Every act of a crowd is contagious.

Individual behavior is sacrificed to that of the crowd, as if it were a hypnotic force, unleashing the unconscious. Man descends several rungs of civilization when in a crowd, and becomes a primitive being.

p.9
“A crowd is often criminal, but also it is often heroic.”
Although individual is undoubtedly less intelligent when in crowd, a crowd’s actions may be good.

p.13
Crowds are irritable and impulsive.

p.22
Crowds are “only impressed by excessive sentiments”.

p.35
crowds have strong imaginations and conflate reality and fantasy. “Appearances have always played a much more important part in history than reality.” Theatrical representations and clear imagery work best on crowds.

p.38
Crowds demand religious sentiment.
worship of a superior being
fear of that being’s power
blind submissionto its commands
inability to discuss its dogmas
the desire to spread them
tendency to consider as enemies outsiders who don’t accept beliefs.

p.61
images evoke strong reactions in crowds.
words are effective by the images they evoke, independent of their meaning. Vagueness often gives words and images their power.

p.100
The Classification and Description of the Different Kinds of Crowds

A multitude of individuals of different races is the most inferior kind of crowd. These are usually bound by the will of a chief.

Next up is a multitude of individuals of a single race.

Each of these multitudes can be formed into organized crowds: the heterogenous and homogenous crowds.

Heterogenous crowds can be either anonymous or not anonymous.
Anonymous heterogenous crowds have no sense of responsibility.
Not anonymous crowds have some sense of responsibility and personal culpability.

Homogenous crowds consist of sects, castes, or classes.
Sects include religious or political crowds, which are linked by acommon belief.
Castes include military or priestly crowds. These are linked by the same education and status.
Classes are people of diverse origin, linked by interests or habits and education.

Attributes of crowds
1- always wants to grow
2- within a crowd there is equality
3- the crowd loves density
4- the crowd needs direction

Rhythmic vs. stagnating crowds:
In rhythmic crowds, density and equality exist from the start. Everything rests on movement.
The stagnating crowd lives for discharge, but it can’t wait. It starts with density and moves to equality.

Slow vs. quick crowds – these distinctions refer to the nature of the goal:
Slow crowds include religious crowds and pilgrims, both of which have very distant goals.
Quick crowds include political, sporting, and war-like crowd, all of which have immediate goals.

Classifications of crowds according to prevailing emotion:

p.49
The baiting crowd’s goal is to kill. It knows who it wants to kill, and cannot be cheated of its goal. The goal is the point of greatest density, where the actions of the participants unite. The final murder stands for all the murders which are not otherwise permitted of the individuals in the crowd. The murder deflects their own mortality onto the mortality of the murdered man. Reversal: one who had the power to kill (e.g. the king), has now been killed and made a commoner. Once dead, the dead man is one of them and the crowd therefore disperses – thus the tendency for authorities to give angry crowds a scapegoat to appease and disperse it.
p.52
Newspapers form a sort of baiting crowd, except the people never have to collect in physical space. Therefore it doesn’t have to disintegrate either. Papers form an irresponsible crowd since it has no sense of guilt or responsibility for the actions it observes.

p.53
Flight crowds: created by a threat. Danger is the same for all = equality. Nobody thinks they are the one who will be caught. They disperse away from the danger in all directions. The goal is safety and distance. Flight can last for days or weeks. Each person must not push others aside, or this crowd turns into a panic crowd, where people are out for themselves. Panic usually happens when direction of flow is impeded by obstacles, and this causes lateral movement.

p.55
Prohibition crowds area created by a refusal. Together, people refuse to do what they ordinarily had done willingly. Anyone who transgresses is outlawed by the others. In strikes, people are equal only in crowd, wheras otherwise they come from different backgrounds. A fictitious equality becomes real during strike. Strikes are contagious and spread to other sympathetic groups. Organization is key in keeping a strike going since the natural tendency of the people is to perform their usual function.

p.58
In reversal crowds, the sheep eat the wolves after having been eaten by the wolves for so long. This presupposes a stratified society. A sting is left in a person who carries out another’s orders. Once an order (and its accompanying sting) is received from above, people generally pass on the accompanying orders to others lower than them (if there are others who receive orders from them), or they return the sting they’ve received to their superiors as payback. Payback is only possible in a group.
Revolution is a form of reversal crowd. It seeks deliverance from a sting. Before they attack superiors, people attack those lower than them. Reversal crowds are often accompanied by baiting crowds, hunting individuals. Reversal is a longer term activity.
Religious reversal is the idea that “the least shall be first”. The poorest stand highest in heaven. This is a very long-term reversal. Also is a form of domestication – submission to God’s law. This is the opposite of the liberation by revolution, but also a reversal.

p.62
Feast crowds have abundance in a limited space – more than those present can consume, so more people are needed – growth. All are equal and can partake of it. People move to and fro in all directionsNormal prohibitions are generally loosened. The feast itself is the goal. Each feast leads to more future feasts. Earlier feasts are remembered by ritual dance and dramatic performances. Density of things and people promise more of life itself.

