Flack Attack is a magazine coming out of The Port, a community-driven space inside the online 3D world Second Life. Flack Attack explores a distributed model for magazine production. The workflow starts with a wiki, a web page allowing for open and continual modification. Articles, images and comments contributed to the wiki are discussed and edited at open editorial meetings at The Port. The more you engage, the more you are able to influence the form and content of the magazine.
The first issue of Flack Attack was produced in December 2005. Editorial meetings were held at The Port three times a week and the production process was continually documented at Whitney’s Artport. The first issue is available as PDF, virtual Second Life edition and as printed magazine on demand.
The theme of the first issue is Autonomy: Autonomy as a complex concept in any governed situation. What does it mean to be autonomous within predefined social codes? Does the notion of autonomy contradict a common language and shared references? In the specific case of online worlds the challenge is readily illustrated by the fact that all interaction takes place inside someone else’s programmed code. But the same basic dilemma can be applied to any institution we find ourselves in, be it a nation, a family or an economy.
Presently ideas for the second issue are being discussed at the Flack Attack Wiki.
www.flackattack.org