:: Saturday, July 12, 2003 ::

Its always good to see collaborations between artists online, however its rare to see collaborations between artists who have never met in physical space or to see collaborations where one artist sets up a work for any other artist to contribute to.

One such example is "Panse - Public access network sound engine" (which has been reviewed here before) and Joachim Lapotre's recent contribution, his "DessinePanse" series (part of the "DessineMoi" series reviewed here before as well).

Essentially the "Panse - Public access network sound engine" is a streaming sound server, created in "pure data" (a pc implementation of "max/msp") by Pall Thayer which can be connected to and controlled by any form of scripting such as a form submission, a flash movie, a shockwave, a java applet etc. Joachim Lapotre's four flash pieces allow the algorithms, which created drawings in his previous pieces, to now be able to control sound as well. This takes his work to a new level and allows the artist to be able to create sounds which would not have been possible with flash alone.
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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"MAD 03 NET is an open call for participation, meant to serve as a LOUDSPEAKER FOR DIGITAL ARTISTIC CREATION during MAD 03 2nd International Meeting of Experimental Arts which will take place in Madrid from October 24 to November 16 of 2003."

Their is the possibility to participate in the NET sections of this festival under four categories which include "MAD 03 NET SPECIFIC", "MAD 03 NET DIGIT", "MAD 03 NET PROJECT" and "MAD 03 NET ZIN". The rules and specifications of these can be found here however don't forget the highly important category of "Urban Visual Poetry" which could also be looked on from a hyperliterature viewpoint! The deadline is 30/09/03 for all of the above.
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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How do you set up an online documentary photography exhibit, accessible by anyone with a computer, when your subjects don't want to be photographed, recognized, or known?
This was the dilemna facing artist, Eric Gottesman in his show Ka Fifitu Feetu .
His original intentions were to show that not all people with AIDS in Africa are sick and dying. He set off to photograph people with the disease living and working in their daily lives. However, fearing eviction from their landlords, dismissal from their jobs, and scorn from their families and neighbors, Gottesman's subjects refused to let their faces and identities be revealed.
So what we get instead is an interesting collaboration between photographer and subject, where the subject has dictated whether the photographs hide them sufficiently enough.
In Ka Fifitu Feetu, Gottesman's subjects are veiled in secrecy, yet control much of what we see and know about them, even if they are able to control little else in their own lives.
:: Kristen Palana [+] ::
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Merel Mirage is an artist that besides sculptures in real space also creates net art pieces. As early as 1996 she made her first piece for the net called poem*generator. One of her latest net projects is Holy, a candy machine that can play clips made on and uploaded through the internet. For this aim Vosholy was developed, a piece of online accessable software which best can be compared with movie editing software like Adobe's Premiere. With Vosholy you can upload material as pictures, movies and sounds from your local harddrive, manipulate it in your browser and what is I think the best: send the movie you made by email to your friends. This because the software is at the moment not linked to the candy machine.
:: Peter Luining [+] ::
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"Presents" is Dutch net art project by the Rotterdam (Netherlands) based artist Ellen Pronk. She started the project in 1999 and it consists of dairy entrances, code snippets gif animations and small flash pieces. "Presents" can be seen as a forerunner of now so popular format of webdairies and personal (b)logs. What makes presents stand out is the vast amount of subjects it covers without getting impersonal and it's duration (4 years now against a average lifespan of 5 months of a blog). Have a look at this project and get absorbed.
:: Peter Luining [+] ::
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Variable Media features artists John Hanson and Richard Paul. Here is part of the press release:

"Variable Media is pleased to announce it's latest project, 'Working Lunch' by artists John Hanson and Richard Paul. Beginning July 6th 2003, this project will develop at the www.variablemedia.org site over a period of two months. 'Working Lunch' finds John Hanson and Richard Paul delving further into their collaborative investigations based on Dudley Stationery, last seen in their exhibition 'Terry's Studio' at Hoxton Distillery, London and in 'Photospin', project space at The Photographer's Gallery in London, UK."
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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The Museum of the Essential celebrates its first anniversary. Below are some of the events:

New interview: Regina Célia Pinto interviews Regina Vater (July)

News at the Library of Marvels: The Newest Song of Exile, Sabi? Virtuality. See the photos of the printed book. (July)

News at the gallery Borders of net.art - web.art and art today: the Art of Tanja Vujinovic & Zvonka Simcic from Yugoslavia, Eslovenia (July)

News at the gallery Digital Poetry:Saadi 1 , colaborative art / poetry, by David Daniels (USA) and Regina
Célia Pinto (Brazil); The Tiradentes' horse by Oscar Araripe (Brazil). (July)

Section CDs of Art and Poetry - "Sabi? virtuality" (3), available to free download *8963 KB, including covers and label - during July, just a gift of our first birthday. (The CD narrative is different of the book and website.



:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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New at Turbulence Artists’ Studios: + requiem + by Michael Takeo Magruder. Here is part of the press release:

requiem+ reflects upon collective memory and emotions surrounding isolated tragic moments in recent history. 01/01/2000 was chosen as the arbitrary start date; the end date is yet to be decided – it is very much a work in progress."

For full details please visit turbulence.org.

:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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A call for online art for the "copenhagen..wireless..art..exhibit" to be curated by Pio Diaz and Eva Sjuve, and which will take place during the month of August in the Royal Park in central Copenhagen, Denmark.

The organisers are looking for "Critical and innovative projects on new, invisible or dormant structures, socio-cultural-political, living space/strategies, emergence and remote collaborations". These projects will be presented in "performances, ultra sound, robotics, dj's, talks, video screenings, streams, globo, scrambling and trans disciplinary events going on the whole month".

Please send a link to the actual work, quicktime, shockwave, mp3, real audio/video, and a 50 word text about the piece pasted into the email to : wireless@moomonkey.com
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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Rhizome.org blocks deep linking. Was it until recently possible to get access to specific urls found in a searchengine as for example Google or link to a certain page on the Rhizome site, it now looks this option is also blocked.

*note: The last 6 months Rhizome permitted deep linking to one specific url but didn't allow further surfing.
:: Peter Luining [+] ::
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Issue six of rhizomes.net (thats plural and nothing to do with rhizome.org!) is on the theme of "Codework/Surveillance".

"'Codework/Surveillance' attempts to work the seam between critical paradigmatics & social discourse, between codework as invention, aesthetic practice, activism, sabotage & its recuperation within and by institutions of knowledge & techno-social surveillance (& vice-versa)."

With contributions from Alan Sondheim and McKenzie Wark this, as are all previous issues, is well worth a look for those brushing up on their new media theory.
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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The following is a commentary, by de and prog, on Garrett Lynch's review of their net project The Post-Patriot Magnetic Motto Maker published on Sunday, July 06, 2003. It was sent to the editor of Net Art Review in response to Lynch's writing. It is here presented as it was received. (Critiques and commentaries of reviews are always welcomed. Those interested simply contact the editor at info@netartreview.net and state if you wish your writing to be published on the website.) Here is the comment as received:
-------------------------

Greetings Netartreviewees!

We at Deprogramming.us were pleased to see Garrett Lynch's discussion of the Post-PATRIOT Magnetic Motto Maker in comparison to some of our other deprogramming.us projects. We can understand Mr. Lynch's confusion: why, after all these projects which foreground programming as both expression and interface, are we messing with magnets? We will try to give some insights:

"Deprogramming.us" has several meanings. The word "deprogramming" in its original context refers to a sort of "unbrainwashing" performed involuntarily on cult members in the hopes of getting them to leave the cult. The premise is that the cult member has become "programmed" by the cult leaders, and is no longer thinking for themself. So the painful and controversial process of deprogramming is intended to get them thinking independently again. Of course, if you look carefully at that premise, the implication is that they'll think the way their deprogrammers (and presumably mainstream culture) want them to think, instead of the way the cult leaders want them to think... so are they really deprogrammed, or merely reprogrammed to the same algorithms as the rest of us? Maybe we could all use some deprogramming now and then...

So there's one meaning of deprogramming. The other is the obvious reverse pun on programming. When the word "deprogramming" was coined in the 1970's, programming was much less ubiquitous and much more mysterious than it is now. Programming to most people conjured cartoonish images of HAL. Now we know programming more personally. And we know that software enforces certain types of conformist behavior (word processor templates
that offer business letters and party flyers; image processing software that gives your images a "look"; software that in general keeps you working and thinking within a particular paradigm and makes your life a living hell if you want to do something unintended it.) But, it's not just the software itself that suffers from these constraints. The creation process, particulary in the dotcom boom, became a hyperlogical, unemotional drag. In commercial software, modules and programmers had to be reusable and interchangable. This led to a cookie cutter mentality which sadly, also pervades a lot of open source software. But even in non-commercial contexts, programming has been seen as a logical, unemotional task of "problem-solving." While it's understood that artists and writers often express feelings/opinions/emotions through their work, and often work spontaneously and messily, this is just downright unbecoming for a programmer. So the other meaning of deprogramming for us deals with approaching programming in an unprogrammatic way.

