:: Saturday, March 22, 2003 ::

Poetry on the net can take on unexpected forms. Komninos Zervos has developed several projects which present cyber poems as simple flash animations or intriguing textual soundscapes.

Beer, when first viewed, appears to be a beginner's crack at flash animation. Zervos' understanding of linguistics, however, in undeniable as the shapeshifting words morph into related and sometimes unrelated terms. The end result is a careful exposure of the intricate linguistic communication network that is often over-coated with romanticized themes of spontaneous expresion, but which inevitably is dependent on very restricted syntax. Another piece that is worth noting is Sound Poetry, where a male voice is heard reciting poetic material that is complemented with repetitive slow moving text patterns.

These projects may be effective because of their consistent "bad design." That is a persistent look that inevitably becomes the perfect aesthetic to let the poetic interest shine through -- something that might not be possible if the poems were presented with a slick design.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Here are some recent and not so recent additions to the New Media Fix: A great resource for software art runme.org, the internationally acclaimed next five minutes, the digital art magazine neural.it, and the dynamic portal verybusy.org.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Artists Union is an artists portal just getting underway with high aspirations. Since changes to rhizome in the last year several websites have popped up to fill gaps that discontented users had with it. There have been sites that have listed artists, sites that have done reviews (even netartreview falls into this) and sites that have aimed to provide various other services. In my opinion the more the merrier as this helps to disband the rapid institutionisation that is taking over net.art, in particular with a certain set of artists, critics etc controlling every aspect.

The "Artists Union" is a step towards helping artists find other artists, "the purpose of this is to provide a source of artists on the web, and rather than listing and archiving images of artists work under one homogenising style (such as axis and other online databases) why not just link direct to the artists url and let the artist have the control over how their work is percieved?"

The creator Rich White hopes "that artists union will grow from what it is at the moment - not only by listing more and more artists but as a communication between artists, as a way of finding collaborators and creating projects." It's ambitious and it's just starting but hopefully with many focused resources like this, a wider distributed system of information will start to emerge in the near future.
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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I've been meaning to do a review of Lisa Bennett's website for quite a while and when I stumbled accross Ellie Harrison's last week (I had seen her work before but did'nt know she had a website) I felt the two had a lot in common so I'd bundle them together.

Lisa Bennett is a student of the Art Institute of Chicago and her website, located on their server, simply documents her work, not net.art but well, art on the net! Her work looks well here due to the fact that its performative and is not essentially linked to any media so can be presented in many. A clean simple website, its easy to navigate and has a young, fresh, possibly naive look that echoes through all her works. Be sure to look at "I Walked 8.4 Miles from My House to My Friend's House While I Unraveled Yarn, That I Bought Off Ebay from Some Guy in North Carolina, from My Homemade Yarn Dispenser Which Broke So I Had to Buy Some Duct Tape to Fix It (It Broke Again When I Stopped to Pee, So I Actually Had to Fix It Twice)" a great title and my personal favourite!!

Ellie Harrison is a another student, this time from Goldsmiths College in London. Once again she does performative work which is simply on the net and exists as documentation. She has however attempted to extend a few of her works to the medium a few of these being the "Random Thought Generator" and "Eat 22" which use ideas of generative programs and documentation to database.
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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Blogger Salam reports from his home in Baghdad. Read his point of view. Source:alternet.org
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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As a way to better understand the circumstances of the current war, here are a few links that briefly explain Iraq's history: A very brief (biased) breakdown of major events in chronological order can be found at scn.org, a more historically objective in depth though still brief synopsis can be read at achiles.net, and a more developed site that offers statistics as well as a historical survey at idf.il

Here are some great sites that provide alternative news coverage: alternet.org, idealist.org, and of course the internationally known indimedia.org.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Vagamundo is an online video game dealing with complex immigration and assimilation issues in the United States. This particular game specifically points to Latin American immigrants and their ambivalent acceptance as part of the U.S. work force. This is an obvious issue as the internationally famous Mexican comedian Cantinflas is used as the game avatar.

Log on and indulge in a game where you can dodge bottles while trying to get a job. Though there is some problem with the accuracy of the movements to the keyboard, and very little instructions for proper use, this game is worth exploring.
Artist: Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Vivid Based in the newly modernised Birmingham are making a call for applications for their "Hothaus, Artists in residence 04". The deadline is March 31, 2003, so not much time left but if you have any possibility of doing this, do! as vivid are connected to some major festivals and organisations in England and this would be a good opportunity.

More info here
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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This is pretty much a straight post, have'nt heard of this event before but sounds good...

