Rhizome

rhizomedotorg: Read about "An Immaterial Survey of Our Peers" a group show organized by JOGGING: http://bit.ly/c9heaF

rhizomedotorg: Artworks featuring the Photoshop lasso tool: http://bit.ly/9OTiiz, http://bit.ly/cszvxS

rhizomedotorg: Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, to speak at the New Museum April 8th: http://bit.ly/aKXNFj

rhizomedotorg: Required Reading: "The Matter of Electronics" by Ed Halter: http://bit.ly/9Vbg0e

Danah Boyd Speaking at SXSW Interactive [Source: SXSW on YouTube]

Now that everyone is out of business cards and has had enough time to check in to their locative media apps, I think we can begin to make sense of the social and technological deluge that was the South by Southwest Interactive festival. After being deep in a web development hole for the past few months, what I took away from the conference was a rejuvenation of critical, big-picture questioning, a reminder of just how drastically technology is contouring contemporary society and culture and that, ultimately, it is still in our hands to determine the overall shape of things to come. Although a late arrival and scheduling conflicts prevented me from hearing everyone I'd have liked to have heard (Douglas Rushkoff, Gary Vaynerchuk, among many others), I was able to take in most of the keynote speakers and the panels whose subject had some impact or connection to the arts (which were few). Here is a synopsis of the projects, presentations, and people that resonated with me the most.

Funding Your Projects from the Crowd - Moderated by Robin Sloan, this panel brought Perry Chen from Kickstarter, Britta Riley from Windowfarms and Jenna Wortham from the New York Times together to talk about how to use the web to raise funds for creative projects, mainly using Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a microfunding website that helps people realize their creative projects by providing a simple online space to mobilize a community of supporters. Both Sloan and Riley are Kickstarter success stories, as Sloan was able to raise four times his base $3,500 funding goal to help him write a book. Riley said that she had a difficult time securing grants from art institutions due to the unconventional nature of her WindowFarms project, but was able to raise over $28,000 via Kickstarter. She also mentioned that using Kickstarter enabled her to devote more resources to the actual project itself instead of having to invest time and money into developing a website capable of handling online payments. Kickstarter is currently in Beta and still invite only, as they are finalizing the best methods for helping people's projects succeed. But, once it leaves Beta, it will prove very valuable for artists to accomplish projects that may require extra funding or don't fit within the requirements of many arts grants.

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Ongoing series of collected photographs from eBay.com depicting televisions for sale. To market the sets, the eBay sellers also used found images. In particular I enjoy the complex interactions of the 2-dimensional screen image, its display device as a 3-dimensional product/subject, a 4th dimensional surrounding environment, your computer browser screen (the 5th dimension), and so on.

-- FROM THE ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Originally via VVORK

(Left to Right) Maryanne Casasanta, Abigail McGuane, Lili Huston-Herterich, Aaron Graham

An Immaterial Survey of Our Peers is a group show currently on display at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Curated by Web collective JOGGING, the exhibit brings together the work of a group of artists whose art is primarily displayed and distributed via the Web. Given the immaterial quality of much of the work, the show does not physically take place within the gallery space itself. Instead, the artwork has been collected and arranged over photos of the empty gallery space using digital compositing techniques. These photos are then displayed as documentation of the exhibit on the show website, and projected onto the walls of the gallery space for the show's duration. Artists on display include AIDS-3D, Kari Altmann, Jon Rafman, Travess Smalley, Ben Schumacher, and Hermonie Only, among many others. The show is currently on display both online and at the Sullivan Galleries at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

A coolness generator which transforms your photos, making you look "TOO COOL".
[Exhibition produced by jstchillin]

Four Letter Words consists of four units, each capable of displaying all 26 letters of the alphabet with an arrangement of fluorescent lights.

The piece displays an algorithmically generated word sequence derived from a word association database developed by the University of South Florida between 1976 and 1998. The algorithms take into account word meaning, rhyme, letter sequencing, and association.

The algorithm's tendency towards scatological or "dark" subject matter is influenced by a variety of language and perception studies, especially Elliot McGinnies' 1949 study "Emotionality and Perceptual Defense."

While the piece was conceived with idea of displaying algorithmically generated lists, it was designed with flexibility and expandability in mind. The individual units can be connected ad-infinitum, and are theoretically capable of displaying any length of text. While Four Letter Words deals with a specific range of content, the technology can be easily expanded for future textual experiments.

-- FROM THE ARTIST'S STATEMENT