Jim Andrews
Since the beginning
Works in Victoria Canada

ARTBASE (2)
BIO
Jim Andrews does http://vispo.com . He is a poet-programmer and audio guy. His work explores the new media possibilities of poetry, and seeks to synthesize the poetical with other arts and media.
Discussions (847) Opportunities (2) Events (14) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Re: Rhizome commission makes it to Digg's front page


> And I've actually been reading articles. Like this one:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.h
tml?page=1

> and this:
http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php

> And yes, also this one:
http://www.usabilityviews.com/ajaxsucks.html

Thanks for the articles, Geert. Here is a related post I wrote yesterday to
the Poetics list.

here's a shockwave sonic piece called 'granular synthesizer' by chris savage
from manchester: http://www.japanesefreeware.com/granular

i know altavista permits sound search, like google, yahoo and altavista
permit image search. in 'granular synthesizer', you type in the sound you
want and 'granular synthesizer' retrieves it from the net and then processes
and plays it in configurable ways. it creates an unusual perspective on
common sounds, on what we hear, on the natural, the 'musical', the digital
and 'art'.

it's an example of a type of net art that is becoming more widely practiced
than it has been over the last ten years. 'granular synthesizer' lets the
player type in what they want to hear, retrieves the sound, and also lets
players store their wee creations on the net for others to hear. the ability
to create works that retrieve and store all sorts of different types of
information from all sorts of different information sources on the net is a
bit easier than it once was (via languages like PHP and Actionscript) and,
also, the data feeds are more numerous than they once were. altavista has
video search now, and i see google has it in beta. google also supplies
"API"s (application programming interfaces) which allow programmers to query
the Google databases and retrieve search results. such APIs are more
prevelant than they were. i gather Flickr also provides an API that will let
programmers create applications that search and load Flickr images.

so what?

i think we're starting to see what net art will be in twenty years. it has
been commonplace to say that net art works should take advantage of the
properties of the internet in deeply artistic ways, ie, net art works should
require a net connection and do very funky shit with that connection. the
response to such a prescription has been understandably resistant. because
it *is* a prescription, but also because it's been very tough to create such
works and the data feeds have been relatively few.

there hasn't been a whole lot of net art that does very funky shit with the
internet connection. most net art could as well be experienced on CD without
a net connection. and, sure, that's net art. i am not out to argue that it
isn't. but i do think that the edge of net art will continue to be strongly
involved with trying to do funky shit with an internet connection. why?
well, that's a crucial distinguishing characteristic of net art versus other
types of art, and it's usually the case that the unique characteristics of a
medium or a person or whatever are crucial to the entity's identity, to the
key strengths and weaknesses.

being able to query and retrieve information from the net, in net art works,
can potentially lend them greater relevance to the moment, and also give
them greater range and scope as works of art and/or as intelligences of some
sort. when we ourselves respond to the moment, we bring to it a vast sea of
memory and experience, of possible interpretation and response. clearly the
Internet has become a vast sea of memory, of text, image, sound, video, etc.

but how does one bring this information to bear in a relevant and exciting
way to the moment?

it's starting to be the case that net art works at least have increasing
access to the information stored on the internet. when we ourselves respond
to the moment, we not only need access to our own memories, but we need to
be able to search our memories for relevant information and bring those to
bear on our response in a relevant way. that sort of intelligence seems a
long way off concerning net art works.

however, you can sort of see that one of the more exciting directions of net
art--including literary strains of net art--will be the funky shit it does
with an internet connection concerning how it retrieves information/memory
of many types from around the net and brings that to bear on the moment. we
will glimpse an 'evolution' of approaches to art and intelligence through
this work.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

japanesefreeware.com


I thought "Granular Synthesizer" and "Imaginary Domes" had some moves:
http://japanesefreeware.com

This is Chris Savage's site (from Manchester).

ja

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: what is the name for this type of work?


> i guess the crucial thing, if i understand correctly, is
> > that the change be based on the previous iteration?
> >
>
> i think they choose the comic images based on some keywords.
> so they make a choice. like lets say for each keyword (or a set of)
> there is an image. one could try to "optimize" this choice, like
> by providing different choices (permuting the assignment of
> keyword to comic image). this would give a (parent) set
> of comic strips for a given document. now the viewer could
> decide which strips are "best" (choice of the fittest)
> and one could use this for evolving the choices in order to
> get an "optimal cartoonization". it would be interesting to
> see what comes out of this, since i could imageine that e.g.
> if you choose a fighting scene for the keyword tension
> or a electrical tension sign for the keyword tension, then
> if you combine this with a comic image for "relationship"
> (however this looks like...) then it would be iteresting to
> see peoples choice. but may there is also no interesting outcome...

i see. yes, if the "crucial thing...is that the change be based on the previous iteration" then the system is merely stochastic. a stochastic process is one in which the next state depends on one or more previous states. so i guess an 'evolutionary process' is a type of stochastic process such as you have outlined in your last two posts.

and that does actually describe the type of work i originally suggested--though it doesn't fit kate and michael's piece, as you note.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: spamtropy


Hi Jason,

After I posted, I thought I'm probably mistaken in thinking that the weirdly inappropriate URLs are showing up in our log files out of design. But I sure don't know why they are showing up. And, yes, they are obviously inappropriate, aren't they. Gambling sites, lots of pharmaceutical sites, stuff like that (on my log, anyway). They don't seem like sites that would be spidering other sites, either. So it's a wee spam mysteree.

Spamtropy: the tendency of information streams to be dominated by sales noise?

ja

> Hi Jim,
>
> I have noticed this too. I added a filter to my log file analyser to
> deal with this a while ago - evil referrals automatically get tagged
> as junk. I have a database of hundreds of these suspect domains
> collected at this point.
>
> The nice thing about this form of spam is that you can usually
> disqualify it pretty quickly - the domain names are generally a
> give-away and they tend not to travel beyond one page.
>
> The absurd ones are the "resume" ones. What are these people thinking?
>
> Jason Van Anden
> www.smileproject.com

DISCUSSION

spamtropy


over time, i've noticed more and more urls in my referral logs for my site
that are not, in fact, linking to my site. they are commercial sites that
have nothing whatsoever to do with art. it seems that they have bought some
service that places their url among referral logs.

the more general point is that it seems spam creeps into different forms of
information over time. email is of course the prime example. spam now
dominates email accounts.

as though there is some law of entropy and capitalism whereby information
sources tend to disorder/spam/noise over time?

ja
http://vispo.com