Last month, I prolonged my stay in Rio for one week, during which I got the chance to work together with Rafaël Rozendaal, ISAN, Evan Voytas, Elen and Jeffers Egan. It is pretty hard (if not impossible) to develop a 70 minute performance in 5 days, with a group of people you have never met before; working methods, perspectives, aesthetics and aims differ per artist. This is why the artist talks that were given at Parque Lage, were (albeit a bit late into the week) very useful for me.

During his lecture, Rafaël noted: "normally we are used to interactivity as a goal, but I am more interested in interactivity without a goal." A conceptual use of meaninglessness that kick-started my wish to connect my methods with Rafaëls work.

Rafaël also said that for our performance, he wanted to use already existing flash work, because "Flash works are both scalable without quality loss and have a very small file size" - which he described as some of the most important material qualities of his work (and which reminded me of some neo-demoscene-gen). Besides this, the development of a new concept and a new work would take much to long.

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The book is a collection of texts written by Domenico Quaranta between 2005 and 2010 for exhibition catalogues, printed magazines and online reviews: a pocket version of what the author would save from the universal flood, in a world without computers. It documents most of the fields of research he has focused on critically: from Net Art to Software Art and videogames, from biotechnologies to the debate around curating and the positioning of New Media Art in the contemporary landscape, and back to Net Art again.

This itinerary is traced through a selection of essays, monographic texts and interviews with artists and curators, in no particular order: from Eva and Franco Mattes to Casey Reas, from UBERMORGEN.COM to Oliver Laric, from Cory Arcangel to Tale of Tales, from Jon Ippolito to Gazira Babeli.

-via Domenico Quaranta.

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But what if we shook up this definition of realism and believability a little bit? After all, a videogame is never going to be real. Even a photograph—a chip or piece of film exposed to light—is more inherently connected to physical reality. Videogames, in contrast, are only depictions and representations of reality, artificial approximations. What if, rather than continuing to move toward slicker and slicker approximations of reality, games instead provoked players into new ways of seeing reality, and new ideas of “realism”?

Chasing photorealism has led to some incredible gaming experiences, but it’s also limiting, defining graphical success only in terms of how real something looks. Visual art hit this conflict when photography was invented—if photography was able to instantly capture reality as it existed, long the territory of painting, what was the role of painting? But what rose out of negotiating that artistic tangle were new forms of art...

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When we first started work on Friday morning, Michael and I started brainstorming what we wanted to accomplish: something visual, high-concept (i.e. explainable in a tweet), and hopefully with a sense of humor.

We quickly realized that our interest in supercuts was fertile ground. Michael's work often touches on structural re-edits and remixes, such as Oonce-Oonce, Battleship Potemkin: Dance Edit, Chapters 1-12 of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet Synced and Played Simultaneously, and his mashup album mixing pop vocals over their ringtone versions.

Both of us were fascinated by this form of Internet folk art. Every supercut is a labor of love. Making one is incredibly time-consuming, taking days or weeks to compile and edit a single video. Most are created by pop culture fans, but they've also been used for film criticism and political commentary. It's a natural byproduct of remix culture: people using sampling to convey a single message, made possible by the ready availability of online video and cheap editing software.

So, supercuts. But what? Making a single supercut seemed cheap. I first suggested making a visual index of supercuts, or a visualization of every clip.

But Michael had a better idea — going meta. We were going to build a SUPERSUPERCUT, a supercut composed entirely out of other supercuts. And, if we had time, we'd make a dedicated supercut index...

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BBC posts the trailer for the upcoming Adam Curtis documentary, "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace." It airs Monday May 23 at 9pm on BBC2. Curtis' previous documentaries (It Felt Like a Kiss, Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares, etc) are available streaming free online at archive.org.

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In conjunction with Rhizome's brand new curated page on Kickstarter, we are featuring select projects from the site on the blog. If you would like to let us know about your fund raising efforts on Kickstarter, shoot us an email at editor(at)rhizome.org

►Bent Festival 2011

Now in it's 8th year, Bent Festival 2011 will be held at 319 Scholes in Brooklyn, June 23rd – 25th.  Bent is an annual electronic art and music festival celebrating circuit bending and its related creative practices: DIY electronics, hardware hacking, glitch, software art, abstract video.  Each year artists are welcomed from across the country and around the globe to share their craft through performances, workshops, video screenings, art exhibitions, and installations. The festival, as a whole, showcases the state of the art in DIY electronics and circuit bending culture, with an emphasis on participation, education and exploration.

► endarchive

endarchive is an open archive of urban experience built from the street. Using unique QR code tags collaborators can make their personal experiences of the city accessible in physical space.

After placing a QR sticker on an object or location, the tag is scanned using a QR scanner on a mobile device like an iPhone or Android and an entry is created consisting of text and an image. Anyone on the street can then view the archive entry by scanning the tag or entering the unique URL. Endarchive.com is an online repository of user entries in New York City. We are trying to raise money ($800) to fund the printing of our QR stickers. 

►DesignBlocks: Visual Programming for Artists

DesignBlocks is an open-source, web-based visual programming language that makes it easy to control lines, shapes, colors and images to create generative and interactive artworks. It uses the same visual grammar as ...

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Live blog of the Seven on Seven conference May 14th.

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Caterina Fake is delivering the opening remarks.

This year's teams:

Stay tuned for tomorrow's live blog!

In the meantime, take a look at the Seven on Seven participants' responses to the question: Do Artists and Technologists Create Things the Same Way? Join in the discussion on Quora. Don't miss ArtInfo's interview with executive director Lauren Cornell about Seven on Seven. And check out John Borthwick's blog post on the event, "Art and technology are two communities that are well represented here in New York and yet they dont intersect that frequently. This event was designed to become a bridge between these communities. As technology becomes more deeply engrained in our lives and society it will become part of what we consider to be art and vica-versa."

[Note: The hashtag for Seven on Seven on twitter is #AOL7on7]

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