p.63
The double crowd. The surest way a crowd can preserve its own existence is in relation to another crowd. For examples, rivals in a game (individuals want to avoid shame), or war opponents (individuals resolve to defend themselves together). Individuals stand together – ensuring unity and causing increased density and vigilence. Both crowds must be perceived to be of equal number or strength or the lesser crowd disintegrates into mass flight or panic crowd.
Men and women form double crowd in primitive societies. For example, women dance war dance while men are away hunting. They act in reference to the absent other crowd.
Living and dead form double crowd. Dead are greater in number. The living cannot hope to win, thus explaining and individual’s death. The living must still fight to try to retain the person in the living although they know it is doomed. Some believe the dead souls are necessary for newborns to be born. Dead spirits also are thought to bring rain and food for the living.
p67
War. Goal is to transform the live adversary into a heap of dead. Slaves and captives increase one’s own number while diminishing the foe’s. Wars carry on well after defeat because crowds want to stick together. People are equal by shared threat of death. Killing others deflects one’s own mortality. Wars offer crowds the hope of a definite duration of life.

p.73
Crowd crystals are small rigid groups of people which serve to precipitate crowds. They are all about limits and consciousness of its every utterance and movement. Examples are orchestras and monks. Crystals can be comprehended at a glance – roles are obvious and familiar, individuals have clearly defined roles. Unity is more important than size. The members are always thought of as a group despite their individual professions, activities outside the crystal, etc. Group persists after individuals disperse – they often persist past their popularity, and can be revived many years later when times change, often after revolution. Crystals’ clarity, constancy, and isolation sit in contrast with that of the crowds that form around them. Uncontrollable growth and fear of desintegration do not affect crowd crystals like they do the surrounding crowd.
Closed crowds are different from crystals in size (larger), and are more spontaneous and not specified by individuals’ functions Closed crowds share the defined limits and repetition of crystals.

p.75
Crowd symbols are crowd like, but not composed of people. However, they are felt to be a crowd.

Fire: always the same, no matter how long or large. Contagious – spreads and wants to increase size. Can originate anywhere. Is multiple (i.e. made up of many flames). Is destructive – can be fought or tamed. Has an enemy – water.

p.80
Sea: multiple – dense and cohesive collection of waves. Waves yield to others as if they were oneself. Has a voice that sounds like a thousand voices. Is persistent – makes itself heard and never sleeps. Has constancy that a crowd lacks. Expresses desire of a crowd to stay together. Growth – consumes rivers and more and more water.

p.81
Rain: felt as a unit most strongly just before it rains. Drops fall in one direction. Sameness in drops and parallel lines of falling. Not as constant as sea, and not contagious like fire. Rain is crowd in moment of discharge and stands as signal of disintegration. Cloud has fallen apart. Who knows when it will reconvene again.

p.83
Rivers: striking in its direction. Absorbs other smaller streams in its flow. But cannot grow indefinitely or unexpectedly. Stands for processions of people, like demonstrations. Lack contagiousness of fire or universality of sea. A river is the crowd exhibiting itself – there is no river without banks (spectators).

p.84
Forest: is higher than man. Density consists of foliage – man has to look up to see the dense canopy. Equality consists only in uniformity of direction – up. Looking up at forest is preparation for looking up in church. Forest is symbol of army – immoveable – can be cut down, but not shifted.

p.85
Corn: is a diminished and subjugated forest under mans’ control. Uniform in height and fate (all sown together). Equality before death.

p.86
Wind: its voice varies with its strength – lives and dies like humans. Direction is always changing. Equivalent to an invisible crowd – roaring like spirits angry or in flight. Flags are wind made visible – make air seem as if its one’s own.

Sand: striking when grains are amassed together. Individually, grains are small and equal. Sand is always shifting. Suffocating like swarms of tiny enemies. Symbol of progeny and quantity of men rather than quality.

The heap: celebrated in feasts. Collections of things – all of one kind – grain, rice, etc. Density indicates success. Time of existence is limited – depleted, repleted frequently.

p.88
Stone heap: inedible and immoveable. Erected precisely for their permanence. Represent rhythmic exertion of many men in their creation (e.g. pyramids). Each stone represents a man.

Treasure: inedible and unperishable. Each unit has special value. Prestige also carries danger of others who want it. Greed which unites people rests on a confidence and commitment to the value of the units. Depreciation is like a flight crowd – men are depreciated, not money.

p.93
The Pack – a primitive form of the crowd and crowd crystals. Still permeate groups today.
Equality and direction really exist.
Growth and density are imagined.

Hunting pack: many men take down animal they could not catch alone. This leads to distribution of spoils among all even if only a few actually killed the animal. The prey behavior determines the behavior of the pack.

War pack: often focused on hunting one man, like a hunting pack, but often formed of loosely joined people, not a tribe as in the hunting pack.

Lamenting pack: forms to lament death of member. Each individual must be preserved or his life taken back from the dead. Members jump on the dead man to form a heap – joining him because he can’t join them.

Increase packs: intent to increase. Rites of ceremony symbolize dissatisfaction with number. Dressing like animals symbolizes the desire to achieve the large numbers of that animal. Totems identify men with an animal. Good fortune for animal means good fortune for men.

Categorizations of packs

Inward vs. outward packs
Inward packs include lamenting and increase packs. These circle around one man or a ceremony.
Outward packs include hunting and war packs. These are focused on capturing something external to the pack.

