/ _/ Cultural Theory & Data-Based Art http://critical-netcultures.net ==================================================================== to add to this list send an email to treborscholz@earthlink.net Non-Curated Links Collection of Networked Artworks using Databases ==================================================================== para: // a database of wonders http://rhizome.org/artbase/3083/para/index.html by Jane Marsching Collection of images from web that hover over the boundary between fact and fiction ==== "The Interactive Lexicon of Juxta," http://namniyas.velikanov.ru/lexicon_e/ a project by the Russian artist Namniyas Ashuratova. "The Interactive Lexicon of Juxta" is an online, empty database, a lexicographical system that can be filled by its users with new items, definitions and images. Ashuratova has developed the database into a public, self-organising information system, one that could not exist without the contributions of the audience. ==== Virtual House by Christina Ray http://rhizome.org/artbase/3341/the_zero_1/thezero_house.html ==== The World Report by Gregory Chatonsky http://www.incident.net/works/world_report/ ==== Point of Departure by Darrin Martin http://magenta.alfred.edu/aviation/index.html ==== ftp_formless_anatomy by Eugene Thacker http://rhizome.org/artbase/1699/index.html This project is an epistemological response to the Visible Human Project, an endeavor, begun in the early 1990s, to create an online, digital database of cross-sectional anatomical slices of a human male and female cadaver. Inspired by the writings of George Bataille. ==== The Allegorical Impulse Part I by Eduardo Navas (look up URL) This net installation re-evaluates the essay "The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism" by Craig Owens. Inside the website you will find quotations taken directly from Owens' text. Artworks by artists used as examples in the essay have been scanned and optimized as sliced images for the web; a Javascript calls these slices at random to create a grid composition. ==== GASHTGARI - the tehran project by Andrew Hieronymi, Tirdad Zolghadr http://rhizome.org/artbase/2476/gashtgari/index.html ==== Rhizomes http://www.ensba.fr/rhizomes by reynald drouhin The " rhizomes " as an experimental attempt at transitory, collective work on the Web. "A rhizome as no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The trees is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposes the verb "to be," but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, "and...and...and..." This conjunction carries enough forces to shake and uproot the verb "to be." (...) Between things does not designate a localizable relation going from one thing to the other and back again, but a perpendicular direction, a transversal movement that sweeps one and the other way, a stream without beginnig or end that undermines its bank and picks up speed in the middle."Rhizome" in Mille plateaux. Rhizome is a figurative term used by Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze in their book A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism ad Schizophrenia to describe non-hierarchical networks of all kinds. "A rhizome as a subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes. Plants with roots or radicles may be rhizomorphic in other respects altogether. Burrows are too, in all their functions of shelter, supply, movement, evasion, and breakout. The rhizome itself assumes very diverse forms, from ramified surface extension in all directions to concretion into bulbs and tubers ... The rhizome includes the best and the worst: potato and couchgrass, or the weed." (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 6- 7) A rhizome doesn't begin and doesn't end, but is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. ==== innovative, useless, bizarre products found on the web by karex http://www.karex.net/ www.karex.net is a product gallery featuring strange, wacky, amazing, useless, surprising, funny, innovative consumer products found on the web. it's a result of the enthusiasm built by the (theroretical) possibility of selling anything anywhere using the web. the site contains hundreds of products and the information about their source as well as a link to it. we only feature the product information provided by the manufacturer - no statements so that the visitor can watch and think what he wants to. one of our goals is to keep going on updating the site so that it will become a kind of a museum of invention & design in the future. ==== ada1852 by Christopher Fahey http://rhizome.org/ada1852 It is a virtual certainly that in the near future we will hold conversations with computers as regularly as we do with other human beings. The more sophisticated these machines are, the more lifelike they will likely be. But what will these digital personalities be like? In addressing the Rhizome alt.interface project, I thought about