The term "participation"
provides a point-of-reference for experimental software art by Barbara Lattanzi.
Such projects as Lattanzi's net-based "CSPAN Karaoke" emphasize the
improvisational and cooperative dimension of Participation as critical (or ironic)
re-figuring of the human-computer interface. Software such as "The Interrupting
Annotator" derive partly from late-1980s/early-1990s models of media activism,
public access tv, and other versions of community communications. Some of Lattanzi's
projects, such as "EG Serene", involve small-scale, cine-software applications
for video improvisation, that "open source" key works from the 1970s
era of structuralist, experimental filmmaking. In 2005, "C-SPAN Karaoke",
received an "Honorable Mention" at Transmediale, the Berlin-based international
media art festival. The Artport website of the Whitney Museum of American Art
featured, during January, her gatepage, "C-SPAN x 4". The gallery version
of "HF Critical Mass Applied to Cinematography by NASA" was included
in the 2005 exhibition "Reverse Engineers". The production of Lattanzi's
multimedia applets and software has been stimulated in part by the open structures
of net-based cooperative venues such as the on-line archive of software art, "Runme.org"
and Rhizome "Artbase", where her work is included. She currently teaches
at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
| 