Tranquil vs. noisy packs
Tranquil packs include increase packs. They focus on some expectation, using concentration and stillness.
Noisy packs include hunting, war, and lamenting packs. For these, noise is important.

p.180
Germany. Unusual case of army as a closed crowd. Prussian Junker caste served as crowd crystals – this was the major source of officers for WWI. Closed crowd army was dissolved in Treaty of Versaille. Denied closed crowds long to form open crowds. Hitler fulfilled this need.

p.313
Soldiers: act in uniform manner. Participate in drills, but generally do not form crowds. If you seperate an individual soldier, they are expected to act the same as when they are in a group – different from crowds.

p.394
Orchestra: subservient to conductor. Is seated but conductor is standing. Conductor transforms individuals into a coherent group. The audience stops moving/talking when conductor appears even though they don’t do the same for the orchestra. Conductor must not turn around, or he will break the spell of the audience. Conductor leads players like a master, audience feels through him.

p.387
Standing: is sign of independence. Indicates superiority over four-legged animals. Done for a long time, it indicates endurance, like a forest. If there’s space between the man and the surrounding people it indicates power, especially if he is facing the others. Standing is a transition point to all other postures, and is thus the most adaptable posture.

p.389
Sitting: historically is a sign of privilege, especially if others are standing. Does not easily lead to other postures, so also leads to the expectation of staying seated for a long time. Getting up involves an obvious intent to change the current social arrangement. Sitting exerts pressure onto something else – a chair which is like a slave supporting weight.

p.390
Lying down: indicates disarmament and vulnerability. One withdraws into oneself. Thus it is startling to see someone go from standing (independence, control) to lying (vulnerability) quickly. The opposite transition proves how alive one is. Lying/falling down indicates an ill, wounded man.

p.393
Sitting and squatting on the ground: indicates absence of need, turning in on oneself. Contentment, self-containment, like a sac. Contains both wealth and poverty in same message.

p.394
Kneeling: active powerlessness (as opposed to lying down, which is passive powerlessness). Supplication, offering of one’s neck to a superior. Form of flattery, indulging another’s sense of power.

The following is a brief lead-up to Mobscene where I will make obvious generalizations which are necessary to lay the foundation for this project, but are not sufficient to prove my theories correct. That is not my intent.

A powerpoint presentation that accompanies this short description can be found at http://amostle.com/mobscene/MobsceneHalfway.ppt

BACKGROUND

Historically, the visuo-spatial organization of crowds has followed a parallel path to the evolution of communications technology.

Starting with word-of-mouth type organization, people were instructed to show up at a particular location at a particular time. This led to the sort of crowd organization we refer to as the rally. The rally topological model is used for events such as Hitler’s Nuremberg rally of 1934, the annual Mass Gymnastics in North Korea, and other stadium stunts. A rally’s spatial topology is generally rigid and crystallized.

The next step towards decentralization is the cult-like organization with a clear leader in a hierarchical relationship with his followers. This sort of organization is generally smaller and more intimate. There is a looser structure to the spatial topology, and also to the way the participants interact.

What we consider to be more modern forms of mass activity have taken a looser form. Participants in concerts or raves tend to be thrown together spatially in a more-or-less ad hoc fashion. These semi-random organizations of people of course have their own clusters and subgroups, but in generally they appear looser and more informal. What is currently considered more interesting visually are such loosely-held organizations.

The use of technology to mediate crowd organization has tended to augment, rather than supplant, the traditional forms of crowd organization. Hence we have projects like Golan Levin’s Telesymphony, which is a very top-down model of rigid, crystallized organization. Flash Mobs represent an example of using flexible modern technology for the same old end – instructing people via email to show up at a given time and a given place. However the spontaneous nature of the organization Flash Mobs makes it unlike Telesymphony or rally-type organizations.

Pac-Manhattan promised a new use of cell phones. Although not a crowd organization, the Pac-Manhattan team used cell phones to instruct participants dynamically and reactively. The technology allowed for meaningful spatial movement on a moment-by-moment basis.

MOBSCENE CONCEPT

Mobscene is an attempt to combine the sponteneity of Flash Mobs with the reactive dynamics of Pac-Manhattan. The use of cell phones will allow a crowd to spontaneously self-organize to form a moving image.

Participants use their cell phones to obtain up-to-date information about the overall image the crowd is producting, and how then can help organize it. Based on the technological hierarchy of SMS, MMS, AIM, and speech, participants will have varying amounts of information about the group, and their own participation in it, based on which technology they choose to use.

NETWORK CHARACTERISTICS

Nodes: The nodes are the participants.

Protocols: existing SMS, MMS, AIM, and speech protocols, all via cellphones. In addition, pure speech between participants on the ground allows them to organize themselves.

Transport: the existing cell phone network handles all transport except pure speech, which requires no transport other than sound pressure.

Contents: text messages, multimedia messages, text chat, and voice are used, where available to transmit images, advice, and text instructions to participants on the ground. The content between people on the ground is left open-ended.

Addresses: phone numbers.

Topology: ad-hoc, loose.

