There have always been heroes. Spiritual Heroes are coming. Who are they? Where do they come from? And above all, what are they doing before they were spiritual heroes. When a new time begins they might let art go .... What is it, Art? Is it understanding life?

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Predating the internet itself, email has become a mass communication tool as well as a pillar of contemporary computing culture. The artists featured in this exhibition consider the ways email has become an unquestioned part of our lives; and their diverse works push the traditionally prescribed uses of thie ubiquitous technology. All works are selected from Rhizome's ArtBase.

FW: Re: Re: takes the form of an email. The exhibition will exist solely in people's inboxes and will last until its moved to the trashed or filed and forgotten.

The artists assembled for this exhibition explore the ideologies and imagery associated with email and technologically mediated written communication. Several of the projects address email as a medium for curation. For example, New York-based artist and musician Jesse Aaron Cohen has organized email exhibitions since 2005, sending subscribers thematized collections of digital images taken from archives or found over the Internet. Other featured works expand categories of mail and email art. London-based artist Marc Garrett, Ruth Catlow and Lauren Wright have recently curated DIWO (Do-It-With-Others): E-mail Art at NetBehaviour, an email art project on the NetBehaviour email list, that was also exhibited at the HTTP Gallery in London. In the spirit of early Mail Art, this project was completely open to all, as long as they were subscribers to the mailing list. The submission and selection of the works and subsequent curating of the show was done collectively (with others! ) through emailing. Together, the works in the exhibition look anew at a medium that has become so normal that its implications, form and possibilities are often overlooked.

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in the new theatre of DIY slanderous offers hope for the oppressed, a way out for the circumscribed, a knowlede base for the downtrodden.

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From sounds to neurons, and back

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Welcome to Roland Quagmire III's cyberspace curatorial and blog.

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what are current (actual and potential) new media pedagogies? if 'new,' aren't new forms of critique and creative methodologies required? where are these pedagogies being practiced? the atelier? the Department of Computer Generated Imagery? the Sprint store? do these varied practices fall under Peter Lunenfeld's notion of a 'hyperaesthetics'? should they even be considered aesthetic, with all of the modernist baggage attached to the term? this 'exhibit' is loosely defined by networked artworks that point to intriguing pedagogical possibilities. each work will be studied in a course that i am currently teaching -- ARED 281: Art Education and Visual Culture -- at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. responses to these works will come in the form of new works created by students, which they will add to the network. new networks (newtworks?) this is *rhizome*, for pete's sake.

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Location is an integral problem (or inspiration) to all art. An installation piece, for example, is often very dependant upon its location to establish its effect. A piece of artwork hanging in a museum is contextualized by that setting, given, in this case, such things as credibility. The experience of viewing art is also changed by the location of other things relative to it—in the museum example, the other artworks hanging next to the piece. Furthermore, an artistic experience is greatly changed by our own location relative to it: we view a painting from several angles, we walk around a sculpture to take in its three-dimensional quality, we navigate through an interactive new media piece my changing the location of our mouse on the screen. Location is fundamentally about space, but when applied to the New Media art works of this exhibit, that spatial quality can mean many things. Some artworks concern themselves with specific locations or landscapes, others do not. In some artworks, the location of the art is irrelevant or nonexistent, and the theme of location is instead physically manifest within the piece: location of elements of the piece on the screen itself, location of the elements in relation in one another or in relation to you, the world, or something else. Pieces about location raise questions like, where am I? How do I find my way? The works of this exhibit, though diverse in their interpretation of the location theme, are connected by these ideas of spatial relevance. Furthermore, by placing them together within the location of this exhibit, I have created a new context and space by which they can be viewed, and thus created a new experience of the works themselves.

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Historically, surveillance has been used as a tool to control large amounts of people. The more information one can gather about their subject the larger their advantage is. Even the Greeks and Romans used on-foot military scouts to learn more about the number of the enemy’s troops or the weapons they would be using; they worked to secretly gather this information or risk death. Besides military intelligence, government institutions like prisons and hospitals used surveillance to control their subjects. The design of the Panopticon in 1791 by Jeremy Bentham was a major step in surveillance because it created the feeling amongst the subjects of a constant gaze or that they are always being watched. This constant sense of being watched has gone from specific institutions to general society since video and film cameras have become so practical and widely used. Since Trafalgar Square in 1960, when two temporary cameras were used to monitor crowds during the arrival of the Thai royal family, governments and large private companies have used video cameras to monitor crowds and places prone to criminal abuse. As time passed, people began to recognize the effectiveness and usefulness of video surveillance and cameras became cheaper and more practical. These two factors combined and large amounts of home-surveillance equipment and self-defensive technologies have ended up in the hands of middle-class and lower-class America. This has created a panoptic version of society. Not only does the average citizen have to worry about being taped in government buildings or large businesses, but also people have been recorded by cameras found in private homes, small shops, cars and even people’s phones. In America and all over the world, people and government officials roam the streets with the knowledge that any person could photograph them at any time without them knowing it. So what does the future hold? The government has been using surveillance for years to prosecute criminals; Hasan Elahi has been using self-surveillance to ensure that he is never falsely accused again. Will other people follow this trend of self-surveillance? Will we live in a society where being recorded is not only something that happens occasionally, rather something that we ensure is happening constantly? Only time will tell. All of the exhibits in this collection are examples of technology enabling people to use surveillance for their own purpose.

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With the advent of PACs (Political Action Committees), 527 groups, and other political advocacy organizations in American politics in the mid-1970s, the concept of “political action” has changed significantly. What was once a term stereotypically associated with naive public protestors on hunger strikes or rogue Greenpeace operatives scaling skyscrapers has become something conservative and institutionalized into the very corporate politics it once addressed.

Discussions within the right and within the left have been “resolved” and refined, then disseminated through the most widely consumed media: newsprint, radio, and television. The brevity of their positions on the issues and the black and white nature with which they characterize either themselves or their opponents may be attributed to the cost of articulation (30 seconds of air time, 1 page of newsprint), or the attention deficient constituent. Either way, the voter is not allowed to reason, as the argument for each side is not thoughtfully presented.

The works in this exhibit do not better represent the positions of contention. They do, however, reconsider political action in the context of a new medium. New media artists have used the less restrictive space of the Internet to return to an older definition of political action. Whereas movies, music, television, and other forms of mainstream communication require huge capital investments to make one’s voice heard, access on the worldwide web demands substantially less funding. The web is also a more neutral medium; a webpage creator is not limited by the political affiliation of his hosting server as a chief editor at a newspaper may be by the paper’s owner.

So long as the contemporary powers of “political action” cannot infiltrate the largely decentralized structure of the worldwide web, new media holds immense potential for the advancement of the public discourse and art of a political nature. In this way, one can think of the mainstream media as the primary vehicle for contemporary “political action” (PACs, 527s, etc.) and new media as a voice for an old style of political activism. This exhibit hopes to present and comment on such new media works in the scope of political action. The following works either embody the notion of political action/activism themselves, or address political action from an outsider’s perspective.

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Identity is divided into two categories: 1. Individual identity and 2. the concept of identity. We search for both. In order to unravel either most people assume the only way to so is to deconstruct what they know about themselves and place it in front of them. It's an extremely analytical way of finding an intangible 'truth'. But what has happened is that identity is now only defined by the search, rather than the entity itself. Thus, many times when an artist attempts to represent identity in any sort of philosophical way, they can only fragment it further and hope to touch upon some fundamental truth that might not even exist. So what are we looking for? This is a collection of five artists who have deconstructed their own identity and/or the concept of it. Some of this work was intentionally fragmented, but a lot of it was not, displaying the fact that humans are trapped in their own notions of themselves. Although these works are all well-executed, and some are extremely telling, it is debatable whether they have actually discovered or represented anything real or not. Can identity be represented? If so, is this the best way to do it? Or does it serve to superficialize and externalize something that should be immaterial and internal?

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The internet is offering more than simply a new medium for artists to manipulate; it also provides artist with an infinite source of material and content. This material is practically limitless, and at the same time it is fully searchable, a detailed catalogue of the lives of millions of people. Cyberspace is literally filled with the fodder of our daily lives. Many new media artists have looked at how to exploit this limitless source of new material within their art. These pioneering artists are exploring the worlds of Flickr, and Blogspot, using search technology like Google and tagged information to grab content from all over the Web to use as content. The works in this exhibit share a notable quality – they all appropriate the raw material of the work from the endless masses of cyberspace. But beyond simply appropriating the material, which artists have been doing since the Dadaist photomontages, these works represent the results of real-time trolling of cyberspace, and thereby the artist is not choosing what image to display, or what sound to play; he is simply developing a protocol and a structure within which to frame, manipulate or in some way contextualize and present, real-time raw data that is being harvested by searching the internet. While the methods of presentation that we see below vary greatly, each work shares the fact that the artist is not regulating the raw materials, and that these materials are gathered in real time. This have a very tangible affect on the meaning of each work. These works, especially when viewed collectively, give a visualized glimpse into the content of the web, giving the viewer insight into just what is out there, the varied dynamics of what we as a culture are uploading. Another important facet of these works is a result of the appropriation the artists initiate. We are viewing bits of the millions of pieces of data that people are self-publishing, but as the viewer, we cannot help but wonder if the people who post their snapshots on flickr or any other medium of self-publication, knew that they would be broadcast out to the world as art.

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Since its inception, the video game has been preoccupied with presenting the world how players would like the world. From the arcade games of the 1980’s to the societal metaphors of contemporary gaming, video games have remained an agent of fantasy and imagination. Often video games allow users to play along as characters they could never actually be (Indiana Jones or Harry Potter) or to interact within digital landscapes that are of this world (Hogwarts or Star Wars' Planet Hoth). Many video games feel intrinsically hedonistic. The mock situations, characters, storylines or actions that a user might want to participate with but cannot. These games fulfil and satisfy. They substitute contrived cyber experiences for the ‘real thing’. This exhibit titled Interfaces of Imagination examines artwork on the Rhizome.org artbase that explore the way in the video game can be used as an artistic medium to manifest fantasy. Throughout the works, artists try to reconcile what human imagination wants and desires with virtual interactions that satisfy these cravings. Some see the video game as an agent of revisionist history, a way of interacting with an imagined reality that is somehow preferred to the way ‘true’ history played out. Other artists see the video game hs a way of narrating their own life and growth alongside the development of gaming technology. For the artists featured exhibit reality can be totally re-informed by the virtual world of the video game. Whether this is intended or intrinsic to the works is almost inconsequential– all of the artists consciously or subconsciously pay homage to the video game as an interface of imagination. Instead of seeing the constraints of gameplay, setting, player characterization, and gaming narrative, these new media artists understand the video game to be a medium of manifesting fantasy. Their works, by extension, re-define the conventions of video gaming.

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This exhibit is best received through tight headphones-perhaps audio fragments will then sound familiar and you will stop wondering why memory failed you when trying to find out what Mary said about John. This is a collection of pieces that dwell into the obsessive world of audio surveillance: eavesdropping. These works are an exploration of the nature of the practice and the ways in which we choose to store this secretly gathered information. The artists probe into the nature of the biological processes of memory thus creating such thorough storage methods as algorithms. Several chose to render this audio in an updated version. They either included fragments from prerecordings, such as movie clips, or remixed in other ready made sound, perhaps as commentary on the nature of our sound memory and its susceptability to change with time. The art work to which this exhibit is dedicated and appropriated after, MTAA's TO BE LISTENED TO, is a celebration of available audio and truly encourages the listeners to engage with the audio. Ultimately what we care about is listening in: listening in on them, on the willful participants, on you listening to them now, on me wanting to listen in on it.

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In the past, people have turned to writing in diaries as not only a means of expressing one’s thoughts and emotions but also as a channel for documenting one’s own existence. Writing as the primary, if not exclusive, source of daily reflection, is one step removed from the actual experience itself. Even if the descriptive language is especially evocative of all the experiences one has, an outsider reading will never truly grasp or be able to imagine the intensity of the sun or facial expression of the drug store clerk. New technology has reduced the gap between the experience and the recording of the experience. A lot of daily experience is interpersonal; revolving ones interaction with people and places and concrete objects. With digital video we can record our interactions and people can observe us in our element. With online diaries and blogs, interactions between events and tangible items, like going to a movie and buying a ticket or going to a play and getting a program, can be integrated into our record of daily life. The artifact itself, which has in prior times provoked the reflection, is now integrated into the actual reflective piece, an action that results in the creation of a genre of art specific to this type of documentation. Digital photos can be uploaded into online blogs, ticket stubs scanned, an image from google earth posted. Dear Diary presents works of art that have an element of the autobiography but also attempt to tell a personal story. This project does not just search for online journals and blogs; it strives to find works of art that radiate diary-like reflection when they are examined. Artists Ana Carvalho, Chris Reilly, Richard Vickers, Florian Thalhofer, and Neil Sorenson document personal experiences in diary-like manners that reflect the presence of the blending of diary documentation and new execution techniques that employ digital and interactive media.

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An intro into the obsessive world of eavesdropping

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This exhibition presents works that engage in a practice of open authorship. In agricultural terms �Free Range� is the practice of allowing livestock to graze openly and forage on the natural environment rather than being confined to a feedlot. Traditional containment agriculture emphasizes control: there is a rigid system and while a predetermined outcome is almost guaranteed, the homogeneous product that results is entirely expected with rare exceptions being discarded. In contrast, free range systems allow varying degrees of openness and while the lack of control allows for chance, the end product has the possibility of transcendence. The artists represented here embrace the idea of free range and allow the audiences who encounter their work to read, redistribute, or modify the cultural artifacts in an open system, providing positive evolution and change. In the spirit of free range creation I have opened sourced this exhibition itself at http://certifiedfreerange.xwiki.com. I invite you as an audience to take an active role in the process and add, remove, change, remix and recreate. Just as the idea of author as genius has been suitably debunked, a similar extension can be drawn to curator as author and it is in this state of mind that we all become producers.

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this is an exhibition work in progress. since i am a new rhizome member i will be finding things that i like as i become more familiar with the artbase.

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This exhibition begins with the experience of sitting in front of the monitor and looking out into the vast culture of possibility offered to us by the Internet. On the one hand it is external to us, what's out "there" on the net. On the other hand, it's inside us, the imagined space of the network. It's like being at the center of a cosmic architecture that is at once chaotic and highly organized and which we can know only in fragments. All of the works in this exhibition, which range from the witty to the hypnotic, either communicate or arise from this sense of the Internet.

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This exhibition presents artwork that incorporates issues of identity by using the image as a mode of articulating, and from this coming to terms with, memory and location. Here, place is understood in literal terms: landscape/nature/urban/rural and also in broader terms: interior/house/virtual/body. What is it about these kinds of places that makes us want to remember things and, moreover, how can such places give rise to other memories that we bring to the image, and also self?

