Digital Art? Google Art.

As I searched for solutions and opinions about Google's ads on the internet (is it worth keeping something which makes me look like a passionate conservative politician?), I found the pretty project Google Adwords Happening by French artist Christophe Bruno. I would call this a brilliant modern take on haiku :). And I bet he ended up making, not losing, money with it.
On Bruno's web page, you can find several other works he made using Google. The best one is maybe the invented word ("sorgoine") that he put on the internet (in 2002) by means of a page announcing its creation. Two months later the word was already appearing in 5 places on the net. Try searching for it on Google today - 2200 entries!

Online vs. Offline Art: two cases

This was supposed to be only about Bruce Nauman's latest work, Raw Materials, at the Tate Modern (London) until the end of March. The work consists of speakers spread around the huge Turbine Hall. Or rather, it consists of sounds. Words coming out of the speakers. A looped "Thank you" or "OK", a few abstract sentences. Moving around the space, one discovers new combinations, immersed in the depths of sound.
There is also an online version of the work. Or is it just a reference to it, or an entirely independent work?
Is it intriguing? Somewhat. Does it seem Great? Certainly not on the web site. Ay, there's the rub - creating a "parallel" version of a conceptual (can somebody tell me if I am allowed to use the word here?) online is extremely risky. We get the concept, but we don't get to walk across the Turbine Hall. So the whole thing seems intriguing, but not that exciting. It's something like watching performing arts on screen.
Or is it?
As I was looking for reviews and opinions about the exhibition, I found this insightful post about it by Ivar Hagendoorn, a neuro-scientist and choreographer. As I browsed through his site, I found an excellent fragment of a dance of his online. I've seen similar rule-based works before, and I'm not a dance specialist, so I probably miss out on most things, but I discovered it was really watchable online. Although it's just a one-camera one-shot recording of a dance, with all the imperfections of such a technique. (here is a description of the piece, called Communications from the Lab and performed by Ballett Frankfort)
Maybe there's hope for all us technology dummies then?
(Oh, and compare the dance with the image of Nauman's installation. Suffice it to say the photographer of Nauman's installation was the dance's choreographer...)

Coming soon

• Of Goldfish and Men - using (and abusing) live animals in art
  
• What is right about pain? - personal tactics in Body Art
  
• Humiliation as Art? - Santiago Sierra
  

Recommended

Arnaud Jarsaillon's site has great, modern (don't you love the word?) design: it's original, suave, and comfortable. His excellent graphic works help, of course.

Think forward

I've been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract. No brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it. - Steven Wright

Interactive art

On Martin Rieser's Mobile Audience Blog, there are two articles about different installations allowing visitors/passers-by to create/manipulate images on the screen through movement. The basic idea is the same: the body of the on-looker (obviously, the term is here out-of-date) is used as a tool. The spectator (another "old" word) is somewhere between the artist and the work. He is at the same time the creator (since he is the one giving the actual form to the work) , the spectator/participant, and the work (since his interaction with the machine is also watched and admired by the other spectators). But was exactly is the difference between this situation and the one we encounter in many games, both classic and modern? Here you have the wonderful aesthetic experience - right? Wrong, at least according to the admirers of Blast Theory, the British high-tech theatre group which creates (among others) works right between the worlds of "high art" and down-to-earth entertainment, such as the famous Desert Rain. Actually, it isn't between those worlds, it equally participates in both.

Self-portrait without me

Obviously, no sociological work is ever about us. It might be about those who surround us, but we ourselves are different, unique.
The idea of the automatedbeacon.net is simple: The beacon continuously relays selected live web searches as they are being made around the world, presenting them back in series and at regular intervals. Both simple and fascinating.
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Note: This beacon began in January 2005. I believe a similar device has been working for several years (?) at the Google headquarters. I even tried with some colleagues to use it once to send a message to the people at the company. I wonder what it would have taken to have it work.
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The authors are quite ambitious in their way of seeing their work: The beacon has been instigated to act as a silent witness: a feedback loop providing a global snapshot of ourselves to ourselves in real-time.

Watching the new words appear for several minutes, I realized how false that pretension is: all of the quests I saw were in English. What sort of a distorted snapshot is this? It is the snapshot of the internet, of how we see the world, of what our glasses look like and how far (near) they allow us to see. In real-time.