New Media Initiatives Blog

• Teddy Banks, writing for Design Observer, shares some commentary on Olia Lialina’s newest article: Vernacular Web 2. The article is a great read on it’s own, and as Banks tells us, should be a must read for every web designer. Lialina’s work, My boyfriend came back from the war, was featured in the Walker’s online exhibit, Beyond Interface: net art and Art on the Net.

  Lialina touches on the similarties of myspace of today and the web of 10 years ago. Instead of being designed by computer geeks, it’s “designed” by teens and ameteurs, and the music is mp3s and not midi.

• And speaking of MySpace, Danah Boyd has some new thoughts posted on myspace and remix culture. Seb Chan offers some thoughts on what this means for institutions that offer graphics and resources that can be remixed (legitimately or otherwise).
• Here’s an interesting article on the paradox of large displays, written by Jeff Attwood. He quotes Dan’s Data:
  

  Users of 30-inch monitors face the terrible, terrible problem of how to effectively use all of that space. You don’t often want to maximise a folder or document window on a screen this big; either you’ll end up with a lot of white space and important program buttons separated by a vast expanse of nothing, or you’ll get lines of text 300 or more characters long, which are difficult to read.

  I use three displays at work, two on my main computer and one on the laptop. While synergy makes this a very useful setup when doing video work, it can also be extrmely distracting at times. I find it necessary to sleep my laptop so I can focus on important tasks on my main displays.

• Interactive Architecture had been quiet for a while, but they posted a brief blurb on a conference going on next week that will discuss the many implications of signage in public space. Hopefully some of the papers and presentations from the conference will make it to the web.

The New York Times reported yesterday on a nifty net art project called AddArt. The concept is simple: replace annoying online ads with works of art. Here’s a sample of the article:

Steve Lambert, a conceptual artist, plans to add his own twist to one type of software that blots out commercial messages. His add-on will replace the display ads -- which are usually papered over with blank windows -- with curator-picked artwork from contemporary artists.

On a recent afternoon, Mr. Lambert demonstrated a test version of AddArt at the Chelsea studios of Eyebeam, a nonprofit arts and technology center where he has a fellowship. Mr. Lambert opened the Fox News Web site on his computer, and both the banner ad at the top of the page and a rectangular ad on the bottom were replaced with a bald eagle illustration. (He is using stock art rather than original work at this point, which can be downloaded from www.addart.eyebeam.org.)

Mr. Lambert, 30, said he and Evan Harper, an artist, are not starting from scratch, but rather were modifying the program Adblock Plus. "Why reinvent the wheel when you can insert a gear and make it run backwards?" said Mr. Lambert.

There are a couple things that strike me about this project. Obviously, this isn’t an optimal platform for showing “work”, but it does create an amazing opportunity for satire in places where an opportunity might not otherwise exist. So it isn’t going to compete with the traditional gallery, but like most net art, that isn’t the goal. I think the real power of this is the ability to change the way ads show up on particular sites. The stars and stripes demo is a good example of this, turning the Fox News home page into a Colbert-esqe satire. It reminds me a bit of the Evil Google Logo greasemonkey script.

The biggest hurdle with this type of project is not getting artists to create work for it, because a handful of people can do a lot. The tough part is building an audience to actually use and enjoy it. While viewing more art on the web is a great idea, there might need to be more to it than just a few replaced banner ads here and there. What incentive do users have to use it? For practical purposes, this should really become an option within AdBlock Plus, since that software has an established userbase that is already hostile to ads and may be receptive to something else.

I’m also a skeptical because in some ways the Aat is just as distracting, if not more, than the advertising it is replacing. It is just a different take on what spyware is already doing… replacing ads with those of competitors. This software is just a bit more up front, and the competitors have more of an altruistic intent.

Finally, it is just a little laugh worthy that the NYT reported on a piece of software that could potentially deprive them of ad revenue. That is the name of the game on the web, though, and maybe someone in the NYT gets it.

Also, check out The Anti-Advertising Agency. They’ve done some pretty interesting projects, AddArt is just one getting press treatment right now.

Ken Goldberg, Ouija 2000, 2000

Nice piece on NPR about preservation of digital art including interviews with artist Ken Goldberg and Digital Media Director & Curator Richard Rinehart of the Berkeley Art Museum (BAM). Rick discusses working with artists to create a script for variable media, a preservation strategy that emerged from the Guggenheim's Variable Media Initiative. On the BAM site, Archiving the Avant-Garde is a great resource and includes a link to Rick's paper A System of Formal Notation for Scoring Works of Digital and Variable Media Art.

The New Media team had a chance yesterday to check out Yerba Buena, a very cool multidisciplinary institution across the street from SFMOMA. I would love to go and catch a performance or a film there, but at the time only the galleries were open. It was an interesting experience to go into an exhibition that wouldn’t be out of place at the Walker — and immediately start looking around for context. It made me realize a bit more how different it is when you work at the institution: we’re surrounded by build-up for months, we can’t help but picking up tidbits of interpretive material and context and stories. I think our audience approaches the show much more like we did at Yerba Buena - “Cool! Um, what?”