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Simplemente una recopilación de trabajos de artistas hispanos en la ArtBase. Absolutamente acrítica.

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I designed this exhibit to show people different types of "art" making techniques. Some of these pieces are interactive with the viewer and some are not. They intrigue me because they are new and interesting ways of creating "art". There is no set outcome.

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The "art of war" is a common term used to describe the strategy and tactics of warfare, but if one looked just beyond the words the term begins to take on different meanings --that war itself is art and that war encourages art (art "of the war"). Though it is very hard to say that war is a positive thing, to an artist it can be of the greatest sources of inspiration, a muse of tremendous and terrible proportions. The events of 9/11 and the war in Iraq (or any war or act relative) are just that. But, the idea that war itself is art brings a question to the table, who is the artist? George W. Bush? The Terrorists? Whether self-proclaimed artist or not, art can be created through accidents, through experiments, through chaos. They, like any artist, have tools to their disposal, expresses ideas, works with different media, changes, creates or tears something apart, (with all intentions aside) then calls it art (or it is called art by another). Then this idea, event, or piece of art work influences other forms of art. The following pieces demonstrate that war is art and as a work of art it encourages other, new forms of art. (The following critiques are my own. The meanings derived from these pieces are my own. I am an advocate of leaving the meanings and expressions of a work up to the viewer to allow a more individual experience.)

Ramblings to reinforce the theme: Art and artists influence one another. In literature many poets pose questions to other authors, poems that ask "where to now?." One view might be that the people of the Middle East (of course not all) look to their beliefs for inspiration, Bush looks to them for inspiration, and other artists look at it all --create art, then ask "where to now?." One may not like being compared to these individuals, but we are all just different shades of gray, all artists of different degrees --all without an acknowledgment to the other.

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This exhibit highlights art and life in a technology intensive world; where new media has transformed the art world by exploring hybrid forms and combining live and mediated experiences. Artists are producing work that simulate what may be considered 'real life', blurring the line between illusion and reality. Pushing this concept even further, artists are creating pieces that place the viewer in situations that offer a greater 'sense' of connection to the world as a whole, while at the same time breeding isolation and inhumanity. For instance, in works like Love Maker v7, the artist created a program that attempts to tailor a love letter that would best suit his/her desired mate and generates an image of a potential human which might be responsive to this letter. It seems that as the lines between virtual and actual worlds blur, technology is altering our perception of what is natural, organic and "real". Some artists are mocking this concept, choosing to explore in their work what the art world and the world as a whole may be coming to with the advent of an impersonal, technology- based life. David Sullivan depicts this reaction in The Ego Machine , a piece that mocks the idea of new technology blurring illusion and reality and how our lives and deaths may be effected by it. Created for a show of artist-designed funerary urns, this piece assumes that as our lives become more digitized, so will our deaths. Our vain efforts to project our historical selves into the future will be reflected in systems and programs that will eventually be created to carry on our egos. A virtual agent, a web spider, scours the web for mentions of the artists name. The results are stored in a database, which drives the artist’s image in Shockwave. As the mentions increase, an image of the artist on-screen multiplies and becomes younger. As the mentions decline, the artist's image loses its health and deteriorates. As with any piece of art, the medium and the content together form the art. The souly technology based interaction required for a piece of new media based art is what this exhibit celebrates and at the same time questions. How far will it be taken?

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Art and technology have gone hand in hand since the cavemen, although they seem to be opposites. Alexander Nguyen says, "Art is about using tools and finding new ways to create images and ideas. It is the catalyst for technological advancement." Most art is derived from the right hemisphere of the brain. While the left hemisphere of the artist's mind is absorbing the technology around them, the right side is producing art that represents the advancement of technology. I feel any art I choose could be used as examples for my theme, but I did look for some that seemed a little more techy than others.

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Man has a deep seeded desire to attain an understanding of life and to exist beyond death. This is a simple concept that can make or break a person according to their level of desire. These pieces explore the outlet of human understanding beyond the confines of the body and perception of reality.

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Today it seems that so many are focused on having a firm grip on everything around them. Control has become one of the primary motivators within the human experience. In fact, the idea of having little or no control at all frightens most of us. However, there are some, including the artists featured in this exhibtion, who have decided to give in to chance. Through doing so it has been discovered that art just as profound and beautiful as a planned piece can be achieved by giving in to randomness and spontaneity. All one has to do is provide the framework for chance.

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A collection of artwork comprised of video, audio, and text. These components are the three key elements to the web. Each piece has a design quality that is minimalistic yet still visually appealing. All web sites use either video, audio, or text in some way or another, to sell something, express opinions, or inform visitors, but those sites are typically linear, not allowing the user to experience the site, but simply visit then go on to the next with little or no interaction. The purpose of this exhibit is to showcase three sites that use each element, but in a way that is interactive with the user.

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What is virtual 3D? It is defined as a computer generated graphic display of depth, width, and height. Everything that exists on this planet has these three properties, but the difference is between physics and computer laws. A big aim of 3D modeling programs is to create realistic images and animation using these three properties. When I say realistic I am referring to 3D realism incorporating the three properties. While humans have found ways to bend the laws of physics, it is much easier to do so when you can create the laws yourself. My exhibit displays work from several artists who use virtual 3D to express their ideas while being unbound by gravity, space and time.

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Like the proverbial tree in the forest, does art exist without an audience to experience it? This exhibit showcases works of art that blur the line between artist and audience. All artists desire to speak to an audience through their work. What better way to involve the audience than to have their interactions with the piece become the art? The art works in this exhibit not only depend on the audience for recognition but require their interactions to enhance the works. In fact all of the works included draw their expressiveness from the audiences interactions with the pieces. And likewise the audience can not fully experience the works without direct interaction with them. The audience is not a passive viewer of the art, but in a way is the audience, the artist and the critic simultaneously.

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This exhibition presents the variety of emotional steps faced during change. Each piece represents a different state of mind that is felt during change; from the initial conception that change is needed to the feeling of achieving this goal. The reason I wanted to focus on the topic of change is that I feel it's an essential step in everyones life. Change is very healthly. The daily grind of life can bring one's spirit down. At this lowered state, obstacles in our way can seem unconquerable. Time is needed to think things through, to realize what changes are needed. Once the plan is in effect it's only time before the goal is reached and the "walkway to change" has been traversed.

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In most cases, a piece of artwork is the same no matter when or where you experience it. But, in a recent browsing of various rhizome.org works, I noticed that many works are different each time they are viewed. They have a sort of randomness to them. In the works that I chose to curate, the randomness factor was applied in very unique ways, either by the work itself, or by the person experiencing the piece, and sometimes both.

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In today's society, women are often viewed not as a unique individual, but as an idea or concept: a mother, a housewife, a sex-toy, etc. "Maintaining the Ideal" is a collection of pieces that speak on woman's perceived role in society as a plastic and unrealistic idealized version of a female, and how trying to maintain that ideal may entail the loss of one's own identity.

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Men on walls of stone and candle light monastery copies; great invention, great inventory. The language of abstract patterns understood, text read, and image created; blending the knowledge of the visual sense and the textual-created mind image sums a result far greater than either alone. Herein reside four examples:

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The evergrowing popularity of video gaming entertainment has grown and sophisticated to the point that it has created its own world, mimicking reality in many ways, skewering it in others, and generating its own cultural rules, taboos, and normalities. The artists in this exhibit examine the line between actual life and simulated life, a line they ultimately pierce.

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Moving Image Gallery (MIG), a physical gallery at 414 Broadway, NYC and a web site at movingimagegallery.com, was founded by Doron Golan and Michele Thursz in 2000. The gallery was in operation for over a year and produced over 15 shows and events.

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sine.qua.non (sin' ä kwä nön'), n. the essential, crucial or indispensable ingredient without which something would be impossible; an absolute prerequisite.

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The unveiling of the blog - an open window into another's innermost thoughts - has habituated the public into a priviledged knowledge of the intimate experiences and secrets of strangers. Why would anyone place something into the open waters of the world wide web if it is not meant to be seen, read, or experienced by another? Having placed something online, is it possible to un-invite the unknown thousands of web-surfers from you innermost moments?

The works selected for this exhibition all address the notion of invaded privacy. They tap into the need for a private oasis even within a world wide presence. In Awkward Moment #2 and in Inviligate, the artists create intimate spaces through which the viewer is placed in the position of an intruder. In Don't Touch Me the viewer is both rewarded and scolded for interacting with the site's "inhabitant" before being drawn into an increasingly personalized interaction with the "inhabitant." Crying Machine mechanizes an confoundingly intimate experience of emotional release, whereas Uninvited Words is a protest against automated email intrusions. Confess, on the other hand, capitalizes upon the public's impulses to find and reveal ever more intimate experiences.

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The electric cave of our collective hallucination.

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A visual reflection of sound, a timeline of noise reactions that are interpreted through a plotted image that morphs according to pitch, levels, tones volume and frequency. An intelligent flash design that utilized the users own mic for input creating a unique interactive design.

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Klara Hobza's Linux Version Project Website.

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This gallery inculdes artist work that I found interesting and would like to be involved with our use for inspiration.

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C6 are a small cell of like minded artists operating since 1997 to produce ‘Event Driven Afunctionality (E.D.A.). E.D.A emerges when an audience is provoked to participate in a counter productive system. This non logical process creates a new awareness to the broadcast medium and message. ‘Want & Need’s’ transformation of data from word to image then back to text involves the public in a displaced creative enviroment of complex technology for arcane result. This multi layered and unpredictable dialogue between the public, gallery and the viewer is essential to the practice of C6. There are no fixed territories for C6 works, which, since its formation, has produced art all over the world in several different media.

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namaste! am nil from kolkata(calcutta)India am a new in digital art my profession is of a civil engineer I seek guidance and support from all concerns related to Art only

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This exhibit highlights net art that uses three-dimensional interfaces to force its audience into exploring the work as if it were an actual physical environment. Since the internet currently tends to be viewed as a 2D space, forcing the audience into a third dimension often requires them to adopt an entirely different type of logic in order to fully view the piece. Abandoning tried and true two dimensional interfaces, these pieces force the audience to learn a new way to interact. As with any piece of art, the medium and the content together form the art. The interaction required for a piece of three-dimensional net art is what this exhibit celebrates. The added freedom of exploration in three dimensions is something to be aware of while viewing these pieces. Also note the relations between the physical and virtual world that are highlighted by three-dimensional interaction.

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Since its early days, the internet has been changing the way we perceive the world around us. It has opened up doors for the sharing, mixing, and re-interpretation of media. The web has allowed for information to be distributed and re-mediated over and over. Today, everyone and everything has a web presence. Grandmas have blogs now. And you better believe that Twinkies have a flash site. What I'm trying to say here is that the internet is making everything old new again. But eventually, that becomes old as well.
The pieces I have chosen for my exhibit are all exciting in their own way. Each piece remediates a different form of media into something that's charming or unexpected. I love it when things that I am familiar with are twisted in such a way that it sheds a completely different light on them. The examples I have chosen take generally familiar things and place them into different context. This is done by making them more personal, less personal, more interactive, less interactive - all of the subjects are approached in a different way than you'd expect. In different ways, these projects all exhibit how "the medium is the message."
In this exhibit, you will be able to see and enjoy re-mediated text, voyeurism, film, viruses, and more!

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projects by [d.o.t.t.e.d.q.u.a.d]

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Being the time of the season that it is, one special day always creeps around that catches me off guard. Simply put, we call it Daylight Savings Time. For the longest time, I've been fascinated by this day, mainly because it takes what we've been used to the for past 6 months and smashes it to the ground. Where does this mystery hour disappear to or get added from? Why do we collectively ignore an hour of passing time or welcome an extra one? Shouldn't we just adjust our 24 hour clocks to accommodate the extra bit of time accummulated by the Earth's orbit? It seems a bit unnecessary now that we are in the midst of the computer age, to halt and edit our lives for some farmers that now make genetically altered food. (probably...) With this idea in mind, I decided to discover the way that time is represented in netart pieces, and different ways that we can approach the idea of time. Why do we assign digits to passing life? Is it possible to understand the passing of time without the use of digits?

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When discussing the Internet there is one term that is a constant, and this is Identity. Identity has been there since the start of the Internet. From chat rooms to personal web sites, identity is always present. People are always expressing or changing their identities with the use of the Internet. When people go into chat rooms they assume an identity. They may make up an entirely different personality or use their own. Whatever they do they are expressing themselves and creating an online identity. Identity is also very prevalent outside of the Internet. People have been taking pills to alter their selves even before the Internet started. They take the pills because they don’t like how they appear to themselves. It may not change their identity on the outside but it puts the person in a different mindset. Identities come from many different things in peoples lives. From where they live or come from to society and advertising to pills and other mind altering substances. I have selected some examples of art from this site that deal with identities and where people get them.

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I started poking around in the ArtBase and I came across my first piece, it really inspired me to create the exhibit I have here. The driving force behind the pieces I've chosen is the concept of possible connections. In some ways these pieces represent a version of the internet, a concept of being so close to someone yet so far away. Each piece deals with the connections between two or more people that could have been but weren't.

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To transfer virtual art into a psychical condition is the subject of this exhbition. So you can touch or interact with the piece of art.

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The portrayal of reality on the net is mystifying. There are countless live web cams, screensavers and desktops of nature and we spend time looking at them all while inside sitting at a desk staring at a screen. These are things that we have right outside our door. We want to be connected to everything in the most immediate way yet we don’t want to be taken from behind our protective barrier of the computer screen. We are confronted with other people and nature every day but while immersed in it all we can do is wait till we are elsewhere. These works are some examples of our viewing of nature and reality as they are re-mediated through our computer monitors.

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Big media has officially taken over our opinions. No matter which channel we watch for our news we are given the same stretches of the truth twisted to different degrees to satisfy our “individual” tastes with little room for independent opinion. Here in my exhibit I’ve chosen my favorite pieces in which the artists in one way or another challenge what we are ALLOWED to see and hear from our “unbiased” news SOURCE(s) through their opinions of war. Though an anti-war argument could be formulated through the collaboration of these pieces, it is not my intention in this case to uplift any political propaganda. Instead I am using these pieces to illustrate that we as the artists are responsible to inform, educate, and above all encourage thinking outside of that which is presented to us by our current system. The use of this subject matter to illustrate my point may in fact, present a cliché based on how we’ve debated and beaten this topic to the ground. (Especially as students here at Emerson where our thinking on the matter is constantly challenged) However there always have been and there always will be wars. Moreover it always will be up to those who consider themselves to be thinkers, i.e. the artist, not to present the public with “an” or “the” answer but to challenge the thinking of greater society as whole. That is our challenge and what these net art artists have done.

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These works explore the concept of data as image. These pieces provide a conceptual framework for visualizing statistics with the use of representational formats that have not been traditonally used for art making.

