Fluid Nexus is an application for Android phones and desktop computers enabling exchange of messages without the need for centralized mobile networks. Messages are transferred by short-range networking technologies like bluetooth and through the movement of people from one location to another.

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, networks continue to be defined by their stable topology represented in an image or graph. Peer-to-peer technologies promised new arrangements absent centralized control, but they still rely on stationary devices. Mobile phones remain wedded to conventional network providers. Continue reading

From July 31 - August 7, Information Department contributor Jacob Wick will be driving along the indirect route from Asheville, NC to San Francisco, CA. Along the way, he will be performing a participatory score entitled what news.

Send him a text, he’ll send you a postcard.

To participate: Send a text to Information Department at 575-446-3676 in the following format: what news [a name] [an address]. If you are comfortable with Wick taking a photograph of your postcard and posting it on his Tumblr, please also include a “Y” (please note: if your postcard is photographed, your name & address will be visible). Continue reading

Turbulence Commission: look art - a MUD/MUSH* exhibition curated by James Morgan, with works by Thomas Asmuth, Alejandro Duque, and Christopher Poff :: Openings: July 16, 2011 at 10:00 am and 6:00 pm PST [Needs Software Download. Follow Directions to Connect]

* MUSH is a pun on MUD — most often expanded as Multi-User Shared Hallucination, though Multi-User Shared Hack, Habitat, and Holodeck are also observed — a text-based online social medium to which multiple users are connected simultaneously.

Built on MUSH code, look art is a contemporary consideration of the Multi-User Dungeon (MUD), a pervasive late-twentieth century, text-based, online environment that was a precursor to today’s Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (such as “World of Warcraft” and “Second Life”). Continue reading

Ars Virtua is pleased to announce the opening of look art, an art show in a multi-user dungeon commissioned by Turbulence.org. Featured artists are Thomas Asmuth, Alejo Duque, and Christopher Poff. The artwork represents a conceptual re-interpretation of the portrait through ascii text, a distopian data exchange platform and an interactive artists manifesto.

Receptions are scheduled in the space on July 16, 2011 at 10:00 am and 6:00 pm Pacific time.

You can connect as a visitor via telnet or mud application our server is named turbulence.sjsu.edu and our public port is 2860. Request an account http://bit.ly/look-art-login to have your own login/password. We also have a http to telnet gateway from Mosha.net (works with firefox and IE): connect as visitor, or to connect and enter credentials (your login and password).

For more information “look” at the site on July 13 at 5:00 pm.

Reading Machines: Toward an Algorithmic Criticism by Stephen Ramsay:

Rethinking digital literary criticism by situating computational work within the broader context of the humanities.

Besides familiar and now-commonplace tasks that computers do all the time, what else are they capable of? Stephen Ramsay’s intriguing study of computational text analysis examines how computers can be used as “reading machines” to open up entirely new possibilities for literary critics. Computer-based text analysis has been employed for the past several decades as a way of searching, collating, and indexing texts. Despite this, the digital revolution has not penetrated the core activity of literary studies: interpretive analysis of written texts. Continue reading

R-Shief is a digital platform that provides real-time analysis of opinion in the Arab world about late-breaking issues. By using aggregate data from Twitter and the Web, R-Shief can dissect how people in Egypt are reacting to, say, the latest changes to the constitutional process, or how Libyans perceive the presence of NATO forces and Bahrainis perceive the presence of Saudi military, or how the pro-regime supporters in Syria are acting out on social media platforms. We are achieving this through the results of our Pan-Arab Internet aggregator as well as Twitter data mining tools, and by publishing data visualizations based on findings. Continue reading

Digital Art and Meaning by Roberto Simanowski, University of Minnesota Press:

Digital Art and Meaning offers close readings of varied examples from genres of digital art, including kinetic concrete poetry, computer-generated text, interactive installation, mapping art, and information sculpture. Roberto Simanowski combines these illuminating explanations with a theoretical discussion employing art philosophy and history to achieve a deeper understanding of each example of digital art and of the genre as a whole.

“Against an aesthetic thought that privileges erotics over hermeneutics and performative presence over meaning, Roberto Simanowski demonstrates in critical detail how the web has not spelt the end of interpretation, but has complicated it. Continue reading

Susan Kozel wrote: “(T)he IntuiTweet project (is) an initiative that began in conjunction with the Theatre Academy and University of Art and Design in Helsinki but which will be developed further here (MEDEA is a centre for new media at Malmö University, Sweden). The goal of this project is to provoke and exchange physical intuition or movement using Twitter. Can a social networking platform also be a way to enhance the performance of every day lives? Do Social Choreographies result?

As we start this IntuiTweet project again, another round of improvisations from Sweden, this time I’m wondering about voice, relevance and ‘audience’: who are these tweets for? With other improvisations they were for a limited number of people participating in the improvisations: Continue reading

Rambler Shoes from ricardo O'nascimento on Vimeo.

“Rambler, developed by Ricardo O”Nascimento and Tiago Martins, is a critical take on near obsessive microblogging habits and elicits reflection on the personal nature, amount and usefulness of information generated everyday through blogging and social platforms such as Twitter. Continue reading

Creative Time Tweets: Public Art, 140 Characters at a Time explores Twitter as a viable place for art that engages audiences, promotes dialogue, and intersects with the physical world, providing a rich environment where — 140 characters at a time — revolutions are organized, the banalities of everyday life are shared, and artists create site-specific interventions. Beginning May 25 and continuing through late-July, 2011, artists Man Bartlett, David Horvitz, and Jill Magid will each carry out a project using Twitter as both an artistic tool and a site for public performance. Each artist will tweet in collaboration with their audiences under a designated hashtag, creating a virtual performance that will unfold as a Twitter stream.

Curated by Shane Brennan. Here’s an interview with him.