EXTENSION, the first net.art competition has been hacked

127 contributions to the world’s first competition for internet art have not been produced by artists but by a computer program.

“280 registrations–two thirds of them are women”, says a press release launched by Kunsthalle Hamburg at 3rd of July, 1997, while the net.art competition EXTENSION still was in progress. The news were picked up and disseminated by several on- and offline magazins and newspapers like ‘Morgenpost’, and ‘Bunte online’.

But the museum as well as the press fell victim to a hack: In fact, 127 of the contributions to the competition do not originate from artists but from a computer program. It was the Hamburg-based net.artist Cornelia Sollfrank who has developed and used the program in order to automatically generate net.art websites. For her intervention to the competition, Sollfrank has invented hundreds of fictitious female net.artists, equipped them with names, addresses, and even functioning e-mail addresses. Then she registered the fresh artists to the competition, and after she had received the passwords to send in the material for the competition, she made use of the computer program which would generate the art. The sent in websites consisted of randomly recombined webpages which a defined serach engine had collected before.

Besides the increased chance of winning one of the prices, the artist tried to take the theme of the competition particularly serious: “Internet as material and object”.

What does the gender model of male/female mean on the net? Is it possible to check if there’s a male or a female person behind an e-mail address? Is the number of virtual identities into which a net.artist can split up limited? FEMALE EXTENSION does ask these and many more questions.

But first of all FEMALE EXTENSION demonstrated that art on the internet can mean much more than just creating websites. It is about picking the technological dispostives of the net as a theme, and working with them as the material of art.

http://artwarez.org/femext/content/publicEN.html

We, M.River & T.Whid, ask that you view a 1 year performance video, to begin today, June 28, 2009.

We shall seal images of ourselves in images of our studio, seemingly in solitary confinement inside seemingly identical images of cell-like rooms measuring 10ft x 10ft x 10ft.

We seemingly shall not converse, listen to the radio or watch television, until — after you have viewed them for one year — we unseal our images.

We shall appear to have food every day.

Our friend the web site, transition.turbulence.org, will facilitate this piece by serving our images to the World Wide Web.

Please login (upper right) to begin viewing.

http://turbulence.org/Works/1year/ 

by Ou Ning

Ever after the country’s economic reforms, Chinese cities have always been influenced by the American model. In particular, the development of suburban housing connected to city centres by highways has become standard. For a long time, automobiles have been a symbol of modernisation. Commuting to the city office from a suburban residence becomes a much desired image of the bourgeoisie. But in fact, such city zoning is a total loss. Panyu, Guangzhou, is a typical case of failure. Because of the development of the so-called Huanan banukuai, the population in Panyu increased rapidly. Luoxiqiao (Luoxi bridge)is overloaded by the busy traffic and is always congested. Furthermore, as many developers are no longer willing to pay for public facilities, whose construction costs were supposedly included in their land costs according to the authority’s idealistic computation, such services are all lacking. People now live in exquisite houses in the suburb, but take pain to squeeze through the congested traffic for necessities like schooling and medical services in the city. Not really better off than the poor.

In lieu of an in-depth front page story today, here’s a collection of front pages from Chinese newspapers who marked the death of pop superstar Michael Jackson:

Most of the headlines are variations on either “Michael Jackson dies” or “Goodbye Michael.” A few newspapers went with something different, but the usual punning headlines that accompany major international news stories were fairly uncommon:

• Dongguan Times (东莞时报): “The Whole World Mourns”
• Chengdu Evening News (成都晚报): “Farewell to a Legend”
• New Information (新消息报): “The King Will Not Return”
• Modern Express (现代快报): “Heaven Gets the Moonwalk”
• City Evening News (城市晚报): “Remember”
• Chinese Business View (华商报): “The Black and White Life of a Lonely King”

In addition, major online news portals like Sina, Sohu (auto-plays music), and even Xinhuanet collected news, music, photos, and memories from Chinese and foreign media.

via http://www.danwei.org/front_page_of_the_day/a_nation_mourns_for_michael_ja.php

Photos of the league’s top 10 players in action formed the templates for the posters. The players themselves were then invited to a studio to create custom poster designs — silk-screening the images on top of one another in various combinations. As the case-study video and the judges noted, the “posters became the battlefield.”

http://adage.com/cannes09/article?article_id=137548

http://www.damndigital.com/archives/2456 

The intention was to create a system with Mandalas interacting with the user. It was inspired by Carl G. Jung’s notes, that said “schizophrenics use figures in concentric circles in a instinctive impulse to reorganize imagination.”

The four-story building that houses the bar Vesper at 493 Myrtle Avenue in Clinton Hill collapsed shortly before 2 p.m.

The collapse also badly damaged the apartment building next door at 491 Myrtle. Councilwoman Letitia James, who was at the scene, said that it would have to be demolished. All told, at least 14 people were left homeless.

493 Myrtle was cited on May 1 by the Buildings Department for having a crack running up the east exterior wall from the ground floor to the roof, as well as separation cracks on the interior on the third and fourth floors.

Article.

Masahiro Karino is a Japanese graphic designer with a keen eye for logical process to his creations. In his contributing theory ‘A dream of typography’ for the published book ‘Lead Between the Lines’, he constructed a logically (grammatically) organised theory about translation of music into graphics. This logical method to visualise sound also has an angle to think about relationship between matters and language, which is influenced by research in thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

His final projects ‘does typography dream of music? & musicological typography’ can be seen as one of the realization of his logical method with music and typography. This achievement of two years pursuing his passion for conceptualising creations has been also evaluated as class of distinction.

He directs now this logical theory to expanding into more general sounds to graphics. He believes this translation could approach various visualisation in indescribable elements in a project. This is his intention of design that a designed object is a communication instrument, which harmonises an element of creation with a communicated motif, and the harmonised object also have an indescribable element of the motif.

http://www.masahirokarino.info/

PieLab, the newest eatery to open in Greensboro, Alabama, would be a familiar space to creatives who frequent their local cafes. It’s a place you can order a slice of Chocolate Bourbon Pecan pie, maybe some lemonade or coffee, read a book, sketch a picture, review the day’s headlines with your neighbors. Except PieLab is not really a cafe, it’s a space created by fourteen designers as part of the design-for-good movement Project M, hoping to draw the community in to a neutral space for conversation and connections. And of course, because of one very obvious reason: Who doesn’t like pie?

http://roxik.com/pictaps/

http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/04/01/ 

Dear Visitor,

I gotta warn you! Before you click through my large collection of photos, you should not forget, what you hear and read daily in of your home countrys’s media about China’s boom.

They talk about “The Sleeping Giant”. About “The Birth of the New Super Power” or “The Awakening of the Red Dragon”. Often with a strange kind of undertone, which is supposed to frighten us. The reality definitely looks more peaceful.

For years I’ve been fascinated by the country and the people. Whenever I linger through the boom town Shanghai, I carry my snap shot camera with me. Because at every corner you can discover people that either are napping in the strangest positions and situations, or are even snoring, while in a deep sleep. The missing mattresses and pillows are noteworthy!

The calmness, the flexibility and the adaptability of those, who are jointly responsible for the revival of China fascinate me. I would be happy, if I could bring over some of these feelings to you.

Now, enjoy a selection from my collection of over 700 photos SLEEPINGCHINESE.

Yours,

Bernd

 http://www.sleepingchinese.com/

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — City police faked the murder of Kermen Basangova in an attempt to ensnare her deputy, who was plotting to kill her. Above, newscasts of the phony crime. There was confusion the next morning when she came to work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/world/europe/17petersburg.html?_r=1&ref=global-home 

http://www.kkoutlet.com/player/index.php?video=11-diesel.flv