STACK:

Application layer: Participants request information via their chosen protocol. Respondents in a control room react by transferring images, instructions, are simple guidance to participants. Participants talk or yell to each other on the ground however they wish.

Transmission layer: All application layer processes rely on the existing cell-phone transmission layer, or pure unadultered speech.

Physical layer: cell phones and people.

VISUAL EXPLANATION

please see the power point presentation linked at the top of this document.

PREDICTIONS

I expect the technological hierarchy (which cell phone technology the participants choose to use) to lead to a social hierarchy. This will be the result of the discrepancy in the abilities of the different protocols to transmit information. In other words, MMS, which includes images and other visuals, will allow a participant to request a copy of the whole image of the crowd. From this, they will make judgements about where they are located within the image, and where they should move to in order to change the picture. In contrast, a participant with SMS, will be restricted to text instructions about what to look for, or where to go. This will lead to limited independence of SMS users. They will rely on users with more information, such as those with SMS for instructions. The participants with the most information will end up instructing the surrounding participants as a result of their information superiority.

I expect voice to be at the top of the information hierarchy. Although MMS should provide rich media information. It seems as if there is nothing more efficient than human speech for dynamic, reactive communications.

RESULTS

Through a series of experiments, I found that SMS, MMS, and AIM are not suitable for real-time dynamic organization of crowds. The potential latency in transmitting the messages proved to be so great as to be of no use whatsoever for this project. In a series of tests using SMS, MMS, and AIM between two Cingular phones and one Verizon phone, it seemed that there was no correlation between the carrier and the latency. A few messages took half a day to be received. While most were received within a minute or two, there were enough outliers to disprove the feasibility of using these technologies.

In a sense, the disproof of the first prediction suggests another reason to believe in the second prediction. The fact that cell phone messaging technologies are not ready for dynamic instant communications, leads one to conclude that speech is still the best, most efficient, way for communicating in real-time. My indended prediction was that even if there were technologies that were capable of real-time messaging, speech would still be the preferred means of communication. This remains to be seen.

p.6
Topographical Aspects of Groups
Topographical aspects include group size, density, and interrelatedness of group members. It can be thought of as the type of information one might try to obtain from a photograph.

It has been noted that free-forming groups tend to be small (mean size of 3, range of 2-7 people).

Density, proximity, and crowding are all features resulting from the mere number of people in a group.

Density = a measure of the number of people divided by the area they occupy.
Proximity increases with density given a constant area.
Crowding is a reaction to increased density. Crowding is perceived when increased density is accompanied by a perceived loss of control.

p.7
Bossard found that the number of possible symmetrical relationships (PR) between two individuals in a group is PR = (N²-N)/2

Kephart found that the number of possible relationships bewteen an individual and a sub-group, or between two sub-groups in a given group is PR = (3^N – 2^N-1 + 1)/2
This means that the complexity of a group increases drastically with the number of individuals. It might add reasons of efficacy and convenience to the noted tendency of people to form subgroups of “us” and “them” rather than viewing each individual as a seperate entity. The “us” and “them” distinction can be stimulated or exaggerated by differences such as gender (McGuire & McGuire, 1982), handedness , attitudes (Gerard & Hoyt, 1974), and roles (Mullen, 1983; Wegner & Schaefer, 1978).

A communications perspective characterizes a group in terms of who communicates, or shares information, with who.
An example is the adjacency density, which is a calculation of the percentage of all possible links which actually do exist in a given network.

Adjacency Density = a/[N(N-1)/2]
where a is the number of links between group members, and N is the number of group members. You can see this is based on Kephart’s formula. It is a measure using the group as the basic unit of analysis.

p.8

The centrality index is an index of the interrelatedness of a group member. Unlike adjacency, centrality uses the individual as the basic unit of analysis.

Centrality Index = Σd_jk/Σd_xk
where d_jk is the shortest distance between any two group members, and d_xk is the shortest distance bewteen group member x and any other group member.

Centrality measures the connectedness of an individual to all others. An individual with a high centrality index communicates with most people. Individual satisfaction is highest at positions of high centrality. A high centrality is only possible in a group of low adjacency since centrality is a relative quantity – a high adjacency leads to an even centrality across individuals.

p.10
Temporal Aspects of Groups
Temporal aspects are changes in a group over time. They can be thought of as the sorts of things you might notice listening to a tape recording of a group.

Members must change together in order to be seen as a group – covariation.

p.11
Most researchers looking into the temporal phases of group activity have artificially created groups and then halted them at a various phases in their development. Most groups follow the general phases set out by Tuckman (Tuckman, 1965; Tuckman & Jensen, 1977):

forming = group concerned with orientation and defining tasks and requirements.
storming = a phase of polarization and conflict, dissatisfaction with the group or individuals within the group.
norming = conflicts are resolved, and members agree on members’ tasks and requirements.
performing = members actively strive toward goals, and work toward task achievement.
adjourning = the group is expected or required to disband upon task completion.

Steiner analyzed groups at the performance phase (Steiner, 1972).
Blake & Mouton halted groups in order to study cooperation and competition (Blake & Mouton, 1979).