"CollectivEye is looking for submissions for the 2nd annual VIDEO/MUSIC screening event and DVD compilation album. We are looking for works that are collaborations between sonic and visual artists. Works should not exceed 6 minutes. Collectiveye is open to all artists who push the conventional standards of video, music, and/or digital and electronic media."

Deadline: 5/1/2003 - go here for further info.
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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In acknowledgment to the current threat of war, here are a few selections from the Wartime project curated by Atty: Media War by Trigger, Pace by Marco, Commercial Break by Floe Tudor, The Winner by Ivan Abreu, Evolution by Klacius Ank Guarino, and Retrospect by Irene Marx.

For viewing more great net projects, please log on to wartime.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Racial discrimination is closely rexamined and exposed in Wayne Dunkley's sharemyworld.net. The website consists of a series of "books" inspired by Dunkley's street posting of his own defaced image around the downtown cores of Toronto, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec. The six books present textual narratives describing ethnocentric gestures disguised as benevolent acts of equality -- or sometimes blatant jokes. Also, many racial clichés that some people may consider a thing of the past are brought back with chilling accuracy.

:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Just a reminder to all new media artists:

Ars Electronica's deadline for submission is March 20, 03. To learn about the specific categories log on to the website. Anyone interested in submiting work this year should, well, get going with it!
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Version>03 is an annual Digital Arts Convergence festival occuring in Chicago and currently in its third year.

"This year, Version>03 is examining two forceful trends, Globalization (the merging of economies) and Singularity (the adaptation of man to machine), as seen, created, and debated by programmers, artists, scientists, activists and critical thinkers. Subtitled Technotopia vs. Technopocalypse, the five-day festival brings together emerging and leading practitioners to respond to the latest advancements in virtual reality, robotics, bioengineering, and other such technology defining our time. The festival will also examine contemporary social and political developments relating to the War in Iraq, the War on Terror and the American surveillance society."

The festival takes place in eight main locations around the city and has an impressive list of lectures / workshops including "Open-Source Life Project", "WeÕre ready For Our Close-up: Strategies for Public Protest in the Age of Surveillance" and "SmartMeme: Direct Action at the Point(s) of Assumption". A healthy mix of free and pay for events, so if your state-side make sure you have a chance to go.
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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Jody Zellen is currently part of Turbulence's artist studio program. The work Desimbodied Voices, which creates soundscapes inspired by cell phone conversations as a metaphor, was recently released.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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onewordmovie "is an on-line platform which organizes, based on user-supplied terms, the flood of images on the Internet into an animated film. A word turns into images, images turn into a movie."

Essentially this work is a image based search engine much like google's or altavista's with a front layer / interface made in shockwave. The user can type any search query into the text field provided and search for images classed under these words on the internet. Once a series of images is returned they are animated algorithmically in the interface.

The projects creators say the "project plays with the tension between on-line and cinematic approaches to images" and for this reason exists in two forms. The first the browser based one and the second as an installation with three screens each showing a different word search / movie. As a piece of net.art this works very well. Using the network as a sort of tv channel where the broadcast can be initially seeded and reinterpreting media freely accessible this could only exist and work online. So viewed within this context is completely appropriate.

Reasons as to why the piece needs to be also presented as an installation, ether removing the little but important interaction if aspiring to a true "cinematic" approach or keeping it and thus denying the latter seem to be more at odds with the work. Afterall movie's are'nt interactive (in the classical sense) and certainly not presented with three screens!
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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The 12 hr-ISBN-JPEG Project may perhaps be one of the earliest net projects specifically dealing with images on the web that constantly point to the net's dependency on printed media. According to Brad Brace's press release, the project got started in December 30, 1994 and can be experienced in two ways. The first is by signing up to a mail group that goes out every 12 hours with a new jpeg image. The second is by logging on to the website, where the ever changing images can be seen for 12 hours before they are swapped for a new image. The concept behind the jpeg images is an extension of his ISBN books, which are self-published and can be bought at a reasonable price. To view some of the images of the books and learn more about them go to the ISBN Books website. To read more about the 12 hour project log on to the 12 hr-ISBN-JPEG Project webpage.

This is an odd art project that needs both printed and net media to be effective. Furthermore, it points to the postmodern tendencies of incompletion or fragmentation that were earlier explored by many conceptual and pop artists in the later half of the 20th Century, like Cindy Sherman -- who constantly pointed to narratives outside of the work of art. In the 12 Hr ISBN, it is almost impossible to make sense of previously released images because these are constantly redefined by newer images released every 12 hours. This places the 12 Hr ISBN JPEG Project in a constant state of action.
Artist: Brad Brace.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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