:: Saturday, May 31, 2003 ::

This week, a most interesting link has been added to the New Media Fix:

Film-philosophy, an excellent resource for anyone interested in discussing and reading about film language as a metaphysical trope. Even though Film-philosophy is a resource for the film enthusiast, it is included in the New Media Fix due to new media's close relationship to cinematic language.

This week's new media recommendation is Gallery 9, the Walker Art Center's New Media resouce which recently came to an end. For more on this look over an open letter that was recently published on mteww's server.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
...

"Suspended Gardens v2" is a project by Alex Dragulescu launched on 21/03/03, the day after the war in Iraq officially started.

The work is supposedly "a hybrid between an interactive flash game, a messageboard and a simulation system" yet to me seems more like a very relevant cross between a virtual memorial / graveyard and a space for documenting anti-war protest. The work is essentially a virtual garden where users can plant one of three plants whose growth is influenced by climate, population and oil. Symbolic plants in a unique ecosphere possibly planted as a mark of respect for the casualties, possibly planted as signs of protest.

Due to the way the space is required to evolve, ie dependant on user participation, time has been needed to allow the work to evolve / accumulate. Two months after its debut and following the end of the war the Suspended Gardens are now well worth a visit.
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
...

Generally I would say I'd rather not have my eye gouged out with a dull spoon. However, I suppose I could appreciate an artistic simulation and commentary about an eye gouging if it was conceptually smart enough.
With that, I bring you South Beach Disco by Antonio Mendoza.
WARNING: Once you go in, you will not be able to get out without quitting your browser!
It's a dizzying array of pop-up windows, frantic animation, error messages, spam, porn, and the worst of what the web can be...all starting out innocently enough...until you curiously begin to click.
I found the whole experience fasinating and frustrating, oddly hypnotic yet infuriating. I was pissed off that I got trapped inside, but excited that someone was able to capture so brilliantly the dark side of the web and the way computers can interfere with our time and sanity.
Frustratingly brilliant! This can also be found at Cyborgfestival.com
:: Kristen Palana [+] ::
...

The season of festivals and events for net.art / new media really is well under way now and we are only barely managing to scratch the surface here at netartreview for whats going on out there. So if we miss an important one in your area please do let us know by mailing us - info@netartreview.net.

One event we missed between the 19/05/03 - 23/05/03 was the "MelbourneDAC" (much talked about at present on the empyre list), 5th International Digital Arts and Culture Conference in Melbourne (obviously), Australia. The main reason I mention it is because yesterday they put all the papers that were presented in the five days, online in pdf format for anyone to download. A huge and invaluable resource for anyone involved in researching a number of new media areas.

Coming up between the 02/06/03 - 03/06/03 is the "Artist as Engineer" symposium at the Sherwell Centre, University of Plymouth, England. The event is organised as one of many "INTERRUPT: artists in socially engaged practice" events happening right up to October in various locations throughout England. The event as a totality aims to present and question the many roles / functions artists now take in society such as educator, engineer, researcher, activist and collaborator, with this particular event focusing on the engineer aspect. It boasts a list of speakers to be reckoned with such as Etoy, The Institute of Applied Autonomy, The Redundant Technology Initiative and Harwood from Mongrel.
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
...

Keeping up with the local Los Angeles New Media scene (Lalaland is where I live), C-level is going at it this Sunday June 1st at 7 PM. The Hacker's club will be hosting a demonstration/lecture on 'dead technology.' Here is the invite:

"Bob Bellerue, Brian Crabtree and Jesse Gilbert will be showing a project called called Obsoletronics involving the use of dead technology (especially computing and communications) for sound generation, by turning them on and prodding with audio leads. Elements include streaming mp3 feedback loops, and 8-bit live processing, ie foundware, oldware, thriftware."

And actually first but not least, Anne-Julie Raccoursier and Andrew Choate will be lecturing on Saturday May 31 at 7pm: "Waxing Politics examines the politics of display, addressing the media, the museum and talking heads."

For more information log on to C-level's website. And keep an eye out for a possible report on the lecture and Hacker's events next week, as I plan to attend. I highly recommend both events for those of you living in Los Angeles.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
...

