Does a “collaboration” imply art, bar-none? While much of what we see under the projects to review and respond to does not fit the mold of explicit “art” in the sense of the manipulation of a physical medium into a representation of an idea, still I found a commonality between many of the more intriguing collaborations in the fact that they attempt to unsettle the viewers and participators. Maria Lind put it well when she stated that,

“Collaboration has again proved to be a good instrument with which to challenge both artistic identity and authorship, and therefore stimulate anxiety.”

I found this especially true of the “oppositional devices” such as “Black People Love Us” and “Rent a Negro,” whose satirical content comes solely from the viewer’s responses to the page/pages. As with “Black people Love Us,” the sight is designed perfectly so that as you surf from the Home page over to “Your Letters,” the author’s intentions become more clear after viewing other’s responses, which range from confused, to upset, to infuriated, to downright panicked.

Perhaps some of the other projects aren’t as overtly preachy as the ones about racism, but they certainly speak to the nature of human interaction in one way or another simply due to the fact that they either promote, showcase, or dissect how people act toward one another when playfully pushed (or forced) into the realm of collaboration. I see the online collaborative process as a means for great potential social transformation if used properly, for it forces the viewer/participator not only to react to the situation presented, but to introspectively match their response to that of other collaborators, thus promoting not only the response but the examination of the response and its implications as well.