Source Code

Feeling lucky? Downloading as a desired risk

2006-03-10T10:18:00.000Z

According to Wikipedia, a russian roulette is "the practice of placing one round in a revolver, spinning the cylinder and closing it into the firearm without looking, aiming the revolver at one's own head in a suicidal fashion, and pulling the trigger. The number of rounds placed in the revolver can vary. As a gambling game, toy guns are often used to simulate the practice. The number of deaths caused by this practice is unknown".

Carlos Katastrofksy used this concept in one of his latest netart projects, but replacing the shooting activity by the more zeitgeist behaviour of downloading. And if randomly shooting could easily take your life away "in a suicidal way", the random downloading of files with no safety guarantees whatsoever could easily take your computer's "life" as easy as the original roulette did. There is no possible ingenuity, "be aware!" the artist says. One can be about to download bad or dangerous data, but who can resist the thrill of risking your own beloved state-of-the art laptop?

But dangerous downloading isn't just the only important aspect here. like in any p2p application, downloading implies uploading, for a file to be downloaded by someone it has had to be generously uploaded by someone else. The files stored in Russian Roulette are the files people decided to share. We don't get to know who uploaded what, just their names (in a reminescence of The Original), a way of further combining the most important concepts of this project: file transfer (up and downloading), desire and risk.

Katastrofsky plays with something very interesting: the file sharing that takes place isn't utilitary (the information per se value), social (the relational value) or political (the free acces to information value). File sharing in this situation has only to do with desire, risk taking, by surprising or being surprised, by engaging in potentially dangerous behaviour or enabling others to do so... one yearns to engage in such activities. Risk taking is part of our contemporary society, no more an external threat, but an actual definig element of contemporary, western societies, Ulrich Beck said in his La Société du risque - Sur la voie d'une autre modernité (the french translation), and this project is such a good way of ilustrating that: desire and risk connected to the file sharing activity of our digital times.
Oh the thrill of downloading and opening an unknown file just for the sake of doing it... adrenaline rushes through the whole body...

Carlos Katastrofsky
russian roulette
call for contribution
2006

Led throwing action

2006-02-21T17:51:00.000Z

I just saw this video from the Graffiti Research Lab at Eyebeam OpenLab.

It shows an installation of LED Throwies in action on a street corner in New York.

What's a LED Throwie? It's a lithium battery, a 10mm diffused LED and a rare-earth magnet taped together. You throw them on to anything metal to add a splash of light and color. The result is reconfigurable, night compatible, digital graffiti. Here's how to make your own. Wouldn't Lisbon look so more interesting?

(through Rhizome)

Sometimes Always/Sometimes Never

2006-02-21T16:45:00.000Z

Sometimes Always/Sometimes Never are a set of two wireless interactive installations by Brazillian artist Giselle Beiguelman, presented at Life Goes Mobile, São Paulo, 2005 (Sometimes Always) and Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica, São Paulo, 2005 (Sometimes Never).

Sometimes Always discusses the visual horizons of nomadic culture and its entropic and saturated environments. Its point of departure is that nowadays life is seen through windows and screens and each moment seems a movie frame that consumes and erases itself as soon as it is processed. The project consists of an interactive projection, based on generative systems, which allow the audience to shot images with cell phones with video cameras and send them via Bluetooth to big screens. On mouse over, the videos fragments in frames can be reorganized by the interactors, following the movements and draws they do with the mouse. When they interrupt the action, the videos restart without erasing the mosaic of images that was built by their activities on the screen. An intriguing image of difference and repletion emerges there. Always.

Sometimes Never is a (de)generative video which is decomposed through the inputs of its interactors. Videographic images, shot with mobile phones in the exhibition space, can be manipulated by keyboards and mouse and the audience edits, in real time, the order of its original frames, their position on the screen as well as introduce colored filters on the new images. When someone leaves the mouse, the original film restarts over the layers built by the interactors. The result is an imagetic and dynamic palimpsest, that consumes itself following and entropic logic where saturation produces erasing and fluid memories. The project dialogues with the series Sometimes Always, where the audience also shots images with mobile phones to be deconstructed by the same algorithmic process used here. In spite of their methodological and technical equivalences, Sometimes Always and Sometimes Never, are very different in their results and cognitive processes. In Sometimes Never the manipulation of images do not produce an entropic mosaic, but instable saturated palimpsests where it is impossible to repeat an action. Never.
(project descriptions by Giselle Beiguelman)

Giselle Beiguelman
Sometimes Always, 2005
Sometimes Never, 2005

Blogging the gifs away

2005-12-29T16:02:00.000Z

Hypertemporality Animations, a project by Peter Baldes, are a series of gif files laid out in a table that due to network conditions, browser idiosyncrasies, and the user’s own behaviour act dynamically. These simple, animated shapes and colors load sequencially, a typical web browser behaviour, giving birth to dynamic images that are the result of factors other than the artist's will. Reloading them or using different browsers will make them load differently everytime. Slower or faster Internet connection speed will influence how the animations are viewed.

These Hypertemps are categorized according to three subjects: color field, shape and web, which are simply a way to catalogue the artist’s inspiration for the original animated composition. Web relates to the use of an already existing animated gif. In the case of the flickr ones, Baldes created his own from a known web image (the flickr loading screen interface animation). Web also relates to representing time. Cory Arcangel's email gif gets subverted to more accurately show what an email must go through to arrive at it's destination, Tom Moody's atomic animation is broken down to show Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, flickr loads slowly… Animations labelled as color field use specific colour palettes or colour relationships that are significantly interesting to the artist. Shape follows the same principle than the previous category but now taking forms and shapes as the main interest.

These animations were originally created for an online exhibition called Hypertemportality, hosted by the University of Richmond and curated by Nathan Altice. Now they have moved to a blog, allowing Baldes to explore a more dynamic, almost performative way of creating and presenting his animated experiments.