"ep #1: did the dot com bust you?" is a strange sort of a website, a website created as a "release" like a music ep or a software version. A release distributing "softwart from unmedicated people" (this is I presume a re-interpretation of "software art"). All the software is implemented in perl, hence usually quite portable and execuatable over a network like the internet.

Some of the pieces / compositions are quite simple but very clever. The "hello world" endless loop piece "Prozac" uses the phrase "hello world" commonly used by programmers to test scripts, especially when learning a new language, as an indication that the script is doing as it is intended by showing the phrase on the screen, a greeting from the computer back to the user, an induction to the new language, and inverts this situation by making the greeting directed at the computer itself - infinitely. This in essence greets the computer to a stage where it crashes.

The piece "Extreme Whitespace" is more visual than a conceptual piece like "Prozac". It bascially keeps inputting "whitespace into your terminal for you to type into/with/against/around..." animating and colourising the text continuously allowing you to turn typing into an event, a performance via a live text-based video mixer. The work has strong links with early ascii art and those spam emails we all used to get which animated when you scrolled down fast. Same concepts but with stunning results!!!
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
...

Though the name Yoshi Sodeoka doesn't pop up very often in net art circles, we are talking about an internet- pioneer who was one of the first that offered interactive soundmanipulation in his works for the internet. His style can be best described as something that holds the middle between video and web esthetics. One of his first net projects called "Project 19" can still be viewed at hotwire's RGB gallery. What is less know though is that Yoshi Sodeoka once was artdirector of the now legendary word.com and set up the shift.jp.org's Bin section, which is an online exhibition space that concentrates on technically advanced net pieces. Though Bin is still running (once in a month a new work is added), word.com and with it works of a dozen artists are unfortunately lost forever. Recent work by Yoshi Sodeoka can be found at http://www.c404.tv.
:: Peter Luining [+] ::
...

Here is some trivia on the net. The first Spam was actually sent on May 1978. It was done on Arpanet, an early version of the current internet. Not that any of us who are overwhelmed by unwanted e-mail would be interested in the first Spam, but, but, but... just in case you are, read the world's first Spam along with the reaction it generated at Brad Templeton's website.

:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
...

Last friday and saturday the results of the Playing field project were presented in Dutch artspace Montevideo. The project focussed on streaming artworks, and invited artists to come up with ideas which especially explored and exploited the restrictions of the streaming technology as small bandwidth, small videosize and waiting time caused by buffering. It resulted in 9 different projects that show what nowadays is possible with streaming technique, from Station Rose's "Webcasting" which uses streaming as a performance tool to Peter Merten's project "Lowflows" which uses everchanging internet data (like temperature or cash flows) to create flows of abstract images. And from os_anm by Slateford that resurrects the old style pixel streams to Kirk Woolford's "reckless eyes" which uses real people with camera's attached to their heads to create a system allowing people to see through other peoples eyes. So a very interesting overview to see what is happening in this branch of net art.
:: Peter Luining [+] ::
...

Dutch design guru and theorist Max Bruisma recently published a book called "Deep Sites". The book is focussing on "intelligent innovations in contemporary web design", and guess what... a lot of featured sites are from net artists or very net art inspirered. The bookcover that features links to all sites in the book can be found here.
:: Peter Luining [+] ::
...

"b u i l . d i n g s" is a new interactive fiction project created for the internet by Michael Sellam.

On the artists request, 24 artists submitted photographs of buildings seen from the outside. These images were then used, one for each of the 24 hours in a day, to wallpaper a room or cube (something along the lines of how Caves are manifested). This creates an outside in (the inverse of an inside out, obviously) virtual room / building in which the user is placed to turn and spin freely from a floating position. Sounds are then played to create the "narration from one place to another".

By combining photographs of architecture exteriors assembled by other artists and using a time-based algorithm to display the relevant photograph for the current hour, the artist manages to create a new virtual architecture which could only exist in a "space" like the internet. An architecture ever-changing, in-flux, progressing and / or deteriorating.

"buil.dings" is a continuation of 3d experiments by the artist occurring over the last two years which also includes "seasons" and "visager".
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
...