References

Blake, R.R., & Mouton, J.S. (1979) Intergroup problem solving in organizations: From theory to practice. In W.G.Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Bossard, J.H.S. (1945). Law of family interaction. American Journal of Sociology, 50, 292-294

Gerard , H.B., & Hoyt, M.F. (1974). Distinctiveness of social categorization and attitude toward ingroup members. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29, 836-842.

Kephart, W.M. (1950). A quantitative analysis of intragroup relationships. American Journal of Sociology, 55, 548.

McGuire, W.J., & McGuire, C.V. (1982). Significant others in self-space: Sex differences and development trends in the social self. In J. Suls (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on the self (vol. 1). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Mullen, B. (1983). Operationalizing the effect of the group on the individual: A self-attention perspective. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 295-322.

Steiner, I.D. (1972). Group process and productivity. New York: Academic Press.

Tuckman, B.W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63, 384-399.

Tuckman, B.W., & Jensen, M.A.C. (1977). Stages in small group development revisited. Group and Organizational Studies, 3, 419-427.

Wegner, D.M., & Schaefer, D. (1978). The concentration of responsibility: An objective self-awareness analysis of group size effects in helping situations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 147-155.

Emile Durkheim – proponent of using the group rather than the individual as the basic unit of analysis. Believed individuals tell us nothing about groups.

Floyd Allport – proponent of using the individual as the basic unit of analysis. The individual is more “real” than the group.

Early social psychologists saw groups as being analogous to an individual in their wants, needs, and behaviors.
LeBon (1895/1960)
Boodin (1913)
McDougall (1920)
Jung (1922) – collective unconscious

Ostrom & Pryor (chapter 9) – saw correspondence bewteen social structures and cognitive structures.
Wagner (chapter 7) – said fundamental memory of group is equal to interpersonal processes.

American research has tended to focus on the individual as the basic unit of analysis, rather than a Gestalt, wholistic approach.

Donald Campbell (1958)
Entativity is the “realness” of a group. This measurement helps decide whether the group or the individual is the proper unit of analysis. High entativity is a result of high proximity, high similarity, common fate, “good form“.

Robinson (1981) was similar to Campbell in judging the realness of a group. He looked for same size, and same activities over time, or covariation.

References

Allport, F.H. (1920). Social Psychology, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

Allport, G.W. (1968). The historical background of modern social psychology. In

G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (2nd ed.) Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Boodin, J.E. (1913). The existence of social minds, American Journal of Sociology, 19, 1-47.

Campbell, D.T. (1958). Common fate, similarity and other indices of aggregates of persons as social entities. Behavioral Science, 3, 14-25

Durkheim, E. (1938). The rules of sociological method. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Jung, C.G. (1922). Collected papers on analytic psychology (2nd edition). London: Bailliere, Tindall & Cox.

LeBon, G. (1895/1960). The Crowd. New York: Viking.

McDougall, W. (1920). The group mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Robinson, M. (1981). The identity of human social groups. Behavioral Science, 26, 114-129.

Wegner, D.M., Giuliano, T., & Hertel, P.T. (1984). Cognitive interdependence in close relationships. In W.J. Ickes (Ed.), Compatible and incompatible relationships. New York: Springer-Verlag.

p.6
Structural Analysis

Network symmetry vs. asymmetry
This connotes whether a given social relationship is reciprocated or not, i.e. whether or not the directionality of a social link goes both ways.

The absence of a relationship (or link) is as important to the network as the presence of a relationship.

p.7
Relationship-specific structures
Some relationships structures are more fundamental than others. The presence of these structures makes the presence of other types of relationship structures more likely. In other words, some relationship structures have a profounder effect on the overall interconnectedness of a group than others. By relationship structure, we mean any axis along which people are said to be connected.

Distance-generating mechanisms
A distance-generating mechanism is any method of effecting the level of connectedness between two nodes.

Structural crystallization
The formation of strong intractable correlations among some structural relationships. This may lead to structural contradiction if the crystallization of some relationships in the network also leads to the suppression of other structural relationships. The persistent strength of some relationships may mean the perpetual weakness of others.

p.9
Models of Integration

A perfect market is an economist’s ideal of the wants and needs of individuals integrating to achieve an equilibrium price and level of production and consumption of goods. The view of the market is of individual atoms interacting to form the aggregate collective behavior.

p.10
The concept of social choice is similar to the perfect market idea. The differences are:
1) component actors are more intentional in their desire to influence the collective
2) component actors have greater or lesser amounts of influence – not all are equal in their ability to influence the collective.
3) groups of component actors may act in concert to influence the collective – they are not always acting as self-interested individuals.

Coercive and administered models break society into two groups – the elite, and the people. Some groups of individuals make decisions for the collective. These models try to minimize the influence of the average individual actor. For an extreme example, fascism.

Social choice offers the widest variety of combinations of elite and collective behavior.

p.19
Relationships among nodes can be either self-reported or empirically observed. These techniques are liable to produce different results.

p.20
When grouping a collection of individuals into a single node on a network (in order to talk about higher-order properties), relationships between these sub-groups can be deduced from the relationships between the individuals within the sub-groups.