So how about the ".us"? That we can explain faster. There's "us" and there's "United States" (where we live.)

So there we have 2 interpretations of "deprogramming" and 2 of "us". 2x2 = 4 distinct interpretations, but actually we often deal with the overlaps of these terms as well. ( In our "forkwar" project for example, we used a forkbomb algorithm that generated a deteriorating flag as it crashed the computer, as a metaphor for US Foreign Policy - both obsessively repeat the same mistakes over and over; it's spectacular for awhile, then it crashes the system.)

So as Mr. Lynch has observed, sometimes we deal with programming as an expression of emotion. In fact, most of our projects are based on something we feel strongly about, often something that we seem to be expected (programmed) to tacitly accept. Lately, we feel very strongly about how the US government is using words that sound patriotic to brainwash people into a) supporting the killing of other people and b) living in a police state - lose all your freedom in the name of freedom... And, many people we know are going right along with this, waving flags all the way. The USA PATRIOT Act (1 and 2) freak us out. And that name, oooof! Uniting and Strenghtening America by Providing.. yadda yadda yadda.. But these kinda words are the exact stuff used to "program" people. We wanted to use programming to help deprogram, by providing a new set of magnets/data and reminding people that in the end, the government really is just manipulating you with refrigerator magnet algorithms. As an interface, of course it's not very exciting, but, this is after all, about refrigerator magnets, not interfaces. :-)

But beyond the magnets, we also wanted to play with the idea of office utilties and their various functions We are interested in the possibilities of "meme development" productivity software, and in particular, meme export from a piece of software with a very overt but non-traditional software bias. Foregrounding software bias is not a new idea; a number of software artists have dealt with it in a much more interesting and direct way. However, it's not our intention to be artistically innovative here; in fact we don't really think of this as an art project. We just want people to start slogifying!

In addition to the export features, the magnets can be used as a web filter to bring up biased Google results (dumb as that sounds, we've actually found lots of info that way that we never found before... amazing what a search for "detain ashcroft without trial in guantanamo bay" gets you. :-) ) ... All sorts of biased filters get pushed on us anyway, may as well make our own... But we also hope people will generate their own slogans, place them around town, make t-shirts, etc.. all of this can be done without the PPMMM of course... but then again, typing business reports can be done without MS Word too... it all depends on what type of productivity you'd like to encourage from your productivity software!

-De and Prog

--deprogramming.us
post-dotcom software
-----------------------------------
posted as received by
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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Here are the latest additions to the New Media Fix:

theNews, an online newsletter brought to us by Completely Naked.

The Transmissor, "a working tool to provide not only a free information flow but also an entry to certain pieces of information, some very hard to attain and whose broadcast does not interest media corporations. "

The recommended fix is Net Art Latino
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
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"Deprogramming.us" who were reviewed here not so long ago have just launched a new project entitled "The Post-Patriot Magnetic Motto Maker" as a political comment / parody on the construction methods of the US government to assemble slogans such as those used recently in "the war against terrorism".

To use "The Post-Patriot Magnetic Motto Maker", download it and "just move the magnets around the refrigerator to form phrases. When you have a phrase you like, drape the flag over it and doubleclick in the flag. The Motto-Maker will automatically check your phrase in Google - just in case it might have some unforeseen bugs like USA PATRIOT". "You can publish your slogans online, print stickers, flyers, business cards and address labels, make T-shirts... even export your slogans directly to Washington - and much, much more!"

While interestingly mixing popular culture and the user experience (interacting locally, immediate feedback etc) to make political comment, I do find this work less interesting than previous "Deprogramming.us" work.

Until now all political comment in their work has been about the politics of the virtual, the user and his computer, unique expression in virtual space. The use of virtual / computer constructs and structures, the result of highly advanced human reasoning, to interpret very basic human expression and emotion in only ways that that could manifest in this non-linear / non-physical / metaphoric 'place'. Now a real world interface, the fridge door with magnetic poetry, has been superimposed into this 'place' which takes us away from the 'high' metaphor and back to the classic path of the development of the GUI (Graphical User interface).

While interfaces of the future will probably be more and more visual, less and less textual, due to human ability to de-construct an image at a faster rate than a body of text and the identification by the likes of Lev Manovich that the virtual will continue to absorb the interfaces of the real, i.e. the continued push for some sort of 3D / television based web to the present design of all Macintosh OSX applications using 3D buttons etc. The idea used in this work that our computer screens could become nothing more than a glorified fridge door (albeit a networked one) fills me with dread.
:: Garrett Lynch [+] ::
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