Originally
published
on
07/26/03It's rare for me to mention a book here but with one like "Making Art of Databases," I think you'll understand my overwhelming joy and eagerness to rush out and buy it so I could add it to my bookshelf, which is being increasingly dominated by "MIT Press" publications!!
The "V2_" organization in Holland, organized some master classes in association with the Zentrum fur Kunst and Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Ars Electronica Center in Linz, and the Center for Culture and Communication (C3) in Budapest around the topic of the dominance of the database (in particular over narrative) in new media art.
New media has been used repeatedly to organize media into catalogs / structures / databases, one example being photography galleries on the Internet. Yet, new media artists themselves have been inverting this classic create-art-and-catalog-it system by integrating catalogs / structures / databases into their art works, questioning what is an art work? Is the uniqueness of an art work relevant anymore? Is an art work the sum of its parts? What is the relationship between the artist and their art? etc.
It's no coincidence that you'll find that Lev Manovich was one of the main agitators at the master classes after his proclamation in "The Language of New Media" (2001) that all new media is essentially a database. This book essentially documents the master class and its results. Don't expect any definitive answers but this is certainly a step in the right direction towards an understanding, appreciation and acceptance of new media art forms in mass culture.
:: Garrett Lynch ::
"Greylines"
by
the
collaborative
group
"Slateford",
Simon
Yuill
(Scotland)
and
Tryggve
Askildsen
(Norway)
is
a
series
of
"code
doodles,"
nothing
more
nothing
less,
created
via
email
exchanges
between
the
two
artists.Partly inspired by their joint admiration for the early twentieth-century experimental animators Hans Richter and Oskar Fischinger, these downloadable director pieces play with shape, opacity, movement and gesture.
:: Garrett Lynch ::
Originally
published
on
07/25/03How does TV culture affect new media and the web?
Now the above question can be entertained in Jim Punk's latest blogspot: http://544x378.free.fr/(WebTV)/index.htm. WebTV is a blog specializing in graphics as opposed to text. The result is a commentary on TV culture as a medium affecting new technologies such as the web. WebTV uses TV language to create a daily journal. Jim Punk's new blogspot may be an omen of what TV will be like in the future. Today it is possible to choose TV programs at will from cable companies, thanks to digital technology; tomorrow viewers might be able to insert their own material into a TV program, much like punk's weblog, to be watched in their homes.
You can be invited by Jim Punk to participate. If you are interested, it might be a good idea to drop him a line. You can visit his website (jimpunk.com) for more information on his net art projects.
:: Eduardo Navas ::