ABSTRACT
Digital productions can take a plethora of forms that defy simple classification. Stories, formal aesthetic efforts, and even ideas and data can be and often are presented as an inter-mediatory experience extending well beyond the confines of an original product. To complicate matters further, original concepts quickly evolve as subsequent contributors remix them. Theorist Lev Manovich describes new media authorship as a result of various types of collaboration. 1 I will augment this key notion of collaboration by invoking additional attributes: auto-theoretical reflection and trial-and-error as technoetic exploration. Situating these personal actions in a networked system re-centers the individual, yet reveals nothing less than “abductive authorship” marked by one’s distinct exploratory interactions with seemingly limitless digital toolsets and the spontaneity of communal discourse. 2 In networked environments, creative dynamics challenge notions of authorship by moving away from a finalized, packaged commodity fixed for consumption. Authorship is not just a concerted effort to produce a particular mediated product, but a conglomeration of interactions.