Hypertemporality Animations
2005 - ongoing
Peter Baldes
http://hypertemps.procurate.com/

Such a beautiful sky today...

2005-12-18T20:34:00.000Z

Such an incredible piece... there is nothing I want to say except: awesome!

This project was initially made in 2002 (or 2003, Arcangel isn't sure), but now he rewrote it. The artist took an old Super Mario Nintendo video game and erased everything but the clouds. In his personal blog, Cory's Web LOG, Cory posted a tutorial on how to do it. Go check it out.

And since the year is coming to its end, I almost feel like saying this is one of 2005's best projects (even if this is a version of an older project). But then again, the "best of the year" ideology always strikes me as completely random... So I'll just say it is a great project.

Super Mario Clouds - 2005 rewrite
2005
Cory Arcangel

Calling For Informations

2005-12-01T12:24:00.000Z

Chiara Passa is developping for Medialab in Madrid a project called Art Calling-Digital Art Stories.The purpose of the project is to bring people closer to digital art in an easy way. “Art Calling-Digital Stories” is a public art project that invites people to listen to stories about digital art (through phone booths used as a communicative medium).

People using “Art Calling-Digital Stories” only need to dial a telephone number (listed on sticker on the booth) which is linked to a switchboard (from a telephone company) with various vocal options and also various audio files. For instance, one of the audio files could be about software art and it will correspond to the phone’s #5 key. The person wanting to listen to information on software art, must call the number, hear all the vocal options and later push button #5. Inside the booth people will find another sticker with instructions about how to connect with different stories. Every tale will be told in English. The stories are about the most interesting artists, artworks and events on interactive art, software art, modified video games, demo scene, hacking tools, digital animation, video installation, sound art, from the beginning to present day, several selected by Passa herself.

The “Art Calling-Digital Stories” audio files will also contain additional materials such as bibliography, webography, info about artists, specific projects, festivals and various resources. Submissions regarding artistic material and artist’s works can be sent to chiapa@libero.it

Art Calling-Digital Art Stories
2005
Chiara Passa

I tag ----> I own

2005-11-18T11:47:00.000Z

It all began a couple of weeks ago with the post "on blogging as curating". Quickly the discussion about it turned into "tagging as curating". Katastrofsky took it one step further, proposing in his personal blog (in accordance to what he had explored in his "the original" project) tagging as owning.

The idea is simple, and it would make Duchamp proud of this new pupil of his. In a set of three simple rules the artist asks us to choose one site whatsoever (the more you like it, the better), then to tag it as an "interactive readymade by Carlos Katastrofsky" and it's done. You become the owner of an online readymade done by you and Katastrofsky himself.

The simple act of signing, so characteristic of readymade works of art (and from a conceptual point of view, the work itself) is replaced by a tag defined by the artist, the creator of this "performative" piece. The interesting thing here is that it is not the artist who signs (tags) the existing object. The artist only allows us to do it for him, and by doing so he completely looses control of what becomes one of his works of art. In the end it doesn't matter if noone else recognises what you just did as a readymade done by both of you, but then again they might.

Using del.icio.us, and defining a priori the readymade-iser tag, Katastrofsky allows for a community, or a net of readymades of his authorship to exist. Tagging something as a Katastrofsky's collaborative readymade opens the door to the club. You get to know what are his readymades, how many of them there are and who owns them (and most important of all, if yours is better than the rest).

By recurring to del.icio.us or the Flock browser he is creating a "one tag" network centred around the ideas of tagging as signing (he allows others to tag in his name) and tagging as owning (what you tag in his name becomes your own katastrofsky piece). If in "the original" it wasn't possible to choose what you could own, the decision belonging solely to the artist, now it depends on you entirely. Now everyone can have whatever "interactive readymade by carlos katastrofsky" they desire.

free interactive readymade
2005
Carlos Katastrofsky
http://blog.subnet.at/carlos/stories/1814/

Go for the original, not the copies

2005-11-09T10:08:00.000Z

The dichotomy between an original (authentic) work of art and its copies isn't a new one. Walter Benjamin adressed it a long time ago and stated that the work's aura (its distinctive characteristic) gets lost when technically reproducing it. This discussion became a bit obsolete when digital culture (and its artifacts) became common in our contemporary world. When looking at a net art piece, how can you conceptualize an original (and its copies) when the work is online, accessible to everyone at the same time? Ubiquity doesn't go along with unicity, at least not at a first glance.

This debate has become old, so much has been said and written around the lost of "the original" (its death by means of the digital) that nobody is interested in it lately. Benjamin couldn't expect this turn of events, but we solved the problem. No original, no copies, just information accessible to everyone.

But what if someone wanted to subvert this status quo? What if an artist missed a time when a work of art was a unique object that one could own? That is what Carlos Katastrofsky's "the original" is all about. This netart project allows you to be the owner of a unique (one of a kind) netart piece. The confusion arises. How can one be the owner (in the traditional sense) of netart? The truth is one can´t and in this lies the interest of "the original". Katastrofsky allows you to be the owner of a unique, numbered, but not signed (the irony continues...) work of art; of something that isn't an object and that will disapear from your screen as soon as you close the window. Your original work of art will forever be gone and the only memory of it will be a print (if you decided to take the artist's advice and print it) and your name in a list of "owners of original artworks by carlos katastrofsky".

This is an extremely ironic project. It allows you to traditionally own a net art piece, own it like any objectual art piece. But the irony lies in the fact it isn't an object, and what you can own is nothing more than a copy (a print out) of that non existing object, another irony (what is a copy of a net art piece?)... In the end there is nothing of an object here, just a process, a set of rules that leads you to the point of questioning unicity, ownership and the object-like nature of a digital art work.

The Original
2005
Carlos Katastrofsky
http://aqua.subnet.at/carlos/projekte/netart/original/

On blogging as curating

2005-11-03T15:14:00.000Z

What if a blog could be thought of as an exhibition? It would turn blogging activity into curating.