Network Analysis attempts to explain he behavior of nodes and of the whole system by appealing to specific features of interconnectedness among nodes. The more-connected nodes are more influential to the whole system than nodes with fewer connections.

p.21
Graph Theory is the mathematical study of network behavior resulting from its interconnectedness. Mostly analyzes one type of relationship at a time.

p.22
Blockmodeling blocks groups of nodes based on structural equivalence. This de-emphasizes interconnectedness compared to graph theory. Also, unlike graph theory, it encourages views of multiple types of relationships in one analysis.

Data Reduction Problems
Given the abundance of data, there are two general strategies for representing the data simply.

Cluster analysis forms sets of nodes by clustering them together.

Multidimensional analysis uses spactial solutions. It maps interconnectedness using proximity in space, usually Euclidean space. Easier to visualize than cluster analysis.

p.23
The number of possible pairwise relationships in a network is given by:
n(n-1) for asymmetrical networks
n(n-1)/2 for symmetrical networks

I will demonstrate that current trends in popular culture and commercial technology have created a new medium for artistic expression: people. Like paint, human behavior can be applied in broad strokes using contemporary theories of information, social networks, group psychology, and distributed computation. My project will turn people into pixels, and turn a moving crowd into a moving image.

Rationale:
This project comes at a time when physical space is renegotiating its relationship to information space. Semioticians, and postmodernists have long bemoaned the separation of an object and its meaning. It has become almost clich頴o mention it in civilized society. But never has this gap been as explicit as with today?s combination of mobile devices and their hypertext capabilities: location-specific information is accessible from cell-phones and PDA?s at the push of a button.

New media artists have begun to exploit this in the creation of new meanings by overlaying physical space with a layer of geographically-positioned information space, whether factual or fantastical. This can be most obviously seen in projects such as Pac-Manhattan, where a video game board is superimposed onto the streets of New York City, and in Blinkenlights, where the fa硤e of an office building was converted into the world?s largest computer display. The separation of information and object can further be seen in museum tours, where handheld devices provide detailed and dynamically updatable information about exhibit pieces directly in front of the viewer. There is something magical in the often-skewed overlap between the information and physical spaces.

My involvement as one of the creators of Pac-Manhattan exposed me to the immense interest, both among cultural institutions, as well as among ordinary people across the globe, in this juxtaposition between information and physical space. Although this thesis, as an idea, pre-dates Pac-Manhattan, and certainly doesn?t have the same pop appeal, it has nevertheless been heavily influenced and altered by this experience.

There seems to be a vested interest on the part of the general public to be performers. This is reflected in the current fascination with ?reality television?, blogs, and might even be argued to be a factor in the massive success of ?first-person shooter? video games in comparison to games with other vantage points.

One particularly foul rainy day in 1999, while living in Seattle, I took a bus from work to my neighborhood, walked a few blocks towards my apartment, and noticed an eerie quiet on the streets. I suddenly realized, through the fog, that I was caught exactly half-way between a line of fully-armored riot police and a crowd of protesters participating in the Seattle riots. Needless to say, I was summarily attacked with many canisters of tear gas and compression bombs, and found myself instinctively running to the side of the protestors, with whom I had never had much sympathy.

As I joined the group of protesters, my belief in their fundamental ignorance on the issues at hand was somewhat confirmed, but quickly became irrelevant. The power of the group, and the level of each individual?s emotional involvement (including my own), was undeniable. Protests are a form of performance, as are other particularly urban types of entertainment, such as Flash Mobs, bike parades, and the like. The organizers of the protests and other group activities are often very well organized and informed, and the individuals who participate must feel interested and engaged in what they are doing in order for the performance to be successful.

How the individual?s involvement and the organizer?s master schemes are mediated by telecommunications technology is a subject relevant not only to protests. Reality television, business organizations, economics, and art could all benefit from manipulating the way people are connected on the ground.

Goals:
My goal is not to solve all the group activity challenges of the 21st century. Rather, I would like to explore the potential of telecommunications technology to mediate the carefully crafted interactions between individuals. Specifically, I would like to use the voluntary participation of individual people as pixels in an image formed by the self-organization of the individuals into a crowd. The interpersonal interactions and the technology?s ability to mediate them, will presumably lead to dynamically adjustable aggregate behavior of the group. The audience for this work will be the participants themselves.

Core Features, Media, Technology:
Participants will hold a portable device which emits bright colored light. These devices will communicate via radio transceivers. The details of what the participants do with the devices are yet to be worked out.

Success Measures:
The pixels, which are held in the hands, or placed on the hats of the participants, must be properly arranged to form a moving picture. Success of this project will be easily gauged by the fidelity of this picture and by subjective measures of the participants? involvement.

This project necessitates that people participate. This means, that people must feel actively engaged and involved in the creative process. Furthermore, they must feel a collective responsibility to form the image correctly. Participants will be interviewed after the event and their feelings and impressions will be collected in an informal manner.

Of course, one aspect of group activity is that people sometimes leave the group, whether in frustration, or as a result of some other reason. Although for this thesis, I will be attempting to maintain everyone?s interest, the frustration of members of the group could, in a future experiment, be seen as a successful result.

Concept Diagram:
Coming soon?..

It is reasonable to assume that were our tools and technologies to be dug out of the ground two million years from now, future archaeologists would similarly accept our tools as evidence of the inner workings of our social life and culture. Presumably, they would attempt to recreate, and perhaps re-enact, our behaviors and social mores based on the capabilities and limitations surrounding the surviving tools, just as we have done with habilis.

