Doodler:
Appropriating Social Interface Structures for Creative Play Online

by Tyler Freeman
5/21/2007

The Theory

The image is a pure creation of the mind.

It cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities.

The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be -- the greater its emotional power and poetic reality...

- Pierre Reverdy (Nord-Sud, March 1918)

The Surrealists created imagery by pitting two peoples' creative powers against each other in a twisting together of their subconsciouses like different colored strands in a rope. Once the twisting was completed, the resulting image was one that no one planned but everyone invented in separate, yet connected, contexts. Doodler is a social space that realizes and connects these contexts with a variety of systems and interface structures. It is designed to facilitate and encourage appropriation of not only content, but interface as well. In this way, it becomes a platform open to user-created games emphasizing collective drawing and multi-authored narrative.

Doodler provides a space on which to put all the elements of the web: text, pictures, multimedia like sounds and videos, and windows into other pages. It also provides a simple drawing mechanism, so anyone can instantly doodle, sketch, or render drawings on any page at any time. The goal is for users to be able to quickly and easily contribute to existing pieces that they find by browsing the social network, with little or no previous knowledge of HTML or web design. This spontaneous editing capability encourages users to collaborate, appropriate and communicate with each other in the private time of their own browsing or in real-time, with multiple users drawing concurrently in the same space.

Since Doodler basically emulates an infinite piece of paper on which to draw, place text and images, or add hyperlinks, it lends itself naturally to playing Surrealist games of spontaneous collaborative creation, such as Exquisite Corpse. In traditional Exquisite Corpse, each player draws a continuation of the last drawing and then folds the paper down to cover most of his drawing. By hiding the drawing before the next person continues it, the Surrealists believed this would encourage autonomous creativity: a tapping of the subconscious’ tendencies of symbols and flow.

In a Doodler-based Exquisite Corpse, the folding of the paper interface to cover a drawing is replaced by a scrollable window which reveals only a small portion of the overall drawing at a time. Each player would continue the drawing within this frame, and then scroll his drawing mostly out of view, where the next player will have to repeat the process. Already we see many differences from the paper version: instead of just one directional area of the paper being covered by a fold, there are four directional areas in which to hide previous drawings. Thus the flow of drawings could proceed in any direction, or converge all onto a single frame. We see here a loss of structure of a finite piece of paper to an opening expanse of endless possibility.

In addition, the number of players is unlimited, and often more than one player could be drawing in the same space at the same time (with or without awareness of the other player’s creative presence). If the players are not aware of each other, then the game suddenly branches into two possibilities of continuation: the game can continue from either entry (or both), creating a rhizomatic, exponential exploration of multiple streams of consciousness. If the players are aware of each other, in essence drawing together, then each stroke plays off the other to produce a combinational subconscious creation: a multiplicative automatism which characterizes, in part, the next generation of Surrealism: what I call Hypersurrealism.

The digital world gives Hypersurrealism much larger creative, social and psychological spaces to explore. It could be argued that the ‘trance’ the original Surrealists entered to create autonomous drawings is replaced by the ‘trance’ of the disembodiment into cyberspace in Hypersurrealism, but it remains to be seen if this cyber-trance affords the same amount of creative automatism as the Surrealists intended.

It then becomes obvious that for this cyber-trance to be truly immersive, the interface of the system must be as unobtrusive as possible. There must be little or no distractions from the locus of creativity in forms of ads, logos, flashy buttons, etc. Even the clunkyness of a mouse (or especially a laptop touchpad) could break the spell of automatism.

Thus, to preserve automatism in the user, the interface must be automatic itself. Drawing functions should be instantly available without any waiting or fussing with options. Creation of new layers or pages must be automatic and unobtrusive. Metadata must be easily viewable and editable but without detracting from the visual elements of the page. This is the purpose of Doodler and when it is completed, it will open a new chapter in user-created and controlled web content, allowing for a global consciousness to emerge through advanced and unhindered systems of collaborative communication.

The Project

Doodler has many features to encourage collaboration between users, including a way to instantly edit any page, regardless of whose page it is. It allows users to draw, post pictures and engage in other forms of digital art with their contacts online. It provides a framework for sharing drawings and art with others by means of personal profiles, mass messaging and online user-moderated galleries. The goal is for users to be able to quickly and easily contribute to existing pieces that they find by browsing the social network, with little or no previous knowledge of HTML or web design.

Doodler is kept as simple and easy as possible to allow as many applications as users can think of, much like the original internet. It includes a template framework to make any form of information easily accessible as metadata, and to promote a consistency across multiple pages and users. It also includes advanced social network functions so users can easily search, categorize, and analyze works by their author functions, or search for works done by a particular individual or group of authors.

Visual Elements

The main page that people can edit is called a doodle. There are four basic visual elements to develop content on a doodle, and also a layer system for organizing these elements by purpose.

Line: users can draw directly on any page with a variety of colors and brush sizes.
Text: users can add text or textboxes of any color, size or font. They can even edit the HTML directly for full control over its appearance.
Picture: users can upload pictures or give a URL of a media file to place anywhere on a page. (media files also include videos, sounds, and even Flash applications)
Doodle: users can also include scrollable windows into other doodles, so you can view nested doodles within other doodles. This allows for many applications, including quoting other works or hiding content to play games like Exquisite Corpse.

The first three elements can have click events, where the creator chooses something to do if someone clicks on that element. This allows for hyperlinking to other pages, but it can also be used for more advanced things like popups, animations, etc.