The idea isn't new at all, but is still somewhat difficult to accept by those practicing traditional curatorial activities. I thought about it last week. What has SOURCE CODE become? I (the blogger) am responsible for selecting works (and other relevant documentation for the purpose of this blog/exhibition), displaying them (their urls) and recontextualizing them from my own point of view. What I am doing in this process is basically what any curator does. Starting from my own subjective views of the world, I try to organize, to give meaning, to make sense out of the cultural production I'm interested in. I include them in my discourse, using them to pass a message. The choices I make have a purpose, they are not random, and consequences can arise from them.

The practice of curating remains the same, only the context changes.

So start staging your own shows. Select, include, exclude, draw similarities, contextualize, organise the unorganisable. Blog your heart out.

Beryl Graham On New Media Curating Discussion List's Latest Debate

2005-10-21T17:10:00.000+01:00

Beryl Graham just summarized an excelent discussion going on at New Media Curating list. Here is what she wrote.

1. "IT'S ALL ART ... BUT ..."

There are many excellent arguments as to why new media art is simply one of the contemporary arts and shouldn't be treated as a special case or kept in a ghetto. Unfortunately, these arguments are often elegantly used by arts institutions and curating courses which do not actually in practice show, see, archive or research new media art. This argument also does tend to exclude all knowledge of technological or scientific histories, which might be useful for understanding "not just art". There was debate about namings of newmedia art (see also CRUMB theme September 2004). However, if the history of art might provide some useful 'handles' for helping conventional art curators understand new media (if only, as AnnaMunster points out, via their pleasure in pointing out that it has all been done before), then the question arises: "What is new media art most like?"

2. "WHAT IS IT THAT IT IS MOST LIKE?"

This simple question puts us at the crux of "Continuity v Rupture"(Ed Shanken), and although the point of new media is not that it is new (Andreas Broekman, and the debate around The Art Formerly Known as New Media), there is still an argument that rupture is necessary: In issues of disembodiment, immateriality, and process, it is a bit like Conceptual Art, but as Matt Fuller points out, "pasted conceptualism" is not adequate. In issues of reproducibility, time, and a relationship to theory, Sean Cubit has pointed out that there are some parallels with Photography and Video, but Sarah Cook pointed out that Lev Manovich's film and video basis for The Language of New Media is only a partial picture. In issues of interaction that Andy Polaine raised, there is remarkably little art history - socially engaged art being largely undocumented, and as Sarah Cook points out, Nicolas Bourriaud's Relational aesthetics being inadequate. In issues for net art in particular, the means of production being the same as the means of distribution has few art historical precedents. Perhaps the most sensible solution to this question comes, unsurprisingly, from artists: Alison Craighead says that the solutionis "just getting on with it" rather than trying to second guess. Matt Fuller quoted by Ryan Griffis said: "So in short, yes, there are potential parallels to conceptualism, as if this were a marker of anything particularly significant, but as a question of understanding the particular conditions and capacities of art systems and the particular historical conditions in which a crisis of multiplicity might be made. On such a basis we can, not recapitulate stylistics, but, make art."

3. CRITICISM, PRESS, ARCHIVING AND DISAPPEARANCE

Ryan Griffis, Marc Garret and others raised the importance of good reviews, and criticism of new media art (see also the CRUMB list theme on the subject in May 2003). Press coverage is often all that remains of certain exhibitions, and unfortunately often never gets beyond technological hyperbole or an understanding of interaction as 'hands-on fun' (see Steve Dietz's excellent historicalparallel commentary on Robert Morris' exhibition Neo Classic at https://webmail.netcabo.pt/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.yproductions.com/). Press coverage obviously relates to historical documentation, and Charlie Gere and others raised the fact that the technical difficulties of preserving the artworks themselves are seriously affecting scholarship. Further reviews of The ArtFormerly Known as New Media are still very welcome - the show is not touring, and Banff's geographic position tends to mean that national press coverage is difficult to obtain.

4. NOT PRODUCT BUT PROCESS

An important thread brings us back to one of our starting questions.In a very important point, Christiane Paul clarified that the reason that her contemporary art museum colleagues would find it difficult to work with her was not so much that they weren't aware of the media, or the new media artworks (the product), but more that they were not aware of the different process of curating new media (a curatorial process that she likens to Schleiner's 'filter feeder'model). As Rudolf Frieling points out, the media art history debate itself is in a state of process, and an early one at that. As inThread 3, the process of documenting itself meets many practicalchallenges which effect end scholarship. papers, etc. As JohnIppolito et al pointed out in the Variable Media project, it is necessary to document the intent of the artist, and the process of interaction, as well as the object itself.

So, as a suggestion for future debate, is the key difference to address when considering new media art as opposed to other contemporary artforms one of process? This could include the process of artmaking (versioning), the process of curating, the process of distribution, the process of documenting, the process of criticism, the process of historicising. What do you think?

(sent by Beryl Graham to NEW-MEDIA-CURATING@JISCMAIL.AC.UK on fri 21-10-2005 15:46)

Riot

2005-10-11T18:42:00.000+01:00

Riot is an alternative, “cross-content” Web browser. Like it's real-world namesake, Riot disrupts the accepted rules of property and exposes the fragility of territorial boundaries. Inspired by the clashing classes and ideologies of New York's lower east side, Riot is a software coded "melting pot", a blender that mixes web pages from separate domains into one browser window.

The basic functionality of Riot is still rooted in traditional browser conventions: you may surf the Web by entering a URL into the location bar, or select from bookmarks. Unlike the conventional browser, Riot builds its page by combining text, images and links from the recent pages that any Riot user has surfed to. The markings of virtual territory: images, brand names, corporate logos, are squeezed into one page. Vatican.org mixes with Hell.com. Microsoft.com bumps up against Hackers.org. Content and ideologies clash and merge as Riot draws from disparate URLs to create a web of mutable, shifting borders. Riot dissolves traditional notions of territory, ownership, and authority by collapsing territorial conventions like domains, sites and pages. The visual result is a beautiful composite based on controlled randomness-determined by chance and the user’s actions as well as the parameters for display that have been set by the artist.

