The Mememorphosis Project

Ever wondered how good jokes seem to spread so fast? Why you had the same brilliant idea that your friend in Bali had, simultaneously? Why fads seem to sweep the nation and then suddenly vanish?

Its all due to Memes. That's right, Memes- Biologist Richard Dawkins first coined the term in his book "The Selfish Gene." But the concept had been around even before that. Basically, memes are self-replicating packets of information, just like genes- only memes are ideas.

Memes spread.

Just like viruses. Or opposable thumbs.

VirComm is organizing an interdisciplinary, long-distance, long-term collaboratory project called Mememorphosis. The idea is simple. Ideas get pooled. Mixed. Re-distributed. And something comes about that no one expected. Or maybe everyone...


The whole idea was evolved from particpating in OTIS, various postal tape and zine collaborations, our experiences with bands and improvisation, and ideas put forth by everyone from Richard Dawkins to William Burroughs, John Cage, and Negativland. We wish to make it accesible to anyone regardless of net.access, technology available, or media. If someone who weaves rugs and doesn't even own a telephone wants to contribute, ideally we would want the project to still be able to include them.


But just what are we talking about, you ask?
A project that would follow this basic plan:

  1. All participants send "seed material" to Viral Communications.
  2. VirComm distributes copies of this raw seed material to all particpants.
  3. Everyone creates something using this material and anything else they want to add.
  4. Participants send what they've done back to VirComm.
  5. VirComm redistributes everything again, and the cycle begins at step 3.
  6. Repeat as often as desired.


This page, and this project, are still heavily under construction.

If you're interested, by all means, contact us.


Links to relevant sites (memetics, collaboratory art, etc.)