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reimaginings/ is a critique of the current culture of data visualization, hyperlinking and relationship mapping. Databases, visual graphing tools, and other internet technologies have made it possible to connect any packet of data to any other packet of data. The illustration of these relationships through research papers, graphs, animations and dramatic reenactments is often a display of technical wizardry designed to assert the importance of the case being made and to intimidate with complexity and rhetoric.

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--On Wednesday, March 10, 2004 12:06 PM -0600 Leif Brush Leifurb@passaroundsound.net wrote: CONCEPT: enter Internet's blackwhole with what THE EPHEMERAL, LISTENING and "SEEING" its imagery as a perpetual generational process of contextualized realtime combinations conjoined with terrestrial and extraterrestrial phenomena; global inputs from listening participants who monitor and offer their physical sources to create a unique and temporally constructed epicentral whole within the Internet's blackwhole. This project seeks to attach to the consciousness of people in a way not unlike the embedding of childhood sounds in long-term memory. REVISITED SOUNDS REINVIGORATE THE PRESENT. THE MELDING OF NATURAL ENERGIES IS A SATISFYING HUMAN EXPERIENCE. This temporality inherent process would rely on the voltages from physical nature's processes to offer this inclusive listeners' connection. An undeniably personal possession. Recordings? I feel no need as our planet's clockwise motion slows further, changing cloud configurations appear as strangers to those who have spent their lives studying and archiving them. How can this project be delivered and received to/from the Interent? A requisite necessary for listening in on such a complex playing ideally be a solar powered demultiplexing receiver, to reconstitute (receive) the multiplexed input. A personal computer projection set-up may include an installed speaker environment behind and beneath walls, floor and ceiling. HOW DOES ONE PARTICIPATE? Through getting the words and actions out of mouths and minds. This Internet page announces, for starters, an annual summer solstice project, using realtime DSPd imaging and sound as process. Through identifying contributor sound-imaging resources: hardware; software; Internet time zone and seasonal differences; set-ups for Internet tests and delivery strategies and coordinated Longitude and Latitudinal sites of global contributors. AMPLIFICATIONS FROM from the world wired for what, CONTRIBUTE WHAT? My own monitored vibrations: Solar panels turned on myriad pre-amped sensors to overhear and "see" vibrations not readily heard, technically deliverable holographically and audibly together in space. A tree trunk's groans, a shimmering heat eddy could both be "seen" and heard. SOUNDS GATHERED for aural-vision by the use of crystal, triaxial acellerometer, proximity, hydrophone, infrared, DSPd imaging and other optical/vibratonal input sensors. Sounding sites are requested from you.

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Sex and new media may seem an illogical pairing. The cold, digital abyss of the computer realm would perhaps be better suited to exploring international economics, or making little animated robots fight. Why should net artists attempt to deal with the most intimate of all human subjects? The simplest answer, perhaps, is that it’s inescapable. There is no manmade medium entirely devoid of sex. The Internet may be made up of metal, wires, zeroes and ones, but you can always count on people to find a way to sexualize it. In fact, the Web itself has spawned a sexual revolution of its own. How long did it take people to fill every corner of the Net with evidence of their desires, perversions, and all other kinds of sexual matter? Sex was in there from day one. Therefore, net artists have a duty to explore the topic of sex via new media, and all the various forms it takes in the modern, digital era. Some artists choose to explore sex and new media through humor and irony. Others investigate the new and different ways in which sexuality is expressed on the Web. I have selected some examples of art that deal with sex on these and other levels. These are by no means the only works on this site to do so, but they suit my purposes well here.

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a collection of anti-capitalist and anti-corporate net.art projects

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We seem to be obsessed with ourselves. The internet has only furthered that obsession. This collection of net art pieces explores what one might call “net identity”.

What really is a net identity? To me, it is not something that is all that real, because it is just a representation of a person. Further, that representation is being created or processed technologically. And isn’t technology is in some ways the antithesis of humanity? People do not need to interact face to face nearly as much anymore with the internet, so their portrayal of themselves through a computer becomes a new representation of self. I suppose this is useful and time efficient in many circumstances, but also could be detrimental to the personal interactions our society thrives on. I might be getting ahead of myself here. This sort of thing has been an issue of debate ever since the internet came to be, but it still fascinates me as I continually struggle with the implications of net identity.

One’s net identity can take on a variety of forms, many of which are now hugely popular, especially with younger generations. Most prominent seems to be blogs/web journals and chat rooms/ instant messaging. The average user with these programs is usually just writing, which is a relatively straightforward means of self-expression in any realm. But what the internet allows for is a much easier way to take on another identity that you might not be able to pull off person to person. The options are limitless; you can portray yourself as whomever you’d like, you can network with others you’d never normally meet, you can be a big secret or spill your guts. The opportunities to express your net identity seem to be expanding more an more as new websites and programs pop up.

There are so many aspects that come into play when net identity and net art are combined, which you can see below. These pieces are ones that I found interesting, mostly because I could relate to them in some way.

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As an art student living in the City, I cannot help but notice how repetitive city life is and how city dwellers are subconsciously reminded of our conformity wherever we may look. Everything from the repetition of ads and buildings to being herded like cattle onto public transport systems stifles the human need for individuality. If you were to stop 100 people on the street and ask them if they considered themselves to be individuals, more than likely, everyone would say they are. While they may have a few individualistic qualities, they have much more in common with the people around them then they will acknowledge. The loss of identity is celebrated through the media and not mourned. People are made to feel insecure about themselves, and urged to fit in with the rest of society. Even the advertisements that stress individuality are still selling the consumer a mass produced product that hundreds of thousands of other consumers will be using. This art exhibit takes a look at conformity through oversaturation, loss of individuality in art, and the dissassociation of humanity from nature in the world around us.

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The human mind is a place where the most innovative things are invented and where the simplest action such as a smile can be done. There is a realm of our minds where there are no rules and no limits to what we can do. No limitations that reality can enforce; the realm of our dreams. What exactly happens in our minds when our eyes close at night? The pieces of net.art in my exhibition all touch on that very concept of dreams, nightmares, and the limitless abilities in them. Dreams are windows into a world beyond our grasp. Dreams are all around us. From the movies we watch, to the keypad I'm typing on, to the cars we drive to taking flight in the sky. The images in our dreams also help us to create art that no conscious mind could think up. Whether our minds "dream up" a great piece of net.art or a dream we have inspires net.art, our minds, whether awake or asleep, are a vast field of images or memories that our mind triggers before it begins its dream sequence. It is an endless world; a world much like the internet. One image or event leading to another, all combined in the grid in our minds. We sometimes many have trouble joining the real and the imaginary, but through net.art we can create it and bring it to life. Now if we could just bring a computer into our dreams and take notes or pictures of what we see, now THAT would be an incredible piece of net.art.

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This exhibit, if I must introduce it, is about the studies into the linearity or lack thereof within some net.art pieces. Mostly, I would like to focus on the lack of linearity in sound. Is this really "random" sound generation? While one can argue that the randomness generators may "never" repeat themselves, can we really agree that this is fact, since most of it is based off of algorithmic expression? Take this exhibit as you so please.

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Death has always been an interesting topic for me. I admit, the concept scares me somewhat, but it is also intriguing that we are creatures who are capable of comprehending and analyzing the state of our condition, such that we are aware of our own mortality. It is most likely due to this awareness that we are influenced to think of things in a strictly terminal sense; everything has a beginning and an end. When confronted with an infinite concept, we are unable to wrap our heads around its un-ending qualities. But why, then, are we so comfortable with digital media? It is something we have embraced with open arms and little hesitation, yet it seems to have no apparent end. The internet is vast and limitless, and the contents held within does not deteriorate or decay like organic material. Death, it seems, is redefined when referring to digital media. Instead of dieing and ceasing to exist, data simply moves into collected areas like archives and old websites. These areas are the places where old media goes to "die," or as close as they come to it, much in the way Florida is like a place for old people to go to die. Only this Florida never ends, and there is no eventual expiration. The pieces in this exhibit in some way discuss this aspect of "digital death" and what that may imply, or even if it exists.

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works that can be called of 'labyrinthic', in some way.

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ART

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Designers and programmers are being acknowledged this year for creating games as social commentary. Many PC games motivate your interaction by placing you in a kill or be killed setting, while other games typically encourage winning as your objective. Contrary to mainstream games, the games we have selected call your attention to the story and place importance on inaction as well as action. They illustrate polemic perspectives on war, terrorism, GMO's, and capitalism. Even though these games make you think about serious issues, they are still fun, creative and masterfully designed. From cute pixel flash games to realistic 3-D game mods, these works peacefully exemplify the art of War Games.

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Project I found for art 107

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INTERACTIVE INSTALLATIONS CONTAING AUDIO AND VIDEO.

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My collaborative work

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You will be given love You will be taken care of EXHIBITION IN PROGRESS

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Researching approaches to digital conceptualism.

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Artists! Try to forget the very notion of 'art.' Forget those silly fetishes -- artefacts that are imposed [on] you by suppressive system[s] you were obliged to refer your creative activity to. Theorists! Stop pretending that you are not artists. Your will to obtain power [over] people [by] seducing them with intellectual speculations is very obvious (though understandable). But [a] realm of pure and genuine communication is much more appealing and is becoming very possible nowadays. Media artists! Stop manipulat[ing] people with your fake 'interactive media installations' and 'intelligent interfaces!' You are very close to the idea of communication, closer than artists and theorists! Just get rid of your ambitions and don't regard people as idiots, [unfit] for creative communication. Today you can find those that can affiliate [with] you on [an] equal level. If you want of course.

- Alexei Shulgin (1996)

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I have no sweeping theme or curatorial objective but to get a little closer to artworks I love!

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Network Scapes

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These art works were added to Rhizome Art Base on January First, Two Thousand and One. This was reason enough for them to be selected, viewed, and enjoyed! (The exhibition banner shows photos taken of Jupiter on 01/01/01 by Thomas E. Williamson in Rio Rancho New Mexico)

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Ephemera -series, explores human identity and spiritual significance using abstract composition.

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A videoprojection about the nothingness and life

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The internet is sometimes referred to as the "Global Village." This name is fitting when considering the physical distance that is overcome so that people on opposite ends of the world are able to communicate. In some ways, however, it is a misnomer. Instead of being a community where everyone knows everyone else, it is a space where identity is intangible and hidden behind aliases and user names. The internet can instead be considered a big city where anonymity abounds. This anonymity allows for greater freedom of expression. When identity is hidden, truth is revealed more easily. The works in this exhibit are outlets for anonymous emotions. In many ways, they are like writing on bathroom walls. You can write anything because you do not have to account for anything you write. These works let their users tell their wishes, their frustrations, their lies, their secrets. They allow for users to be completely honest and bare their souls because their words cannot be traced. The works also release these messages into a public space. It is not enough for the users to simply write out their emotions; those emotions also need to be viewed by others to be deemed important. These works are cathartic tools. They encourage unmitigated honesty and provide a safe-haven for emotions by maintaining anonymity in an already nearly identity-free environment. These tools center around certain emotions or causes to narrow down the type of expression and to bring the user in contact with other people who feel the same way or share a similar experience. Most people need a confidant, someone to listen. These works give each anonymous user a confidant: another anonymous user.

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---Joseph Campbell, a theorist on narrative structures, wrote “Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.” ---All the artworks included in this exhibition are alive/interactive, whether they shun narrative structure or embrace it. Fictive or real, these pieces take the formerly passive observer of narrative form (be it film, literature, photography) and force him to create an individualized, pretend “storyscape”. Rather than recapitulate standard plot-arcs, the artists in this exhibit favor the cyclical structure of children playing pretend. ---With My Lover in Unequal Parts: A Found Photo Project, for instance, Rheim Alkadhi connects pictures from Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine with words of a fictional person seeking a lost lover. The narrative is loosely drawn, and is nonlinear. The artist writes that “…the lover is revealed through all and one…”. The photographs—although blurred and poorly composed—are vague enough that they allow the viewer to explore his own memories. The lover could be anything; the artist imposes no authoritative metaphorical significance. Since the viewer knows Alkadhi crafted this narrative from bits of life, there exists an inherent freedom to play with it. ---The Email Flyer Project by Tim Devin also offers participants the opportunity to interact with a fictional narrative. By leaving flyers with the notes of bickering lovers (intended to mimic what might be printed off yahoo mail), Devin attempts to engage people in the make-believe drama he’s created. He succeeds, in that people email to console or criticize Sue and Jay. Thus, the story of a real person’s real day becomes entwined with the pretend-world of Sue and Jay. Devin imagines that some people spent time and energy crafting the perfect reply. This is a formless narrative—as the participants never hear back from the feuding couple. It is just a moment rich with the meaning of being alive, without any introduction or denouement. ---Hundekopf by Knife and Fork uses simple text-messaging technology to allow those riding the Berlin metro to participate in a vaguely subversive political group. Once on the train, text messages connect the real sights with a narrative structure designed to mimic the train ride. In this way, a virtual/story world can be entered and exited from any point located around a central hub. The hub, in this case the TV tower, serves the same function as the child’s fort, a fixed object around which play revolves. ---Luca Bertini’s 800-178968 also blurs the boundaries between the real and imagined. After calling a toll-free number, the audience is assaulted by phone calls intended to capture the spirit of a stalker: “I’d really love to hear you breathing into the phone.” One can imagine that after the first few phone calls, the participant might begin to wonder when the calls will stop. Like the delayed emails of Mouchette.org, this art project focuses on forming a fluid interpersonal narrative between the fiction and the real observer. ---In The Kissing Booth by Kimberly Simpson, the viewer sees the artist’s life reconstructed into stories about kissing. Such a focal point seems wildly arbitrary, but is—in the postmodern sense—no more arbitrary than career changes or moral accomplishments. By presenting her history in this way, Simpson shows the impossibility of any narrative structure to accurately represent a life lived. As Campbell explained, we bring the meaning to life. By imbuing kisses with meaning, the artist invites the viewer to reexamine his own life, and to fill in the gaps in Simpson’s story with imagination. ---Lastly, Accidental Mpegs by Joe McKay compiles found slices of life recorded with digital cameras. A design flaw causes people to switch on the video function when they mean to take a picture and, in doing so, a context-less, structure-less story is revealed. This is the narrative deconstructed to its barest form: characters (rich with backstory) interacting. From that bare moment, the viewer has the freedom to find meaning where he will. As with My Lover in Unequal Parts, McKay gives the viewer agency to craft his own fiction out of reality. ---Together, these works represent a step away from traditional notions of narrative, fiction and truth. The viewer wields the power to begin and end his interaction with the storyscapes. The amorphous nature of such “pretending” echoes the structural boundlessness of the internet itself, and of human consciousness.

