Knowbotic Research with Peter Sandbichler

This piece of art by the artist group Knowbotic Research along with Peter Sandbichler, is know as Mindsof Concern::Breaking News was presented to the the public in 2002. It first appeared in a group exhibition in New York. This piece is created using port scanning software that looked for weaknesses in the Internet servers of selected non-governmental organizations as well as media activists. When the website was visited by visitors of the exhibition, a port scan was initiated. This was performed by a " colorful slot machine interface called the 'Public Domain Scanner' ". This scanner found weaknesses in the specific servers to attacks by hackers. What you see in the picture is similar to the type of feedback received from the port scan. Results are returned in the form of a newsticker with things popping up different ways without signifying which port each result was referring to. Different colors and fonts and font sizes are used.

Scanning the ports is a legal process but is often prohibited by the internet service providers because it helps hackers gain access where they should not be. Because of this, the scanners were taken offline after the exhibit. The idea behind the project was to expose the issues that NGO's deal with in securing their projects from constant hacks or attempts at hacking.

I liked this project because it brings out a serious issue into the public eye. While showing what comes back from the scan as art, the results are translated into a language that allows for different groups of people to understand the issue. I feel like this is what happens with a lot of art so digital art is no different.

Email Erosion

Email Erosion, by Etham Ham, is a sculpture piece. A block of styrofoam is carved out depending on the spam and email present on your computer. This project consisted of a steel frame with the block of styrofoam within it. A mobile sprayer, the Eroder, moves around within the frame to spray colored water on the styrofoam to sculpt it. This is a very simple idea but an interesting one at the same time.

With this project, anyone can email in and have their email and spam turned into art. Once it is completed, they will recieve a picture of their sculpture. This is very much an interactive project for all people. All you need is an email address to take part! Each person will have a unique sculpture based on the content on their computer. It is amazing how it seems to get easier and easier to get involved with projects like these and they get more and more personal at the same time.

I thought this was a cool project because this is the first one that I have seen of this kind, which is what grabbed my attention. I also liked how simple it is to be interactive with this project. All you need to do is email eroder@emailerosion.org and your art can be created.

Check out the Email Erosion website HERE.

BUST D0WN THE D00RS!

HERE you can find the link to the flash video.

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries has created a number of different flash videos. The particular one that I was interested in, Bust Down The Doors!, was released in 2000.

Young-Hae Chang, a Korean artist, and Marc Voge, an American poet based in Seoul, were participants at a Net Art workshop in Brisbane, Australia. At the workshop they focused on Flash, a web animation tool that would take years to master. While there, they went over the first two topics of Flash which were making text appear on the screen and then setting it to music. After going to the workshop, Chang and Voge created Flash movies of fast moving text set to music under the name Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries. Bust Down The Doors! in 2000 was a Flash movie that told a story of a midnight raid on a house from different perspectives.

This video is different from others today because it sticks with the most basic of concepts from Flash. This artist and poet have made an art out of this style of Flash movies. Since the videos are all text, a lot can be taken from the font style and size. With the focus on the meaning of the words, the pace of the text and the music in the background, the viewer becomes a participant as is a characteristic of New Media Art.

I like this because it is different from the other New Art that I have found. In this case it isn't the direct participation that is required rather an indirect one as you watch the videos. Because this type of old school style to their videos is what thay do I wouod say to keep bringing new things to the table in the way of font usage as well as background music.

Vuk Cosic

Vuk Cosic, the man widely acknowledged for coining the term net.art, used a program and ASCII characters to create one of his best-known projects, ASCII History of Moving Images. Vuk Cosic used software to transform still frame images. He used ASCII characters, a set of numerical equivalents for typed letters and symbols that allow computer programs to talk to one another, to take the place of pixels in the image to create shadows and figures. After changing the still frames, Cosic quickly ran the images in succession to re-animate the original piece. Vuk was not the first to use these characters in art but this different way of recreating images goes with a long list of other ways Cosic has used to reproduced images.



