FlashRiot

I have been working towards my Doctorate and have been considering the effect of FlashMob. I used FlashMob back in the 90s on live performance events of Neuter (more on that at http://www.andrewoldham.co.uk/?p=74). I have started to see how FlashMob brings people together, becomes a social network or in many cases a publicity tool to sell the latest mobile deal. Rather than creating a performance event, people now look around for the cameras recording it. I have been considering the use of FlashMob events in the context of technology, whereas technology brought Flash Mobbers to the same location, I believe that technology can now do something different. That social networks, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google + should now embrace FlashRiot. The principals are simple:

1) FlashRiot does not bring Mobbers together but rather acts like a viral campaign with no end, no resolution, it will go as long as those who push it continue the riot of language and technology. It mutates.

2) That the original FlashRiot content will constantly change like Chinese whispers, that in essence the text of the original work is unbound.

3) That FlashRiot unlike FlashMob is owned by everyone who contributes and is not a corporate tool.

A simple way of seeing it in action, and one I think may work, is to start a ‘story’ from several different points on the globe. This for sake of taste is an urban myth or as we did with Neuter a whodunnit with no end. Then pass it on, modify adapt, add content, add images, add sound, make is viral, change for cultures sake, change for tastes sake, change and change and change. A riot of language, a riot of image, a riot of technology.

FlashRiot. No product. No selling. No advertising. User controlled. User guided. User changed. User chaos.