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Since 2001 Analogue Art Map has employed non digital media to address issues of digital technologies particularly within the realm of creativity. Through architectural interaction, mapping social networks and psycho cartography, the group seeks to both record and generate connections between creative individuals and the spaces in which they live. Analogue Art Map strives to continue its ground breaking work using only obsolete technology.

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This piece explores many areas of phonetics/words and there instant association with images & News. The world has become over diluted with imagery, so that their meaning has become diluted. What does it take these days to shock, nothing can compete with War & Poverty, Happiness & Consumerism that is offered instantly by TV. Has this become the new barometer of our senses. What this piece tries to show, through random text, images, video & news, is the uncertainty of life, and how one image or word or story does not fit all people the same.

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How does Digital Art enhance the present status of Impermanence in our lives? By randomly selecting days, memories, spaces, events, landscapes, emotions, with our innermost thoughts of life and death, in thousands of frames. And a frame here is seen as a depiction of a specific physical or psychological event that exposes an Impermanence. In the past century we've seen the rhythm of Life changing dramatically and accelerating into new modus vivendi. A lifestyle filled with imprecision where the gaps face us with our innermost Impermanence - the state of permanent mutation. The duality of the variety of mediums and its constant modifications (new developments) reinforces this state of ever changing times. This multiplicity of Digital Mediums available these days, adds a volatile memory to the recordings of different events. The content can be portrayed in several time-space events with gaps between it. The duration of the event depicted in a frame is the Impermanence. The Art selected for this Exhibit talks about Life's Impermanence in a group of questions that'll lead us to some reflections on grief, loss, imprecision, doubt, memory, path, emotion, identity, within the limits of our nature.

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Inspired by film noir and b/w Hollywood horror films, my most recent work is a series of short video loops produced exclusively with composited computer animation. In these videos there is no beginning and no end, only a single moment continually repeating like a skipping record. Questions are not answered; the story is implied but never defined.

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This piece was completed in November of 2006 and was exhibited at the Dowd Fine Arts Gallery in Cortland, NY. Trap was also included in the Ritual and Repetition Exhibition at James W. and Lois I. Richmond Center for Visual Arts at Western Michigan University in March/April of 2007.

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Todo la realidad es una pura union de hilos mentales y emocionales. A.JODOROWSKY

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Some interesting stuff about this

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The artworks which were selected for my exhibit were based largely off the symbiotic relationship that takes place between nature and technology. When we think of nature, the logical aspects come to mind: forests, seas, animals, etc; and technology is commonly seen as the opposite of nature: metropolitan areas, computers, televisions, cars, etc. It’s almost the equivalent of living on a farm on one-thousand acres of mountainside and having another house in the middle of Manhattan. Naturally we think of both these “terms” in their most pure form and most of us leave it at that. But what if we wanted to form an interaction with the two? Or what if we wanted to grab a piece of nature, understand it, and then say, “Okay, now let’s see if this is possible…” And that’s where the technology comes in. The reason I am so attracted to this theme is that people are taking nature—something that was not created by any man—and applying learned sciences to it; to see it, to understand it, to monitor it, and to radically change it. A good example of this interaction can be seen through David Bowen’s “Growth Rendering Device”. In this art project, David combined an inkjet printer, some paper, wires, and a pea plant and created a system for feeding the plant and documenting the growth with successive drawings created by the printer. David actually did two other projects that I have chosen for my exhibit that somewhat parallel this one. One of them, “Infrared Drawing Device”, involves four sensors that detect movements from a participant, and a mechanical arm with a piece of charcoal that interprets the movements and translates them onto paper in the form of charcoal drawings. Bowen’s last piece that I selected for my exhibit was one titled, “Fly Drawing Device”. Much like his previous two, David has created a system for documenting some form of nature onto paper, only this time it’s the movements of house flies. A fly enters a chamber that Bowen created himself, and miniature sensors relay the information to a controller arm with a piece of charcoal in which it attempts to translate the fly’s movements onto paper. The most visually appealing piece I chose for my exhibit was that of Christopher Bauder and Robert Henke’s "Atom". Now while this piece doesn’t actually mix nature with technology the way that David Bowen’s did, it does provide the viewer with a very creative look at the makeup of atoms, molecules, pixels, space, and gravity. Using sixty-four helium filled balloons, dimmable LED lights within those balloons, computer-controlled cables, and “variable positioning and illumination of each atom” (Bauder, 1) the two artists manipulate the work in real-time to create “a pixel in a warped 8x8 spatial matrix” (Bauder, 1). In Chris Sugrue’s "Delicate Boundaries", we are invited to explore the result of human touch interacting with a digital realm. In Chris’s piece, digital animations resembling small life forms are transferred from a computer screen to a human hand or arm when it touches the screen. It is almost like the screen or program knows when a human presence is near and the animated bodies slowly make their way to the point of contact and then cross over the boundary from computer to human. The final piece I chose for my exhibit was Martin Bonadeo’s "Thermosynthesis". In this art piece, Martin has created a series of sculptures made out of alcohol thermometers and arranged in a way so that they imitate flowers. The center of these pieces is a heat-emitting light that also has sensors on it to detect human presence. So when the light detects a person, it lights up, putting out heat and causing the alcohol in the thermometers to rise. In some of Martin’s works he has a thermostat to restrict how high the alcohol in the thermometer can go, but in others he does not, which results in irreversible modifications to the piece and causing it to “bleed”. It is increasingly fascinating to see how human interaction and the application of technology to an already discovered field can change things so dramatically. Essentially this is how new discoveries are made within the realms of science and engineering, but to put these applications to use in a creative manner without boundaries is amazing. Studying the relationship between nature and technology and continuing to expand its limits and the applications of the combination of the two is a case for unrelenting physical and mental creativity, and shows no signs of letting up.

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"Weird, I don't get it. What are they thinking?! Cool. Ugly. Awesome. There's a message here."

Art I feel, should invoke responses as well as be seen by as many people as possible. Creating art is accomplished in many ways and different media. With all the technology, it is easy to acheive art as well as get it out into the world. Art for the masses is now possible and people who may never step into a working studio, gallery or art museum can now virtually tour the world of art simply by the click of a mouse. This has also enabled artists who otherwise would have trouble getting the exposure they desire. The internet has changed how artists can get word out as well as photos and videos of their work.

Art, too, has been transformed from stagnant displays to interactive intrepretations of color, form and even sound. Most art incorporates some of these elements in order to achieve responses. The new urban art that we are seeing so much of is innovative, bold, simple and complicated. It's not just about scenery, animals, Greek sculpture. It's our art. Now. It's youthful and in-your-face. It is not your parents' art.

Yamashita and Kobayashi. Joao Santos. Joseph Gray. As curator of my online show, I have chosen these three artists because I feel that they exemplify some of the latest urban art. To me urban art is art that is the art of the people. It is timely, but not pretentious. These pieces are thought-provoking, innovative, colorful, employ unique materials or common items, yet all contain interesting themes. They are edgy, but approachable. The world is their canvas and the viewer is drawn into the playful, yet sophisticated space these artists have created. Sound coupled with movement, scattered with color are all integral and common themes of the artists I wish to present.

Diversity is what makes the world work. The work of these artists is truly diverse and promises the viewers that they will see the ordinary in a new way. None of these artists show any timidity or meekness with their work. They are bold and forward thinking.

I have always preferred simple and minimalist artwork. Art, to me, should should command its own space, but involve the viewer as well. Art should also explore different ways of looking at things. These different styles of art put new twists on the ordinary and show different views of things that we often take for granted, yet alone take the time to think about. With so much going on in our busy world, it is refreshing to stand back and look at life through a creative eye. Words carry weight, but art shoulders the responsibility of taking the viewer on a visual journey that sometimes involves the rest of the senses.

All of the artists I have picked use simple themes. The complications or intricacies of the art are in the intrepretations as experienced by the viewer. You can read much more into these pieces or you can accept them simply at face value. Therein lies the theme.

The three (four) artists I have chosen use every day objects or themes and transform them into a thinking person's show. For example the Japanese team of Yamashita and Kobayashi, now living and working in Berlin (graduates of MFA Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music) use ordinary objects in their art. They go beyond the normal observations, however, by making common objects into art- things that normally would go unobserved by most of us.

For example, I chose Yamashita and Kobayashi's organic exhibit which portrays the symbol of infinity. Instead of creating the path of infinity by drawing it or laying down material of some sort, they walk the path. Feet and earth literally become the mediums of this art exhibit. The path is created in a grassy field over a period of five days. Watching a path become a work of art through basically walking, running, stomping is a creative way to achieve the symbol. It's not an every day event to see a path become one. Yamashita and Kobayashi show this to us. The artists say, "Paths are made by walking. In order to determine whether the phrase was actually true, we kept running in a park for five days. In the fast-forward movie compiled from digital photographs taken one per second, a path ...gradually emerges..." Paths are often taken for granted when one is using it, but to see the work that goes into the path and the process of many footsteps, you could say footwork, involved is an original concept for a very ordinary, often overlooked, thing. In 2006 Yamashita and Kobayashi were finalists of the Japan Media Arts Festival, excellence award in the Art Division/Visual Image category. Asaba Katsumi, art division head jury says that "the entries for this category ...strike a good balance between technique level and artistic expression." He also states, "these works are converting advanced digital techniques gently and beautifully into analog; this may be the equation of modern media art."

Another artist I have decided to add to my exhibit is Joao Santos,who lives and works in the fast-growing, lively city of Dubai, Portugal. Santos' work displays a surreal almost chaotic plethora of light and colors. When viewing abstract/urban artwork, especially photography it is difficult to keep a variety of shots. This is especially true when photographing the same subjects while using the same techniques as usually what occurs is chaos and confusion. Yet with Santos art, the result is diverse and each piece is a unique statement of color, light and movement. All the photographs I have chosen are the lights from a city, but when looking at them from different, fresh points of view, they become something else entirely and the viewer has the pleasure of interpreting the art any way they choose. With the color and excitement of these pieces, 600 photos (High Resolution - from 4 to 12MB each) the viewers seem to forget that what they are seeing are things they see every day. Santos says this about his art, "A person can buy the latest car, residential property, or flashy hi- tech mobile, but it doesn't necessarily mean that he has improvbed his mind like art can." Through color and movement Santos shows the pulse of the city through its lights. "What's New Magazine," writer, Reshma Mehra, says "...in Dubai for just 14 months..his facination with Dubai's rapid-fire growth has led him on a photographic journey that delivers..."

The final artist I have added to my exhibit is Joseph Gray. A BFA graduate of Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Gray studied video and sculpture. He is a graphic designer and web developer. Gray creates a truly unique experience (from what we can see from the photograph) by "painting" three-dimensional paper surfaces with video projectors. The paper takes on a new, exciting form and begins to evolve with the addition of color. Gray cuts, folds and twists the paper is into shapes, dipping, curving and bending. He almost does a free form type of orgami. The paper when twisted and folded and bent holds a sculptural form on its own. Just the white paper itself is interesting to look at. But Gray takes it further with his projected images of color and movement. He uses three video projectors, software he has created and three computers to create his work. Gray says, "Light, Paper Sound is constructed of paper cut-outs folded and curved into three dimensional forms and suspended in the gallery space. The paper is used as a sculptural canvas..." Original music is then produced specifically for each sculpture. The result is a blend of jazz and video.The room in which the installation is placed transforms. Four walls become another world as the viewer travels beyond the museum into an almost underwater and alien world. Additionally the work of Gray is a multi-sensory exhibit where the viewer not only sees the art but hears it as well. The "Vroom Journal" of Seattle has this to say about Gray's work, "... the artist has built an environment that puts time back into time-based media arts. Once inside the installation, time stands still. The visual and aural completeness of this piece makes this effort an important seminal event for video installation in Seattle and points east and west."

Each one of these artists' work, I feel represent a fresh and new look at our world. Technology aside, most of these works can be created purely through basic means but not without creativity. All of these artists have taken a chance. A chance that they are too weird, too minimalist, too colorful, too loud. If these artists chose not to take a chance, none of these pieces could have come to life. Each of them stepped out of the box and found a place where we can be entertained, confused, delighted and most of all, think. Why, how, when? Click on a mouse and enter the world of art. You might find that you want to stay there a while.