Ultimately this artwork is about the line where human nature meets technology. The internet introduces us to a world where property is defined by hardware and software, data and instructions. Information can be recycled and reproduced in seemingly endless ways and distributed in ever-shifting contexts; the alternative space of the Net resists our traditional, physical model of ownership, copyright, and branding.
How do we translate our need for power and control into this new medium and what, if anything, do we yield? Are we willing to expand our definition of what authority can be? How we relate to this technology will eventually determine how we relate to each other within this new territory.

(text by Mark Napier)

Riot
1999
Mark Napier
http://www.potatoland.org/riot/

Portuguese Platform For Debating Art And Technology

2005-10-11T18:26:00.000+01:00

Read the text

ASCII Carpets For Sale

2005-10-07T15:01:00.000+01:00

carpet/s is an internet based project by Lithuanian net artist mi ga that allows you to purchase a personalised carpet made out of ascii. It is based on a php application where internet resources are used as yarn to make ascii cloths. The user's influence is as small as a click of a mouse. All the rest is done by a machine. The program generates textual output based on the time when the user goes to a web site. The time in a form of hh:mm:ss is then used as a keyword for the results taken from a google search engine. The program downloads the contents of a second given result, rejects html tags and white spaces and puts all textual content into a carpet-like form. The produced carpet-like image can be printed out, signed by the artist and then sent to the purchaser.

T-shirts As Software

2005-09-24T19:24:00.000+01:00

Susana Mendes Silva keeps creating interactive performances and by doing so continues to investigate the nature of social relations. After Artphone and art_room, two performances in which the spectator (user, to be more accurate) had to interact with the device created by the artist, a technologically mediated question-answer situation about contemporary art, Silva developed Live Art.

The assumptions are the same. Even the name of this new performance reminds us of the previous ones and how much she enjoys questioning the boundaries of traditional art, or at least of a commodified, object driven art. In this project there is again a device the artist created, but not a digital one, or at least not one at first sight. It is a t-shirt with information concerning the performance. The information, the technical details of the work of art, functions as the instructions manual for the performance, defining how it is supposed to work.

The user, he or she who buys the t-shirt, will have to perform a determined action, wear it (or not), thus making the device work, interact with it. This performance consists in a set of rules materially formalized in an inexplicit manner in a t-shirt, . The course of action is unpredictable and is completely out of the artist’s control. Once again, through such a procedure, Silva questions how spectator and contemporary art interact, playing with concepts as artistic phenomenon or authorship.

A t-shirt, a simple, implicit set of rules. An open, modifiable, autonomous device. If we look at the user’s role as secondary, if we look at the device, and how it works and changes, the concept of generative art isn’t that far away. Thinking of it as “any kind of artistic practice in which the artist uses a system and makes it function with a certain degree of autonomy in order to create complete work of art”. Live art is put in motion and the outcome is unpredictable (as was art_room’s) being the result of chance and the limitations of the set of rules defined.

But how accurate, how realistic is comparing the human system here described with the procedures of autonomous systems responsible for generative art? What of meaning? Part of this system is made of a user to whom this whole situation in which he sees himself has a meaning and that guides his action. Not only is he influenced by what is written on the t-shirt, but also by his interpretation of the event and that has to be accounted for.

There is usefulness in another comparison. If the focus in the spectator-user’s expectations and in his reaction to the piece, in how the action unfolds and meaning is created from the interaction with the set of rules defining the performance, if the focus is in the procedures rather than in the outcome, we are clearly facing what can be called software art. Even though not recurring to digital tools or the like, Silva is, ideologically, walking through digital art’s grounds, for she is exploring communication procedures, processes over objects, relations over subjects. She is doing analogically immaterial works of art and her tools are concepts such as interactivity, software or self-organization.

Susana Mendes Silva
live art, 2005
performance
person with t-shirt

for the exhibition
private t'shirt
30.09 to 27.10
a loja do lopes
lisbon

Read An Artist in the Chatroom, a text discussing Silva's performance art_room

For A Safer Internet

2005-09-05T20:35:00.000+01:00

ICA's Digital Sudio, in London, is welcoming Vuk Cosic's XL L M Slovenia, his first solo show in the United Kingdom. Cosic is one of net art's pioneers, having coined the term net.art when refering to artisitic practices that use Internet and its specific characteristics as a creative medium.

This show will be on from September 6th until October 2nd and it will include projections of works that were forgotten in the artist's computer and done during what is now know as net art's heroic period. Besides these works, a new comission, specifically done to be shown at this exhibition, will be presented, called “File Extinguisher”.

The new project, “web’s first file extinguisher” as it is said on the site, was first done in 1998 but never shown. After that it was commissioned by Hamaca in Barcelona but that never materialized. And since Cosic had all the files, design and all, he decided to put it up for his show at ICA.

But what is this File Extinguisher all about? It is that, a simple File Extinguisher. Cosik departs from Paul Baran’s memorandum on distributed communications network and assumes that this document was published with a tremendous omission. As he says: “Baran insisted that the true last line of defence of any distributed network would be a file extinguisher. However, he indicated this function with a red dot; due to the limitations of 1960s-era black-and-white printing, this key element was not visible in his publication. We can now recognize that today's internet vulnerabilities are a direct result of this tragic mishap.”

So there you have it: Baran’s model of distributed network, intended to survive an eventual nuclear attack, was published without something very important: The file extinguisher. But Cosic made that final step and created one. Now the internet is finally safe as Baran wanted. So if you have any files or websites you need to delete just use Cosic's new safety tool and extiguish them.

