:: Saturday, April 12, 2003 ::

Here are the latest additions to the New Media Fix:

391.org, a resource developed with ideas by the late Francis Picabia.

Linkoln.net, a website featuring web projects including net bumper stickers and tons of net portal links.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Over my Dead Body is a web project protesting against the war in Iraq. Anyone can contribute by adding an image of themselves along with a comment.

This website proposes a 'virtual' protest, but in order for a protest to be effective it needs to be imposed on the powers that be. It is not made clear how the Over my Dead Body project will actually reach people outside of those who are already participating in the project, as well as their acquaintances. Unfortunately, much political art these days functions as a contemplative stage -- that is, as a platform to present and entertain ideas of action with no real political implications. The Over my Dead Body website, though very well developed in content and form, needs to push itself in culture at large. Expecting people to log on to learn about the protest is not enough. Spam would be a welcomed strategy in this case.
Artist: Joe Rabie
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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The Webby Awards recently announced the 2002 nominees.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Live in a world of idiots? Feeling disconnected and isolated? Maybe you're just wondering what you could possibly have in common with every other human being in the world.
Hint: We all dream.
TCUP- The Collective Unconsciousnes Project by Simon King and Josh Dahl attempts to connect us all together through dream images and metaphors.
They've created a vast data base of dreams that allows you to travel in a non-linear way from dream to dream with words as the connector. The site constantly grows in size and connectivity as more dreams are added.
Check out the interface design, spontanious transitions, and color usage.

Artists: Simon King and Josh Dahl
:: Kristen Palana [+] ::
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Minneapolis and St.Paul are East African cities. Part of Julie Mehretu's year long artist-in-residency project at the Walker Art Center 'Minneapolis and St.Paul are East African cities' is an interactive map, revealing the stories, daily lives and personal histories of East African youths of the twin cities. Created by Entropy8Zuper, this poignant piece mirrors Mehretu's painting process, which examines identity, geography and personal/cultural history. As you traverse the map, your route is plotted, and the students stories are revealed as text, image and audio.
:: Neil Jenkins [+] ::
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Switch recently released journal #18, emphasizing software's important role in new media.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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'Staying in to play' is an online 3D game environment (built in shockwave 3d) that needs the user to do exactly what the title says in order to see some sort of interactivity or progression. Currently on day 3 of a planned 90 day online performance the work just from its concept alone questions the differences between game play time / real time and issues of game as event / performance. At the moment there is'nt a whole lot to see within the environment and this project is highly vunerable to attendance / interaction within the game space in order for it to develop, yet the promise of an evolving subconscious collective narrative will surely prove to be an irrestible attraction for people to play again and again.

'Staying in to Play' will be on-line from the 7th April until the 28t of June 2003, so check back regularily.
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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"Je suis un autre," poet Arthur Rimbaud wrote during the late nineteenth century's social and political turmoils. For digital poet August Highland, that assertion has taken on new dimensions, as well as become profoundly plural, as evidenced by his worldwide literati mobilization network.

Highland is a prolific writer who uses text generation and text recombination algorithms to author whole literary movements. He takes the idea of avatars about as far as it can go, ascribing authorship of his plentiful texts to various "imaginary" people, and constructing web sites accordingly. Be warned, though--the wlmn is a big network, and there are many such sites in the ring.
:: Lewis LaCook [+] ::
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Dutch artist Jan Robert Leegte has released an intruiging new piece called "Wood and Button". As one of the leading members of the Amsterdam Reductionist School Leegte again succeed in creating a piece that plays with the interchangability of digital material: wood becomes a button and a button becomes wood.
:: Peter Luining [+] ::
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:: Peter Luining [+] ::
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"Get-Carded" is an art ecard site that allows open submission and seeing as it has common elements to bannerarts call for participation at the moment (ie the War in Iraq), I felt it should be reviewed. Using a fairly standard internet application here, the combination of a gallery and an email system on a webpage in what normally would have been a commercially orientated tool, this is a good example of re-interpretated technologies through art. The site Currently Features 80 artists, most of whom have submitted static images (a shame) but submission is also open to the swf format (or indeed animated .gif!) to create animated or even simply interactive ecards. And who knows perhaps with a bit of user lobbying the organisers might add the shockwave .dcr format? as the website is still a beta!

:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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Boring art currently features mez@boringart.com. This is actually an interesting take on post-structural writings' relationship to new media. Here is part of the press release:

"With a critical presence of mind net.wurker][mez][ researches structures of language, inter alia; far beyond from the perspectives of Wittgenstein, Barthes, Kristeva or Derrida. With a wit and acuity the code of the visual mezangelles simultaneously slices and intertwines the semiotic and semantic discourses to coexist within the riveting structure of art'wurk' in a very unconcized and evokingly pleasurable forms of 'all the _texts_'."

I often wonder about people's ways for 'expressing' themselves in relation to some structure -- a slippery one at that (hence the inevitable 'post' that was added to structural theories). Mez's project could be considered a literal attempt to analize expression and its functionality within new media language. -- or as the over cited Derrida would say, a deconstructive attempt.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Plant Flowers in Iraq is a Flash project combining messaging and gaming features unique to the internet. The project offers users a chance to express their sentiments on the current war in Iraq by symbolically planting flowers throughout the country. The generous gesture can also be complemented with comments. All information is then available for other visitors to view.

This is yet another Flash interface effectively using new features for database manipulation, that points to the possibility of information access becoming more visually appealing while offering greater efficiency.

Plant Flowers in Iraq does fall short in a few areas. For one thing, the activity of planting flowers is abstracted as a generic humanitarian gesture with no real connection to a physical space, other than general statistics. That is, even though users can choose a planting area from an Iraq map, there is no real contextualization to better understand the situation within the Middle Eastern Country. Also, there is no information as to whether this project will be ennacted in real life once the war is over -- something that would be more beneficial to Iraq. This possibility woud also develop a direct connection between internet practices and real life results. Part of me hopes that the net piece is a proposal for a constructive global project; but unfortunately, the website does not mention anything related to real life activity.
Artist: Alex Dragulescu
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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At Turbulence.org, the latest artist studio feature is on Jeoffrey Thomas.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Joseph McElroy is a "corporate performance artist." What that means exactly I have no idea--but I do know that his latest piece, Rub Linda the right way and she might show you wonderland has caused quite a stir on both the thingist list and rhizome.

Many have been dismissive of the work, seeing it as exploitive of the Iraqi dead. I'm more inclined to see it as a thoroughly American work--in fact, a work that uses the American thirst for sensation against the ideology of war. It's directly related to Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty--a piece to shock us out of our desenstized shells.

Is it exploitation, or art? Have a look: you decide.
:: Lewis LaCook [+] ::
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