how an artificial intelligence might be used to serve as a kind of docent or guide to the Rhizome Artbase. I did not, however, want to create a slavish "service" robot. I did not want to build a person whose primary function is to be a non-person like a telemarketer following a sales script. ==== New Lexia by Sebastian Harms, Ismael Celis, Cesarina Balsells http://www.master.esdi.es/newlexia/submit.asp ==== This is the Time of Your Life by Juliet Ann Martin http://www.julietmartin.com/timepiece/ This website examines issues about time and its effect on our lives. The site provokes the question whether the time the user spends in their lives is "too stressful," "too emotional," or just "too busy." It also prompts the user to answer questions about satirical personal issues. This is compared to answers given by the artist and the other visitors to the website. Finally, the user is given an "official" printout that documents and realizes the "wisdom" of the site. This journey creates a communal and ironic look at what is the Time of Your Life. ==== psychogeography || .walk.readme http://socialfiction.org/psychogeography/ readme.walk Generative psychogeography(*), walking on algorithms as a means to explore the city, translates ideas from computer science to the real world. The next logical challenge was to take the whole concept a step further & to start regarding: (1) The city as a database (2) The city as a switchboard (1) The City as a Database. Quoting urban theorist Lewis Mumford: "[T]he great city is the best organ of memory man has yet created". The city is a memory bank or in modern terms a database. The database is perhaps the most post-modern product of the digital revolution: no longer are data units separated entities: by feeding the database queries every data can be correlated to uncover unexpected patterns. If the city is a database then .walk software improves the power of the generative psychogeographical search method by adding formulised shifts in the formula, connecting the pandemonium of individual action into an interconnected meta-software to share information & experiences. ==== faces / des visages by reynald drouhin http://rhizome.org/artbase/2724/faces/index.html Fine art of Rennes: transverse workshop "community / exchanges / transmission on the Net" year 2000/2001. In this workshop, the faces followed one another... " faces / des visages " is an interactive project which allows users to construct a face by combining three different images into a photographic composite. The variation in types of faces that are shown is completely arbitrary; they can appear in a linear fashion or at random. As the user scrolls through the various photographic options, the words which comprise the captions are changed. As a result, the appearance or erasure of different facial components sometimes leads to the generation of incomprehensible captions. This work is meant to be a play on the concept of the (collective) "Other," ultimately allowing the user (or "artist") to generate their ideal subject from the discrete elements of different individuals. ==== e-Arcades by Robin Michals http://www.e-arcades.com/ Walter Benjamin, writing in the 1920's and 30's, used the Paris Arcades, as the focal point of a study of 19th century Paris. He constructed The Arcades Project by mixing many citations of other authors with his own comments, generating understanding as much by the content of a particular bit as its juxtaposition with other texts. For example, advertising copy might appear right before a citation from Frederick Engels. The quotes functioned as a bit of newspaper collaged onto a painting to provide concrete evidence from the past. Benjamin used montage and fragmentation as a new way to understand and write history. Inspired by The Arcades Project, e-Arcades is a non-linear excursion into a realm of ideas about technology with a focus on computers and the internet. Borrowing Benjamin's methodology of juxtaposing quotes, e- Arcades illuminates the effect of our technologies on how we think as well as live. The site, using the dynamic functionality of the web, demonstrates this effect instead of describing it. Associations replace linear sequences. Variables replace static answers. The site has a clearly defined goal but not a final destination. The intent of the site is to generate an unexpected resonance between the quotes. This resonance shows the present moment in a way that can not be seen directly. The distorting effects of proximity can make it hard to grasp the cultural changes caused by technological growth. The strength of e- Arcades lies in the associations it creates between quotes, exploiting the most powerful feature of the web hypertext. Each trip through e-Arcades will be unique. From the home page, the user enters the dynamic site. This second page, generated randomly from a number of key quotes concerning computer technology, presents the