File Extiguisher
Vuk Cosic
2005
http://www.file-extinguisher.com/

commissioned for
XL L M Slovenia
ICA - Digital Studio
06 September - 02 October

Mona Lisa Toogled

2005-09-02T12:52:00.000+01:00

C6 is a London-based collective of artists and designers, recently aligned with Tactical Media or Strategic art, who share a decisively anarchistic view of life and a sense of humour. They devellop eventslike digital and physical performance, anarchic stenciling campaigns or fine-art propaganda. The group has opened minds in pubs, clubs and galleries, on the streets and on the web. As a code-slave liberation front of sorts, the designers mock the hype around new media, while showing that they know how to deal with code at the same time.

One of C6's best project is Toogle, "The most comprehensive image buggery on the web". Toogle is a page that mimics Google's look. It also works as a search engine but slightly different than its Google counterpart. Using Google's image search engine, Toogle returns those searches in ascii. This ascii image is constructed out of the word that you entered to search.

Toogle (and the more recent Woogle) uses a search engine as relevant and ideologic as Google and completely subverts it. One can only access one image (not anything more) about the word searched for, but even that image isn't the original one Google found. It is a transformation of it, made entirely of the word we are looking for. A nice way of subverting searching (and finding) information on the web.

C6
Toogle
2004
http://c6.org/toogle/

UNESCO Digital Arts Award 2005

2005-08-26T14:20:00.000+01:00

Young artists from around the world are invited to take part in this year’s award devoted to the theme of “City and Creative Media”. Organized in collaboration with Art Center Nabi, the Award would be delivered to non-realized project proposals in order to embrace a wider audience of creators, who have the innovative artistic ideas but not necessarily the means.

The call specifically aims at encouraging young emerging artists to cultivate new forms of expressions using new media and technology in reflecting on how urban spaces and city environments could be transformed into creative outlets.
The submission deadline is 14 September 2005. All project proposals should be submitted online at the official website of submission, where participants will also be able to find further detailed information (description of sub-themes, general guidelines, submission criteria, etc). All submissions should be in English.
The total prize money is US $10,000, which would be divided into and given to more than one laureate, in some cases a group of artists. An additional US $10,000 will be granted by the Art Center Nabi (Seoul, Republic of Korea), as production costs, to the winner(s) of a Special Honorary Mention awarded for projects already realized that can be re-embodied within the urban context of city Seoul. The funds are also to cover the travel costs of the 1st winner of the UNESCO Award to the International Workshop in October organized by Nabi.
The award-winning projects would be selected by an international jury, assembled on this occasion representing the five geo-cultural regions (Africa, Arab States, Asia/Pacific, Europe/North America, and Latin America/Caribbean).
For more information, contact:
unesco_award@nabi.or.kr
digiarts@unesco.org

taken from
http://www.nabi.or.kr/unesco_award

Best Of - My Boyfriend Came Back From The War

2005-08-26T13:06:00.000+01:00

Almost ten years ago, in 1996, Olia Lialina created My Boyfriend Came Back From The War, an interactive, non-linear narrative, making use of basic web technology. Two lovers are reunited after a war and start having a conversation, which unfolds as we click on the photos and texts that show up in the screen. Depending on where we click, the story may take slightly different turns.

Everything is very contained: no sound, no colours, simply black and white, transmitting a certain feeling of timelessness. The strenght comes from the intensity of what is said. Those lovers could be any lovers after any war.

In 1996, most creative experiences with the web were exploring political issues, but this one dealt with something more subtle, relationships, loss, love and trust. Despite being online, Lialina never thought of it as a net art piece. As she said it: "It's my most successful work, but it is not a real net project. The fact that it can exist on cd-rom, that you can put it on a floppy and go to any computer and show it offline makes a difference."

Despite this classification issue, My Boyfriend Came Back From The War can be thought of one of the most influencial pieces of what can now be termed net art's historical period. The narrative it puts up is poetic and simple, yet very strong. It opened up net art to narrative and to different ways of storytelling as another way of exploring the artistic possibilities of the world wide web.

Olia Lialina
My Boyfriend Came Back From The War
1996
http://www.teleportacia.org/war/war.html

Mapping the web

2005-07-27T09:57:00.000+01:00

mapper#09 is a small piece constructed with processing, as an attempt to visually represent the structure of the world wide web and how information is organized in it. It was built to retrieve the external links of a web page and navigate through them. It works in a rather simple way: given an initial url, the external links are retrieved if they exist, one of the links is randomly chosen and the process is repeated until it finds a page without any external links.

The attitude is exploratory; the metaphor of the map is obvious. Revealing what is hidden, what is unknown, covered, that which permits for the web to exist becomes central to this artwork. The concept of the link and the action of linking as a way of structuring the web, almost as the building blocks of a cyber-architecture.

We can see this project as an online cartographer, exploring unknown, unexplored online territories, mapping them for the first time, but we can also talk of a translation tool. mapper #09 translates the specific language of the web into a visual language, simplifying, almost demystifying part of the properties and invisible processes defining the World Wide Web.

mapper #09
Vítor Silva
2004
http://www.atmosferas.net/projectos/gs/13/index.htm

Best Of - Mouchette

2005-07-23T12:16:00.000+01:00

One of my first experiences with netart was back in 1999, while I was studying in France. I remember reading a small article in a contemporary art magazine (I'm pretty sure I still have it somewhere) about Mouchette.

Mouchette, a website, netart piece, artist's alter ego, intrigued me from the first time I saw it. It can be thought of a non-linear narrative, a hipertext art project. So far no reason for feeling intrigued... but as I went through its pages, getting to know the character, doing what she told me to do, I felt chills down my spine.

We are browsing through a 13 years old little girl's art project. She asks us our name. She asks us the better way to kill herself. She asks us to feel her tongue in our cheek. She asks us to kill a cat and why we did it. She keeps asking us disturbing things, things involving sex and death.

