Posted inArt

The Potential for Journalism in the Expanded Field

BERKELEY, California — As more of us can afford the tools historically only available to publishing houses, we have increasingly adopted them to share our stories and thoughts online. The invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s cheapened and quickened the arduous process of writing texts by hand. The cheaper the publishing, the cheaper the books, making information more accessible and creating an economic environment where more people could become publishers, creating an increasingly diverse, cheap, and accessible flow of information to an increasingly wider audience. Before the printing press books were rare and expensive, few possessed them and few could read them. The internet has expanded what the printing press started at an unprecedented degree.

Posted inArt

Twitter as Art

After thinking through the idea of Tumblr as art, I began to find the difference between various social media platforms glaringly obvious. Marshall McCluhan’s phrase “the medium is the message” came to mind. How do settings and mediums change or possibly mandate artistic intention? After exploring Tumblr’s unique qualities, I wanted to expand the focus to another relatively new platform for artistic creation, Twitter.

Posted inOpinion

Robotization of the Internet

I recently stumbled across a video of writer Jon Ronson confronting a Twitter bot that was “stealing” Ronson’s personality. The surreal (or is it hyperreal?) video and the subsequent article written by two of those interviewed in the video, Dan O’Hara and Luke Robert Mason, is a fascinating glimpse into the robotization of the internet today.

Posted inOpinion

Twittering Machine 2.0

Angelo Plessas is a net artist whose works predominately deal with color, interactivity and sound. “Re-Twittering Machine” (2012) caught my attention because of the ever growing hype around social media’s role in social unrest like the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement.