User:Eleanorg/Works I've Enjoyed

This is a record of works I've enjoyed in each month - not ones that have been newly made, but that I have encountered or re-encountered, and struck a chord at this particular time. It's an attempt to overcome my terrible memory for names; a crib sheet for tutorials, etc.

March 2013

• Geoffrey Farmer (2012) Laves of grass http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jun/11/documenta-13-review

A 3d photo-essay showing the evolution of time magazine over 50 years of Life magazine.

Feb 2013

• Marko Dugonjić (2013) Realtime http://webdesign.maratz.com/lab/responsivetypography/realtime/

Font size changes according to movements detected in your webcam.

• Mladen Stilinovic. (?) Time-based currency prototype http://chazhuttonsfsm.tumblr.com/post/1016226683/time-based-currency-prototype-because-time-is

Jan 2013

• Hayley Louise Goodsell (2010) Online Life Drawing: How to Draw Strangers http://metalculture.com/archive/online-life-drawing-how-to-draw-strangers.html

Nice healing of divide between drawing and workshops/conceptual projects

• Aaron Swartz Memorial JSTOR Liberator http://aaronsw.archiveteam.org/

Like a participatory Amazon Noir; rare example of a very accessible UI - drag a bookmarklet, visit JSTOR, click the bookmarklet and liberate a document.

• Stephanice Rothenberg & Jeff Crouse, Labourers of Love (LOL) http://laborersoflove.com/

Applying mechanical turk to fantasy-generation by collecting online porn. Nice combination of human labour and an algorithm that collates/remixes the content.

• Goldsmiths College Design BA, 'Out of Print' http://out-of-print.org/

A script generates headlines from trending news topics and people print them using woodblock letters onto posters. Any suggestions of more sophisticated variations on this idea, where the re-combinability of letters makes a meaningful link to digital data?

• Harold Offeh, 'Smile' (2001) http://www.axisweb.org/ofSARF.aspx?SELECTIONID=89

Beautiful illustration of the problem with signifiers....

Dec 2012

• TAG Magazine (2009), At Transmediale & PRINT/Pixel Rotterdam

A temporary editorial office invites visitors to come and make a magazine over the course of a week. Professional editors & designers coordinate the process. (Post Digital Print p.69)

• The BlogPaper (Beta) http://www.theblogpaper.co.uk

Fascinating appropriation of "citizen journalism" web-to-print. Like a for-profit Indymedia (writers give articles for free, upload them to the BlogPaper site) where most popular/discussed items get printed and handed out in London. Note prevalence of 'Comment Is Free' style racist nutters & PR press releases. Why does everyone want to create their own walled-garden "community", rather than aggregate? (See 'aggregators as parasites' debate, Post Digital Print p.57, and paper printouts as 'best of', p.58).

Nov 2012

• Amazon Noir, Ubermorgen, Ludovico & Paulo Cirio

Copying books from Amazon, one Look Inside search result at a time.

• Assembling Press (1970-1982), Richard Kostelanetz http://www.richardkostelanetz.com/inventories/assembling.html

Public invited to send in 1,000 copies of anything they wanted included. Burden of production shifted onto authors; distribution of resources determines who gets published - rather than more elaborate democratic means. (Post Digital Print p.45)

• Amsterdam Weekly (2008 fundraising campaign) http://www.guerrilla-innovation.com/archives/2008/04/000647.php

Magazine divided into blocks, only blocks sold (5EU each) get printed. 'Vote with your wallet' publishing.

• Newsmap (2004), Marcus Weskamp http://marumushi.com/projects/newsmap

Visualizes live news stories; the more coverage, the more screen space. Neatly demonstrates self-fulfilling emergence of news hierarchy; especially nice visual effect at corners of the screen as unpopular stories literally 'squeezed out'.

• Bambina Precoce (1984-1986), Tommaso Tozzi http://www.tommasotozzi.it/index.php?title=Bambina_Precoce_%281984%29

Fanzine distributed by being posted on walls around Florence. (Post digital print p.47). How else could printed material be distributed?

• Pamphlet (2006), Helmut Smits http://helmutsmits.nl/public-spaces/pamphlet

A message 'sent' electronically is distributed physically, simply by placing a printer high up - dramatic/cinematic fall of the paper visualizes a message being sent. Instantaneous one-off editions.

• The Quick Brown (?), Jonathan Puckey http://www.thequickbrown.com/

Stylish text-diff treatment of live headlines. Using HTML Parser & XinDiff.

Sept 2012

• Google Ghosts (2012) by Paulo Cirio http://streetghosts.net/

Bartholl-style re-introduction of digital images back into real space

• Vitruvian Paint Machine (2009) by Conditional Design http://conditionaldesign.org/workshops/vitruvian-paint-machine/

Artist experiments with surrendering control to the Other; becomes 'programmable' << opens up links between computers (commands) and social power/instruction

• 'The Piracy Project' by AND Publishing

Making digital issues physical. Non-overly hierarchical way of bringing together a collection of autonomous works.

• 'Laptop Reflections' by Conditional Design - http://www.laptopreflections.org/

Like Sophie Calle's photos of ppl using cash machines - photos taken every five minutes by the artists' webcams. Beautiful documentation of digital labour.