Mouchette is based on Robert Bresson's 1967 movie, called "Mouchette". Mouchette, a 14-year old girl situated in a small rural community, lives a dreadful life. Her mother is dying and her father is an alcoholic, leaving her to provide most of the care for her baby sister. Her social status at school is so low that she isn't bullied by her classmates, but simply disregarded. One night while returning from school, she encounters the poacher Arsene in the woods. Arsene is agitated because he believes he has just killed the town policeman, and takes Mouchette back to his cabin. He rapes her and uses her as an alibi for his whereabouts for the night.

This contemporary Mouchette is 13 and lives in Amsterdam. She acts very much in a Lolita fashion, provoking us, mixing sex and death, she insists in seducing us and at the same time killing herself and taking us as part of the process.

Mouchette has taken part in numerous art manifestations, exhibitions and events in the artworld, and created a new part of her website each time. Mouchette has held a very important presence within the netart community and has lectured and appeared (anonymously) extensively in online and offline events and publications. The artist responsible for the project at a certain point announced (s)he was giving it to someone who had interest in continuing it and eventually pased it to the chosen one in a ceremony at Postmasters Gallery in New York.

Mouchette
1996 - present
http://www.mouchette.org/

Hacking your Xbox

2005-07-21T14:22:00.000+01:00

What is an Xbox? The answer seems pretty obvious… A game console...?

Apparently not. Those responsible for the Xbox Linux Project state that "The Xbox is a legacy-free PC by Microsoft that consists of an Intel Celeron 733 MHz CPU, an nVidia GeForce 3MX, 64 MB of RAM, a 8/10 GB hard disk, a DVD drive and 10/100 Ethernet. As on every PC, you can run Linux on it. An Xbox with Linux can be a full desktop computer with mouse and keyboard, a web/email box connected to TV, a server or router or a node in a cluster. You can either dual-boot or use Linux only; in the latter case, you can replace both IDE devices". It is possible to hack your Xbox and turn it into much more than a plain product for playing games.

What was done here, the modification of an Xbox so it can work as a personal computer running Linux operating system, is becoming more frequent. Actually it can be thought of a cultural activity within digital culture. Gameboys as musical instruments, personalized AIBOs, the list could go on forever…

Electronic products using computer technology are open to modification and such activity has become very interesting to observe. These products are now seen more as processes and thus, easily transformed into something different of their initial purpose.

This meaningful use of technology allows the development of communities and a political involvement of its members. It is stated on the Xbox Linux Project: “Welcome to your Xbox. For the first time the box you paid for can do what you want it to do. As the owner you are where you should be – in control”. This last sentence also points to another aspect of user-personalized technology: being an author as part of owning the technology.

So if you’re the proud owner of an Xbox and are tired of playing the same games over and over again, go on, visit the Xbox Linux Project and transform your console into a Linux operating computer. Own it to the limit.

The Xbox Linux Project
http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Main_Page

Travel to Java Island

2005-07-19T14:11:00.000+01:00

Java Island or an island in JAVA?

A minute window that is open and increases until it occupies the entire screen.

A text which informs us that “this page contains a hidden script and your browser is now partially controlled by some lines of code. For troubleshooting please contact the Museum of Modern Strategy…”.

The browser was effectively controlled by an unknown source and it is not possible to do anything else besides the self-replication of this window with this message. It’s one more strategy of power questioned by the Museum Of Modern Strategy (another project by Leal), the breaking of the omnipresence and the omnipotence of the browser. It no longer controls tyrannically the way we access and visualize the information. Actually, it doesn’t allow for us to develop that type of activity. It finds itself as a hostage among a few lines of coding and the only plausible solution is to restart the computer, which we promptly do.

The hostage is us, and voluntarily.

(text originally published for Online - Portuguese Netart 1997-2004 and translated to English by Rui Azevedo)

We can see this project as a form of resistance. The access to information is now controlled by big companies like Microsoft. Their browsers allow us to do only what they want us to do and, ultimately, find what they allow us to find. The way the information is dispayed on our screens is chosen by their interface designers. This project, by shortcircuiting our web browser, by taking it and transforming it into the artist's hostage, sheds some light into the dominance strategies working around us. No longer able to work with the browser, what does one do? What does one do when liberated from the IE6 tyranny? Fear, doubt... confusion... One restarts the computer hoping it will solve the problem... Do we like tyranny? Who is resisting after all? Didn't we all pray for IE6 to be working properly after restarting the computer?

I did.

Miguel Leal
JAVA Island
2003
www.virose.pt/moms/digital/morbidi/java_island/

Still an artist in the chat room

2005-07-18T09:20:00.000+01:00

For the first edition of prog:ME, the new media festival in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Susana Mendes Silva has developed a new version of Artphone, her 2002 project. This time she is using Skype, a program for making free calls over the internet to anyone also using Skype. The software has to be downloaded and installed, her Skype name has to be added to your contacts. If she is online, you can ask her whatever you always wanted to know about art.

For more information about Artroom:

http://homepage.mac.com/susana_mendes_silva/Artphone.htm

For more information about prog:ME

http://www.progme.org/

Confess yourself

2005-07-14T09:49:00.000+01:00

Who says you have to be Catholic to confess?
Why leave voyeurism to the priests?
Can a website manifest redemption?

These are three questions Stewart Smith asks in the introduction to his Confess website. In this project users are invited to confess themselves. You confess not by a religious motivation but to let go of what's troubling you. But it doesn't end here. Not only you get to confess your inner most, secret thoughts, you also get to forgive someone else for their own confessed secrets. It works pretty much as a trade. You confess. Then you are allowed to read one anonymous confession. You rate it based on a few provided categories. Then you are allowed to confess again. Each confession is only ever read by one other person. The intrest arises because the site is self-governing, meaning the confessions that are selected for you are done so based on your user rating. The better your user rating, the better the confessions you read will be.

You get redemption from an automatic system, a website, and at the same time you are browsing through other people's confessions. Do you confess because you want people to read your confessions, or because you want to read people's confessions? Or both? Or because you just feel like making up some terrible stories about yourself and let people think they're true? But since the site works in an anonymous way, what's the point? People will never know who you are.

