Benjamin De Kosnik

California College of the Arts, U.S.A

     Theories of Art Practice-as-Writing

     in Digital Space: the Generous

     Attractor and the Negative Attractor

The generous attractor is that all the mobile communication and social media output is a new form of writing. On the other hand, the negative attractor is that this is not writing at all. At each of the two poles, standards and conventions vary for what is considered a first or formally published work, how to credit collaborative work, and other important details of interest to art writing. Can a Facebook post shared with 900 people constitute prior publishing and prohibit later academic work that might have incorporated it? How are versions of writing tracked across social media? Is it necessary to delineate post from draft from finished piece of writing? How does one incorporate a comment or user-generated suggestion?