Posted inOpinion

A Look Back at Aaron Swartz’s Open-Internet Art Project

Aaron Swartz, the 26-year-old internet pioneer, Reddit co-founder, and activist programmer who tragically committed suicide last week, made an intriguing entry into the art world last year at Rhizome’s Seven on Seven conference, which brings creative technologists into collaboration with artists. Swartz participated with Taryn Simon, an American artist who often works to visualize sets of data with her photography.

Posted inArt

Seven Artists Meet Seven Technologists, But Who’s Who?

Seven on Seven is an annual conference hosted by Rhizome and the New Museum that pairs seven artists together with seven technologists to collaborate on projects created in a 24-hour period. The event’s second outing was last Saturday, May 14. The first question that came to my mind while attending the event was — what exactly is a technologist? Through the presentation speeches and Q+A sessions that showed off the series of thought-provoking collaborative artworks, I began to get an inkling of what the word might mean, and what its implications could be. But at a time when new media artists are technological innovators and software developers are artistic creators, where do we draw the line?