Timothy Vollmer SI 504 Section 9 Box 285 3648 Words

Gigposters

Collections live and thrive within social systems. At the same time, we’ve come to see

that collections cannot be understood of effectively managed without understanding the social

systems that create and use them.1 Collections help social systems remember by providing a

storage area for knowledge, which can facilitate clarification in a dispute by providing evidence.

Collections are inextricably linked to social systems and are built through social processes.

Collections use social systems to provide resources for preservation, disposition, repurposing,

and more resource gathering. Throughout our lectures and course materials, we’ve learned to

qualify a social system as an enduring group of people who interact regularly, create meanings,

establish hierarchies and roles, and rehearse norms. Social systems use collections in various

ways: as a tool for social memory, in collective sensemaking, to provide coordination and

control, and as a means to support social processes and institutions.

Gigposters.com (henceforth Gigposters) is a virtual collection of concert posters that

accepts submissions of digitized concert posters from designers and collectors. After being

approved, these posters are displayed online in Gigposters archive. As described on the site, “a

gig poster is an advertisement for a live musical performance … [including] flyers and handbills

… [but not] promotional, non-music related posters or posters for shows that did not happen.

There must be at least one musical performer listed on the poster.”2

Gigposters is the largest online collection of concert posters. To date there are

approximately 67,000 posters on the site, created by more than 5700 designers.3 Poster images

load quickly because the file size remains small (usually under 200kB). The Gigposters

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collection is accessible to users with Internet access and provides ways for viewers to browse or

search the collection. Viewers can browse Gigposters alphabetically by band or designer.

Viewers can also search by band, venue, city, or designer. A drawback of the search feature is

that viewers are not able to combine various search terms to return results. For example, a user

cannot enter “Sonic Youth” + “Budapest” in order to return results of posters containing Sonic

Youth shows in Budapest. Viewers may only search one field at a time.

Clay Hays, the current webmaster and sole administrator, created Gigposters in 2001. He

used Gigposters as an opportunity to demonstrate his skills as a web designer and learn more

about web development. Clay began uploading posters from his old bands and friends’ bands,

and Gigposters grew from there. While Gigposters gave Clay a platform for experimentation and

self-education, he is quick to point out that “the goal of the site in the beginning was to create a

community.”4 Today there are over 12,000 registered members on Gigposters.5 Gigposters in

now financially stable because of advertising and the introduction of paid premium member

accounts.

While the Gigposters website receives thousands of hits per day, occasional viewers do

not necessarily represent a part of the corresponding social system. Social systems rely on

members to provide resources such as knowledge or manpower. Social systems also assume

interaction and shared language, which may exclude casual viewers to the site. While we realize

that open accessibility to the wealth of the Gigposters collection is important, opt-in membership

to the site proves the most instructive example of the social system that lives within Gigposters.

Members create an account by choosing a username and password (which are validated through

an active e-mail account). Membership allows for more interactivity with the site, with the

collection, and with other members. Members can create profiles, display some personal

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information, and send private messages to other members. Gigposters incorporates a feature

which allows users to comment on individual posters and also provides a larger, more in-depth

discussion forum area where users can talk about other topics such as hot bands, upcoming art

shows, pertinent legal issues within the poster making community, and design technique. An

interesting category entitled “anything goes” contains over 900,000 posts!6 Recently, Gigposters

has introduced a “premium members” section in which member who pay a fee of $10 per year

can get access to expanded features on the site such as chat rooms, web cams, discounts on third-

party products, job postings and an online arcade.7

Gigposters audience includes designers, bands, and the general public of art-lovers and

music-lovers. Clay speculates that Gigposters user base is comprised of 50% designers, 25%

bands, and 25% general public. Immediately, the demographic of Gigposters members can tell us

much about its social system. We see that Gigposters relies heavily upon members of a social

system entrenched in art and design. This information helps us better analyze the embedded

values and priorities of the members of the social system

Throughout this paper, I will draw upon an interview conducted with Clay Hays, as well

as other information written by Clay that is displayed on the Gigposters website. I will also use

background information from conversations with friends who are poster makers. Gigposters is a

fascinating collection of concert posters that lives within an intertwined cycle of creation and

member interaction. At the onset, we will note that various forms of technology have come to

inform all aspects of our inquiry. We will keep these ideas in mind when analyzing the