The strenght of this project lies in the way it explores the issue of anonymity. What do people say, or do, or let other people think of them when they're protected by a system that hides their true identities? This is a frequent issue when debating how people relate in online enviroments. What are they able to do or say being protected by a computer screen? In this case, that experience is taken one step further since it deals directly with the notion of guilt. You only confess when you feel guilty, but by confessing to a machine do you feel even more liberated or by the contrary, simply careless?

Go on, try it. Confess yourself. Make the artist's day.

Stewart Smith
Confess
2004 - present
http://www.confess.cc/

An artist in the chat room

2005-07-13T14:20:00.000+01:00

(portuguese version archived in July 2005)

In 2002, Susana Mendes Silva (1972) put up, for Free Manifesta, the Artphone project, a cell phone mediated performance in which everyone could contact the artist, through her personal cell phone number, and discuss contemporary art related subjects. The slogan she used when advertising the project was revealing of what her purpose was: “Don’t be afraid to ask everything you always wanted to know about contemporary art”. Everything one has always wanted to know about contemporary art was available, only one phone call away. The artist exposed herself. Not only was she completely available for anyone who called but also assumed she could answer any question addressed to her.

In 2005, three years later, the cell phone was replaced. Instead of just being available, of waiting a phone call, the artist became more dynamic, active. She replaced the cell phone by an online video chat room and created Art_room, an online performance where anyone could meet the artist and, once again, ask her everything they wanted to now about contemporary art. Besides the notorious change of environment and, consequently, the kind of relationships established, the artist also worked the engagement of those assisting or participating in the performance. It was mandatory to have an internet connection, to know the implicit rules of online chatting and to download different plug-ins that allowed the access and interaction in such an environment.

The performance was announced by email and happened in predefined schedules during the month of June. The goal was to put together, in the same place, the typical users of such chat rooms and people more familiarised with the contemporary art discourse. The development of the action taking place was let to chance and it would be completely dependent on the public and the artist’s interactions. Only one person other than the usual chatters of the chosen room showed up. The performance started and the artist introduced herself and told people to ask her questions about art. People in the chat room didn’t quite understand the objective of her behaviour and started to act aggressively towards her. As she repeatedly stated she was doing a performance and she wanted people to ask her questions about art, aggressiveness escalated and she was invited to leave the chat room, since her presence wasn’t welcome there.

The following day the artist repeated the performance in the same chat room. Everyone in the room were regular users and they were mostly present at the previous day actions. The artist continued her activity, seen as unwelcome and undesirable by some of the members of the room. Later on, the room monitor shut down her webcam and finally banned her from the monitored area, known as friends and family.

The Art_room project thus exceeded the artist’s initial expectations. Even though largely depending on the establishment of social relations, and on the contingencies that rule them, such reactions were never planned or accounted as a possibility. Yet, a closer look at the processes explored and undermined by the artist let us see how predictable the reactions obtained during the two days of performance are.

Silva, with this project, is working in two different areas, both able to induce attitudes and behaviours similar to those witnessed. The notion of community is central to Art_room. There is a group of individuals sharing the same interests and gathered in a specific online space, considered by themselves their reunion space. It’s by sharing that space with each other that they feel as part of that community. The artist, by introducing herself in that chat room has crossed the community’s border separating the outside world from that group of people. Not only has she crossed the border, thus invading that space and assuming herself as an outsider, she also acted in a way that made that difference even more visible, by showing the impossibility of conversion, of becoming part of the community and sharing a common discourse. She acted in a disruptive manner, disturbing the regular functioning of the social structure crystallized in that video chat room.

But besides assuming her otherness, and thus being irreducible to the group, Silva was questioning the group’s beliefs about what art is. Assuming her behaviour as an artistic project not only is she clashing against a traditional, objectual, almost commodified vision of the artistic object, she is also affirming that a disturbing, parasitic, undesirable activity, may be considered art. She confronts them with something they don’t see as such, and never will. The debate wasn’t centred in what were the artist’s initial plans, but in justifying and legitimizing her behaviour, inappropriate to the community as a valid artistic practice. The artist will never become a member of this community so as its elements will never share with her the same vision of the artistic phenomenon.

We have here two events, that can be thought as the ever present dichotomy between the self and the other and that, in this particular case, will inexorably result in a difference without any possibility of being resolved. There is only one possible way . The community regains the state of equilibrium, by eliminating the destabilizing element, the artist and her behaviour.

A technologically mediated performance working as a human relations laboratory. An extremely interesting exercise that happened live, in front of our eyes. What is the difference between online and offline? Is the online world a public space open to dialogue and to equal participation for all? Where is the emancipating utopia of cyberspace? The artist knows how to answer to those questions.

Uma artista no chat room

2005-07-12T11:04:00.000+01:00

Em 2002, Susana Mendes Silva (1972) realizou, para a Free Manifesta, o projecto Artphone, uma performance mediada por telemóvel, na qual qualquer pessoa podia contactar a artista, que tornou público o seu número pessoal de telemóvel, e discutir temas relacionados com arte contemporânea. O slogan de divulgação da performance era bastante revelador do intuito do projecto: “Don’t be afraid to ask everything you always wanted to know about contemporary art”. Tudo o que sempre alguém quis saber sobre arte contemporânea estava ao alcance, apenas à distância de uma chamada telefónica. A artista expunha-se, colocava-se à disposição de quem lhe ligasse e assumia que podia responder a qualquer pergunta que lhe fosse colocada.

