Artist Animal by Steve Baker, University of Minnesota Press:

Artist Animal examines the work of contemporary artists who directly confront questions of animal life, treating animals not aesthetically or symbolically but rather as beings who actively share the world with humanity. Featuring full-color examples of their art, it situates artists within the wider project of thinking beyond the human, asserting art’s power to open new ways of thinking about animals.

Animals have always been compelling subjects for artists, but the rise of animal advocacy and posthumanist thought has prompted a reconsideration of the relationship between artist and animal. Continue reading

["Wifi Camera," Sjölén, Haque, Somolai-Fischer, 2006] From Picture This — Reinventing The Camera As A Social And Anti-Technological Object by Jonah Brucker-Cohen, The Creators Project:

[...] “Examining the invisible proliferation of wireless networks that are permeating every location we inhabit comes another type of camera that takes images of the signals themselves. The “Wifi-Camera” (2010) by Bengt Sjölén, Adam Somlai Fischer, and Usman Haque is a camera that takes photos of locations that contain wireless transmissions in the way that a traditional camera captures spaces illuminated by visible light. The camera is meant to reveal all of the electromagnetic space that our mobile and portable devices create daily. From their description: “Radio waves at wifi’s wavelength behave similar to light in that they are reflected off almost all solid objects to varying degrees, just as when we see colors we see the light from a light source being reflected off an object into our eyes.” This effect is achieved by pointing a wireless antenna and measuring the signal strength throughout a viewing period to create an overall image…”

Digital Prohibition: Piracy and Authorship in New Media Art by Carolyn Guertin:

In the first book to discuss the global politics of creativity and emergent models of authorship in a digital age, Guertin explores the creation of new media forms by artists who use technology to challenge established modes. Redefining authorship within remix culture, the book identifies the potentialities in the social nature of electronic works to foster new creative practices - from sampling to mashups to digital anthropophagy - on a global scale.

Carolyn Guertin holds a dual appointment in digital media — as Assistant Professor and Director of the eCreate Lab at the University of Texas at Arlington and as a member of the graduate faculty at Transart Institute in Berlin, Germany. Continue reading

The Mapping Practices of Catherine D’Ignazio by Christine Temin, Art New England:

“Catherine D’Ignazio is an artist, software developer, and educator. She leads the Experimental Geography Research Cluster at RISD’s Digital+Media program. Her artwork has been exhibited at the ICA Boston, Eyebeam, MASS MoCA, and the Western Front, among other locations. Her artwork is participatory and distributed — a single project may take place online, in the street and in a gallery — and involve multiple audiences participating in different ways for different reasons. Her practice is inherently collaborative.

“In the early days of the Internet, you had a handle,” D’Ignazio recalls. Hers is Kanarinka. “It was given to me by a friend from Montenegro. In Montenegran it means ‘canary.’” Continue reading

[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

[DPoN showing temperatures in the low-60's, clear skies, and winds out of the south (indicated by the vertically-oriented yellow streak to the right)] Dynamic Performance of Nature: Augmenting Environmental Perception Through Social Media And Architectural Informatics by Brian W. Brush, Yong Ju Lee & Noa Younse:

Abstract: Architecture has always functioned as a mediating structure between humans and the environments in which they live; a static assemblage of semi-inert materials orchestrated, amongst other things, to temper environmental forces for human habitation. With advances in material and communications technology, architectural assemblies no longer perform as impassive boundaries separating discrete conditions of occupation between environments. Continue reading

dichtung-digital Nr. 41 (2012), Scott Rettberg and Patricia Tomaszek (Editorial):

Simon Biggs and Penny Travlou: Distributed Authorship and Creative Communities

An investigation into creativity as driving force for emergent communities marks the research theme of this article that discusses the use of various ethnographic methodologies to gather information on the interpretation and on the performativity of ‘creativity’ by electronic literature practitioners within a transnational and multicultural context. As ELMCIP partners responsible for the ethnographic study of networked creative communities, Biggs and Travlou present their research in progress. Continue reading

[Fig. 6. A single page of the Book of Stamps. It acts as a score that sends instruction to computer application that generates a soundscape based on the type and number of symbols that were stamped onto the page.] The Book of Stamps: Travel Guide for a Sonic Landscaping from Cities to Urban Cultures by Art Clay:

The « Book of Stamps » by the sounds artist Art Clay is a travel guide between sonic landscapes from cities to urban cultures. The sheets of the book provide a “recording surface” and the ink stamps with their various patterns provide the ability to place sounds into the book. Together they act as an interactive tangible interface for a variety of time based musical tasks that form a collaborative composition by its users. Continue reading

[Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG Reenactment of Valie Export and Peter Weibel's Tapp und Tastkino, (2007)] From Plaintext Players to Avatar Actors: A Short Survey of Online Gaming Performance by Mathias Jansson:

Performance art emerged in the mid-1960s into the 1970s and was a way to push the boundaries between art and everyday life. Many artists saw performance as an opportunity to bring art directly to the audience without having to detour through the galleries, curators or agents. Performance therefore often occurs outside the institutions on streets, squares or other public places. It was defined as an antithesis to theatre and the ideal was to “create an ephemeral and authentic experience for performer and audience in an event that could not be repeated, captured or purchased.”(1) Famous performance artists from this time are Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, Vito Acconci, Chris Burden and Marina Abramović. Continue reading

Digital Memory and the Archive by Wolfgang Ernst, Edited and with an Introduction by Jussi Parikka:

In the popular imagination, archives are remote, largely obsolete institutions: either antiquated, inevitably dusty libraries or sinister repositories of personal secrets maintained by police states. Yet the archive is now a ubiquitous feature of digital life. Rather than being deleted, e-mails and other computer files are archived. Media software and cloud storage allow for the instantaneous cataloging and preservation of data, from music, photographs, and videos to personal information gathered by social media sites.

In this digital landscape, the archival-oriented media theories of Wolfgang Ernst are particularly relevant. Continue reading