Gigposters collection and the social system it affects and is affected by. First, we will look at

how analog-to-digital transformation adds value by increasing access to once-disparate

collections. Second, we’ll look into the phenomenon by which transformation builds markets and

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helps financially support creative communities. Third, we will try to understand how poster

collections aid in social memory. Next, we’ll analyze how Gigposters utilizes both centralized

and decentralized controls to maintain its collection. We’ll also look into the how collections that

promote efficient communication methods enrich a user’s experience. Finally, we’ll examine the

process by which communication allows users to uphold ideals of creative freedom, question

institutional policies, and resolve disputes when they arise.

Transformation adds value through aggregation

Thomassen writes, “to maintain a quality archive, we must maintain the relationship

between content data on the one hand and the form, structure and context of creation of these

data on the other.”8 The transformation and uploading of digitized posters creates value through

aggregation, creates new markets for poster sales, and allows users to exchange design ideas

online. History, context of creation and the original provenance are important factors to keep in

mind when analyzing the transformation of collections from the physical to the digital.

Gigposters combines previously disparate collections of posters into a massive archive

and helps bridge the gap of space and time. A supercollection is created where there was not one

before! The original purpose of a concert poster was to advertise a local music concert, to draw

persons who were knowledgeable of the surrounding neighborhood or city to a venue to see live

music. As a result, no large geographic collections materialized, and for good reason—a person

is more likely to attend local shows than those spread across the country and across the world, so

it makes sense that someone might collect posters from local shows. These posters are more

readily available and often free if taken from a kiosk or wall of a venue. Similarly, personal

physical poster collections most likely span only a limited amount of time. The Gigposters

collection draws posters from vastly different musical eras—it contains a poster from a Beatles

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show in Liverpool in 1963 as well as a poster from a TV on the Radio show in Detroit only a

weeks ago. Gigposters allows members to sift through thousands of posters showcasing concerts

spread throughout hundreds of cities and over decades of time. Clay writes, “the Internet has

allowed me to create a place where anyone can view gig posters from around the world. It’s the

only way.”9 Clay even admits that the size standards (600 by 800) are set solely because it

represents the size best displayed on web browsers.10

Moving collections online seems to encounter an obvious tradeoff—we lose quality but

gain viewing portability and easier access. This distinction misses the point of Gigposters, at

least for now. We see that the aim of Gigposters is not to provide a replacement for the original

work. Instead, it aims at opening historically distant communities to a wealth of creativity and

intimate knowledge of art, bands, and design that was nearly impossible to access before. The

history and provenance of poster making is steeped in a tradition of the physical—heavy paper

and quality ink. Gigposters does not try to solve the problem of the physical—the reproduction

of a poster on my 12” iBook screen does not do justice to an 18X24” four-color silkscreen

Modest Mouse concert poster. So, while the collection provides a gigantic wealth of beautiful

posters that are easy to access, we are constantly reminded of the original context of the poster’s

creation.

Transformation creates new markets

It’s interesting to see how Giposters facilitates a market for the purchasing of posters.

This market was not present before, save for a few poster makers who were actually able to

attend the shows for which the posters were created. This is an arduous process in itself, usually

requiring permission from the band, venue, and promoter in order to sell the posters. Gigposters

represents the springboard from which collecting and buying can bloom. It creates markets that

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were not present before. Clay writes, “I don't think posters were sold near[ly] as much before the

site came around. I think [Gigposters] has opened up the art form, collectiblity, and has resulted

in more people selling posters in many different ways.”11 The posters, once a functional artifact,

help fuel an economic market rooted in nostalgia. The Internet, and Gigposters in particular, has

brought existing collectors together and created new collectors, who have been exposed to vast

knowledge of new posters (and their corresponding designer websites, who often sell them)

through the Gigposters site. “Most people go and buy posters after viewing them on Gigposters,”

claims Clay.12

Transformation aids social memory

Radley discusses the collecting, sorting, and presentation of objects that social systems

deem worthwhile for remembering:

The status of objects as things for remembering is a matter of social definition, framing

some artifacts (through displacement) as mementos, some as of historic interest and

others so that they remain merely functional. This marking of objects as being worthy of

attention for remembering … can be illustrated by the discovery of an old heirloom in the

attic which is brought into the living room … There is here a definite invitation to attend

to these objects in a special way, to allow [emphasis his] the interests and attitudes which

they evoke to be revived through the elaboration of meanings made possible by talking

with others about them.13

“Gigposters is an historical archive,” says Clay.14 The aggregation of posters on the site helps us

remember, in a very literal way, a musical history of our time. We realize that the representation

of music and design history on Gigposters is never all-inclusive, but still remains useful in our

analysis.

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While individual posters are beautiful and provide useful information and entertainment

in a standalone context, Gigposters begs for user participation to share experiences, rebuild

histories, and further social memory. Through discussion on the forums and poster comments

pages, Gigposters can help us remember these narratives. Members can provide comments that

can provide the necessary background, nostalgic ruminations and stories that can help describe a

music scene at a particular time—in a sense, a journalistic snapshot of a social scene at its height.

Imagine what it would it be like to hear a personal account describing of one of Nirvana’s first

shows in the Pacific Northwest in 1987. Concert posters have the ability to trigger this kind of

emotion and urges members to discuss and share stories. This sharing of history with such a

large and diverse audience would have been impossible before.

Considering the more technical realm of design, the aggregation of poster collections on

Gigposters helps members document and track various movements in art and design. Gigposters

design forums can help open containers of specialized knowledge wrapped up within the poster

design community. Designers are able to receive feedback on their work from members the

might not have interacted with before. Artists and musicians are able to study and discuss trends

in art, design, and interact with the creators of the art. The use of the Gigposters collection as a

tool for sustaining musical histories and documenting design trends represents a very pure way

of utilizing artifacts to sustain memory over time. Infinite value is added when these

communities interact.

Coordination and Control

Beniger shows us that control arises in the intersection of information processing and

reciprocal communication: “Two-way interaction between controller and controlled must also

occur, not only to communicate influence from the former to the latter, but also to communicate

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back the results of this action.”15 This feedback is necessary in order to maintain and further

control in a meaningful way.

Gigposters represents an interesting interplay of control and feedback that is distributed

between the webmaster (Clay) and Gigposters members. Since Clay is the one person who

approves posters to be uploaded to the Gigposters site, it appears that the control mechanism is

fairly straightforward. Clay manually looks at each poster submission sent to the website to make

sure that it contains the proper technical attributes (live show, name of band, file type and size).16

Since Clay is the only person involved in approving posters, we wonder what would happen to

the collection if he were unable to continue.

In addition to following technical standards, Clay asks that members refrain from

submitting duplicate posters, and also urges uploaders to read the “Terms of Use” page in order

to make sure the proposed poster follows the “Permitted Uses” and does not contain prohibited

content.17 Clay respects artistic freedom and does not discriminate posters based on quality—“if

it's up on the street to advertise a music show, it deserves to be on the Gigposters site.”18 At the

same time, Clay admits that he has to moderate the forum sections all the time in order to rid it of

spam, advertising and inappropriate entries.19

Collectors as well as designers may upload posters to the site. Deregulation allows for

more posters to be uploaded and shared, as is the case when collectors add old posters from

which we no longer know the creator. Increased exposure may allow the poster’s creator to

eventually be identified.

While Clay plays an important role as gatekeeper to Gigposters, we also recognize that

members play an integral part in managing the site’s collection. Members add a layer of control

to this seemingly simplistic hierarchy by representing the “eyes” of Gigposters. Clay says, “I

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manually approve every poster. If I screw up ... people let me know.”20 Modeling this under the

open-source model of “many eyeballs,” users provide a layer of control to Gigposters in

identifying technical problems (corrupted poster display) as well as flagging duplicates,

copyright issues, or inappropriate content. This is similar to the “flag this video” button present

in sites like YouTube, except that on the Gigposters site, users must email Clay directly with

issues or complaints. This avenue for feedback and user control provides an extremely useful

tool for control of the collection. Members function as the “neighborhood watch” of the

Gigposters community.

