ProjectEmily

Summary
Project Emily is the running name of a social networking project, which is being conducted through the department of New College at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. It gets its roots from the small world experiments of Stanley Milgram, studying the bounds & peripheries of human social relations and the paricipation of individual human beings in the distribution of knowledge and information. This project is axiomatically tied in the external world, as a series of letters & correspondences with the various members of the Project, and with contributions from each participant, as the project develops complexity.

History & Context
The experiment is based in part on Stanley Milgram’s “small world” experiments, which were conducted in the later 1960’s, and a faculty project conducted by a member of the Conceptual & Informational Arts Program at the San Francisco State University. Each of these experiments attempted to draw ties, and examine the ties that were formed between various groups of particular individuals.

Milgram
In the prior experiment, Milgram
“formally articulated the mechanics of social networks, and explored the mathematical consequences of these”
In doing so, he sent a package to individuals with the motivation of having an originally intended recipient in Boston, Mass. Receive the package. Each participant down the line was told to pass this package to a person they thought would know the individual, or atleast to get the package closer to that individual’s geographic location, until it eventually reached the person.

SFSU Project
The second experiment was conducted by Stephen Wilson at the San Francisco Stae University’s Conceptual/Informational Arts program, and consisted in a “magic box,” which contained both GPS components and a speaking module, through which individuals could communicate with the current box holder, through a laptop voice translation program. The box would record the individuals’ whereabouts, would take various photographic notations, and could be used to communicate with individuals participating in the project. The box would be passed on to subsequent individuals, who would take their turn with the box, & the surveillance it entailed.

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