So how do modern tools and technologies mediate behavior? Do tools extend our mental capabilities2 or are they merely an externalization of innate mental proclivities ? a sort of physical appendage, performing the brain?s outsourced tasks in order to lighten the cognitive load within our overstuffed craniums3? The scope of these questions is obviously far too broad to be answered with any semblance of certainty in any reasonable amount of time. But it is clear that an understanding of human behavior is inextricably linked to an appreciation of man?s tools.

Whether or not the tool makes the man, or the man makes the tool, there is nonetheless a tool-man interdependency at the most fundamental level of human behavior4. Today this connection, between man and tool, is ripe for exploration as an artistic medium.

Whereas once upon a time, the relationship between any Homo habilis and his simple stone tool was a private matter just between the two of them, today, modern telecommunications technology, as a set of tools, has effectively ripped apart the sanctity of that intimate bond and opened it up to a potentially infinite number of relationships with other tools and with other men5.

These networked devices, and the people networked through them, can be connected in any of a vast array of network topologies6. The old-fashioned one-to-one communication relationship, as found in a telephone conversation, has been relegated to its proper place alongside its neglected siblings, one-to-many, and many-to-many. In addition to these ?cardinalities?, the overall shape of a network helps define its topology, which in turn defines its set of possible behaviors.

For example, in a star-shaped topology, a central node acts as a sort of hub for the rest, serving as the connecting link between any two other nodes on the network. Behavior-wise, all messages must pass through this hub, which must then pass each message on to its destination node. This can lead, in turn, to a very small but standardized set of behaviors.

Conversely, in a mesh network, all nodes communicate through a tangled web of connections. This leads to varied and often-complex behavior where messages must sometimes hop around across many nodes before eventually finding their proper destination. In a fully-meshed network, each node is directly connected to all other nodes, leading to very computationally-expensive, redundant, but reliable systems of communication. In an ad-hoc mesh network, the connections are usually indirect, unreliable, and short-lived. Thus the overall behavior of the ad-hoc network must be able to rapidly adapt to, or gloss over, any sudden changes in topology7. This has obvious consequences for the quality and value of any information shared in this way.

The study of the properties inherent in the various incarnations of networks has traditionally been approached from the vantage point of only one of the many related fields. Mathematicians, economists, and sociologists have all independently developed tools for network analysis. Mathematicians speak in terms of ?graph theory? to quantify the computations inherent in different networks8. Economists, often influenced by Thomas Schelling?s famous ?tipping model?9, base their models on interactions between networks of consumers and producers, each with independent, ?greedy?, behaviors. Sociologists tend to perform analyses of the average strengths of social bonds between two people or two groups, and qualify the emergent properties that result10.

More recently, with the growing popularity of the science of emergence, and the work on Complex Adaptive Systems, done in the 1990?s at the Santa Fe Institute11, scientists, economists, and social scientists have begun to study networks as abstractions and only then to apply the resultant disembodied theories to the details of their respective fields. The result has been some progress towards the development of a unified theory of networks12.

The fact that networks of people have different behaviors than individuals was not lost on early social psychologists, including Freud. In his ?Group Psychology and The Analysis of the Ego?, Freud critiqued contemporary theories of group behavior, and laid out the case for the psychoanalytic perspective, noting along the way the self-similarity between the group and the individual, the structural differences between crowds and organizations, and the emergent properties of groups as opposed to individuals13. All of these are classic properties of a complex adaptive system.

The organizational structure of groups, or the lack thereof, and its relationship to the ability of a group to steer itself, or be steered, towards a desired objective is the intensely scrutinized subjects of sociological, operational, and marketing research studies14. The effects of the message inherent in the contemporary media15, technology, and telecommunications network topologies upon the organizational structure and objectives of groups are starting to be reflected in the groups? behaviors.

In American culture, the spontaneous organization of people and the organization of group behavior mediated by technology have begun to be seen as a sort of populist entertainment17. This is nothing new: America, as land of the dispossessed, has traditionally favored entertainment for the common people over the traditional notion of high art and culture. After all, within the speed of only a few generations, we have transformed ourselves from being smug apostates of European high culture into the proponents of a new land of Reality Television and insta-celebrity stalking.

But, no longer are groups of people required to be in close physical proximity or close temporal intervals in order to be organized, and to retain the behavioral properties that this organization entails16. With the advent of modern telecommunications technology and mass media, the behavior of groups can be steered and micromanaged towards objectives through the careful control of the flow of information between people.

Creating new and unexpected connections among such organized groups is enjoyed online on services like Friendster, or MySpace18, but with the increasingly blurry division between life onscreen and off, the entertainment in the ad-hoc wiring and re-wiring of these mesh networks is enjoyed in the physical world as well as in the virtual19.

For example, pieces such as Golan Levin?s, ?Telesymphony?20, in which he created an orchestra ensemble out of an audience?s cell phone ringers; and the Blinkenlights project in Germany21, where the facade of an office building was transformed into the world?s largest computer display; exhibit the ability of modern telecommunications technology to map virtual networks onto physical space and to transform online simulations of life into second-order simulations transduced back in the real world22.