• 'Chinese Business' by Conditional Design - http://conditionaldesign.org/?articles=3

Visualising ideas about distribution/democracy by applying business rules to drawing. What other sets of rules/ideology could be applied to physical making?

May 2012

• Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec’s installation, Virtual Hole - Sun 1:1 (2011) Part of nimk show: http://nimk.nl/eng/archive/the-source

April 2012

• The Best Is Yet To Come (2012) by our own Silvio! http://www.silviolorusso.com/thebestisyettocome/

i love how such a minimalist comparison of forms provokes thought about representations of time and the unnoticed expectations/rhythms built into everyday use of the internet.

March 2012

• Mud Tub (?) by To Gerhardt http://tomgerhardt.com/mudtub/

Movement sensors(?) allow you to play in the mud and alter projections onto the mud as you do. Wired would love it. Silly + fun.

• Lumarca (2009?) by Albert Hwang, Matt Parker, and Elliot Woods http://lumarca.info/about.html

System to help you make 3d data visualisations with string and projector

• PlaneScape (2010) by Yoko Seyama, Lyndsey Housden, Wolfgang Bittner and Jeroen Uyttendaele http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmWwuKZaMyA

Non-tech use of hi-tech looking installation; projections on rubber bands

• Walking Dead Drops (2012) by Jerome Saint-Clair http://vimeo.com/38786165

like dead drops, but using transport networks to send data across the city

• Celluloid Remix - competition (2012) organised by EYE Film Instituut Nederland & Beelden voor de Toekomst

interesting example of institutions doing 'remix' culture. Prizes for the 'best' remixes. Weird.

Feb 2012

• Dead Drops (2011-), Aram Bartholl, http://deaddrops.com/

Another offline network, taking 'digital' into physical space & inviting strangers to take risks together

• Skin (2003), Shelley Jackson, http://ineradicablestain.com/skin-video.html

The aesthetic of a distributed network, taken offline & entirely relying on the living body.Frustrating lack of documentation of the original work; this video is a remix.

• The Time Machine In Alphabetical Order (), Thomson & Craighead, http://www.thomson-craighead.net/

creative use of cutting up a text & deconstructing it in a rule-based way

• EpicPedia (2008), Annemieke van der Hoek, http://www.epicpedia.org/

re-performs collaborative editing. A nice treatment to make sense of the history of collaborative texts

Jan 2012

• The Bank of Time (2001), Richard Wright http://thebankoftime.host.furtherfield.org/

'grows' plants on desktop screen saver; inverts speed fetish of computing; striking superimposition of earthy time on computer time

• Mimeticon (2006), Richard Wright http://mimeticon.host.furtherfield.org/cgi-bin/Baroque.cgi

search by similarity: deconstruction of images vs words; word becomes an image, which then becomes a 'word' (as it signifies, in order to gather 'relevant' results)

• Bicycle Built for 2,000 (?), Aaron Koblin http://www.bicyclebuiltfortwothousand.com/

Another nice example of the many vs the individual; nice how individuals work in isolation & are then combined into a whole

• 10,000 Copyrighted Images (2007), Richard Wright http://futurenatural.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/film10KVIMEO.html

Deceptively simple format; bases a critique of copyright in age of 'information overload' on human perceptive capability

• ExtInked, UHC Collective http://www.uhc.org.uk/portfolio.php?tag=13&project=54

Beautiful use of volunteers in ritual-like format; demands long-term commitment; participants are 'witnesses not spectators' a la Etchells

• Newstweek (2011), Julian Oliver & Danja Vasiliev http://newstweek.com/overview

Very clean & sophisticated implementation of a simple idea intercepting wifi hotspots. Golden Nica award, Ars Elec. 2011

• The Sheep Market (), Aaron Koblin

Similar aesthetic to InBFlat. Nice how it uses the system itself in an unorthodox way, to critique it

Dec 2011

• Virtual Choir (ongoing) Eric Whitacre http://virtualchoir.ericwhitacre.com/

beautiful juxtaposition of the everyday/isolated and the sublime/communal, as isolated voice uploads become a full choir. Shame about over-literal, tacky visual presentation

• Listening Post (2004), Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen http://earstudio.com/2010/09/29/listening-post/

Meditation on collective mind; integration of pre-designed elements with live data; creation of physical space from virtual material

• Coal Fired Computers (2010), YoHa http://yoha.co.uk/cfc

Strong conceptual linking of hardware/body to 'virtuality'; not just conceptual but visually engaging

• Internet Topography (2006-11), Nicholas Maigret & Nicholas Montgermont (collaborating as 'Art of Failure' http://www.triangulationblog.com/2011/04/nicolas-maigret.html

Beautiful abstract, minimalist exploration of the physical medium of 'the internet' and its glitches

• With You (various performances)

Thoughtful integration of performance into social media; 'fake'/hijacked identity; nice solution to documentation in USB format

• Packet Garden (2006), Julian Oliver http://julianoliver.com/pg

links physical geography to virtual travel; re-imagining geography in networked world