[A network of nodes (29)] Emergence in the Social Web by Liat Berdugo:

Abstract: Complex systems sometimes exhibit what’s known as emergence — the phenomenon wherein the whole is more than the sum of its parts. For instance, ants acting individually are mindless, but collectively they self-organize to form intelligent colonies with intricate behavior patterns. I explore whether something similar can be said of the way that a collective consciousness seems to emerge from the nodes in a social web. I begin by showing why emergence is a compelling way to understand what happens on the social web, and examine meme generation and social movement formation, specifically, as resultant emergent phenomena. The emergence of social phenomena is nothing new — it happens in offline communities like family units, corporations, and cities. Continue reading

Naked on Pluto — by Dave Griffiths, Aymeric Mansoux and Marloes de Valk — is the winner of VIDA 13.2, the prestigious international art and artificial life contest. Continue reading

ISEA Istanbul presents Leaf++ by FakePress Publishing, part of Digitization of Biological Data :: Sep­tem­ber 20, 2011; 2:45 - 4:25 pm :: Sa­banci Cen­ter Room 2, Sa­banci Cen­ter, Lev­ent.

Natural interfaces and cross-medial technologies allow for the creation of new publishing paradigms in which the term book can be disarticulated and rearranged into unexpected forms, fostering new ways of interacting with data and information.

Leaf++ is the product of a research project that goes in this direction in which a prototypal interactive system involving computer vision, gestural interfaces, augmented reality technologies and cross medial systems to create a novel tool to experience botanical information about plants and their leaves. Continue reading

The Commons by Linda Carroli:

Taking cues from the examples and critics cited here, the idea of the commons has emerged as a networked space of creative and generative possibility and risk. To recover is to reclaim. In shaping the commons, Jay Walljasper states that we “recognise some forms of wealth belong to all of us, and that these community resources must be actively protected and managed for the good of all. The commons are the things that we inherit and create jointly, and that will (hopefully) last for generations to come. The commons consists of gifts of nature such as air, oceans and wildlife as well as shared social creations such as libraries, public spaces, scientific research and creative works.” However, there’s never just one commons – the commons itself is multiple and complex, in process and becoming. Artists actively keep the commons alive in the face of all kinds of opposition, censorship and antagonism. Continue reading

A Billion Gadget Minds: Thinking Widgets, Data, Workflow — A workshop on the politics of cognition between the expanded mind, software studies and cultural theory :: October 21, 2010; 9:30 am - 6:00 pm :: The Swedenborg Hall, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way, London, WC1A 2TH :: There is no charge for attending the workshop but numbers are restricted. See contact below.

A growing body of research, including literature on cognitive anthropology, software studies and cognitive capital suggests that whatever is called ‘thinking’ occurs amidst mechanisms, habits, codelike systems, devices and other formally structured means. Continue reading

[Image: Creative Land: Place And Procreation On The Rai Coast Of Papua New Guinea by James Leach] July on empyre soft-skinned space: Creativity as a social ontology :: Moderated by Simon Biggs (UK/Australia) with invited discussants Eugenio Tisselli (Mexico/Spain), Helen Varley Jamieson (New Zealand/UK), James Leach (UK), Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli (USA/UK), Ruth Catlow (UK), Magnus Lawrie (UK), Scott Rettberg (Norway/USA).

Simon Biggs wrote: Dear empyre subscribers,

Creativity is often perceived as a product of individual, or group, creative activity. However, it might also be considered an emergent phenomenon of communities, driving change and facilitating individual and ensemble creativity. Expanded concepts of agency allow us to question who, or what, can be an active participant in creative social interactions, providing diverse models for authorship. Creativity might be regarded as social interaction in reflexive mediation. Continue reading

Susanne Jaschko and Lucas Evers wrote: Process as Paradigm: Concept and Context

On April 23rd at Laboral Centro de Arte y Creacion Industrial in Gijon, Spain the exhibition Process as Paradigm – art in development, flux and change opened, curated by Susanne Jaschko and Lucas Evers. With this empyre discussion, the we as curators wish to deepen the critical discourse on the concept of Processual Art as formulated with the show. The full catalogue of the exhibition can be found here.

From the curators’ notes in the catalogue: With this exhibition and accompanying programme we curators formulate a bold thesis. We claim that process – and here we mean non-linear and non-deterministic process – has become one of the major paradigms in contemporary art and culture. Continue reading

Divination2.0 by Emily Schleiner :: April 23, 2010; 8:00 pm :: Media Labs, 58 North 6th, Brooklyn. Continue reading

Augmented Systems: Explorations in Complex, Emergent, and Generative Systems Workshop with Alexander Jones Gross (University of Main) :: March 25-26, 2010; 6:30 - 9:30 pm + March 27; 10:00 am - 6:00 pm :: CIANT - Art laboratory, Kubelíkova 27, 130 00 Praha 3, Czech Republic :: Zdarma / V angličtině / For free / In English — Please register at ivan.nemeth [at] ciant.cz.

Complex, indeterminate, and chaotic systems exist everywhere we look from the flight paths of birds to the growth patterns of plants to the formation of clouds. These systems are not simply random, they are complex systems bounded by discrete natural laws. Through study and investigation much can be learned about how these systems work. Continue reading

Treefingers is a social web experiment that allows anybody to “plant” a thought anonymously — and vote on the thoughts of others in an interesting manner. Bad plants get weeded out and good ones are watered, creating an abstract forest with thoughts of varying colors.

Using Treefingers is easy: simply click the “water” button on thoughts you like, and the “weed” button on thoughts you don’t. You can submit your own thought to the site by clicking “Plant a Thought” in the upper-right corner. Treefingers requires no registration and is completely anonymous. Your thought will appear instantly on the site for other visitors to water and weed!

Treefingers empowers advanced web technologies to provide a website that continuously updates. This means you can track the activities of other Treefingers users in real-time! Plants change colors before your eyes as people water and weed them, and new plants show up instantly. The result is a living, breathing website that is constantly changing! [via Christina Coleman]