Admittedly, “The Flocking Party” requires its reader to stare at a screen for a few extra hours of their life, not to mention the countless hours I spent there to create it. This is somewhat regrettable to me. It makes me wish that I had a journal like my protagonist, Frank to get out there as easily. Within the story there is this focus on the movement of media and computing into meaningfully situated spaces. For example, Frank's journal enables him to get outside. And the images he creates display his passionate observations of outside creatures and spaces.

After months in front of a screen I had a great desire to get outside whenever possible. So I also promoted the website in ways that engendered interaction with people and the outside environment. While my website served as my online agent, I played in the snow, literally distributing the seeds of the project. I did this a few ways. I created a large stencil of my web address and stenciled birdseed onto snowy hillsides. This was done a few times, but some factors stood in my way. First, the snow was very unreliable this year. Second, my stencil was very big, 40 ft long, in fact. It was made out of pink insulation paneling, which folds down like an accordion book into a 1 by 2 by 4 foot foam block. When opened-up, it didn't behave very well on a windy, winter day. I have managed to stencil a few times, once by my studio, and once on campus. The second time I stenciled, a herd of deer ate the seeds before anyone saw them. I may do more, since I discovered that the seeds are still quite visible on the bare ground.

I also did what I'm calling the "Business Card Plague". I left business cards adorned with the website's url and with a bold image of the “Hebbets” virus in places that people would run into them. I liked this, because people discovered them in their everyday, on-the-run activities, like riding the bus or buying coffee. The rule I made for myself was that the cards were like a virus. So they could only be left in places that I went in my everyday life. Among the places I left them included: grocery stores, gas stations, buses, bus stops, computer terminals, bathrooms, book drops, movie theaters, lecture halls, cashier counters, ledges by doors, the mall, etc. I didn't want to post them on community billboards or leave stacks of them at every café, because I wanted to keep the encounter with this information virus an intimate one. Like the blog comments, I wanted people's interest to be stimulated. A stack of cards on a counter, might look too much like advertising. I've since realized that more people are likely to be curious enough to pick up a card from a stack, and have less reservations about setting out stacks in more common venues.

My final and ongoing publicity is an invented social phenomenon. It is one possible way of viewing “The Flocking Party” or any multilinear narrative in a more social arrangement. I call these arrangements 'flocking parties'. A group of people sits around a digital projection of the piece. The 'leader' has control of the mouse, but it is their job to follow the cumulative command of the 'flock'. With laser pointers and conversation, the 'flock' prompts the leader to rollover and click on the content of their choosing. Simple rules needed to be developed to structure the movement of the flock a bit more, like clustering into no more than two groups. I think that by intersecting digital space with real space the social interaction takes on a new dimension.