OS Relationships

OS Relationships maps the evolving roles and exchange dynamics within an experimental online art economy, revealing how value, participation, and networks form over time.

OS Relationships presents network diagrams of emerging roles and activities—exhibiting, buying, collecting—within OPENSTUDIO (2005–2008), an experimental art economy platform developed and maintained by the Physical Language Workshop at the MIT Media Lab.

The project visualizes the evolution of user interactions and market behavior in a digital creative economy. By exposing the traditionally opaque processes of valuation, marketing, and exchange in art, it offers a participatory space to understand how creative value is constructed and circulated over time.

Each diagram encodes the intensity of relationships through the width of connections. Nodes are positioned by connectivity, with more highly connected participants appearing farther to the right—revealing the structural dynamics of influence, exchange, and attention.

OS Relationships was featured in Architectural Design no. 180, Collective Intelligence in Design (2007), edited by Christopher Hight and Chris Perry, published by Wiley-Academy Press, London. See the section “Collective Cognition: Neural Fabrics and Social Software.”