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Zero to One is a series of works that, overall, addresses a typically American or Western viewpoint about Consumer Culture and the value and power of money within that culture. Also taken into consideration within the series is the digitalization of our Culture and economy. The sleak advertising that promts us to spend money on today’s stuff is an art in itself, yet some artists have turned that around and used it to make counter arguements against such a Culture. The opening piece, by Scott Blake, displays both of these aspects so simply through one of the most common symbols of consumerism – the bar code. The bar code first appeared on packages of Wrigley’s Chewing Gum in 1948, and 60 years later is on nearly every product that we purchase from soap to construction lumber to an iPhone. The bar code is purely a representation of 1’s and 0’s, mere binary technology, and it is that simplicity that enables the Consumer to participate in a complicated Culture that runs on spending Power and produces such complex gadgets as the iPhone. Regarding his own work, Scott Blake asks ”How do the producer and consumer relate, how do the entertainer and entertained interact, how do the leaders and the leaded work together?” This question leads to the second display in Zero to One, created by the artist Mark Cooley. His project, american dreams: a work in progress, uses packaging that is based on Consumerist trends and aesthetics. Underneath the sleak wrapping and advertising, Cooley presesnts symbols of government and corporate power that are military related; within the packaging of miniture guns, he will include images of combat, government personel, or written legislature. His approach is an attack on primarily U.S. government policies of war and that relationship to the U.S. Consumers, making a firm statement about how that lifestyle underhandedly supports the governments and large corporations. Discussing ”american dreams”, Cooley says that ”the installation is an ongoing recording, assessment, and repackaging of objects and images from the U.S. media terrain”. The third piece again addresses the use of binary code in Consumerist Culture. The piece, entitled ”The Moneychanger or the New Economy” is created by Tete Alvarez using an older Marinus Van Reymerswaele work, and money takes the form of zeros and ones as it is dropped into a collector’s pile. The unclarity of the figures in contrast with the stark white of the numbers reinforces the power of money, as well as its overpowering effect it can have on people as Consumers. The binary code as money vanishes after one cycle and then reappears. Of Alvarez’s work, Oscar Fernandez states that it ”tends toward an aesthetic of disappearance as a transcendental driving force for chrono-political reconsideration of post capitalist society”. ”The Moneychanger or the New Economy” also serves as a commentary that relates an older vantage point about Consumerism to a more current perspective. Furthering the theme of Consumerist Culture and a spending society, the artists of Nike Ground have taken full advantage of those who purchase corporate products in world-scale prank. The artists, Eva and Frank Mattes, whose projects can be viewed on 0100101110101101.org, have used corporate commercialism and guerilla marketing in a way that displays the power of such a Consumer based society. They created a proposal to construct a monument and rename a traditional, famous square in the city of Vienna after the Nike Corporation. Using modeling programs and posting a commercial website online, http://www.nikeground.com, they advertised the overtaking of Karlsplatz, a main square in Vienna, by the Nike Corporation. The proposal involved the construction of a large statue of the Nike Swoosh and renaming the square Nikeplatz. The Nike-esque slogan ”You want to wear it, why shouldn’t cities wear it too?” went along with their proposal. Everything about this prank is done within the corporate identity of Nike, and therefore seemed conceivable to carry out in consideration of the guerilla marketing. Although Eva and Frank Mattes used the trendy ad campaigns that Impact consumers, the digital creation of Nikeplatz was an anti-commercialism project, and it created a huge controversy in Vienna and Europe, resulting in a suing of the artists by Corporate Nike. In a discussion on their site, it is commented that ”many artists have dealt with commercial products in the past, before Nike even existed. Think of Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup, for example. Contemporary art does not have a well defined role within this society. On the contrary, it is a field where one can make statements that are not possible in any other context. Art has always used powerful images from the society of its time as its subject. Nike invades our lives with products and ads but then forbid us to use them creatively”. This kind of comment can be applied to Consumer Culture, wealthy corporations, and the concept of guerilla marketing as a whole cycle could that promote the realization of projects like Nikeplatz. Keeping on a larger, more archtiectural scale, The Monument for the Masses takes a look at sculpture and public space in the world of advertising and targeting The Consumer. The online proposal, found at http://trialerror.org/Monument/index.html , devotes much of its space to revealing the power structure behind (primarily Commercial) profits. It is put on display that much of public space, such as parks and even bought streetscapes are made possible by privite marketing. By putting on display the fact that an entire city street can be purchased and devoted to the advertising of a movie or a brand of jeans, the artists make their point that this world is one of Consumers, not citizens. Commercialism, supported by The Consumer, has the Power to change landscape, and by doing so in public places where The Citizen once roamed, it reinforces itself and the ”I must buy more” attitude of Consumer Culture. ”Public space, my a$$”. The artists make aware the realization that in today’s media saturated environment, Consumers have to pay for the privilege to avoid commmercials. Consumerism and Spending are monumental and everywhere. Alexis Lloyd’s pieces both deal with current trends in targeting The Consumer and ways of marketing. Her first work in this exhibit, The Ad Generator, uses the sharp images in contrast with sharp words taken from familiar Consumer Product marketing campaigns to emphasize the Power of a commercial upon The Consumer. Power of imagery and words in a spending society is used to convince or intice one to make a Purchase, thus supporting a structure run by corporate companies. In regards to this work, Alexis Lloyd says, ”it is the exploitation of our larger, intangible desires and values that makes advertising so effective”. Her second work once again brings society’s subjection to marketing and the persuasion to Spend to the surface of her art. She has photographed neighboorhoods in NYC, highlighting the Commercial landscape in the daily environment. Her organization and documentation of advertisement do not include those on TV or on the internet. She has catagorized the ads by type (i.e. clothing, alcohol) and displays how many of each type are located in different classes of neighboorhoods, showing how Corporations filter their Consumer profiles. In summary of Zero to One, seven pieces of art take a stab at the Western Consumer Culture and attempt to create a realization within the viewer of truly how much Power two small numbers have over The Consumer’s lifestyle of Spending More. These works placed together form a cohesive commentary on today’s value placement of Money and how that placement has control over many aspects of society. barcodeart.com o100101110101101.org ecopolis.org nikeground.com http://a.parsons.edu/alloyd

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Zero decibels refers to the quietest, or lowest amplitude, sound that the human ear can hear. Prolonged exposure to any sounds above 85 dB can begin to cause permanent hearing damage. Our range of perceptible sound is quite small when compared to the larger possible spectrum of sound waves, perceptible or not, however we are quite unique in our differentiating abilities within these limits. We have the ability to connect sound over distances, understand sound as metaphor, translate sound as visual texture, and these are just a few of the ways we are able to re-interpret and understand our small, but uniquely nuanced range of auditory perception. In this exhibition I wanted to focus primarily on the concept of audio-spatial works which exemplify our ability to assemble landscapes from sound cues in the real world and in digital form. These artists are concerned with sonic landscapes reaching in scale from the assemblage of the micro-universe in string theory to a world scale visualizing the global network of communication via telephone. In general sound art can be difficult to define and understand. Sound art and soundscapes are hybrid languages calling upon histories of music and visual art for supplement. It is a relatively new art form, and the electroacoustic aspect of it stretches only as far back as the beginning of the digital age. It can come across as ambiguous because of how it tends to subvert any direct representation or upset our ingrained training in the construction and experience of music, but at the same time is immediate and immersive. The field of electroacoustic presents a number of potential challenges to assumptions about what Western art music is: as John Cage noted as early as 1937, it opens up the entire field of sound as musical sources. Barry Truax states that "the serious use of environmental sound in music is potentially disruptive and even subversive to the established norms of the artistic field" (1995: 1). Electroacoustic music can shift attention from pitch relationships to timbral possibilities of sounds. As a result, much electroacoustic music confounds traditional forms of musical analysis (Tenney 1986: 4). Soundscape composition, with its focus on environmental sound, could be considered a type of electroacoustic music that is particularly resistant to traditional analysis and categorization. (1) Because of this tendency towards ambiguity, I would like to define a few terms that may provide insight into the language and consideration of these sound installations. First of all, a Soundscape Composition can be defined technically as portion of the sonic environment regarded as a field for study. The term may refer to actual environments, or to abstract constructions such as musical compositions and tape montages, particularly when considered as an environment. (1977: 275) By sonic environment, Schafer is referring to "the ever-present array of noises, pleasant and unpleasant, loud and soft, heard or ignored, that we all live with" (1977: jacket notes). This acceptance of all sounds is similar to that of John Cage, who said that the use of electrical instruments "will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard" (1961: 4). Recording equipment makes any sound in the world available: it can be isolated from its context and treated as a sound object, or the interplay of sounds within a specific environmental context can be the focus of attention. Schafer’s statement in his definition that abstract constructions such as musical compositions are soundscapes particularly when considered as an environment refers to the importance of context in soundscape composition. (1), an attempt to make dimensional that which exists only in human perception, because remember sound has an elusive physicality, much like light, where it only exists in a wave form until interpreted by the human. The artists presented here are also a quite formal type of sound artist in the sense that they are interested in sound as sound, as both subject and object of the work, and in just a few works I've tried to assemble a spectrum covering major elements of contemporary soundscapes, such as Keynote Sound, Soundmark, and Sound Signal. Keynote Sound refers to the way in which all of the ambient sounds of a place begin to make up the tonal background character of a place, such as wind or traffic noise. I invite the viewer to contemplate this especially when considering 'Aperture.' Sound Signal refers to the foreground sounds of a place signifying a particular idea, such as in the piece '95 Chimes,' and Soundmark, derived from the term landmark, can easily be understood as a primary texture in 'Voice Mosaic' where an interconnected geography blinks and blips on a colored quilt symbolic of communication networks. Also the 'Performances with electroacoustic Clothes' defines a certain personal sphere within which is contained the audio-sensory manifold around one's self in relation to sphere's held by others. 'Studies for sensitive hands' in particular the work 'The body of Ligia' takes this personal sound space to a new level by territorializing areas of soundscape on the female body and playing it like an instrument. The works in this exhibition are all necessarily time-based and dialogue with the spaces they are exhibited in, however the site of those exhibitions differs significantly. Some of the works are documentations of installations at a particular time and place, and to be experienced directly would need to be witnessed in person, while the others are directly accessible in real time through media available at the site of the installation, here online. I invite the viewer to contemplate the difference between the two and make an imaginative leap to "go to" the sites these works occupy to understand their context. Debra Swack's work '95 Chimes' continues her interest in the shapes of sound. The concept of the interplay of sound and vibration as material form also functions metaphorically in her aesthetic for the string theory set forth by Brian Greene (Layman's Note: The essence of string theory, as Green records in his book The Elegant Universe, is that vibrations replace particles at the subatomic level as the building process, rather than building block, of matter and as these tiny one-dimensional filaments vibrate differently, they shape matter differently.) But the initial variables in the sound work are gathered digitally and edited since Swack's aesthetic includes the concept of composition. (2) Eric Socolofsky's work 'Aperture' recreates an ambient digital space where minimal forms of moving light and sounds are intended to place the viewer in a contemplative mindset absorbing the permeability of ourselves in a space. Jennifer Schmidt's work 'Wish You Were Here' uses a hacked form of greeting cards to playfully transport the viewer to various "in-scapes." This work remixes field recordings, which are a specific genre in sound art and recording more commonly used to record natural sounds at a particular site (think recordings of bird calls you may have heard,) but rather than represent any particular place, these remixes rely on the idea that field recordings have a transportive effect. Browsing through this 'gift shop' of cards may be reminiscent of cards found at a National Park Interpretive Center, or the assorted kitsch shops that spring up in these places, but rather than post cards from a 'real' place, these are a reminder of a vacation to a landscape of the mind. 'Voice Mosaic' is a real-time interactive display that can be manipulated by calling into a number and entering a pin on any telephone, cell or otherwise, from anywhere in the world. This piece exemplifies the ways in which we are all completely connected across the digital landscape and attempts to give a voice and sound to our itinerant and anonymous sites of interface. Benoit Maubrey has been making 'electroacoustic Clothes' and creating choreographed performances of people donning them since the early 1980's. He and his group, Die Audio Gruppe have been on the cutting edge of incorporating sound and performance almost from the beginning of the digital media age. Carlos Sandoval, finally, is added to this exhibition for his work 'The body of Ligia,' although 'Studies for sensitive hands' also connects the space of sound to the limits of the human body, so that the body itself becomes the landscape moved upon to produce and experience sound. My goal with this exhibition is to highlight work that, although working within the confined limits of human aural perception, expands or hones our faculty of understanding the contemporary context surrounding soundscapes. Christoph Cox sums this sentiment up well in his article 'Return to form: Christoph Cox on neo-modernist sound art - Sound - Column' "To the postmodernist, the new sound art might seem to retreat from social and political concerns. But neo-modernism has a politics of its own--a distinctly avant-gardist one that recalls both Greenberg and Theodor Adorno and implicitly criticizes postmodernism for its symbiotic relationship with the culture industry. In eschewing mass-media content, the genre proposes a more radical exploration of the formal conditions of the medium itself. Against the anesthetic assault of daily life, it reclaims a basic function of art: the affirmation and extension of pure sensation." (3) Reference Websites: 1. http://cec.concordia.ca/econtact/NAISA/soundscape.html 2. http://www.asci.org/druck540.html 3. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_3_42/ai_110913969

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While generative art is widely considered a genre of art, it is not strictly a genre as other types of art are. Generative art is more concerned with the process of its own creation rather than the reason for its creation, outcome of the work, its content or its underlying meanings. While landscape art is primarily founded in the depiction of scenery in a style chosen by the artist, generative art has neither a style nor a specific subject, and can potentially be applied to create artwork that can fall under the umbrella of any other genre of art. Further investigation into the true nature of generative art as a genre and process will be explored.

The process in which generative art is created is broadly open ended, but can be fairly easily summarized and defined. The production of generative art, as defined by Philip Galanter, is the practice of art making wherein "the artist creates a process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is then set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art." The constraints of rules applied to the art making process are essential to the idea and creation of generative art. While less pivotal, the concept of autonomous art creation is also important. Once the constraints and rules of a system are laid out an initial input is given which begins the process of autonomous creation wherein generative art will then effectively create itself. In many cases, the user input or initially supplied input given to the rules will ultimately change the outcome of work, allowing generative artists to create essentially infinite permutations of images. Generative art thereby manifests a system based largely on the combination of strict order and disorder to varying degrees of complexity in order to create works.

As generative art has only somewhat recently begun to gain relatively widespread attention as a potential method of art making, its history is characteristically hard to follow. In centuries past, many pieces of art and art movements can potentially be loosely classified as generative art, working and creating within the confines of certain rules. Generally speaking, however, most of these works do not strictly fall under the category of generative art for a number of reasons including the consideration that most of these works were not created with the generative process in mind. Within our contemporary art world, generative art finds use in a few different art making environments, including the generation of electronic music, computer graphics and animation, and industrial design. Within the confines of these settings, the generative art process is used to create vastly complex and often on-going works that continue to manifest themselves without further input from the creator. In many cases, the initial setup of the piece is much less complex than the potential output of the system, allowing prolific works to be created very efficiently and simply.

The first work within the exhibit is glyf: construct, a piece by Duncan Holby. The work consists of 6 sets of constructs, each set having a specific topic that it explores in relation to the work as a whole. The piece’s purpose is described on its Rhizome page as, "glyf: construct explore[s] visual dynamics that are made accessible through code: scale, sequence, repetition, displacement, math based color sets, linear and angular motion, the variable of user input." Most of the construct sets within glyf: construct share many of the same rules and inputs to then generate their results in real-time. Frequently, the user has two modes of input to change the outcomes of the works – one is to move the cursor around the screen (in phaSing .v3, the user’s mouse position modifies the angle and skew of the shapes on screen, much like it modifies the length of the lines in ge(o)m .v0), the second is to click and hold the left mouse button, which changes the spatial arrangement of the displayed objects (again, in phaSing .v3, clicking the mouse rotates the circle objects at varying speeds according to their places in the grid). The combination of these user inputs with the grid confinements of the objects creates a nearly infinite store of different images that can be generated using the constructs.


The second exhibited work is Miika Nyyssonen’s rally. Rally begins as a grid of randomly colored blocks, which progressively becomes all one single color. The process in which this happens is thus: "one of the colors replaces the color of randomly chosen square, that color is removed from the array of possible colors" - eventually, after an astounding number of permutations, one of the colors dominates the grid. The work was created as a visual representation of a situation where probability slowly replaces randomness. Rather than a user-given input, the work is preprogrammed to create a random initial input which is then processed by its complex set of rules that leads to the final, single color work. In terms of generative art, rally truly fulfills the basic requirements in addition to being fully autonomous in its creation of images.


Next is Return of Silent Radio, a piece by Peter Stanick. Return of Silent Radio is a continuously generated animation which creates new composite images based on a large library of pre-selected imagery. The work's input consists of randomly selected imagery which is then placed according to certain rules within a composition which is quickly compiled. According to Stanick, Return of Silent Radio has the current capability to create over 3 million unique compositions based on its image library. While conceptually simple, Return of Silent Radio’s compilation abilities can create some stunning and interesting composite images. Discussed at coolstop.com, Stanick’s work is reviewed as, "watching [pop] culture … unfold before your eyes" - an interesting concept in terms of generative art - the use of previous art imagery, put through a generative art process such as Stanick’s in order to create millions of new post-modern pieces. This piece simply depicts the ease in which generative art process can be applied to work for many different art genres.