user with two to four links. The destination associated with each link is decided by the web application and is based on parameters set in the database. Where the link takes the user is not fixed but variable. It is chosen at random from a concept category. Similarly, the images that accompany each quote are chosen in a similar way, at random from a fixed grouping. The user's own choices determine the subject and direction of her experience with e-Arcades. As the database of e-Arcades continues to grow over the next several years, the site will record the diverse attitudes towards technological change as they shift and transform. ==== T U R N S by Margot Lovejoy http://www.myturningpoint.com/ T U R N S is a community-building Web site focused on the idea of collecting and sharing the story of a turning point in one's life. The site's interface is designed as a map that may be reorganized according to multiple criteria. Stories are represented as pebble-like shapes that can be opened and returned to the narrative pool. Visitors to T U R N S can contribute their narrative and browse stories according to 12 categories, such as education, relationships, health, trauma, family, or war. The Anthology section of the site allows users to reorganize the stories through relational filters--such as ethnicity or the time at which the turning point was experienced--and to access related databases. People may also contribute and draw a "life map," visually representing the course of their lives. T U R N S provides connections to lives lived under many circumstances and time periods. Seen through relational filters, lenses and links, one?s story is understood as part of a social memory. The site also is a reflection on the ways new media are influencing and changing notions of the individual in a social context. With its possibilities for creating networked communities and relational databases, the Internet becomes a form of collective, social consciousness. T U R N S is part of what has become a continuum in seeking public participation and community building through my work. As an artist using technology to expand the concept of art as communication, I have been committed since 1992 to engage audiences in direct interactive experiences through installation works, bookworks, and websites by various means. In my 1992 Black Box installation anteroom, viewers were asked to write answers to questions about the future. For the 1995 Parthenia installation, appropriate brochures were prepared and sent around the country seeking narratives and visual expressions to be posted as part of a memorial work dedicated to victims of domestic violence. These personal stories and tributes became the initial database of shared stories in the www. parthenia.com website which grew out of the museum work. This website was developed in consultation with adaweb, one of the earliest sites committed to pioneering artist involvement with the web as an important new form of representation and cultural communication (this site has now been archived by the Walker Art Center). A 1998 multiuser interactive gallery installation "SALVAGE" allowed participants to explore aspects of healing through transformative processes of engagement. ==== nUMB by Christian Oyarzun http://rhizome.org/artbase/15788/ The experiencie of our everyday life is not only the result of our concrete life but also of the interrelationship with existing abstract data that refers it. The experience, modelled and tabulated, is redrawn up foreign in his abstraction but , however, this data frameworks and overlaps itself inside and from experience. From objective data, we verify our own continuous experience and represent ourselves in a double input/output flow respect them. nUMB is a web application that manages and visualizes the data obtained from psicometric evaluation tests in his users. This tests have been designed in order to objectify both the presence of psychical disturbances and the therapeutical response to his treatment, acting like microsystems of representation, dynamics and marked out, moving between the affective identification with user and the effective functionality for the test administrator. Articulating itself from the information-score stored in a database -and that would denote the possible presence of psychoaffective disturbances in the users, nUMB returns a fixed and diferential field of experiencie as an interpretative answer, inverse and transverse to the objective representational condition of the obtained data. ==== The Great Game by John Klima http://www.cityarts.com/greatgame/ Image recontextualizer by eidolon http://www.denature.org/pub/recontext/recontext.jsp ==== Babel http://www.babel.uk.net/ by Simon Biggs Babel is a site specific work for a non-site. The context of the work is non-physical. The site is an abstract thing...information space and the taxonomy of knowledge that all libraries represent...which