In celebration of their respective ten-year anniversaries, Turbulence and Rhizome collaborated with Upgrade! New York to present an exhibition of works that they commissioned or presented over the course of their histories. The term D.I.Y. (or do-it-yourself) expresses an independent ethos, one that encourages cultural producers to create and distribute work outside mainstream or commercial systems and often in direct confrontation with them. In this case, D.I.Y refers not only to works in the show, many of which create alternate models for collaborative artmaking, community building, and media distribution, but to the organizations themselves whose missions--to commission and present digital art work--had no tradition or cultural niche to call upon. Historically, net artists have included audiences in their work; many created calls to action that compel their audiences to intervene and contribute their own ideas, stories and histories. From re-purposed commercial software to homegrown digital knitting applications and works that offer alternative constructions of identity and nationality, D.I.Y. or DIE presents a cross-section of Internet-based art that, much like punk and grassroots activism has the urgency and invention required to change existing standards of art practice.
D.I.Y. or DIE is currently installed at Individual Artists of Oklahoma (IAO), a not-for-profit arts organization presenting work by Oklahoma artists, including visual art, poetry, theater, and film and video.
Organized by Upgrade! New York, Turbulence and Rhizome.
WORKS
Average Shoveller
by Carlo Zanni (2005)
http://archive.rhizome.org/exhibition/diy_or_die/average_shoveler.php
Average Shoveler is an online game challenging the boundaries between photo, paintings, game and short movie. The game uses the allegory of cleaning up the snow from the user's way at NYC's East Village to explain how we need to survive from the daily soft bombing of news. But, as Carlo explains, "there is no way to win. Of course you are going to die; it i s a matter of time..." . While the user experience a fictional environment, he/she is playing with coming from your the real world: each flake of snow contains an image taken live from news/politics/sport/entertainment web channels. This dichotomy is also represented in the aesthetics of the game with the contrast of the pixelated environment and the realistic quality of the shoveled images "exploding" and disappearing over the users's head.
Big Box Reuse
by Julia Christensen (2006)
http://www.bigboxreuse.com/
Since Spring of 2004 Julia Christensen has been traveling around the USA visiting sites and meeting people who are transforming abandon mall buildings into useful structures for the community. With Big Box Reuse , a work that treads on the thin line between art and social research, Julia is researching the way people re-build their towns through traveling, studying communities and the urban landscape. Big Box Reuse is an online collection of photographs, interviews, and stories documenting her research with the aim of showing the resourcefulness and creativity of communities dealing with a situation that is happening all over the country.
Eternal Sunset
by Adriaan Stellingwerff (2005)
http://rhizome.org/commissions/2005/eternalsunset.rbw
Eternal Sunset is a project by Adriaan Stellingwerff that continually presents live images of the sunset using existing online webcams from all over the world. As the sunset moves westward, Eternal Sunset tunes into different webcams, chasing the sunset around the globe. This project is a virtual space where time is passing but where the daily cycle of day and night has come to a freeze at sunset. Eternal Sunset is a reflection on the collapse of space and time brought about by technology in general and the Internet in particular
Fallout, Part 1: An Open Repository
by Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga (2005)
http://turbulence.org/Works/fallout/index.php
Ricardo Miranda Z úñiga's project Fallout serves as a repository of personal perspectives concerning the enigma of the Nicaraguan national character. Including a Graphic Nicaraguan History timeline, the project was initiated by requesting personal commentaries from individuals representing various generations of one family. Later, through the open participation of public, Fallout became into an open archive of informed and thoughtful insights addressing the past, present and future of Nicaragua as well as parallel situations with other countries.
Farklempt!
by Jason Van Anden (2005)
http://archive.rhizome.org/exhibition/diy_or_die/farklempt.php
Farklempt! is a net.art game that challenges its players to manage their emotional-health through the skillful manipulation of feelings against other players attempting to do the same. Equal parts addictive videogame and compelling visual art, Farklempt! continues artist Jason Van Anden's aesthetic investigation of how our emotional states impact the world around us.
getawayexperiment.net
by Marcus Neustetter and Nathaniel Stern (2005)
http://turbulence.org/Works/getawayexperiment/index.php
The project getawayexperiment.net proposes a dialogue between the virtual and physical processes of signing and site design and perception. Stern and Neustetter have transformed several well known information-based web sites into a collaboratively constructed communication site. Initially, authors commissioned local sign-makers in Johannesburg, South Africa to "re-mix" five, live websites by painting stylized versions of each image on their main pages. For a limited time, participants worldwide could edit any of these "getaway" pages by uploading their own replacement images. When not editing a given page, each individual image is randomly pulled from the site's live database, thereby transforming the "getaways" into dynamic collages that signify something completely new.
