aaaarg in Dockray 2013
much a passage into a space as it is an apparatus enclosing the individual. (In this sense, Open Access is one configuration of this apparatus). Two projects that I have worked within over the past 7 years – a file-‐sharing website for texts, AAAARG.ORG, and a proposal-‐based learning platform, The Public School – are ongoing efforts in escaping this regime of access in order to create some room to actually understand all of these conditions, their connection to larger processes, and the p
amework within which people propose ideas for things they want to learn about with others; a rotating committee might organize this proposal into an actual class, bringing together a group of strangers and friends who find a way to teach each other. AAAARG.ORG is a collective library comprised of scans, excerpts, and exports that members of its public have found important enough to share with each other. They are premised, in part, on the proposition that making these kinds of spaces is an active, cont
aaaarg in Sollfrank & Dockray 2013
time.
[03:18]
Motivation
[03:22]
It was in the air at the time already, so I don’t think it’d be an entirely
independent impulse – number one. But I had actually tried to start a couple
of things that had failed. [03:41] Like Aaaaarg – I tried to set up some
physical reading groups that would complement the online archive. So, in Los
Angeles the idea would be that we’d meet and talk about things that were being
posted to the website. So, yes, reading groups. But they never re
t’s, I think, what comes with
the project, which makes it very valuable to a lot of people.
[19:13]
Yes. That’s going back to what I was saying about some of the failures before
The Public School, which was... As the site was growing, as Aaaaarg was
growing, all of a sudden there would be things in there that I didn’t know
about before, that someone felt it was important to share. [19:37] And because
someone felt that it was important to share it, I felt it was important to
read it. And I
mpanies, because they are
sort of gaming the system and the restructuring of the economy, but also how
we consume entertainment, and all this kind of things, and the restructuring
of production around the globe.
[27:59] I don’t think sites like Aaaaarg do anything more than point out a
kind of dynamic that is existing in the world – to think that somehow you can
sort of turn that into something positive, you know, in a way that gets
capitalism to stop exploiting people – like it seems silly
the accounting software. [29:31] A lot of it is
changing through the entire pipeline anyway, so to me, it’s really difficult
to say how publishing is changing because the entire flow, the entire
apparatus is changing.
[29:48] At the beginning, Aaaaarg was a way of bringing readers together, and
to allow readers to sort of give value to certain things that they were
reading. And I think that’s always been a form of publishing to me. [30:09]
Yes, someone is responsible for having the book edited,
nues to have a life, like sometimes it lives for decades and decades, and
it goes between readers, it goes through sidewalk vendors, and used book
stores, and sits on people’s libraries, and goes to public libraries. [30:44]
And I would say that Aaaaarg is sort of in that part of the life cycle.
[30:54] These platforms become sort of new publishers themselves, but I
haven’t really thought that kind of statement through enough. In a way, if
publishing is to make something public and to create publics, then of course,
that’s something that Aaaaarg has done since the beginning. [31:22] It made
things public to people who maybe didn’t exist for before, and it also
produced communities of people around books – I mean, if that’s what a
publication and a publisher does, then, of course, it
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