MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and University of Southampton researchers recently wrote a paper analyzing 4Chan's "alternative credibility mechanisms" and particular community activity. Collecting a dataset over two weeks (576,096 posts in 482,559 threads) 4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community (Michael S. Bernstein, Andrès Monroy-Hernández, Drew Harry, Paul Andrè, Katrina Panovich, Greg Vargas) considers the speed of activity on the site and user habits like having “/b/ folders” archiving material from the site and unicode fluency is a status indicator. Interestingly, the paper sees 4chan's ephemerality as a potential motivator for further participation ("One may think users would see no point to contributing if their actions will be removed within minutes. However, if /b/ users want to keep a thread from expiring within minutes, they need to keep conversation active. This 'bump' practice, combined with a norm of quick replies, may encourage community members to contribute content. This hypothesis was derived from our observations, and will need to be tested more rigorously.")

Among their findings:

The median life of a thread is just 3.9 minutes...The fastest thread to expire was gone in 28 seconds (i.e., a thread with no responses during a very high activity period); the longest-lived lasted 6.2 hours (i.e., a thread with frequent new posts to bump it).

The median thread spends just 5 seconds on the first page over its entire lifetime..The fastest thread was pushed off the first page in less than one second (actually, 58 of them shared this dubious honor), and the most prominent thread spent 37 minutes on the first page cumulatively over its lifetime.

Threads last the longest between 9am and 10am EST and expire fastest between 5pm and 7pm EST ...

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The infamous, brackishly titled Berlin-based duo Keller/Kosmas (Aids-3D) have exhibited widely from an extremely young age. Dropping out of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and moving to Berlin at age 20, Keller and Kosmas became known in the late naughts for their dirt-style website documenting static works with a fantastical, conspiracy theorist sci-fi sensibility, in addition to weed-infused performances of laser shows and naked babes. As an artistic entity, Keller and Kosmas essentially grew up online, and for better or worse, in the public eye. Now barely 25, Daniel Keller and Nik Kosmas enjoy exhibition opportunities throughout Europe and the United States, albeit with a more concerted sense of art historical sensitivity, production know-how, and overarching artistic maturity.

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Rhizome Commissions voting is now open. Since 2004, Rhizome's member community participates in the annual commission cycle through an open member vote. This special members-only feature, gives you the opportunity to survey the hundreds of proposals and vote for which proposal will receive a significant grant from Rhizome.

The Approval voting stage is now open through June 5, 2011. During this first of two stages of voting, members can survey the hundreds of proposals submitted by artists from around the world. In the approval stage, our members vote Yes or No for as many or as few proposals as they wish. At the end of the approval stage, the top 25 proposals will move on to the ranking stage. To learn more about the open voting process, check out our policy and procedures.

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Jens Wunderling is interaction designer and media artist based in Berlin. In 2009, Default to Public, his graduation project at the University of Arts, Berlin, won an award of distinction in the Interactive art category at Ars Electronica. This artwork explores the discrepancy between people’s modes of self-revelation online and their simultaneous desire for privacy in the real world in three different modules, focusing on the microblogging site Twitter. This interview was conducted over email during February and March 2011.

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(shout out to david o'rielly) (i got a max beat behind me) (im doing me, making .gifs) (on the web. Ryder Ripps) (It's cool cause its nerdyyy) (yeah)

datamoshing cool datamoshing great. justin bieber i'l move him with my face. then use it for an art show. use it for a piece projected on a apple projected on a peach find me on the internet, i'm making gifs...

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Fragmentr is a "collaborative image remixing site" designed by Ryan Weafer. It's also a "living archive. When you generate a permalink it displays a range of images that shuffle randomly."

Via Sarah Hromack, pointing out the site has a lot of potential: "I love a big, gorgeous, authoritative slideshow. What I love even more though, are projects that expose the precarious state of the digital image."

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Lia Ices’ video for “Grown Unknown” is a visual performance diary documenting modern dancer Ruby MacDougall’s three week voyage across the Pacific from Long Beach, California to Shanghai, China...The footage was shot from a laptop camera, and edited by Joanna Bovay

via FAKE TV

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Scott Draves and Electric Sheep, excerpt from the High Fidelity Demo (at reduced resolution and quality for web upload)

The Electric Sheep is a cyborg mind. It harnesses the collective intelligence of 450,000 computers and people creates abstract art with mathematics and Darwinian evolution. The result is seamless, organic, and infinite.

Scott Draves: Pioneer of Generative Art is on view at Devotion Gallery in Brooklyn until June 5th, 2011. An interview with Draves, conducted by Phoenix Perry, is available at Triangulation Blog.

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Blipfest co-founder Nullsleep, performing to a Saturday crowd
Over the weekend Eyebeam Art & Technology Center hosted the fifth annual Blip Festival. The three day concert series is a hub for the chiptune scene, an international community of musicians composing, arranging, and performing music for vintage computer and game systems such as Gameboy, NES, Commodore 64, and Amiga. For a sound that is left one-dimensional on record and is conflated with gamer culture, Blip provides the optimal conditions for absorbing the scene's depth and diversity. While the genre obviously draws influence from video game soundtracks, this is due in part to the parametric limitations of the medium and its composition environment. Stylistically, the weekend's oeuvre ranged from super posi 8bit pop-punk, to the darker more aggressive corners of electronic music and noise.

On display throughout the three evenings was the Blip Festival Gallery curated by Lindsay Howard. Three video monitors featured works from Sterling Crispin, Alexandra Gorczynski, and Nicolas Sassoon. This rotating exhibition was limited though to a small peripheral area by the entrance, and would have benefited greatly by expanding into the main gallery space. Instead the corners of Eyebeam's main gallery were occupied by vendors offering goods such as Makerbots, Gameboy accessories, and cupcakes. Among the festival's standout performances were: Tristan Perich (2010 Rhizome Commission recipient), offering a performance drawing from his 1 bit symphonies and 4mat, a veteran of the demoscene, and composer of music for the Amiga, presenting his debut public appearance (accompanied by stunning visuals from Enso). Unsurprisingly though co-organizers, and scene veterans Bit Shifter and Nullsleep stole the show (Nullsleep's visuals provided by Tabor Robak), both exuding pure energy with unstudied stage presence.

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Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools opens Thursday at The Whitney. Here are some interviews in advance:

I Sing the Gadget Electronic, New York Times
“There’s something inherently absurd about people sitting in front of their TVs and controlling a virtual 3-D representation of themselves bowling a ball down a lane,” he said. In modifying his games so that their characters are destined to fail, he said, he’s used advanced technology to unspectacular ends, so “all you’re left with is a repeated, infinite letdown.”

Futurism, The New Yorker
We had an Atari early on, but we never had a Nintendo. I’d watch my friends play when I went to their houses, but that’s it. I think that’s why my pieces are about watching, not interacting.”

The Joys of Obsolescence, New York magazine

For the series “Photoshop Gradient Demonstrations,”Arcangel took the titular computer files—rectangles of color, fading from one tone into the next, intended as guides for graphic artists—and ordered them made into the enormous, gallery-quality color photographs known as C-prints. You might mistake them for Ellsworth Kelly–ish paintings until you realize that the gradients are standard-­issue with the software, with no inherent artistic content. “I realized that it doesn’t make sense to only use old stuff, because everything’s gonna be old at a certain point,” says Arcangel. “In twenty years, my C-prints might look tacky. In 40 years, they might be kitschy.”

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