Sensemaking

The Gigposters collection opens up access to a gigantic virtual poster collection and gives

members the opportunity for interaction and communication. Users must engage in sensemaking

when they spot something out of the ordinary.

In 2003, a Gigposters member and designer named Delicious posted a silk-screened

poster for a Gossip concert in Chicago. The poster depicted a cartoonish, stereotypical “mammy”

character, an “Aunt Jemima” figure. The poster fit the submission guidelines and therefore went

up on the Gigposters site. Immediately, the poster started generating member comments such as

“I imagine this will get some attention” and “I’d like to know the motivation behind this one.”21

Many thought that the poster was racist (the band actually refused to play the show until the

posters were removed from the club). Others thought the poster was a brave statement of artistic

freedom. Still others chose to only critique the poster’s design elements. Everyone seemed to

have something to say about the Gossip poster—to date 245 comments have been left on the

page.

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Clay remembered the issue when put to him, and stated that the poster is still on the site

and has not been removed at any time. The ubiquity of Gigposters within the poster making

community reduces the fallacy of centrality described by Weick—the idea that if a person

doesn’t know about a situation, then it must not be happening.22 Everyone knew about the

controversial Gossip poster because it was so easily accessible online, whereas before, probably

only a few kids in Chicago would have actually seen the poster in the first place. Gigposters has

made information retrieval so efficient that we are unable to ignore it when outliers appear on

our radar screen. At the same time, we should realize that this increased access to information

should come coupled with an increased responsibility for analysis, public discussion, and

sensemaking.

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Weick says, “sensemaking is understood as a process that is grounded in identity

construction, retrospective, enactive of sensible environments, social, ongoing, focused on and

by extracted cues, and driven by plausibility rather than accuracy.”23 The conflict and cognitive

dissonance brought about by the Gossip poster incident shows how Gigposters members attempt

to true their ideals of artistic freedom with personal and community integrity: Members aim for

sensemaking by maintaining standards supported by a common identity. Members look at other

posters to see whether a similar issue has arisen before. Members build and sustain the collection

in a continual cycle of social interaction. Members utilize design cues and text to praise or

critique other’s work. Members search for an eventual answer.

The really interesting part of sensemaking concerning the Gossip poster occurs at the

intersection of creative freedom, published regulations (terms of use agreement), and members’

values and ethics. Designers wish to protect artistic freedom while the site tries to maintain

standards that attempt to prohibit content that is “patently offensive to the online community …

promotes racism, bigotry, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual”24

At the same time, the member community does not wish to be considered racist if they allow

controversial content like the Gossip poster to remain in Gigposter’s collection.

Clay says that the terms of agreement came from a generic form that is typical of many

websites like Gigposters, and that the terms of use provisions have not changed since the site was

created.25 Clay also proudly states that he does not delete any posters based on the content

therein—he claims that artists are provided with 100% creative freedom. Clay is very flexible

concerning poster submissions—all are considered art.26 Taking into consideration the outcry

from many members, who denounced the seemingly racist depiction on the Gossip poster, it’s

interesting to see how sensemaking is achieved through communication.

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Members build and maintain identity on Gigposters—they realize that the environment

they occupy on Gigposters is one that comes preloaded with a culture that adheres to certain

principles and defends some viewpoints more strongly than others. We also realize that

sensemaking is a social and ongoing process that reflects the time and culture—while we might

tolerate pornographic images (itself a violation of the site’s terms of use); we feel more internal

and community conflict when affronted with racist imagery.

By raising our concerns with others within the community, we can help resolve this

conflict. Weick says, “[the] social context is crucial for sensemaking because it binds people to

actions that they then must justify.”27 Delicious initially refused to comment on his poster, but

after members posted increasingly critical comments about his irresponsibility, he eventually

began to explain his motivations and ideas for using this particular imagery. The users of

Gigposters were creating sense by urging the author to speak. This process of accountability in

being able to justify choice and action is an important process of understanding for the health of

the social system and the robustness of the collection. We see that it is equally important for us

to keep records of these discussions and issues, which allows us to revisit them later and

provides a tangible example for later sensemaking. We constantly revisit, reexamine, and rewrite

our history and story as new people discover the poster. While the deluge of comments on the

Gossip poster came within about the first two months, the most recent was posted just this year.

