Project: Map of a Micro-Community (2007)

A depiction of the developing structure of a web-based community.

Conceived and developed for the August 2007 exhibition staged by What They Could Do, They Did.

This piece renders visible the changing structure of an online community, depicting the growth and flux of its usage over an 18-month period. This community is comprised of over 100 members, and acts as a forum for discussion on a diverse array of topics. Discussions are built up from distinct 'posts', which can then be extended to project-based developmental chains.

The content of these forums over time has been abstracted to a numeric stream of post identifiers and significance ratings, determined by the amount of discussion surrounding a post. Each post is transcribed onto a 2-dimensional plane, with its size defined by its significance rating, vertical position by the user ID of its author, and horizontal position by the time at which it was created. Relationships between posts, based on overlaps in subject matter or authorship, are indicated by colour-coded threads.

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