myData=myMondrian is an interactive computer program in which the personal data provided by viewers is translated into Piet Mondrian-like composition.

-- FROM THE ARTIST'S SITE

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Focusing on a wide array of themes such as the context of a rapidly changing planet, our evolving human / natural ecosystem, the growing global strain on natural resources, and the advancement of artistic methods on potential of technological infrastructures, the 10th edition of the FutureSonic festival spanning 14 years integrated a wide and impressive array of international speakers, workshops, exhibitions, and performances. Scattered around the bustling city of Manchester in the United Kingdom, the festival took into account both its local strengths and its global outreach to encourage debate and showcase a wide arrange of artistic projects that examined just how far we have come in these debates and how far we have to go to make sense of the evolving technological apparatus that surrounds us.

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(via Vvork)

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On any given day, the average web user may log into as many as a dozen different social web services. Interaction with these sites could involve any number of activities including browsing photography, commenting on blog posts, planning trip itineraries, looking for a lover or updating a resume. While the sequential (or parallel) manner in which we navigate these databases and the generic aesthetic of the web 2.0 interface might suggest these sites form a unified network, that is simply not the case. In engaging the social web we voluntarily fragment our interests, social ties and demographic information in order to make them "machine readable" and allow us to participate in these communities. With these rules of engagement in mind, several recent projects speak to these conditions and explore the notion of web inventories in relation to identity, aggregation and as binding legal agreements.

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Image: A Tag's Life (screenshot)
Image: World At Work (screenshot)

An almost all too perfect follow-up to the 24 Hour Program at the Guggenheim this evening, this online exhibition hosted by Utrecht's Impakt also examines time, but through the lens of the internet. Time and technology have a long history together, a fact the curatorial statement acknowledges, and "It's About Time" organized by Sabine Niederer shifts its focus to the present with two projects that specifically attend to the contemporary reality of the web (such as 2.0 technologies) and time. The first, titled A Tag's Life and produced by the team George Holsheimer, Mirjam ter Linden, Daan Odijk, Patri Sadiqah, and Raoul Siepers, indicates trends by visualizing the lifespan of tags used on Flickr over time. The tendencies that emerge are generally expected, like the exponential use of the tags "politics" and "Obama" around this year's U.S. Presidential election. With the plethora of data visualization projects out there, this one isn't exactly groundbreaking, but could prove to be a useful tool to access Flickr. Unfortunately, you must "suggest" tags in order to generate graphs, which limits one's ability to take full advantage of the site. The second project, World At Work by Theo Deutinger, extends the boundaries of the clock to include both the macro level of the universe and the micro level of the working day on Earth. The site opens up on the Milky Way, and the visitor must zero in on Earth in order to draw up the number of people globally working 9-5 shifts by location. By showing how many people in the world are at work simultaneously, the site reveals the rhythm of labor worldwide, at any given moment. Deutinger, an architect, created the project as ...

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Processing, the open-source programming language and production environment developed by Ben Fry and Casey Reas, turned 1.0 yesterday. While it started off as tool for sketching and teaching the fundamentals of programing, Processing has developed into a full-fledged alternative to expensive proprietary software for the creation of everything from data visualizations and interactive installations to music and video. In just 7 years, Processing has grown into one of the primary tools used by contemporary artists working on digital projects, and stands as one of the finest examples of the power of open-source development.

Visit the Processing website to download the 1.0 version and start making things!

Read more about the 1.0 Release on Casey Reas' blog.

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"Assembly Instructions" is a visual thought map, comprised of over 120 small framed black and white xeroxed collages, by Brooklyn-based artist Alexandre Singh. Each collage represents an idea, which the artist connects to other collages via a network of dotted lines. The city of San Francisco is the originating point for the series, and the visitor can follow Singh's train of thought related to this subject by following the intricate and tangential maze of images, which spread throughout the gallery. In a sense, this project is almost a tactile answer to the visual sequence of ideas encountered on sites such as FFFFOUND!, while also drawing on the older practice of free association. The exhibition is up at Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco until the end of November.

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LAUNCH
Click here for more work by Claude Closky

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The relationship between sound and image has long entertained comparative theorists and geeks in both literary and music circles. Of course, this relationship keeps evolving with new technologies, and couplings between audio and the visual continue to grow, particularly in the context of live performances. But how do these two dyads manifest themselves in still forms? This is the question raised by "Frozen," an exhibition organized by Norwegian artist and curator Marius Watz, who has led the field of generative art with his own work, his Generator.x blog, and events focused on the work of others. The show is up through July 26th at Amsterdam's Melkweg Mediaroom, Paradiso, in conjunction with the 5 days off MEDIA festival. Everything included in it is the result of an assignment, which seems in keeping with an exhibition that responds to generative practices and computer-programmed processes. Artists Andreas Nicolas Fischer & Benjamin Maus; Leander Herzo; Daniel Widrig & Shajay Booshan; and Marius Watz have created digital prints and "audio sculptures" that respond to audioworks by Freiband and Alexander Rishaug. The artists have used techniques such as rapid prototyping, CNC, and laser cutting to make objects that map and visualize sound, in "frozen" form. Of course, these works may purport to stop time--existing almost like a single frame in a film strip--but they are utterly-time based, with the concept of frozen motion entirely scripted by the concept of time, and a processing of the structural qualities (timbre, tempo, rhythm, etc) of sounds informing the logic and form of the ultimate objects. A nice Flickr set documents the results which demonstrate both the diversity of ways in which sound can be interpreted and the fact that beauty still lies in the ear of the beholder. - Marisa Olson

Image: Marius Watz, Sound memory (Oslo Rain Manifesto), 2008 ...

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Codemanipulator is a Polish artist whose work revolves entirely around code and the pleasurable binary between the latter as text versus its ability to constitute an image. He makes "coded paintings," interactive installations, and data visualizations that address such topics as architecture, urban planning, and that public space we call the internet. While these themes coalesce around physical models, the work is intended to inquire about the impacts of seemingly immaterial code on creativity and social interaction. In a broader sense, this entails a consideration of the ways in which binary models of thought have further polarized or developed, following the emergence of network culture. For his show at Krakow's Foto-Medium-Art Gallery, entitled "I am code" (open May 9-June 20, 2008), Codemanipulator will present "CodePainting, CodePoetry, CodeMovies, CodeSculpture, CodeArchitecture...CodeEverything." That is, he takes the same sequence of code and explores how different machines and systems--from web browsers to video processors--interpret it differently, manifesting in a variety of forms. Judging from the gallery's photos of the exhibition's opening, the most popular manifestation was an installation of printed tiles resembling large-scale magnetic poetry. Despite the simplicity of these shingles laid out on a table, it was the ability to interact with and manipulate the code--physically and syntactically--that made it so popular. Take this as a reminder of the ongoing importance of playing language games. - Marisa Olson

Image Credit: Codemanipulator, Codemanipulator's Toybox, 2007

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