the Internet, where the project is realised, is. The Dewey Decimal numbering system, used in the cataloguing of library contents, is the key metaphor, visualised in a three dimensional multi-user space that is itself a metaphor for the infinite nature of information. In Babel, the Dewey Decimal system is used as a mapping and navigation technique. The structure of the library is re-mapped into the hyper-spatial that constitutes the Web. The Dewey numbering system is employed as a means to navigate the internet itself, the taxonomy inherent in the numerical codes mapping onto web-sites that conform with the defined subjects. The Dewey Decimal system is based on two concepts; firstly that each area of knowledge can be defined as a number and that the space between each numbered area is infinitely divisible. This allows the cataloguing system to be both navigable in its subject headings whilst able to contain an infinite number of potential entries in the catalogue. As such, it is a simultaneously finite macrocosmic and infinite microcosmic system. In Babel, viewers logged onto the site are confronted with a 3D visualisation of an abstract data space mapped as arrays and grids of Dewey Decimal numbers. As they move the mouse around the screen they are able to navigate this 3D environment. All the viewers are able to see what all the other viewers, who are simultaneously logged onto the site, are seeing. The multiple 3D views of the data-space are montaged together into a single shared image, where the actions of any one viewer effects what all the other viewers see. If a large number of viewers are logged on together the information displayed becomes so complex and dense that it breaks down into a meaningless abstract space. Viewers are able to generate specific Dewey Decimal numbers, a dynamic interface keeping them informed of web-site addresses that conform with the subjects thus defined. Viewers can select any site with a simple point and click of the mouse, opening the site in a new window. ==== Netsleeping by gregory chatonsky http://www.incident.net/works/netsleeping/ Netsleeping is a cooperative screensaver for sleepy computers wired to the network. More and more connections are permanent (DSL/cable). This represents an immense change in our relation to the network: we don't connect anymore to the Internet with a telephonic modem, the flux is always available, information simply awaits navigation like an independent and strange world. But what happens when you don't use your computer--does it remain lit and hardback to the flux of the network? or when computers fall asleep and aren't being used by anybody? Netsleeping tells this story of sleep, abandonment, and of the machine's a-instrumentality and passivity in the flux. ==== community mapping by Nikola Tosic http://www.community-mapping.org you can register, save a period of your life and then within this period you can save data about communities to which you belonged, most important you can save maps where your communities have been located. you should update your maps as time passes and make them bigger and more colorful (color signifies type and transparency signifies importance of community). ==== Average by schoenerwissen http://rhizome.org/artbase/2633/average/index.html We enable you to use a much more fashionable and personal computer than you would have ever thought. Our system of small algorithmic modules give you the possibility to form your idea of what the future is all about -transforming these often miniscule ruses of discipline, these minor but flawless mechanisms to become far of being regulated. ==== The Banner Art Collective design http://bannerart.org created by Garrett Lynch. The new design brings a vast number of improvements to the site, which collects and distributes net.art and poetry created according to the limitations of WWW advertising. The project uses PHP (a hypertext preprocessing language) and MySQL (an open source unix database) to create dynamic relationships, structures, and inference rules among the interchangeable text nodes. ==== Apartment by Marek Walczak & Martin Wattenberg http://turbulence.org/Works/apartment Viewers are confronted with a blinking cursor. As they type, rooms begin to take shape in the form of a two-dimensional plan, similar to a blueprint. The architecture is based on a semantic analysis of the viewer's words, reorganizing them to reflect the underlying themes they express. The apartments are then clustered into buildings and cities according to their linguistic relationships. Each apartment is translated into a navigable three-dimensional dwelling, so contrasting between abstract plans/texts and experiential images/sounds. Apartment is inspired by the idea of the memory palace. In a mnemonic technique from a pre-Post-It era, Cicero imagined inscribing the themes of a speech on a suite of rooms in a villa, and then reciting that speech by