Which is why I was so happy to find that they have a cellphone-based audio guide! They’re using Guide By Cell, and the interface is very bare-bones, really just a welcome menu. Some of the audio quality (true with some of Art on Call as well) was spotty and hard to understand, and some of it also sounded like the artist had simply called into the system to record their comments. I love the immediacy of that connection, the ability to rapidly update content, and the informal comments it generates. Very cool.

The other exciting thing for me was their “Shotgun Reviews”: they have several kiosks right in the galleries inviting comments on the exhibitions, and the reviews end up on the web. I didn’t leave a comment so I’m not sure if they’re moderated, but it seemed to have gotten a fair bit of use. I’m not sure if we could pull off a similar concept, but it was refreshing to see that much trust in their users, since that’s been a strong theme at MW2007 so far.

Let’s see, it’s Friday morning… haven’t posted in forever… must be time for WebWalker!

• The Quartet Project is built on the very cool idea of mixing multiple inputs - sound, movement, motion capture - into multiple outputs: virtual instruments, and even a projected virtual dancer. The cast of Quartet comprises of a dancer, a musician, a motion controlled robotic camera, and a 3D virtual dancer. It looks like a lot of custom development for this, tied together with MAX/MSP. The Project Outline section has more details on the performance.
• You won’t generally find these opensource advocates linking to Microsoft, but this is actually a cool project and they’ve got an API so you can plug into it for your own site. Asirra is an alternative to the widely-used CAPTCHAs involving wavy and distorted text that PETA’s blog described as being “torture devices for dyslexics“. MSR calls Asirra a “HIP” (Human Interactive Proof) and it involves quickly classifying pictures of pets as either dogs or cats - so easy a child could do it, but difficult for computers without some serious processing. Just another tool in the constant arms race against the spam bots…
• WordPress continues to make my life better: the team has just released (finally!) a central repository for plugins. What used to be a rather complicated process - “1. I know there must be a plugin for this… 2. What was that site again? 3. Man, how can I be sure this is the latest version? Who’s the original author? 4. Cross fingers and download.” - is now reduced to “1. Go get it from WordPress plugins.” Sweet.

A user group for Max/MSP has been formed in the Twin Cities. The first meeting was last month at Acadia Cafe and from what I hear, it was a resounding success. Topics included getting Max/MSP to talk to Quartz Composer, motion tracking with jitter, and how to safely generate and save files from within max. There are some demo files on the group’s wiki to corroborate.

The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday the 12th of December, once again at Acadia Cafe. I’ll be demoing how to use Max/MSP to talk to the command line using the shell external. I’ll show some of the techniques I used for the capturing component of Party People Photos, and give a brief intro to the command line (on OS X) and some possible areas of expansion. If you plan on attending, visit the group’s wiki and edit the page with your name to let us know you’ll be there.

The meeting is followed by the Tuesday Night Music Series for Improvisers and Experimentation, which is always an interesting experience. I’m very pleased to be a small part of the group and hope that it can contribute to new media art in the Twin Cities. If you know of any other user groups or gatherings like this, please post them in the comments.

Omotesando Hills, an upscale shopping mall in the Aoyama district of Tokyo has an integrated media component called Notion Organization Project. I’ve been meaning to write something about it since my visit to Tokyo earlier this year unfortunately I could not find many articles written in English so I’m relying heavily on my poor Japanese skills and translation programs.The project consists of LED screens on the outside facing Omotesando Street. The LED wall is low resolution but large scale so close up it image seems like a rather disconcerting jumble of flashing screens. From across the street or down the block however the illuminated wall is quite striking. Legs in sillouette are the most interesting video, the display alternates between that and an abstract color wash. At first I thought the pedestrians walking by on the side walk were creating the visuals above. That proved to be an illusion but brought to mind the Podium Lights or Memory Wall projects which would be very interesting to see in a busy space like this.

Video taken from a pedestrian bridge over Omotesando Street.

This is a close up view of the LED wall, you can see it is quite low resolution but very large.

Inside the project continues as a projection of light and image from the ceiling. There are directional speakers playing layers of music and natural sound effects, which i suppose is soothing and condusive to shopping. Both the projection and directional speakers are on motors which allow them to trace a path up and down the malls long stairs creating an effect of water cascading down. The imagery on the interior projections is close up video of the famous trees lining Omotesando Street and nearby rivers. Theatrical lights provide color which changes to reflect the current season. Unfortunately they wouldn’t let me take any video of the inside but there are some photos of it on their site. The effect indoors is less spectacular than the outside but it is mesmerizing if your walking down the long stairs.
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Our friends at Kinecity have posted some new information about the Podium Light Wall they have been working on for the facade of 7 World Trade Center.