However, these works use a static physical structure ? be it a building or a stationary seated audience ? and map onto it a dynamic mesh networked piece of music or video. What remains to be seen, and what seems like the next logical step, is to use a spontaneously organized ad-hoc group of people, organizationally mediated through ad-hoc networking technology, whose artistic value at any given moment is a stylized reflection of its own organizational structure. In other words, turning a moving crowd into a moving image: this would be the ultimate in modern simulation science!

Works Cited

1. http://lithiccastinglab.com/gallery-pages/oldowanstonetools.htm
2. and http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo/homo_3.htm
3. Ong, Walter J. (1988). ?Orality and Literacy?. New York, NY: Methuen.
4. Clark, Andy (2003). ?Natural Born Cyborgs?. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
5. Norman, D. A. (1993). ?Things that make us smart?. Reading, MA: Addision-Wesley.
6. http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/topologies.asp
7. http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/1.2/coverweb/Cogdill/many.html
8. Hartsfield, N. (1990). ?Pearls in Graph Theory?. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
9. Schelling, Thomas C. (1978). ?Micromotives and Macrobehavior?. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
10. Laumann, Edward O. (1976). ?Networks of Collective Action?. New York, NY: Academic Press.
11. Waldrop, M. (1992). ?Complexity: the Emerging Science at the Edge of Ordered Chaos?. Carmichael, CA: Touchstone Books.
12. Watts, Duncan J. (1999). ?Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks Between Order and Randomness?. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
13. Freud, Sigmund. (1956). ?Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego?. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co.
14. Barrett, John H. (1970). ?Individual Goals and Organizational Objectives?. Ann Arbor, MI: Braun-Brumfield
15. McLuhan, Eric (ed.) (1995). ?Essential McLuhan?. New York, NY: Basic Books.
16. Rheingold, Howard (2002). ?Smart Mobs?. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.
17. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59518,00.html
18. http://www.friendster.com and http://www.myspace.com
19. Gabler, Neal (1998). ?Life: The Movie?. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
20. http://www.flong.com/telesymphony/
21. http://www.blinkenlights.de/
22. Baudrillard, Jean (1995). ?Simulacra and Simulation?. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press
23.

Websites of interest:

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/03-03/03-04-03/c03sp089.htm
Guinness world record for largest human logo in Portugal

http://www.typotheque.com/articles/pixel_people.html
Scott Givens Olympic Stadium Stunts

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/arts/art/reviews/4485/
Review of artist Andreas Gurskey

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001450.html
Natalie Jeremijenko interview about protest technology

http://www.osa.ceu.hu/galeria/spartakiad/online/
Bodies in Formation online gallery

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/sage/bod/2003/00000009/00000002/art00001
Politics of Gymnastics: Mass Gymnastics Displays Under Communism in Central and Eastern Europe

Thesis Context/Research Outline

Concept Description
Mobile Moving Mass
New form of visual media
Group dynamics affect visual image
Mass
Density
Interconnectedness
Flow of information

Historical Events
Situationist International
Exploration of space
Derive ? wandering
American celebrity culture
Uncultured frontier mentality
Shun high art, focus on common man
Ordinary people as celebrities
Reality television
Relationships as entertainment
Life: the movie
Science of Emergence
New metaphor for life
Interactive
Object-oriented
Cultural change in many fields
Physics
Biology
Ecology
Computer science
Social sciences
Economics
Simulation
Agent-based interactions
Bringing simulation off the screen

Related Projects
Flash Mobs
Stadium Entertainment
Korean Mass Gymnastics
Pac-Manhattan
Blinkenlights

Technology
Global Positioning System
Self-organizing networks
Ad-hoc Location Routing
Portable Personal Technology
Bluetooth cell phones

http://www.typotheque.com/articles/pixel_people.html
- very specific article on examples of design with “People as Pixels”

Media Theory

http://homepage.newschool.edu/~wilder/MediaElision.html
“Media Elision”, an article by Carol Wilder of the New School on the blurring of news and entertainment. Mentions Neil Postman, McLuhan, Beaudrillard – the usual.

http://proxy.arts.uci.edu/~nideffer/Tvc/section3/11.Tvc.v9.sect3.Grindstaff.html
“Trashy or Transgressive: Reality TV and the Politics of Social Control” – gives a good overview of media theory surrounding infotainment and reality tv. Mentions Adorno, Horkheimer, Postman, etc.

http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/teaching/classes/401_s02/connections/Saras_connections.htm
Sara Diamond’s Connections. Contains links to participatory media, designs, spectacle, enabling technologies, and all that.

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jlesage/Juliafolder/nonfictionTV/nonfictiontvbibliog.htm
Bibliography of useful books on Nonfiction TV.

Prior Art

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/arts/art/reviews/4485/
- review of Andreas Gursky’s minimalist photos of buildings and crowds as “Pixel Visionary”

http://www.flong.com/telesymphony/
- Golan Levin’s “Telesymphony”. He used the audience’s cell phones as instruments in a ring-tone orchestra.

http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/World_20record_20display_20panel
- another waste of an idea on halfbakery.com. They suggest making the worlds largest display panel made of people holding adjustable CMY color cards