Em 2005, três anos depois, o telemóvel foi substituído. A uma atitude de disponibilidade, de espera, que caracteriza quem aguarda uma chamada telefónica, a artista contrapõe uma dimensão mais agencial, mais activa. Substitui o telemóvel por uma video chat room existente online. Surge assim Art_room, uma performance online em que qualquer pessoa se pode encontrar com a artista e, mais uma vez, perguntar tudo o que sempre quis saber sobre arte contemporânea. Para além da óbvia mudança de ambiente e, consequentemente, do tipo de relações que se estabelecem, a artista operava também ao nível de envolvimento de quem assiste ou participa na performance. Já não basta fazer uma chamada telefónica. É necessário possuir uma ligação à Internet, conhecer as regras implícitas de funcionamento dos chats e instalar um conjunto de software especifico que permite o acesso e a interacção com os outros utilizadores do chat.

A artista divulgou por e-mail a sua performance, que ocorreu em horários pré-definidos durante o mês de Junho. O intuito era juntar, num mesmo local, os frequentadores típicos destas salas de conversação online e as pessoas mais familiarizadas com um discurso artístico contemporâneo. O decorrer da performance seria deixado ao acaso, e exclusivamente dependente das interacções do público com a artista. Apenas compareceu uma pessoa para além dos frequentadores habituais da sala escolhida. A performance teve início e a artista apresentou-se pedindo que lhe dirigissem perguntas relacionadas com arte. A incompreensão do motivo de tal acção colocou quem se encontrava na sala numa postura de desconfiança generalizada, que se acentuou drasticamente após a informação repetida de que o que a artista estava a realizar era uma performance, que requeria a participação de todos e que podia ser considerada uma obra de arte. A artista foi convidada a sair daquela sala, sendo claramente explicitado que a sua presença não era desejada.

No dia seguinte, a performance repetiu-se na mesma sala de conversação. As pessoas que se encontravam presentes eram, exclusivamente, utilizadores do chat e, na sua grande maioria, as pessoas do dia anterior. Perante o prosseguimento da actividade, aparentemente incompreensível e indesejável, o responsável pela monitorização das salas desligou-lhe a webcam e, algum tempo depois, foi banida de todas as salas monitorizadas que constituíam a área friends and family.

O projecto Art_room excedeu assim as expectativas iniciais da artista. Ainda que dependendo do estabelecimento de relações sociais e, consequentemente, de todas as contingências que as definem, nunca foi esperado que as reacções atingissem tais proporções. No entanto, um olhar mais atento sobre os processos que a artista explorou e, sobretudo, minou, deixa que se entreveja a previsibilidade das reacções que ocorreram nos dois dias em que a performance teve lugar.

A artista, com a concretização deste trabalho, operou em duas áreas distintas, ambas passíveis de despoletar comportamentos como os assistidos. A noção de comunidade é central em Art_room. Existe um conjunto de indivíduos que partilham os mesmos interesses e que se encontram reunidos num determinado espaço online que consideram o seu espaço de reunião. É a partilha desse espaço que os define como comunidade. Ao introduzir-se na sala de conversações, a artista atravessou a fronteira da comunidade, que separa o exterior, o mundo, do interior, um grupo restrito de indivíduos. Não só atravessou, penetrando no seio da comunidade e assumindo-se como outsider, estranha, como também agiu de forma a salientar essa diferença, vincado a sua alteridade e a impossibilidade de conversão, de inserção na comunidade, de partilha de um discurso comum. A artista não pretende ser um membro da comunidade. Ela age portanto de forma disruptiva, perturbando o normal funcionamento da estrutura social que se constitui naquela sala de conversação.

Mas, para além de se assumir como um outro, irredutível ao grupo, ela vem questionar as próprias crenças relativamente ao conceito de arte. Assumindo o comportamento visível por todos como um projecto artístico, ela não só choca directamente com uma visão tradicionalista, objectual, do conceito de arte detido pelos membros da comunidade, como afirma que uma actividade parasita, perturbadora, indesejável, pode ser considerada arte. Confronta-os com algo que eles não encaram como tal e que não virão a considerar como tal. O debate não se centrou sobre o que era inicialmente o intuito da artista, responder a perguntas sobre arte contemporânea, mas a justificação e a legitimação do seu comportamento, desadequado aos olhos da comunidade, como uma prática artística. Tal como a artista nunca se converterá num elemento da comunidade, também os elementos da comunidade não partilharão da mesma visão do fenómeno artístico com a artista.

Temos aqui então dois acontecimentos, que podem ser sintetizados na dicotomia sempre presente do eu e o outro e que, neste caso, vai resultar inexoravelmente num diferendo sem resolução possível, que só poderá ser concluído de uma forma. A comunidade volta a restabelecer o seu equilíbrio, eliminando o elemento destabilizador, o grão na roda da engrenagem, a artista e o seu comportamento.

Uma performance mediada tecnologicamente que funciona como um laboratório sobre as relações humanas. Um exercício interessantíssimo que ocorreu diante dos nossos olhos, em tempo real. Onde está a diferença entre online e offline? O mundo online como espaço público aberto ao diálogo e à participação igualitária entre todos? Onde está a utopia libertadora, emancipatória, do ciberespaço? A artista saberá responder.

2005-07-11T12:57:00.000+01:00

One possible way to start this blog is presenting my latest project, a netart show called Online - Portuguese Netart 1997-2004. The purpose of this show was to look at what has been done by Portuguese artists in the domain of netart. With this show I am not saying there is a specificity of Portuguese netart when compared to the international scene. I just selected (and being a personal selection it is highly subjective and questionable) what I thought were the best netart projects done by Portuguese (net)artists since 1997. I divided them into five different categories, adressing different subjects or ways of thinking the internet, (h)activism, interactivity, narrative, world wide web and geography.

The show is produced by Atmosferas - Digital Arts Centre and it is available at www.atmosferas.net/netart

Please feel free to visit the show and give some feedback or random opinions and thoughts.

2005-07-11T12:40:00.000+01:00

This blog is intended to serve as a platform for debating issues related to digital art, (h)activism, tactical media, resistance, critical theory and everything related. Feel free to join or start a discussion. Everyone is invited to participate and let others know where their work and researches are leading.

2005-07-09T15:37:00.000+01:00

On ne peut pas tomber amoureux d'une courbe de croissance.