The Podium Light Wall is located on the South and North facades of 7 World Trade Center. As people wander on the pavement below a strip of blue light gracefully follows them. This strip of blue light is 7 floors tall and is visible from Freedom Park. The Podium Wall accentuates the individual, and the patterns that are created as many pass by together. Kinecity designed the interactive element of the design for James Carpenter Design Assoc. who were the responsible for the wall as an art piece.

source: information aesthetics

It wasn’t to long ago that we launched the Walker’s new Artists-in-Residence page and it’s already got an update! We received a lot of feedback on the site and made substantial changes to the interface that (hopefully) make the site easier to use.

The Li Zhenhua is the latest Artist-in-Residence. He is here as part of OPEN-ENDED for the opening of The Wave a collection of experimental films from China that he curated, and for the installation his online project Virtual China.

Let us know what you think of the Artist-in-Residence site with a comment here, or even better go over to Li Zhenhua’s residency journal and drop him a comment.

CompuServe’s venerable Graphics Interchange Format looks like it’s back in vogue again.

The GIF show was curated by Marisa Olson (of Rhizome) and the Rx Gallery, it opens tomorrow at the Rx Gallery in San Francisco and even has it’s own mySpace page. Participating artists include Cory Arcangel, Peter Baldes, Michael Bell-Smith, Jimpunk, Olia Lialina, Abe Linkoln, Guthrie Lonergan, Lovid, Tom Moody, Paper Rad, Paul Slocum, and Matt Smear.

Update:
I just saw Marisa Olson put links to some of the works in the show on a del.ciou.us page. Like this GIF by Michael Bell-Smith.

In other GIF news the Animated GIF Mashup was launched in early April. This project allows users to find their favorite animated gifs and combine them into a single wild page. It was developed at the Eyebeam OpenLab. There are quite a few mashups saved on Delicious

Sabine Himmelsbach gave a lecture last week at UCLA on exhibition strategies for media based artwork. The lecture is online in Real Player format, or check their amazing archive for other material. Himmelsbach was head of the exhibition department at ZKM | Center for Art and Media from 1999 until last year.

Today’s webcast is Rebecca Allen’s lecture at 12 noon (thats Pacific time so 2pm for those of us in the central timezone).

Rebecca Allen is an internationally recognized artist and pioneer in 3D computer graphics, human motion simulation and interactive media. Her work is inspired by the potential of advanced technology, the aesthetics of motion and the study of behavior.

While on leave from UCLA from 2003-2005, Rebecca served as Senior Research Scientist and Director of the Liminal Devices research group at Media Lab Europe in Dublin, Ireland. From 1996-2002 she directed the Emergence Project at UCLA, an Intel funded research effort involving artificial life, 3D virtual environments, augmented reality and unique multimodal interfaces.

I’ve been paying attention to the Design | Media Arts lectures although there are some lectures related to Arts and Sciences that look interesting too. The webcast archive goes back to 1999, so far everything I’ve watched has used Real Player.

A brand new special section just got posted on http://www.artificial.dk/ about Art Games, and by art games they mean video games made by artists. Their selection of featured art games is a good cross section of this kind of work, including The Intruder by Natalie Bookchin. There are several other Art Games in the Gaming category of Gallery 9 as well. This special section follows the interview with Jakub Dvorsky from a couple weeks ago.

An article in the New York Times describes the latest project by Lynn Hershman Leeson called DiNA whose conversational demeanor sounds similar to the Dolphin Oracle II in the new Walker but with a much different technological implementation. DiNA has voice recognition software that allows her to hear questions spoken to her then formulate a response and talk back. I’m sure that was a real challenge to get working, DiNA will be shown at the Bitforms Gallery in New York from December 10th to January 14th.

Other Related Links
DiNA for President
Hershmanlandia

Walker Connections:
Hershman Leeson’s work Tilllie, The Telerobotic Dollwas also featured in Art Entertainment Network at the Walker in 2000.

Steve Dietz the former New Media Curator at the Walker was quoted twice in the article.

Steve Dietz, who showed her work at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis when he was curator of new media there, said: “Like most great artists, Lynn is amazingly tenacious. Anyone can have a sci-fi imagination and daydream about what is possible, but not everyone has the doggedness and determination to make it happen.”

“Lynn should be much better known than she is,” Mr. Dietz said. “Part of the problem is that she started in the 70’s, when so many women artists were fighting an uphill battle for recognition. And since then she’s been working with technology, which has more support from museums in Europe than the U.S.” He pointed out that her biggest awards have come from Germany.

Mute has an article about Furtherfield.org’s expansion from totally digital presentations to also include gallery space.

From the HTTP site:

HTTP is London’s first dedicated gallery for networked and new media art. Working with artists from around the world HTTP provides a public venue for experimental approaches to exhibiting artworks simultaneously in physical and virtual space, and for online projects that explore participative and collaborative art practice. Artists’ projects on DVD, real-time, webcast, software art and live art also play a role in the curatorial work of HTTP.

Furtherfield.org
HTTP
Mute Article