All elements are linked to their creator's profile, so when you hold your mouse over any line, text, picture or doodle, you can see who created it and view his profile. This forces users to be responsible for the content they create by assigning an author function to the content. In this way, users can get a feel for other users' styles of drawing and writing.

Layers

A doodle can have different layers containing any of the four drawing elements. A layer may also contain as many other layers as are approved by its owner. Each doodle contains:

The 'main' layer: the default layer shown at the initial viewing of a doodle.
- contains the owner's elements and layers.
- can contain other users' layers by approval by owner, which can be done when the layer is submitted by its creator or beforehand.
  - by granting write access to a layer for specific users (or groups or cliques) beforehand, the owner can create communal drawing spaces for synchronous sketching and dynamic detached discourse.
Any other users' layers on top (including the owner).
- these layers have to be manually enabled by the viewer, or by a specific link or search result.
- Layer names are unique. By convention, users can name layers for:
  - Metadata (tags, notes, comments, related links)
    - This is much like the user-appropriated del.ico.us tags to designate bookmarks for certain people, like "for:user". (Orchard, Ch. 6)
  - Appropriation (additions, alternatives, replies, remixes, remediations, graffiti, defacement, hacktivism, etc.)
  - Templates. Any user can duplicate any layer from any doodle in his network into his own doodle.
    - This means a template creator can offer a template layer for anyone to use, which is a list of as many other layers of layout and metadata for users to appropriate and customize, such as:
      - a standard profile, complete with standardized metadata layers like name, age, location, interests, picture, testimonials, etc.
      - a blog entry with layers for the title, content, and a space for comments.
      - structures for online games like a blank Exquisite Corpse canvas, with instructions and a scrollable space for drawing.
      - layouts for a picture gallery.
      - frames for collaborative comic books.
      - chain-letters and surveys
    - Since the name of the original template layer is preserved when a user appropriates it, viewers can easily search for all doodles containing derivatives of a certain template. This will make it easy to find active games of Exquisite Corpse, for instance, or to search for all blogs by a certain user or clique.
      - eg: A user could search for all blogs by all users in his contact list, like LiveJournal's Friends page.

Templates

Templates are pre-made layers that a user can drag-and-drop onto any page. By using templates, common forms are easily accessible by users, thus setting a space to define metadata. The metadata in any template is searchable and groupable throughout the entire Doodler database. For example, a person could drag a biographical template to their profile page and fill it out with their own information, such as age, location, interests, etc. Each of these pieces of info would be in their own layer named 'age', 'location', etc. making it extremely easy for other users to search for users with similar interests to make new friends.

Any user can make a template, either by scratch or by basing it off of any other work, thus making appropriation and attribution an automatic function. Templates also allow users to create forms for content to fit into, as to make complex information sets developable by end users. For example, there could be an "Exquisite Corpse" template, which gave the basic instructions and elements needed to play Exquisite Corpse online. Users could then make their own Exquisite Corpse drawings with their friends, and all the Exquisite Corpse drawings based on that template would be groupable, thus allowing for entire galleries of Exquisite Corpse drawings to be made just by doing a simple search.

Social Network

Profiles

The social network in Doodler is a flexible one. Each user is given a space to create a profile, and also given the ability to create new doodles much like a Wiki. The user who owns any particular doodle can specify who he wants to be able to edit specific layers in the doodle (whether it be everyone, only specific friends, only friends of friends, etc) and also maintains the ability to delete (or approve before showing) any content on that layer.

However, this does not give the user complete and total control over the information contained in his pages. Any other user can in fact appropriate his page or portions of it by duplicating the layer(s) and placing it on her own page. The link to the original creator(s) of the work is preserved, however, so attribution is automatic. In addition, any user can add a layer to anyone else's doodle, whether it be graffiti, comments, tags, etc. These additional layers would not show up on the doodle on the initial viewing; they would have to be enabled by the viewer or by the link to that doodle. This will encourage a space for freely exchangeable information that can be modified in any way anyone sees fit, allowing for an open information exchange that transcends notions like intellectual property.

Cliques

Cliques are automatically-generated groups of tightly-connected users. For example, if five contacts all appear on each others' contact lists, they comprise a clique which Doodler will group together. A user will then be able to treat that group as one entity, so she could send one group of friends a mass-message that another separate group of friends may not have interest in.

By constructing these cliques as separate social groups, Doodler creates a more defined sense of community between members, allowing for discussions and artistic collaborations that are specific to a certain subset of people This allows for a meta-author function to be attributed to an entire group of authors, which is different from the author functions of the individuals within that group.

Technology

The Doodler protocol will be open to everyone. The protocol will be defined by the structure of a doodle (containing one or more layers with visual elements on that). It will be based mainly on convention, for example, layers named "tags" will be simple text elements overlayed on visual elements of a page to describe that area with keywords. Users will be able to make new conventions and features just by naming layers for a certain purpose and propagating that convention along their social network. A simple URL scheme will enforce and enable these conventions and make displaying any combination of default layers and user layers, making linking to a specific version of a doodle quick and easy.

Anyone will be able to access the Doodler database via an open API, however they will have to interpret and display that information according to the protocol (or not). The actual Doodler client application for viewing and editing doodles will be a closed-source Flash application. Access to the MySQL database will be mediated by AMFPHP, an open-source Flash Remoting alternative.

Security Issues

By giving users full write access to the database, there will have to be many protections. For instance, a user could overflow the layers system by continually adding layers to a doodle. Layer creation will have to be monitored and regulated so this does not happen.

Also, allowing users to include Flash applications in their doodles could easily compromise the Doodler client application. So far I am not aware of any sandboxing methods to isolate Flash applications within other Flash applications.