mentally walking from space to space. Establishing an equivalence between language and space, Apartment connects the written word with different forms of spatial configurations. ==== net.narrative SF Camerawork's online exhibition, "net.narrative http://www.sfcamerawork.org/netnarrative.html ==== Project > photography_project Exactitudes http://www.exactitudes.com/ Photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek call their series Exactitudes: a contraction of exact and attitude. By registering their subjects in an identical framework, with similar poses and a strictly observed dress code, Versluis and Uyttenbroek provide an almost scientific, anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity. more information: http://deaf.v2.nl/deaf/03/205-206-59-225-38-81-55-118-89-230-227-192-198-168-247-58.py ==== Exactitudes Ð a contraction of ÔexactÕ and ÔattitudeÕ Ð is a photography project that systematically documents groups of identities, in which the heterogeneous, multicultural street scene has been a major source of inspiration: the people portrayed have literally been Ôpicked up from the streetÕ. DEAF03 will present he series Gameboys. ==== They Rule http://deaf.v2.nl/deaf/03/30-202-156-79-100-132-255-24-23-114-57-219-23-88-136-235.py http://theyrule.net Josh On and Future Farmers ==== The Worldprocessor by Ingo GŸnther During the 1980s Ingo GŸnther started making 3D-sculptures in the shape of an of the earth globe, as representations of global movements and processes. A selection from his by now hundreds of globes will be exhibited at DEAF03. Each globe visualizes current problems or invisible processes like refugee flows or which super power has military control over which area. http://deaf.v2.nl/deaf/03/96-167-189-177-13-237-210-231-213-111-106-227-109-119-100-75.py ==== Police State http://deaf.v2.nl/deaf/03/150-73-44-59-188-101-3-224-144-177-219-10-15-83-97-241.py ==== 100.000 Streets Would you like to know what a mix of New York, Tokyo and Rotterdam would look like as a city? With his 100 000 STREETS image artist Geert Mul explores the visual overlap of cities all over the world. Visitors to this interactive installation are treated to a tour of a kaleidoscopic fan of urban images that are retrieved from the Internet and selected on visual quality by especially designed, visually intelligent software. http://deaf.v2.nl/deaf/03/107-51-53-175-77-66-29-115-234-232-172-46-237-132-128-59.py ==== Substract the Sky http://deaf.v2.nl/deaf/03/25-60-58-26-188-21-165-129-208-186-132-58-134-32-9-185.py ==== Worldprocessor http://deaf.v2.nl/deaf/03/169-45-115-106-191-27-101-41-4-156-236-132-217-11-143-179.py ==== Pockets Full of Memories http://deaf.v2.nl/deaf/03/112-194-35-95-52-88-95-92-147-149-104-36-61-152-243-152.py ==== H.I.D.E http://deaf.v2.nl/deaf/03/195-101-20-212-120-18-78-43-29-151-197-95-81-197-255-232.py ==== Can You See Me Now? http://deaf.v2.nl/deaf/03/147-53-33-156-177-34-194-215-174-199-95-232-39-12-109-151.py ==== whisper http://deaf.v2.nl/deaf/03/199-35-90-253-54-198-254-159-227-169-129-3-115-112-203-194.py ==== PainStation http://deaf.v2.nl/deaf/03/47-40-215-10-45-188-158-223-199-139-4-0-80-167-78-186.py ==== Wikipedia.org === The hub: http://www.x-arn.org/hub/ ASRF/0.2 is connected to the HUB and uses its collected emails as raw materials. ASRF/0.2 allows users to compose and publish random generated texts based on emails extracted fragments. http://www.x-arn.org/hub/osm/ ==== The Collective Unconsciousness Project (TCUP) is not designed to be a finished project, but an evolving framework that is both created and changed through interaction with it. It exists as both and online community and personal space. It's not as straight forward as an information driven website, but a nonlinear experience based on chance and the user's interactions. The purpose is to view connections between our dreams. http://tcup.currentform.com/ Review: http://netartreview.net/featarchv/04_19_03.html ==== "EPIC TALES" by Carlo Zanni is not using a particular database, but actually using php technology to appropriate pages: http://www.zanni.org/epictales.htm review here: http://netartreview.net/featarchv/06_28_03.html ==== http://www.teleportacia.org/swap/ Bunting has also worked together with Olia Lialina in the work Identity Swap Database, a database aimed at exchanging identities. After filling out a form with their basic personal details, the user can acquire a new identity Ð temporary or permanent Ð and can even donate theirs for others to use. In English, Russian, Spanish and German.nglish. ==== database project & article for/about Europe Against the Current, a manifestation of alternative, independent and radical information carriers; Dutch version of article published in 'De Gids' mei 1990; 1985-1989 http://imaginarymuseum.org/ETS/ETSeng.html ==== NINE: community project http://9.waag.org/frontend.html?content=http://9.waag.org/cgi-bin/nine.pl ====