October 31, 2006
Furtherfield.org
The New Reviews/Interviews, Oct/Nov 2006
Welcome to Furtherfield's current collection of reviews and interviews. Please find time to read all of the writings, they are in no particular order. After reading, do explore all the networked behaviour generously written and thought about, in context.
Boredom Research: Interviewed by Aaron Steed
PHONETHICA: Reviewed by Franz Thalmair
Alex Dragulescu - Blogbot: Review by María Victoria Guglietti
VISP Project MACHFELD: Interview by Julian Bleecker
The Lost Biology of Silent Hill: FurtherCritic Article by [[Mez]]
disturb.the.peace [angry women]: Review by Eliza Fernbach
2nd Upgrade Meeting at Oklahoma City: Review by Luis Silva.
Jason Nelson - Vholoce: Review by John Hopkins
Boredom Research: Interviewed by Aaron Steed
An interview with Boredom Research on their latest project 'F.wish' a new online project commissioned by Folly (http://www.folly.co.uk/); based on the Lam Tsuen Wishing Trees. In Hong Kong near the Tin Hou Temple you can visit these trees, write your wish on a “bao die”, tie it to an orange and throw it up into the branches. If your wish is caught in the branches it is said to come true. The tree used to be a camphor tree where a tablet for worshipping Pak Kung was placed before it withered and became hollow. The myth goes that a worshiper prayed to the tree to fix his son who was slow in learning. The granted wish led to many more wishes being made of the tree.
PHONETHICA: Reviewed by Franz Thalmair
The contradictory overlap between diversity and similarity of languages and their corresponding cultures is the initial point for the project PHONETHICA by Takumi ENDO and Nao TOKUI. More than 6.5 billion people on our planet share approximately five to six thousand languages. Nevertheless, every single individual owns a speaking equipment, which enables him/her to produce the same sounds in every corner of the world. Consequently, there exists some coincidental similarity within the different idioms. Looking at languages in this specific way, it must be concluded that phonetic rather than semantic aspects of languages result in an overlapping of language phenomena in different cultural backgrounds.
Alex Dragulescu's Blogbot: Reviewed by María Victoria Guglietti
Blogbot and productive inertia. Sometimes silence is unbearable. Alex Dragulescu’s graphic novel What I Did Last Summer inundates our screen with words that we can almost touch. The phrases are intermittent, fragmentary, irrevocably silent… “I don’t ask why…” “Now, you’ve got all that on…” “I read the Stars and Stripes and….” These are textual bombs; scattered sentences harvested by Dragulescu’s software agent Blogbot. The phrases are actual extracts captured from the famous war blogs My War[sub]1[/sub] and Baghdad Blogger[2], two of the most famous blogs written by participants and witnesses of the war in Iraq.
The Lost Biology of Silent Hill_: FurtherCritic Article by [[Mez]]
The game Silent Hill [all 5 versions] attempts to restitch game-genre predictability. The versions progress using suspense/dread evocation as their primary engagement tool. Various game elements produce this introspective thrill-connection through the use of sound biting [almost literally], sinister environ expectancies [limited visual negotiations through fog/blackness], rotten materiality [decay + dereliction] and puzzle elements designed 2 provoke survival adaptions [fight-or-flight responses].
disturb.the.peace [angry women]: Review by Eliza Fernbach
Can anger be beautiful? Can rage be aesthetic? The collaborative net-based installation site D/tP disturb.the.peace [angry women] thinks so. What after all is more powerful than an angry woman but a group of angry women doing art? The infamous 'angry young man' epitomized by the likes of James Dean and Marlon Brando in the cinema of the Fifties hasn't really been mirrored in a feminine glass. Polishing a reflection on angry women- young or old is the aim of this site that Hollers back and out into the future with bravado. Curated by Jess Loseby (http://rssgallery.com/), submissions to the site are ongoing and the bar has been set high by the founding fems who grace the inaugural page.
2nd Upgrade Meeting at Oklahoma City: Review by Luis Silva
This year, the Oklahoma City node will host the Second International Meeting. Having the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) ideology as its theme, as well as a metaphor for the functioning of the Upgrade! network, this city in the middle of the United States of America will witness, from November 30th to December 3rd, a worldwide meeting of new media artists, curators, critics and theoreticians. Over twenty nodes will be present and have been preparing specially for the occasion a program that will feature exhibitions, performances, lectures, workshops, screenings and debates. Spreading all over the city, in spaces like Untitled [ArtSpace], IAO Gallery or The Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
Jason Nelson - Vholoce: Review by John Hopkins
Vholoce is one project in a long line of projects which seeks to creatively engage the ubiquitous data-streams that are flooding our virtual world. The rising flood of data is useless without sensible display. Visual (and sonic) display of digital data is a fundamental contemporary issue. But what is sensible display? Using a data stream as a basically random source for visual display is one way to play with the stream. The syntax of visual display (possibly) becomes the site for expression by the creative producer. The data-stream source, the method of (and reason for) display, and the overall creative process need to be interrogated in order to find the basis for the type of digital engagement.
If you are interested in being a reviewer on Furtherfield contact: marc.garrett[at]furtherfield.org
Furtherfield Neighbourhood & Projects:
# www.furtherfield.org
# www.http.uk.net
# www.visitorsstudio.org
# www. blog.game-play.org.uk
# www.nodel.org (with many others)
# http://netartfilm.furtherfield.org
# www.netbehaviour.org
# www.furthernoise.org
Posted by jo at October 31, 2006 11:06 AM