The man who coined the term "net.art" has used the computer in an artistic way with this project. A few movies and television shows that he recreated in this way can be found HERE. These recreations have a futuristic look to them. It is cool that he used ASCII characters which were created in the 1960's to change classic videos in an artistic way.

I thought the videos and shows that Vuk Cosic chose to do were interesting because they spanned many genres from classic to pornography. With such a wide variety though, the art can be respected and enjoyed by a larger variation of people which is one idea behind New Media Art that brings people from all backgrounds together.

Umbrella.net

Created by Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki, Umbella.net look visually at mobile computer networks that connect spontaneously between mobile divices. This piece features white umbrellas with mobile devices attached to the shafts of the umbrellas. These umbrellas were operated by various people at various events. When participants would open the umbrella, the bobile device would attempt to establish a connection with other computer equipped umbrellas in the area. The color of the umbrella was created by LED lights in the umbrella to indicate the connection status, red signified that the mobile device was trying to establish a connection with the and blue means that a connection has been made. The umbrellas were chosen for aesthetic reasons and the creators "... believe these transitory networks can add surprise and beauty to our currently fixed communication channels."

This project embodies New Media art in how it involved a group of people to create the final product. This collaborative effort brought together people from all backgrounds, from architects to engineers, as well as designers and artists. As with many New Media projects that I have come across, the idea came up in a context other than an artistic one. Umbrella.net came up in an engineering context but had an artistic charm to it which allowed it to express an idea in a different way.

What caught my interest with this project was the want to find out more about the colored umbrellas. I think that to better relate to connecting to a network, Green LED lights would have been a better color for being connected to a network than the blue LED. On everything that I have ever seen, green means connected and red means that there is no connection. This change would have allowed a clearer understanding of the umbrellas and the mobile devices attached to them being connected with each other. I did like the dotted lines between the umbrellas to show that all the umbrellas were connected to one another because it was visually easy to understand.

This project was found on Mark Tribe website and the site can be found HERE.

This image was my original one turned in a week ago. The baby was intended to symbolize people in general that were being pushed to eat healthy. The fast food symbols were thoughts of those people and what they would rather have over healthy food, symbolized by the green baby food.



This above image is my second attempt based on the critique received from the first image. It seemed like people were having a tough time grasping how the baby knew about fast food in the first image. Instead of changing the baby to an adult or child I decided to change the "thoughts" of the baby. I thought popcorn suited the image better.

TOROLAB

A group called Torolab created this project in the early 21st century by using a series of GPS transmitters and specific Torolab-designed clothing to explore logistics of the daily life of Torolab members over a 5 day period. The members were all from the twin border cities of Tijuana and San Diego of which a map was included in the animation of the raoming lab members. The idea behind the project which they called, The Region of the Transborder Trousers, was to use GPS systems to accumulate data which would be entered into a computer and analyzed by a program which they had altered. From the data that was input, a piece of art was born. Along with the GPS data to show where people have been, there were different colored circles to represent the location of the Torolab members with the diameter of the circles to show the amount of fuel that remained in their tank. This successful design was presented as an installation at an art show in Madrid known as ARCO.

This project, though it was not meant to be used for this purpose, takes a look at one of the busiest borders in the world. By tracking only a handful of people in the Tijuana/San Diego area, one can get an idea of the amount of activity surrounding the border. By releasing this in Madrid where they may not know about the area, I feel like more can be pulled from the projection than by those who understand the area and may overlook the activity of the Torolab members in the region. The Spaniards will analyze the projection and may be able to compare the region to one that is around them. By releasing in other parts of the world, cultures are connected, compared and related in different ways than how they would be through looking at data points of similar circumstances. The installation feels much more personal that data.

I really like this piece because it is a different way of looking at people from a different region and where their like takes them. It give a personal account of their life which can be understood by all cultures, young and old. There are no barriers for understanding this installation. I feel like that is important with new media because much of it is shared between people of different backgrounds and cultures. Without barriers it is all for anyone, not just for those who received background or those that know a little about the region. Thought this was a great piece!!

This was found on the Mark Tribe Website HERE.