In March 08 the winners of the first ShiftSpace commissions program were announced and have been working on their commissions since. Here are the concluded winning commissions in the two categories: Spaces and Trails.

all of these works are based on the ShiftSpace platform. Please install ShiftSpace to explore the winning pieces.

Winner Space - Yeas and Nays ($2000):
A ShiftSpace widget for calling representatives by Christian Croft

A ShiftSpace that allows a citizen to call her representative from any webpage, record her call and publish it on that very page. Yeas & Nays attempts to promote civic responsibility and a democratic discourse and make our citizen duty just a bit easier.This space combines ShiftSpace’s power to layer commentary above existing contexts with advances in VoIP telephony to build a tool for informed civic action. It layers the citizen’s act of calling an official on top of online information substantiating her argument.The proposed space enables a phone call with a representative from a webpage that politically concerns you. Type shift + space, enter a location, and Yeas & Nays fetches your matching representatives. Next, enter your phone number, and the system initiates a call that bridges your phone to that of the representative’s office. After the call, the widget updates to include a recording of your call whose URL you can send as proof of your civic action to all your friends.

Install Yeas and Nays

Fisheye ($500):
by Geoff Matters

Fisheye is a narrowly targeted application, using the ShiftSpace platform to implement a Web Annotation project specifically designed for criticism of online media. The primary feature is embedding categorized links to various existing media criticisms directly into the work being criticized. This yields a much more efficient model of media criticism, because rather than media consumers having to seek out criticism of each article they read, the criticism comes to them in the context of the original articles on, eg, nytimes.com. Metadata, including tags, ratings, categories, and channels, allow each user to customize what they see to match their interests and keep the signal/noise ratio optimal.Rather than extending ShiftSpace’s general abilities by enabling a new type of media or page hack, Fisheye is employing the ShiftSpace platform for a specific, narrow, but very important purpose: democratizing and improving quality of online media.

Install Fisheye

Cutups ($500):
cut and paste any text on the web by Joe Moore

Cutups is a space that allows users to explore the recombination of existent text on a webpage so that new meanings and uses may be discovered and articulated.

Simple Scenario:
A user navigates to a given web page and invokes the Shifspace console and the Cutups space. The Cutups space allows the user to select from a variety of manipulations. Currently, those are to perform a random sort, to alphabetize, or to reverse alphabetize. The user checks what manipulation it is they want to perform using radio buttons and then turns the space on using a checkbox. The user may then select a block of text with the cursor and when the mouse button is released the given manipulation will be performed on the text string.A longer description on the application page is available.

Install Cutups

Trails Winner: Greenwashing Trail of Tears ($600):
by Transnational Temps (Andy Deck)

This trail pulls together a variety of websites that address or exemplify ‘greenwashing’: the use of misleading PR and advertising to cleanse a corporation’s image with respect to its environmental impact. In recent years, and especially after the release of An Inconvenient Truth, the public perception of global warming has changed. But the tremendous increase of feel-good PR on the part of some of the most environmentally abusive corporations on earth leads us to wonder who will hold greenwashers accountable for their deceptions. Shift Space’s annotation system is a good way to introduce the kind of reading between the lines that is needed in today’s environmental marketing environment.

View the Greenwashing Trail of Tears trail

CIAO/CU ($100):
by An Mertens

The trail belongs with a novel in print which will have the same title, and is written in Dutch. I wanted to give this story back to as many people as helped create it. That is why I have decided to tell the story in ENG on the web.I chose for ShSp because I believe it can suit netnative collaborative writing. I really hope ShSp will somehow develop in that direction. Some hints:

*have the possibility to make corrections within a shift

*have the possibility to interact: post comments on shifted pages and/or create derived trails that allow different developments of the story

*view the trail permanently while browsing

View the CIAO/CU trail

©opy/w®ite ($100):
by Piper Wynn Severance

©opy/w®ite is an interdisciplinary exhibition in the form of scales. The base of these scales is Visual Literacy, an integral component in what defines us as human.

The column is the Speed of Information, from the oral tradition through the digital revolution, and the profound impact information (and access to it) has had. The two weights are ©opy (copyright) and w®ite (graffiti). The bar they act upon is Fair(use) and Balanced?

On this bar ideas about visual information are played upon: Fair Use, Iconoclasm, Propaganda, Censorship, Political Identity, Monopoly, Enlightenment. ShiftSpace can create this thought map.

View the ©opy/w®ite trail

Thanks for all the applicants and congratulations to the winners. We have learned a lot and (while not everything went as smooth as possible) managed to develop ShiftSpace much further as a result of this commission program.

A special thanks to the jury members for their great help, inspiring insight and remarkable support: Regine Debatty, Catherine D’Ignazio (Kanarinka), Alex Galloway, Jo-Anne Green, Dan Phiffer, Sala Manca, Nat Muller, Clay Shirky, Liz Slagus, Helen Thorington, why the lucky stiff, Mushon Zer-Aviv. § heart U.

Special thanks to Turbulence for finding the funds for this commission program. Thanks to Dorkbot for hosting the winner announcement event. Stay tuned, as new stuff is always coming from the ever growing ShiftSpace team.