Geoff Cox is an artist, teacher and organiser of events connected with digital experimentation in the United Kingdom. Within his curatorial route for Arnolfini, an organisation dealing with contemporary art, he developed an interesting project whose topic is the intersections between critical theory of social networks and critical practice of the world of art.
Geoff’s developed an interesting project called Antisocial notworking. These are the notes about the project and an interview with Geoff talking about social networks. Fascinating stuff – just make sure you’ve got a clear head when attempting the Notes…there’s a lot to take in, but it’s worth the effort.
Also see Art & Social Technologies, which is a research group in the UK that examines creative practice at the intersection of art, technology and society.
I’m part of the creative industries and fairly immersed in network culture. I know this, but it does not sit well. Funny that!
For my latest quest, I’m on the look-out for information about the impact of digital technologies on media practice. As I delve further and further into this web of…the Web, actually, I’m struggling to come up with ‘the goods’! On the plus side however, I’ve re-discovered the thoughts and theories of Geert Lovink – first encountered in my undergrad ‘Digital Media’ class in 2002. The ‘future’ we discussed then, is now. Geert’s articles in my course reader helped my understanding of all things ‘new media’ immensely back then. Yesterday, as I again seek knowledge of the future in the now (Web 3.0 anyone?), his name popped up – again. I found Geert’s archive of ‘thoughts’ on the web and promptly wrote a post about it. Today, I’ve come full circle and wandered into his current home at the Institute of Network Cultures. Serendipity!
Hello Professor Lovink. You’ve appeared at just the right moment and sets me ‘on course’ again. The past and future collide. There ain’t nuthin’ new in that!
This is what I like about the world today. A lot of information presented in one layer…but on closer inspection is densely multi-layered. Simple complexity. This biomap was created by Christian Nold. Somehow I want to incorporate these ideas into my Honours project. I like the idea of ‘tracking’ home movies to see what type of pattern takes shape and meaning is revealed.
Christian Nold is the creator of this biomap.
The San Francisco Emotion Map is the culmination of Christian Nold’s five-week residency and participatory art project that involved a total of 98 participants exploring San Francisco’s Mission District neighborhood using the Bio Mapping device he invented. During his residency at Southern Exposure, Christian Nold worked in the organization’s Mission Street storefront gallery encouraging visitors to stop by and use the devices during the weekdays and on Saturdays when he conducted intensive workshops. The project invited the public to go for a walk using the device, which records the wearer’s physiological response to their surroundings. The results of these walks are represented on this map using colored dots and participant’s personal annotations. The San Francisco Emotion Map is a collective attempt at creating an emotional portrait of a neighborhood and envisions new tools that allow people to share and interpret their own bio data.
While working on one research project looking into digital technologies affect on media production, I stumbled upon this gem from the Video Vortex conference held earlier this year in Amsterdam. It’s a quote from the (always interesting) Geert Lovink. It was written for an upcoming book:
We no longer watch films or TV; we watch databases. Instead of well-defined programmes, we search one list after another. We are no longer at the mercy of cranky reviewers and monocultural multiplexes. what we run up against is the limitations of our own mental capacity. Which search terms will yield the best fragments? What was that title again? Does anyone know that director’s name? What was that band called? What category was it under? Does he know someone else with interesting tastes? Was that reference blogged anywhere? Does she know the URL? Was it under pets or entertainment? Welcome to snack culture: watch a clip and move on.
My ‘home movies’ project is still ‘the road I’m travelling’ for my Honours, but it’s important (to me) that it is somehow related to contemporary culture. I’m also looking into emotional mapping, visualisation, identity,archiving, databases and the ‘cultural DNA of content’ (yet another ‘Lovink term’ that’s bang on the mark for what I want to explore). Things shift and swirl…
Veer are a very cool company that provides visual elements for use in professional creative work, such as graphic design, motion design, advertising and filmmaking. Their products include stock photography, illustration, typefaces, and unique merchandise. This New York outfit is very sassy and won the 2008 Webby Awards Winners for Best Use of Typography.Who needs substance, when you have so much style?
visualcomplexity is a beautiful website showing the visualization of complex networks. The project’s main goal is ‘to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web’. Some are not genuine complex networks, but ‘they either provide advancement in terms of visual depiction techniques/methods or show conceptual uniqueness and originality in the choice of a subject’.
I love it, because it makes me look at how information and data is (and could be) ‘mapped’ in different ways. I’m also a sucker for the pretty colours and patterns!
Is this where we’re headed? Someone told me about this video (made by CasaleggioAssociati) yesterday. I found it pretty fascinating and I love that crazy, Italian accent! Science fiction…or not? See what you think.