Next is Eva Schindling and Daniel Wilson’s piece, Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow (1963). The work consists physically of a large skewed trapezoidal grid of rotating magnetic arms. The generative aspect of the work is seen in the input of the user, who is able to manipulate a rotating arm, which then affects those around it based on the magnets in the arms, cascading into a large scale manipulation of the grid. The rules of the work operate around the controlled locations of the grid and manner in which the magnetic forces of the arms can interact with each other. The piece is named after a 1963 paper written by Edward Lorenz, the man who coined the term "butterfly effect." Directly related to this is the concept driving the piece, which dictates that the random-input generative system it consists of reflects life and the ultimate impossibility of predicting the entire outcome of our actions. Conceptually, the work nearly defines generative art in its unwieldy, random progression and infinite potential for creation. Video of Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow (1963) can be found featured at futurefeeder.com and discussed in the monochrom.at blog.


The last work of the exhibition is Paul Robert’s Ever Since. Ever Since is a sort of counting display, however, rather than numbers counting along, letters progress onwards. The rule system of the work dictates that every second, the leftmost “digit” of the display will alphabetically advance one letter, thereby, on an infinite timeline, creating every word, phrase or literary work within the English language. With an initial input date of 13.7 billion years ago (the hypothesized birth of the universe), the counter has progressed 13 digit places to date, covering a large majority of existing single words and short phrases. The work’s theoretically infinitely autonomous nature is particularly interesting, when all human life on earth will have potentially expired; this work may still be plodding along generating English language phrases that have long since passed from use. Creating truly infinite scenarios, this piece characterizes the simplicity in which a generative artwork can be set up to create an infinite and infinitely complex body of new works.

A list of links to the Rhizome documentation pages of each work of art displayed within the exhibition is as follows:

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Who likes to Gamble? Would you bet the farm? I personally am not a fan of gambling, and I would never bet it all. But there is another form of chance that I am a fan of. That being chance occurrences, especially while utilizing technology. The abstract expressionists like Pollock and Johns were my first exposure to the idea of using chance to aid in the creative process. Roxy Paine’s Schumak sculptures are contemporary examples of mixing chance and technology that have kept my interest alive.

The Web is a great place to play with the idea of chance, and “Four & Six” by Art Crap provides the viewer with a “Lite Brite” layout of random web-links, represented by a small blue rectangle that is visible on rollover. Chance is applied in this work by providing the viewer with 80 possible random links to lead the viewer to a chance viewing.

“Drag & Drip” is a replication of Pollock’s process through the use of computer programming technology. The viewer selects a canvas, and by dragging the mouse over the canvas a trail of “paint” appears. The process is enhanced by the way the computer replicates the movement of the mouse; the movement is out of synch with the mouse.

Create a monster of your own using “Einstein’s Monster”. This work loosely deals with chance by using parts at random to create an image of some figure. I do like the way the flash file is engineered.

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The news industry is changing. The days when the newspaper was the only available news source are gone. People don’t read the paper front to back and then sit on the porch talking about it; they sit on their couch and watch it on TV. But now TV as a news source is becoming inferior. The Internet is where it’s at. When there’s an accident or a major crisis, what kind of person will wait for the 9 o’clock news to come on, or read about it in tomorrow’s paper? No one. The Internet is fast and easy, and people are using it more and more to get their news. The Web also offers interactivity with the news, something that is not possible with a hard copy. Readers can click on links sending them to related pages, view slideshows and videos, and comment on an article. The popularity of online news has made a new medium possible for the public. Before, if you wanted to comment on an article, you would have to write out a letter and send it to the editor. Today, if a reader has something to say, he or she can simply post a comment on the story. This invention is making it possible for anyone to voice his or her opinion on an article. Besides the simple act of leaving a comment, the Web has opened a gateway to another form of expression: Web art. Using the Internet, an artist is able to create art on a computer and then post it online for the public to see. The pieces I’ve chosen for my exhibition are all related to news media and each artist’s reactions to it. This is a way to express what might not have been expressible through just words. Though not every piece is Web art, an artist being able to broadcast their work through the medium of the Internet is a fairly new idea. Below are seven pieces that touch on the subject of news, each with completely disparate ideas. The seven pieces are in no particular order, so explore each with the same interest. ****Here are a few references: http://www.msnbc.com/m/info/press/02/0107.asp, http://netartreview.net/monthly/0805_5.html, http://design.ucla.edu/gallery/grad_gallery.php?ID=103****

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My daughter crawls across the floor to check out a new pair of socks she has just spotted. My son picks up a empty soda bottle and tips it upside down, dripping drops of cola over my desk. The urge to play with our environment starts out immediately after the shock of being born. Our curiosity is inborn.
There reaches a point when our environment is relatively stable. We can walk, speak, feed ourselves, understand jokes - and it is one of the responsibilities of the artist to make the world new – so we can play with our environment again, for the first time. Here in this exhibit are works of art that interact with our world, invite us to interact with a different world or break our expectations on how we see our own world.

'Interactive Art' is long established and well developed. In the early 80's a very basic computer program called "Eliza" which was an early example of a computer actively interpreting our responses to interact with humans in their own world. In the last few years the use of computers and networking has brought a new level of interaction to the artform by way of incorporating extensive database libraries and programs to predict and model behavior (Eric Socolofsky's work is a particularly good example of this use of computer modeling).
Computer games and children's entertainment work the other direction and invite the participant to enter into a constructed environment to interact with a system on its terms. Chris Joseph's "Eisenstein's Monster" (a inside-joke reference to Montage Editing) and Alexander Mouton "Epiglobis" show how a simple set of rules builds a creative space to play with.
Artists have been actively working to break viewers expectations for as long as their have been people to look at the artwork. It is the highest calling of most serious artists to give life new meaning - or at the very least a new perspective - on the world people drift through. Since the mid-1800's with the Impressionist movement an extraordinary trend has been built to push people out of "normal perspective" and make the attempt to touch something deeper, more immediate - to evoke a response or shift in viewers attitudes. Pascual Sisto's "28 YEARS IN THE IMPLICATE ORDER" is exactly this break with expectations - done in the apparent world of the pre-photographic continuum (the "real world") - by establishing what seems to be perfectly normal physics, and then pushes you to look closer at a image that cannot possibly exist.

Wikipedia gives a basic (if incomplete) overview of the concept of interactive art - as opposed to 'Generative Art' (also a form often employed in electronic/computer art using math or algorithms to "generate" an artwork).
Because of the nature of the artform as one of exploration, many of the interactive possibilities are incorporated into children's exhibits. A great example of interactive art is seen in the National Gallery of Art's Kid Zone.
For a terrific permanent site that specializes in interactive art exhibits - look at Art Interactive, a Cambridge art gallery dedicated to "...creating a public forum that fosters self-expression and human interaction..."

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Upgrades, improvements, advancements: All are achievements that, in the digital age, aid in the continued betterment of everything from communication to work flow. In the beginning, when the Internet was “new” technology, it was a slow process to transfer or transmit information, but now faster ISP speeds allow people to quickly and easily communicate through the transmittal of files (1). However, while digital is inevitably on the rise in society, the actual personal level of things is on the decline. Computers and humans are not naturally compatible and thus scientists are working to make interactions between the two easier. There is a whole psychology behind their findings and project, but more importantly, society is becoming more and more dependent on the use of computers or technology for communication (2). Humans, as a very basic instinct, long to connect with others, and are reaching out for any means of contact amidst the cold, impersonal digital landscape. With Internet art, digitally produced art viewed online or ANYTHING that is displayed on or through a public domain, there is very little to hide. Once something is out there, it is exposed, and while whatever it is can be taken back, there is a high possibility that at least one person will see it before it is gone. Perhaps this is exactly why many artists prefer to make websites to display their work. Galleries could very well be considered out of date or old fashioned considering the rate at which art is displayed through the Internet. In any case, I have found that artists (through their publicly-digitally-published art) seem to be reaching out for some sort of connection, whether it is to get someone’s attention or to reveal something personal or private to their viewers. Allowing others to see a side of oneself that is not usually apparent tends to form strange little bonds, and there is something strangely intriguing about knowing something about a complete stranger. This sort of information may come from a variety of places, or come in a variety of forms, but it gets where it is intended eventually. I hope that I have chosen a variety of pieces that will aid in showing the different methods used to communicate connections. In a general sense, we are all connected by the news and things happening in our own societies. Whether you are from the United States or Australia (or anywhere for that matter), SOMETHING is happening around you whether it is the same THING or not. Martin John Callanan addresses this in his piece, "I Wanted to See All of the News From Today (a work in progress)," by displaying the front page of all printed papers, all on one web page. Bloggers that have reviewed this piece claim that he is making fun of how the news industry bombards its viewers with too much information (2). However, I would say that it is more of a direct statement that we should recognize and appreciate that everyone, though different, lives in this similar way of keeping up-to-date and thus connected. On a more personal level, a simple connection could be considered a sort of relationship. Love interests, hook-ups, etcetera; we have all experienced them, and sharing the gritty details can be either something someone might like to keep quite, OR that they would want to talk about. For artist Kimberly Simpson, her piece, The Kissing Booth, tracks and notes her major and minor love circles and relationships from high school, up through college. Not only is she connecting with her viewer on a very personal level by allowing them to relive her happiness and heartbreak through interacting with her timeline, but she is also showing the interconnectedness of all the people she shares similar histories with contained within her website. Have you ever people-watched while sitting in a park or on a crowded bus and wondered what kind of people you were seeing? Who are they, what do they do? In Peoples, by Gregory Chatonsky, you get to find out the answers to your questions. By selecting a person from a crowd, you are directly sent to another page that continues on to randomly generate words and images pertaining to the particular person you chose. On the other hand, some artists like to invite their viewers into the own very personal lives. Martin John Callanan (from who I have chosen to include two pieces), in The Location of I, has mapped out his location for the whole world to see. He likes that he can easily be tracked by anyone, and yet he remains nearly un-findable. In any case, he has purposefully made his location apparent so that people will track him down. Ellie Harrison, while not telling her location, has posted some he personal thoughts in combination with what she was drinking at the time. In her piece, Tea Blog, she presents her thoughts in a sort of random, and yet very structured way. It’s almost as if the viewer could be sitting with her conversing over the tea or coffee that accompanies her thought. As a viewer, myself, I wondered after reading a few of her thoughts what I might be thinking in her situation … what is it that goes through my mind at first when I settling down to drink something that is most likely meant to sooth some tension. I don’t know, next time I drink a cup of tea, I may just consciously note what happens to be in my head at that time. A true artist, whether digital or not, will make you think, and connect to you in some way. All of these pieces and their artists are very different, but even they are connected; not only by this art database/display arena (Rhizome.org), but by the fact that, as a viewer, I have found something about each piece or artist that triggered a response or feeling of connection. Reference website: (1)http://ezinearticles.com/?Intern et:-Communication-Through-Technology-Including-Video-and-Audio&id=109180 (2)http://books.google.com/books?hl =en&lr=&id=30UsZ8hy2ZsC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=psychology+of+human+communica tion&ots=1KEH-2Ie6n&sig=ol0FEOFOyR7ImjY3B-bSD4-Bq_E#PPP1,M1 (3)http://www.swarmingmedia.com/200 7/09/immediacy_archive_and_life_two.html

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Introduction to Curatorial Exhibit: Humans have always been fascinated with the biological aspects of the world. People are constantly trying to figure out how living things function, why they do what they do, and more importantly what purpose they serve as a living thing on this Earth. Many contemporary artists have asked themselves these same questions and have used their own forms of creativity to express how they feel about all kinds of biological forms. Artists also use their own creative prowess’s to try and alter the natural aspects of the world and see if they can somehow present these forms in a new type of way. The artists I have chosen for my curate exhibit all have one thing in common, despite how different each of their projects are. They all deal with some aspect of certain biological forms and or senses that all living things possess. Whether its Debra Swack’s piece that deals with the biological makeup that produces animal patterns, or Mattia Casalegno’s work that tries to actually produce life through his images that seem to express some sort of sense related to the body where, “you don’t create the art piece, you are the art piece.” Many of the bodies of work I have chosen force the viewer to interact with the piece, giving their art a whole new aspect of life. Many of the artists have combined scientific logic with their own personal artistic twist in order morph technology with living things. Quite a bit of research has been done in many scientific fields within these pieces in order to not only create art, but manipulate the very forms of life we are all familiar with. In the first body of work I have chosen by Debra Swack entitled Animal Patterning Project, Swack explores the world of animal patterns and how fascinated we humans are with the different shapes and colors that certain animals produce. Swack goes quite deep into the biological aspects of how certain animal patterns are produced, and then she herself tries to reproduce that pattern in her own artwork. She is interested in how to genetically alter an animals’ skin/fur pattern in order to make them easily commercialized for designers alike. Swack goes on to describe how she would go about doing this in an extensive genetic altering process that she shows through her artwork. Swack, who combines art and technology, also has another body of work in this exhibit entitled, “My Perfect Child.” In this work, she goes even further into realms of genetic alteration and explores the on-going fascination with cloning. Through digital imagery and photo installation, Swack shows how genetic altering can affect someone’s life through a completely neutral view on the subject she has explored. The third body of work was done by man named Daniel Desiderio Paez Castillo. His work is entitled, “idades// multi-local, multi-user, realtime interactive installation.” His work combines the interaction of the human form with a technologically based system that is designed to copy certain a human figure in what ever position they are on a room, and then project that image digitally onto a wall or screen. These images are placed with an image of virtual “ball” that has been programmed into the system so that the piece not only becomes interactive, but is also a game that the viewer can manipulate. With each projection of the person’s figure and movements they can see where they are relative to the “ball” and can move themselves around accordingly. The “ball” allows for others who are circulating throughout the piece to communicate with one another in order to link them all in an otherwise neutral space. This piece allows the viewer to also become the creator which forms a creative bond with the artist themselves. In Mattia Casalengo’s work, “X-Scape,” he too explores the worlds of the virtual and biological and attempts to combine them through his own artistry. This body of work tries to create sound and the ability to listen through images alone. His work is a, “hybridization of space with bodies and sensations.” Casalengo conveys emotion, feelings, senses, and forms in how work so that the viewer becomes so engaged in the pieces that they actually become the work themselves. This happens because one is forced to interact with the images in order to truly experience what he has created. Fourthly, in this exhibit that combines life with technology, I have placed Chris Sugrue’s work; entitled “Delicate Boundaries,” into the mix as one of the most profound ways a person has been able to combine art with the scientific world. Sugrue’s art consists of an interactive installation where the human form and human touch enable one to break the barriers the lie between humans and machine. Very life-like digital images emerge from the confines of their digital world and move to the skin of a hand or arm when it comes in contact with the computer screen. A person’s body becomes a “host: or a canvas for these digital images to thrive on. This body of work truly encompasses what it means to completely break down the barriers between virtual reality and actual living forms. I feel that this work is very influential and is a major break through, not only in the art world, but in the science world as well. Lastly, but certainly not least, is the work done by Chris Joseph entitled “Eisenstein’s Monster.” This form of art allows one to create biological life forms by the wonderful use of digital technology. The user gets to create their own “creature” by digitally moving certain pieces of biological forms; one essentially gets to play God. This piece is intended to be a little more light-hearted and fun for its audience, however it still reflects people’s fear of science playing God. This is quite similar to Swack’s bodies of work where she explores the ideas of cloning and genetic alteration that our society seems to be fearful of, yet be so fascinated with. Each body of work in this exhibit explores and intertwines the use of science and technology with biological forms of the body and other living beings. They all explore how certain things function in the world and how they can all be altered or manipulated in order to be formed into something completely new and innovative. That is why I believe this work is so important because it not only expresses the creative thoughts and ideas from different artists, but they also seem to take a step forward in terms of technological and scientific advances. I feel that this is something important and useful in our society, and perhaps all artists should try and do the same, not just create art for the sake of making art, but making it so that it has some sort of significant impact on the world around us.

