To tackle the anxiety of online identity and the constant torrential rain of information, artist Toni Dove has orchestrated a ghost story. It’s a spectral experience that spills from video screens that raise from the floor and hover from the ceiling, blending in live soundtracking, robotics, motion-sensing animation, and a whole cavalcade of integrated technology that comes together more like a sci-fi symphony than a replica of all that online noise. I recently visited Dove’s studio in Lower Manhattan, where she demonstrated the technology behind Lucid Possession and discussed her continuously evolving new media-based work.
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Alexandra Chasin’s Brief, an innovative narrative in the form of an iPad app, is “Exhibit A” in the case that the novel is finding exciting new ways to reinvent itself after the digital turn. Brief, the first novel-app of its kind, would make a rich and wonderful addition to any syllabus or reading list on appropriation, experimental fiction, new media literature, visual studies, violence and representation, or text and image, and I hope in these “brief” paragraphs to adumbrate some of the reason why.
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If you thought 3D printing was confusing, just wait until four-dimensional printing hits. The somewhat erroneously named term has come into vogue as of late with a few MIT-driven projects that promise to lead the way for self-assembling skyscrapers, among other futuristic phenomena.
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VALENCE, France — There is a new thread in the ongoing stream of censorship by social networks and mobile applications. Vine, the iPhone and iPod Touch “Instagram for video” app, underwent controversy mere days after it’s release on the App Store. Twitter-owned Vine was released last week to a notable buzz, even being featured by Apple as an App Store “Editor’s Pick” from the first day of its launch.
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Lately, the art world has been awash in technology-driven art start-ups, including well-funded ventures like 20×200, Artsy, and Artspace that dominate headlines by providing access to buying (or at least window shopping) art to a wider audience than blue-chip collectors. Making the gallery experience less intimidating is all well and good, but what about the nice parts of going to a small, hip art space and being able to pick out a piece that you might be able to afford? The good news is that a pair of independent, effortlessly cool online art galleries have recently launched to provide engaged collectors with the chance to follow specific curatorial voices.
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There’s a post (that I can no longer find, unfortunately) on the hilarious Tumblr Sexpigeon (SFW, I promise) that features a man on the street, slouching over his smartphone, face angled far down, features invisible. The caption, something to the effect of: “What a brave new world for posture we live in.” The advent of portable technology has brought with it a range of new behaviors, both virtual and physical. Two recent projects take on the IRL side of how we interface with our contemporary devices.
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