Onward

We have seen that the transformation of collections from the analog to the digital opens

doors to access once constrained by geography and time. We’ve also discovered that the

aggregation of collections can result in the creation of novel markets. Furthermore, consolidation

of disparate collections into a central site shares histories and sustains memory of design

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processes. We’ve realized that virtual collections require resources and control techniques that

can be both individual and social. Finally, we’ve learned that we through regular communication,

we can make sense online.

Over all of this, we have remained cognizant of the technological innovation that affects

each aspect of this collection and its corresponding social system. Brown and Duguid write, “by

engaging the social context in which technologies are embedded, better designs and uses will

emerge.”28 Technological innovations are happening faster and more easily than ever before.

While technology can provide answers to many problems, we need to be able to step back and

analyze these progressions with an ever-vigilant eye. We are challenged to “look around”29—to

remain open-minded in our thinking about these dynamic concepts as we encounter new

technological and social environments.

1 504 lecture, week 2 2 Clay Hays, “Submit a Poster.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/submit.php> 3 Clay Hays, “Home Page.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/> 4 E-mail communication with Clay Hays. November 18, 2006. 5 Clay Hays, “Forums.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/forums/> 6 Clay Hays, “Forums.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/forums/> 7 Clay Hays, “Premium Members.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/chat.php> 8 Theo Thomassen, Archival Science 1, no. 4 p. 383 9 E-mail communication with Clay Hays. November 18, 2006. 10 ibid. 11 ibid. 12 ibid. 13 Alan Radley, Collective Remembering (Inquiries in Social Construction), p. 56 14 E-mail communication with Clay Hays. November 18, 2006. 15 James Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society, p. 8

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16 Clay Hays, “Submit a Poster.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/submit.php> 17 Clay Hays, “Terms of Use.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/terms.php/> 18 E-mail communication with Clay Hays. November 18, 2006. 19 ibid. 20 ibid. 21 “The Gossip” poster comments. Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. 22 Karl Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, p. 2 23 Weick, at 17. 24 Clay Hays, “Terms of Use.” Gigposters.com, 2006. December 5, 2006. <http://www.Gigposters.com/terms.php/> 25 E-mail communication with Clay Hays. November 18, 2006. 26 ibid. 27 Weick, at 53. 28 John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information, p. x. 29 Brown and Duguid, at xxiv.

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Works Cited

Beniger, James. The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the

Information Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), “Introduction,” pp. 1-27.

Email communication between Clay Hays and Timothy Vollmer, November 18, 2006. Hays, Clay. “Forums.” Gigposters.com. December 3, 2006.

<http://www.gigposters.com/forums/> Hays, Clay. “Home Page.” Gigposters.com. December 3, 2006. <http://www.gigposters.com/> Hays, Clay. “Premium Members.” Gigposters.com. December 3, 2006. <http://www.gigposters.com/chat.php> Hays, Clay. “Submit a Poster.” Gigposters.com. December 3, 2006. <http://www.gigposters.com/submit.php> Hays, Clay. “Terms of Use.” Gigposters.com. December 3, 2006. <http://www.gigposters.com/terms.php/> Radley, Alan. “Artefacts, Memory and a Sense of the Past,” Collective Remembering (Inquires

in Social Construction), David Middleton and Derek Edwards, eds. (London: Sage, 1990), pp. 46-59.

Seely Brown, John and Paul Duguid. “Introduction,” The Social Life of Information (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2000): ix – xxv. Thomassen, Theo. “A First Introduction to Archival Science,” Archival Science 1, no. 4 (2001):

373-385. Weick, Karl. Sensemaking in Organizations (Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications, 1995), Chapter 1, “Nature of Sense-Making,” and 2, “Seven Properties of Sense-Making,” pp. 1-62.