User:Eleanorg/Works I've Enjoyed

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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

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

Feb 2013

Font size changes according to movements detected in your webcam.

Jan 2013

Nice healing of divide between drawing and workshops/conceptual projects
Like a participatory Amazon Noir; rare example of a very accessible UI - drag a bookmarklet, visit JSTOR, click the bookmarklet and liberate a document.
Applying mechanical turk to fantasy-generation by collecting online porn. Nice combination of human labour and an algorithm that collates/remixes the content.
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?
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)
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.
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)
Magazine divided into blocks, only blocks sold (5EU each) get printed. 'Vote with your wallet' publishing.
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'.
Fanzine distributed by being posted on walls around Florence. (Post digital print p.47). How else could printed material be distributed?
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.
Stylish text-diff treatment of live headlines. Using HTML Parser & XinDiff.

Sept 2012

Bartholl-style re-introduction of digital images back into real space
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.
Like Sophie Calle's photos of ppl using cash machines - photos taken every five minutes by the artists' webcams. Beautiful documentation of digital labour.
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

April 2012

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

Movement sensors(?) allow you to play in the mud and alter projections onto the mud as you do. Wired would love it. Silly + fun.
System to help you make 3d data visualisations with string and projector
Non-tech use of hi-tech looking installation; projections on rubber bands
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

Another offline network, taking 'digital' into physical space & inviting strangers to take risks together
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.
creative use of cutting up a text & deconstructing it in a rule-based way
re-performs collaborative editing. A nice treatment to make sense of the history of collaborative texts

Jan 2012

'grows' plants on desktop screen saver; inverts speed fetish of computing; striking superimposition of earthy time on computer time
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)
Another nice example of the many vs the individual; nice how individuals work in isolation & are then combined into a whole
Deceptively simple format; bases a critique of copyright in age of 'information overload' on human perceptive capability
Beautiful use of volunteers in ritual-like format; demands long-term commitment; participants are 'witnesses not spectators' a la Etchells
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

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
Meditation on collective mind; integration of pre-designed elements with live data; creation of physical space from virtual material
Strong conceptual linking of hardware/body to 'virtuality'; not just conceptual but visually engaging
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
links physical geography to virtual travel; re-imagining geography in networked world