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"Internet art projects are art projects for which the Net is both a sufficient and necessary condition of viewing/expressing/participating. Internet art can also happen outside the purely technical structure of the internet, when artists use specific social or cultural traditions from the internet in a project outside of it. Internet art is often, but not always, interactive, participatory and based on multimedia in the broadest sense."
– definition by Steve Dietz, former curator in new media at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis

Intreractive is a collaborative artform. This can be derived from a sculpture that can be touched or moved, or from a stimulation of heat or motion as well as exploration through hypertext. Most commonly the interation of a digital representation that can be manipulated by the viewer. As a very contemporary medium, it has not been explored or even considered as a notable "fine art", yet. Generally speaking, a typical website could be considered interactive art, what makes this specific medium different and enjoyable?
"Interactive Art can be distinguished from Generative art, Electronic art, or Immersive art in that it is a dialog between the piece and the participant; specifically, the participant has "agency" (the ability to act upon) the piece and is furthermore invited to do so in the context of the piece, i.e. the piece has "affordance" or "affords" the interaction. In contrast, Generative Art tends to be a monologue -- the artwork may change or evolve in the presence of the viewer, but the viewer may not be invited to engage in the reaction but "merely" enjoy it."

In this modern world, we have been conditioned to machines as a part of our everyday lives. Constantly stimulated by multimedia, we have become fast paced and everyone is has seemingly formed a type of "ADD". With that said, if something does not captivate and hold our attention, we may have a harder time giving a piece more than a few seconds of attention.
Digital Media is responsible for this change in mindframe, as well trying to harness it. Interactive art is a way to express the artists medium as well as incorporating the onlooker. Most began as programs created for children, like in the "Kids Zone Gallery" http://www.nga.gov/kids/zone/ where artwork has the ability to manipulated by the user. Simultaneously, the user learns of great artists, such as Johannes Vermeer, when they can design his studio. This kind of stimulation is kinesthetic as well as teaching with visual aid and giving an element of control to the veiwer.
Which brings me to the element of control in artwork. Artist, generally speaking, create a work with thier personal intiative and viewpoints. They attractive aspect of Interactive Art is the lack of total control. The viewer is a part of the piece and the artist's difficulty is contriving an inticing, and presumtuous work. It is still the artist vision, but the vision now includes multiple vewipoints.

This curatorial is a small sample of various types of art that necessitates outside interaction. Some are computer, data based and others involve actual touch or movement of the human body.
In "Last Life (Your Life, Your Time)" Gregory Chatonsky has generated a program that detects when you are going to die based on how long you have lived thus far. With that information and you name, it regurgitates a random lifespan. It is a comment on "second life" and very mystical about it. It also keeps a running tabulation of all who have visited.

Eisenstein's Monster is my favorite. What is more fun than playing God? The concept is creating your own "monster" with attributes that have there own personalities, a sighing eye, or nose with a themesong. " Eisenstein's Monster' is a participatory video piece, a tongue-in-cheek coupling of Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' and the montage theories of Sergei Eisenstein." As Eisenstein is a filmmaker and theorists who was famous for his use of photo montage. Which is what this work is about, a montage of attributes.

"Delicate Boundaries is an interactive installation where human touch can dissolve the barrier of the computer screen. Using the body as a means of exchange, the system explores the subtle boundaries that exist between foreign systems and what it might mean to cross them. Lifelike digital animations swarm out of their virtual confinement onto the skin of a hand or arm when it makes contact with a computer screen creating an imaginative world where our bodies are a landscape for digital life to explore." This is a intresting coehisitance of human and machine. Fascinating that the "little lights" are so attracted to the human touch. On the contrary, its almost like a disease crawling up your arm.

This Artificial Life span determiner is based on combining input variables with statistical and random values. You plug in your "stats" and habits (ie vegetarian, smoker) and then it spits out the major happenings of your life until you die, even giving statistics of how many people ar going to be inhabniting the world. Unfortunately, I could not access the end of the program...so maybe I die sooner than I think? Another smart presumptuous data interaction.

"Scale presents a struggling vertebraic object which scratches the surface it is mounted to. This object is always in motion but not locomotive: as the viewer approaches the object it moves faster but cannot escape its situation. Placed along the walls are 20 amplifier boxes, which broadcast the sounds of the object's attempts at self-determined ambulation. Under the objects outer branches sound is picked up by contact microphones that are linked to the amplifiers through a network of audio cables. The reactive and kinetic components are comprised of a light sensor embedded in the object, servo motors, and a micro-controller. Together these elements make up a elementary sensing and responding system, alluding to our own more complex internal systems of perception and action, yet stripped bare exposing itself as a network where the signal's path can be traced." The human presence around this creepy, insect type system of branches and scratching and sound. Something I would not want to step on in the middle of the night. The sensory persception of the receptors is intriguing. But I have not quite figured out its purpose, maybe just to give the viewer the jitters?

Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow is" a large-scale hexagonal grid of rotating units demonstrates a number of phenomena; such as pattern formation, magnetic forces and the trajectories within a dynamical system. Magnetic forces in each of the rotating arms cause a chain reaction of movement - affecting neighbour units and moving across the grid. Participants are invited to interact with the sculpture by turning the units, which produces movements along unpredictable lines. A projection on the wall shows the spreading of the movement in realtime through the application of a motion detection filter that manipulates an overhead video feed." It is rather poetic and I would really like to see this in the flesh. The charge of human touch, energy; to magnetic system to generate imagery and sound. A full body experience. Everything is creating.

The experiences of intereactive art are ones that leave a more satisfied feeling for both the viewer and the artist. The artist enables the veiwer to assist in creating. Everyone wins. In this modern world, it is hard to be unique and original. Interactive art is an open plain that will probably continue to be explored.

In addition, after researching the interactive arts, I stumbled upon a school of interactive, digitized online art courses. The Interactive Art School: http://www.interactiveartschool.com/index.html About $1000 and you can pace yourselves over two and a half years. They even give you a digital camera to document your work and then the critiques happen with diagrams and detail specificty of the stuents artwork. An alternative (and affordable) option to go to Art school.

References: wikipedia.org

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We have reached a point in history were nature does not necessarily hold power to the human race. That is to say, where before nature toke on its own form, now mankind can use nature only as entertainment or appeal purposes. Meaning, we use nature only as entertainment or appeal purposes. Meaning, we use nature for our own amusement. For example, planting different species of trees next to one another, or even more simply put mowing ones yard. These acts in itself alter the look of the environment to fit a ordered view created by mankind as a whole. Trees in malls, parking lots, plants in offices, and even artificial plants show our control over the natural world. Through the five works of Summerbranch by Bruno Martelli, Islanders by Gregory Chatonsky, badlands by Michael Greathouse, Kamon Series by Jon Montenegro, and Growth rendering device by David Bowen we can see this control. Though this might not have been their intensions individually they do indeed show this pint when connected with each other. Summerbreach, taking still images of nature itself and disguising a human figure within. Thus showing that humans cannot just leave nature to itself. Trying to take in qualities of it and form it into ourselves. Using the most advanced technologies to do so. Leaning on the concept of mankind needing to use technology instead of adaptation for survival. Moving on to Islanders, this piece shows how we have shrunk even the earth to our convenience. For as of today we can go and see anywhere on the planet we wish and do as we wish. Altering the earth’s surface itself not linked to this piece but a fine example none the less. The Spiral Jetty, showing that no place on earth is safe from the marks of humans. Within the work badlands we find that even the animal kingdom isn’t immune to man’s control. Not only using false images of birds imposed by the convinces of electricity for ourselves. Making nature adapt to us rather then we to it. Furthering this connection is Jon Monteegro’s work Kamon Series. Giving all of us access to nature through our cell phones. Thus continuing our illusions of what is nature and our control over it. Finally we come to Growth rendering device, which has a symbiotic relationship between technology and nature. The plant being given nourishment to live and grow while the rasterized inkjet creates an image of the plant at given intervals. Thus mapping out the life cycle of the plant. Leading to questions of which is more interesting the plant or the image of the plant. For the image is what can be seen changing and given our ideals of time being linear change is what interests us. Through these works we see that though nature exists on its own and can overpower us, we have the ability to change and maintain it to our whims. To really think about it, we can go anywhere and change the earth’s surface to how we see fit. Thus giving way to nature being nothing more then a play thing rather then a equal existence. Interesting links for further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_art http://www.acearth.com/ http://www.usc.edu/programs/cst/dea dfiles/lacasis/ansc100/library/styles/EarthArt.html http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=991007

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The ideology of new art is flawed in the sense that, in general, all art is simply rehashing, recreating, re-presenting something that existed previously. This phenomena is seen most clearly when viewing works of digital art. Appropriation becomes an art form as old news becomes new again. The following works present a way of looking at things, which you may have seen before, differently.

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One’s memory resonates in sympathy with personal media, the diary, home movie, photograph album. This digital composition explores how a sense of one’s past -- perhaps the aura of childhood -- is imagined and represented, and how those representations re-inflect the past. A psychologically suggestive montage of archival film clips joins a chorus of looping, poetic voices -- as the material objects to which memory is anchored grow more distant, through copying and transcoding across multiple media formats. Optimal Viewing: Designed for installation experience, as an extended audio/visual loop. (Body loops 3:20) User can interrupt to view leader and trailer information (5:03). This should be setup with high-quality, stereo sound and the maximum possible separation between speakers. Digital Literature Net Art E-Poetry New Media Writing

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Certain religions exist dependent on the belief that God can only be realized through the presence of nature. In this context, certain organic artworks could be viewed as a physical manifestation of a higher power, countering the eternally persistent notion that, in order for one to possess true faith, they must believe in what they cannot see. These works, reliant on nature's processes, serve as a conversation between creations, proposing interaction among practically all things exposed through the senses. In effect, art takes on a new form of faith-based communication; not one restricted by the multitude of boundaries present in prominent religions today, but rather a direct relationship with the beliefs you ascertain through your relationship with nature. Understandably, reaction to art as faith will vary greatly. Despite this, the main ideas remain intact for all: if one wishes to know they must merely look to the source. In this case, art is treated as the foundation, the creator a creation themselves.

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In starting this project, I thought about what I wanted to say about eternity. What is Eternal and what is temporary?
Temporary: Anger, Hate, External Beauty, music
Eternal: Internal Beauty, The Spirit, Love, Unity, Loyalty, music

The state of mind of anger and hate are temporary because they cannot be sustained. Negative emotions are not of the Spirit.
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” Galatians 5.

I’ve focused on pieces that emphasize some aspect of Eternal and Temporary.

What does nature have to do with eternity? Everything. The way we see is only with our eyes, only with our ears. All of nature is both eternal and temporary because life will still exist. There is life after death because the memory lives, the Spirit lives.

Our nature as humans is to react in anger, feel sad, feel happy. An animal's nature is to breed and spread life, but it can feel and sense and love. Our emotions won't bring eternal love and happiness.

You’ll notice that I’ve listed music under both of these. This is because while we will always have musical songs, always be creating sound, songs are only temporary in society. Artists don’t stay popular for long, and people get tired of listening to songs. We become de-sensitized to music, and become weary of hearing something every day. As you view the project, think about how you would define eternity, and what people would do with an eternity to live.

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An algorithm is a set of specific directions created to complete a task. A randomized version of this uses the same basic logic but includes a variable input. In this exhibition the focus will be on Net.art that uses well-defined instructions and results in a random occurrence. These works also focus on the participation of the viewer to obtain the final result.

It is important that the artist incorporates this final variable because this makes the computer seem human-like. In pop-culture, cyborgs have long been limited to a physical connection between organic and machine but broadening this view into a more psychological standpoint often scares people. Making a machine more of a man means it would have to 'think' on its own, essentially to make its program's outcome random. Randomness is not everyone's favorite idea. Human being's behaviors are not restricted as a computer's are. Creating something that has no restricted behaviors would be especially controversial because it would be creating another form of life which could act as humans.

Coding that is placed into computers presently is developed to make a computer operational. Having non-random programming computers are made as tools for us, not to coexist. It would be frightening to be typing a document and have the computer start erasing parts of it. Besides, I do not think there would be much popularity or business in a tool that does what it wants. Programmers are constantly solving problems that have a definite answer to connivance us but, isn't it more 'human' to not know that answer?

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The desire of humans to push the limitations of the machine have brought us to this day and age of wireless ready-at-hand technology. In the archives of computer history, experimental programming with letters and numbers unexpectedly transferred to beautiful imagery. Now, artists can create striking compositions and landscapes with the elaborate programs and codes of today but the simple designs of yesterday. This exhibit examines the relationships artists have developed between these basic principles and the intrigue it creates with the viewer.

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In a medium where everything is accessed with the click of mouse it was inevitable that digital art would follow in the internet's footsteps. The internet has quickly become the most used, appreciated, and useful medium of our time. Art is a medium all its own, paintings, pictures, sculptures, people pull as much from them as they do the internet. These artworks I have congregated are all hybrids of the two mediums; Interactive, creative, and ever changing. The pieces are all interactive and all require a user to connect to them online and manipulate them. Without the user interaction the piece is not complete.

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The advent of digital art has allowed us to take our every day experiences and remix them through the use of computers.

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Generated Chaos comes from the Chaos Theory which describes the unpredictability of dynamic systems in mathematics. The outcomes are often difficult to anticipate, and through the use of mathematical equations these fractals and nonlinear dynamics can be generated. There is an unexpected factor in creating these images using software programs, coding, and calculations because there are infinite possibilities, small changes can completely change the entire outcome of the image. The artwork created can be interactive and is visually interesting and intriguing each time it is viewed.

