March 8 - 15, 2003

Originally published on 03/01/03
First made popular through mass emailings and Internet gossip in 2000,

UK programmer, Ed Burton's Soda Constructor is the first Java toy on the Sodaplay site.

With Soda Constructor you are able to build interactive creations from a sparse framework of limbs and muscles. By tweaking physical characteristics such as gravity, friction, etc., you truly get a unique, ethereal creation.

This site is more about the art we the viewers can make ourselves. I find it truly interesting to see the infinite possibility of creations that can be made from such a limited set of the same tools. Great fun.
Artist ( er..
Programmer): Ed Burton
:: Kristen Palana ::


Originally published on 03/01/03
03/03/03 is the official launch date of the new Farmers Manual release "rla" consisting of every locatable live recording and more dating from 1995 until now and beyond on one special hybrid DVD. This DVD is a versatile archive documenting the live development of one of the most innovative computer-based groups of the last 10 years. What makes this release so special is that it is accompanied by a comprehensive website that is mirroring all of the disc's content plus extra material; in other words, you can download over 10 hours of music and video for free. Interesting to note is that the copyleft license that comes with the release is completely opposite to any known license record or movie companies put with their CDs or DVDs. Download all the Farmers Manual material from rla.web.fm or buy the DVD from MEGO.
:: Peter Luining ::


Originally published on 03/03/03
The Dutch Art Initiative w139 has been commissioning net-art projects since 2000. The latest addition to their "site specific" collection is a net-art piece by Andy Deck called "The BOXPLORER" which is a browser that offers a rectangular view of the World Wide Web. It abstracts layouts to produce what are frequently rather colorful compositions. Just type your favorite URL and start to navigate around the rectangle.
::
Peter Luining ::


Originally published on 03/05/03
From time to time there's a real gem of work that passes through rhizome's net art news announcements and this week, these came through:

Cory Arcangel has created a piece of what I would term (and I don't often say this!!) an exceptional piece of net art. Mainly known for working with sound and video games, such as his released album "8-bit Construction Set". In this piece, "Data Diaries" Arcangel's work uses Quicktime to read "the binary data daily passing through his computer's RAM" to create a non-interactive, heavy-in-sound, heavy-in-image piece.

It's difficult to pinpoint what qualifies this piece as net art since, from a strictly technical point of view, it would work on either CD-ROM or video. Perhaps this is a sign of a truer art form that is free from its medium? But on a conceptual level, this work resides firmly in an Internet space. With ideas of memory, persistence, authorship, stream of conscience vs. stream of data, the relation between a user and their computer (or vice versa), and the intersection of text (data) and image (light), the creation of a website around this work ensures that the computer's purest data, its raw memory, is shared with as wide an audience as possible.

There is, of course, something personal that every computer user imbues in their computer and it could be claimed that those in new media use them as sketchbooks for their own raw memories and ideas. Alex Galloway comments in the introduction "What did Cory Arcangel do in this piece? Next to nothing." Hardly. Arcangel has managed to reveal his own identity in a unique way: to stream his 'memory' over the internet; surely this is the perfect avatar free of its body.
:: Garrett Lynch ::