March 8 - 15, 2003
Originally
published
on
03/01/03
First
made
popular
through
mass
emailings
and
Internet
gossip
in
2000,
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
03/05/03From 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 ::