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The World Wide Web is an ever-expanding source for knowledge. More information is added with every passing moment. Like a library containing books, the Internet must find ways to sort out the never-ending flow of ideas. But in the case of the web, the available storage space seems unlimited. This is an illusion. There is of course a cap on the amount of information this amazing new medium can handle but hitting this imaginary ceiling is not likely. As technology grows and the rate at which information is processed increases, it becomes easier to cram everything into one place

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This exhibition focuses on interactive art through the concept of artificial life. The purpose of this exhibit is to expose the viewer to new forms of interaction through new media. Media art gives an environment for artist to expand their knowledge and creativity in many different ways. Among the artist that I have chosen for this exhibition, they all create a unique style on ways for them to involve the viewer. It is a new medium that challenges the artist as well as the viewer to question why we conceive and build these electronic beings. Overall these artist give ways to free static form to involve the viewer as they incorporate an artificial life form for humans to connect with.

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These works were chosen as some of my favorites, all relating to the "robotics" genre. Some of these works are robots (or forms of robots) responding/reacting to participants. Some create physical art (automatically and/or with a participant), and some simply move or react automatically to their surrounding environments.

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When you see a work of art that consists of parts that are set in motion and rely on some form of movement, that work of art is known as kinetic art. It can be artwork in the shape of moving machines. Just think of pulleys, cranks, gears, sculptures, balls, all kinds of objects in motion. In some cases, the movement that this type of art portrays can be imagined while in others it could be real. The movement could be produced by a simple act like someone walking past a work or the viewer pushing a button. The movement could be mechanically powered, for example by water, air, or electricity; it could even be by a motor, giving the illusion of movement within the work. The mobile is probably the most well known form of kinetic artwork. Things can seem to be what they are not, it can seem to pass the exploitation of optical effects which can surpass a concentration of energy which takes on a new meaning.

Since the early twentieth century, artists have been incorporating movement into art. Kinetic art became a major phenomenon and was predominate in the golden age of the late 1950s and the 1960s. Kinetic art has increased over time in response to the world becoming more techno driven. People are amazed by what they can not understand or figure out. It captivates their mind and causes one to engage in the act of trying to figure out something that can seem complicated but yet simple at the same time. Materials that are used can be as simple as paper, plastic or items found and can progress to the more difficult use of aluminum, neon, wood, metal, or steel. Kinetic art has a wide variety of overlapping styles and techniques. The combination of other arts with kinetic art is often used. Information art, performance art, mixed media and computer-generated art are just a few that collaborate with kinetic art. Kinetic art has been seen as a way of contemporary or modern art that depends upon movement for its effect.

Kinetic art has an international interest because it can be understood in so many different ways and it does not indicate any specific style. Len Lye, a kinetic artists who specializes in sculpture, states that the “kinetic experience lies deep in our bones,” he noted, “It is a more constant experience than any other. Our hearts beat, blood runs, rib cages expand and contract, eardrums resonate, lungs vibrate, every attitude we enact we enact kinetically.” By letting motions and movement guide ones artistic technique, you are able to capture the essence of that work rather than its portrait. When a person explores how things look when they move it can open their mind to new experiences, allowing one to see potential in what others take for granted.

Kinetic Artists : Marcel Duchanp, Naum Gabo, Alexander Calder, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Jean Tinguely, Bridget Riley, Nam June Paik, Antoine Pevsner, Pol Bury, Arthur Ganson, Bruce Gray, Theo Jansen, Starr Kempf, Frederick Kiesler, Gyula Kosice, Fletcher Benton, Alice Aycock, and Jonathon Borofsky.Lewis Alquist, Mineko Grimmer, Jim Jenkins, Gary Justis, Robert Mark Packer, Bryan Rogers, Survival Research Laboratories, Sarah Tamor, Fred Tomaselli, Steve Barry, Matthew Gil, Andrew Ginzel/Kristin Jones, Everett Greenbaum, & Dave Quick.

To single out a few artists David Bowen, Erika Lincoln, Eva Schindling, Daniel Wilson, and Joao Santos all create kinetic artwork using movement to express their visions. Below we take a further look into how they explore kinetic art as an art form.

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blog

noun

1. a shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies; "postings on a blog are usually in chronological order"

For many years now people have had access to the Internet, and therefore, have become a part of the Cybernetic Era. Blogs are the new and technological way of creating a journal or diary, and making something that was once so private, completely available to the public. Of course they are on the web. Being on the web allows anyone to access and view them, and in some cases, they become interactive. When they become interactive, or contain images and videos, they become works of art.

All of the works in this exhibit are unique ways of expressing everyday events, and everyday life. By usage of text, video, photos, and flash, these artists show how the progress of the internet has allowed people to share their thoughts, as well as artistic ability.

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I chose to base my exhibit on virtual reality. I have gravitated toward virtual art because it fascinates me how life like it can be. It has such a realistic feel but at the same time it can take you to this fantasy world. I sometimes find it hard to believe that it is just art. Virtual art has the ability to allow you to escape reality and get lost in the picture. It allows you to take yourself there and you forget you are just looking at a picture. When I look at this artwork it almost feels like being in a dream. I have chosen these various works of art because I felt that they truly expressed the virtual aspect of art.

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An artist can mix technology and digital media with essentially any medium in any unique way that they want. Use of the Internet in combination with artworks makes the piece even more accessible to viewers. New media are becoming much more widely utilized as the world grows technologically. As far as what to combine new media with, the creativity lies in the hands of artists. A media mix trend that has been more prominent lately is the combination of nature and digital media, which creates the ultimate contrast between what is real and organic with what is completely artificial. In most cases the artwork in this category has substituted a natural process, or something that could be natural with an artificial simulation. The mix of digital and natural creates something that could never exist in nature, but works in the same natural way and studies natural processes. It isn’t a nature VS technology idea, but more of a nature and technology partnership. The artists that are showcased in this exhibit have combined a natural element with technology or digital media and created a successful harmony between the two.

The first artwork is the "Growth-rendering device" by David Bowen, and it exemplifies the technology and nature contrast greatly. It is basically made up of an electronic device that feeds and nurtures the plant and the plant reacts to this device by growing. As it grows the device produces an inkjet drawing of the plant’s shadow, which shows a record of growth. The plant and the device react to each other and work in a cycle as if the device creates a natural process, though the device is programmed to start the nurturing making it completely un-natural.

The second artwork “Desserts” by Erin O’Hara is a video series of desserts as anthropomorphic forms where they have human characteristics but become very nonhuman beings. The artist explores the idea of simulating the eating experience through showing formally beautiful images of the desserts, which can sometimes be more satisfying than actually eating. In this artwork the human reaction to the digital video represents the natural aspect of the nature and technology contrast. Also, the use of actual dessert material to create organic looking creatures connotes a simulated nature. Nothing can actually simulate eating, but this work effectively tries to duplicate the experience.

The third artwork “Fly Drawing Device” by David Bowen is similar work to the first piece. An electronic device is paired with a natural substance, and in this instance it is houseflies. The device draws the houseflies’ movements as they move about in its chamber. It gives the flies a chance to something they would never physically be able to do otherwise.

The third piece is called the “L-Garden” by Eva Schindling and is an interactive program that serves as a tool for creating growing rules for a set of drawings. The program explores the biological process of evolution and reproduction. It is simulating the most complex process in nature and allows the viewer to actively intervene in that possess.

Each of these artworks is completely different from each other but explore the same idea of the nature and technology harmony successfully in a very unique way.

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I call this the Space between the Lines. I feel these three amazing artworks I have selected help so space in a whole new meaning. A meaning in which has not been able to be seen with the naked eye. Space is all around us, and isnt just the area between two objects. I feel that space can be more than that, such as the movement and sound that consumes space. Also the way both the organic and mechanical hear and see space.

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This exhibition features four artworks that focus on aspects of surveillance and tracking of the private and public lives of humans in the world of today and the projects were brought together to hopefully expand our consciousness concerning the increasing lack of privacy in our lives today. With the remarkable advances that technology has gone through in the past several years, the lives of people in the world today are more public and available than ever before in history. In this world of Wireless internet, cell phones, digital cameras, credit cards, and surveillance cameras, we are being observed and tracked mare than ever before. It is hard to imagine how often someone is "tracked" everyday of their life and most people don't think about it, but just like the three artists shown in this exhibition, I hope to open some eyes and get people thinking about the privacy issues of today. So, imagine if you wanted to disappear, hide, or vanish in today's society. You would need to eliminate ways for anyone to track or watch you, but that is completely impossible it the world of today. That would mean no credit card use, the emails, no cell phone calls, and no internet, but even then, your information and records would still available online and there would still be cameras in every store, school, and on every corner. Staying private is impossible with just simple tasks in today's life and that's without even getting the FBI or CIA involved. Technology has made it impossible to "hide" from the world. Just think, Google earth is available to anyone in the world and it is just the tip of the capabilities when it comes to satellite and cameras so imagine what is considered "private" to the general public but is available to governments for surveillance. There are devices being used that the general public won’t know about for another ten years and advances in technology being made everyday. We all might as well live in glass houses, because there really is no private life available anymore.

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Demetria Andreadis This is an exhibit of art pieces using death as their theme. Some pieces have death stronger in their piece than others, but death is always around us.

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Software, Taking Art to Another Level. Is an exhibition that features atwork that has been created using various software applications. Such artwork because of software have been taken far beyond the constraints of traditional art medians such as paintings and sculptures. Unlike the before mentioned art medians, software allows artists to create artworks that can interact with users, visually and conceptually go beyond the boundaries of time and space; software also allows for many interesting concepts and ideas to come alive, where they wouldn't be able to outside of the digital realm.

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The future of our civilization is uncertain. Some view it as bleak, others are hopeful. We can only question and comment on it. Many artists have begun to consider new media and what impact it may have. Whether we accept it or not new technologies are influencing our body and its perception. From plastic surgery to enhance or change our aging and dying bodies, to new technology that is helping victims of horrific scenes walk and breathe again. With cosmetically optimized techno-bodies walking around, this new art scene will either be fantasy or warning. The future: hybrid, monstrous, machine-like, cloned, digital, networked, cellular and transgendered bodies. Media Art is the perfect environment in which our questions can be considered and even answered. These artists are concerned with robotics, artificial life, futurism and cyborgs. Speed, technology and violence are all apart of the robotic utopia we are seeking. Ever since the Czech writer Karel Capek first coined the term “robot” in his 1917 play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) artists have been obsessed over the relationship between humans and machines. The new interface: human-machine extensions of the body. Extreme artificial life or Alife artists like Stelarc consider the body to be obsolete and can be made better with machines. Robotics was originally created for efficiency and to do mundane simple tasks. But they have become incredibly advanced. Robotics are encroaching our personal space: ‘smart homes,’ microchips in prosthetic limbs, microchips in our pets, microchips attached to our ears so that we can walk around and look important…blue tooth. They have far-reaching potential but can also show the limits of human control. It is a new medium that challenges our understanding of robots and makes us question why we are conceiving, building and employing these electronic creatures. Robotics can unify an installation piece. They can free a sculpture from its static form. It can respond to and involve the viewer or it can be a completely independent piece without human interference. These are unprecedented interactive scenarios. The goal of robotic art is to examine systems related to life, its processes and its evolution through simulations. All of the artworks included in this show address these issues on some level. Fly Drawing Device is a human free performance. It is combining technology and nature. This piece makes me wonder what goes on in our homes when we are not there. Atom is a performance that is controlled by humans. It is an atmospheric technological investigation into what we are made of. Spinal Rhythms, like Atom, is also an investigation that breaks down human as well as robotic processes into mechanical simulations. These robots are noiseless and graceful. It is an independent, human-free piece. Arabesque is also a performance but is human-free in the sense that when it is actually going on there is no human interference only previously programmed movements. This piece consists of amputated human-like limbs. It is a theatrical piece that combines new technology and classical music. The mechanics of it are air-powered. Air giving life to robots.

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A trend in the art community is interactive web art. The five pieces I chose represent that trend. These pieces require the viewer to interact with the art work ion some way, by either clicking or scrolling or by whatever other means necessary. I like interactive web art because the viewer has to be part of the piece to get the full effect. I feel that a person is able to get a lot more out of piece they feel involved in rather than by just viewing a piece of art.

The Wall by Galina Manikova is a brick stone wall made with flash. When the viewer moves there mouse over certain parts of the wall, different things occur. Some of the stones, previous viewers have left comments and stories and complaints of their own. Other stones lead to different links outside of The Wall. The Wall is loosely based on the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and the Buddhist tree of wishes. Another great thing about this piece is that it is always changing. People are constantly adding a part of themselves to the wall.

My Art Becomes Yours! by Caroline Maby is a fun art work. It allows the viewer to take am art work of hers and then redo it in a way. You can change the work layer by layer by changing the color, hue, or saturation. It really allows the viewer to be creative and to become an artist as well. Once you're down changing Maby's piece into your own, you can print it out to keep.

2 Roads by Steve Shaddick is another interactive piece that makes the viewer choose between two paths. This site changes with each visit. Depending on which path one takes, and depending on whether or not the choice the viewer made was a common path chosen or an uncommon road, the path becomes either more developed into a city, or more overgrown with trees. There's also a notepad that compares your options with that of other that have visited the site. Parts of Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" somewhat randomly pop up as well while the visitor travels. I really like the fact that you can compare the options you make with other visitor's choices.

Eisenstein's Monster by Chris Joseph is an odd piece. Basically. the visitor to the site builds a face. The artist provides several options of face silhouettes, mouths, noses, and eyes to choose from. Each option, minus the silhouettes, are like a mini animation of that feature. The different mouths make different noises and movements, and the nose and eyes do their own unique movement as well. The piece is based off of Shelley's Frankenstein and touches on the idea of science playing God, and artificial life.

Brian Judy's flash game called My US Rep is pretty entertaining. The visitor to the site can play as any US house representative. The goal is to gain popularity by approving certain bills, and earning money.

In conclusion, I feel that by making an interactive web piece, the artist can get their point across in a new and entertaining way. By including the viewer I feel it makes the artist's intentions more clear.

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Rhizome is home to over 2000 web-submitted artworks, and continues to grow as it becomes more and more popular. The works span across a wide variety of categories ranging from conceptually based works to the more self explanatory type. As I was researching for this assignment, I stumbled across several works that incorporated questions that humans have been struggling to find answers for, questions that have been asked throughout generations; questions involving life, God, human purpose, and reality.

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In my exhibit I want to show how artists take John Cage's idea of 4'33 and put it in to there own perspective. This will also show that anything can happen in art and why does art have to have an outcome. Art can have more that one outcome; it could have 10, 100, or 10,000 outcomes. There is more than one way to make art and as an artist you can evoke your audience to interact with your art and be part of an outcome.

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