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Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI)
by UBERMORGEN.COM, Alessandro Ludovico, and Paolo Cirio (2005)
http://rhizome.org/artbase/artwork/48115/
Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI) is a subversive web project that critiques Google's growing monopoly of information. GWEI aims to buy Google with funds generated via Google's own advertising program, Adsense. GWEI has the typical look and feel of serious marketing and business websites but, like so many other websites, its real objective is to hijack hits from people searching for information and subsequently lure them into clicking the ads. Each time someone clicks one of the Google text-ads, GWEI receives a micropayment, which will be invested in Google shares, meaning that Google will slowly be bought via its own advertisement-system.
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Grafik Dynamo
by Kate Armstrong and Michael Tippett (2005)
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/dynamo/
Grafik Dynamo is a net.art project by Kate Armstrong & Michael Tippett designed to load live images from the Web into a live action comic strip. Currently using a feed from LiveJournal, images are accompanied by narrative fragments dynamically loaded into speech and thoughts bubbles in a random way. Grafik Dynamo is an experimental approach to open ended narrative, positing a new hybrid between the flow of data animating the work and the formal parameter that comprises its structure.
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Graph Theory
by Jason Freeman (2006)
http://www.turbulence.org/works/graphtheory
Graph Theory enables the user to navigate among 61 short looping musical fragments to explore a composition for solo violin. Graph Theory interface displays user location within the graph of musical fragments and it lets the user preview and chose next steps. Future concert performances of this work are influenced by the decisions that Graph Theory users have made by their choices.
Imprimatur
by Andy Deck (2005)
http://turbulence.org/Works/imprimatur/
Imprimatur is a free, multi-user, online easy-to-use tool for creating posters in different sizes. Influenced by the use of posters as an instrument in mobilizing massive rallies, Andy Deck aims with Imprimatur to channel energy into thoughtful forms of public dialog. In response to a social condition in which public influence practically demands marketing, Imprimatur anticipates a wave of colorful, independent, and low-budget posters in public places that are now dominated by professionally produced commercial messages. Written in the Java language, Imprimatur it generates documents in the suitable for all printers. If you save a poster, data will be sent to the server and your document will be archived for others to see.
iTunes Signature Maker
by Jason Freeman (2005)
http://rhizome.org/artbase/artwork/37227/
iTunes Signature Maker is a software art piece that scans users music collection and algorithmically generates a short sonic remix of everything user has in its collection. By trying to capture the essence of the user musical taste, iTunes Signature Maker seeks to help people learn something about the music they listen to (and by extension about themselves), to share that with others, and to have some fun in the process.
Knit++
by xurban.net (2002)
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/Knit++/index.htm
Against the delimited plane of the warp and the sedentary path of the woof, xurban.net propose an acentered and infinite space in which any point is connected to any other point in lines of flight where points are subordinated to trajectories: a retroactive smoothing of the cyberspace. A constant flux of connections in between undifferentiated plateaus opposes the "navigation" of striated space-time.
Knitoscope Testimonies
by Cat Mazza (2006)
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/Knit++/index.htm
Knitoscope Testimonies is the first web based video using "Knitoscope" software, a program that translates digital video into a knitted animation. Knitoscope is a moving image offshoot of microRevolt's freeware knitPro. Knitoscope imports streaming video, lowers the resolution, and generates a stitch that correspondes with the pixels color. The Testimonies in this piece are from various professionals who work against sweatshop labor. Knitoscope was developed by Cat Mazza and programmed in C with Quicktime and OpenGL by Shawn Lawson.
knitPro
by microRevolt/Cat Mazza (2005)
http://www.microrevolt.org/knitPro/
The knitPro Needlecraft Art Show exhibits stitched craftwork made from microRevolt's freeware knitPro, which translates digital images into needlecraft patterns. The twelve artists featured in this show exhibit a spectrum of fiber artistry and extreme hobbyism with the flare of outsider art aesthetics and the tenacity of DIY craft culture. knitPro users are stitching a barrage of images as diverse as flickr -- featuring lo-tech video games, children's book characters, candid snapshots, pop celebrities and symbols of political uprising.
mimoSa: Urban Intervention and Informal Correction
by Alexandre Freire, Etienne Delacroix, Giuliano Djahdjah, Luís "Asa" Fagundes: hacker, Murmur, Ricardo Ruiz, Romano, and Tatiana Wells (2005)
http://turbulence.org/Works/mimoSa
Since october 2005 the project maps different cities around the world where mimoSa workshops take place. In the workshops people work together with artists, craftsmen and activists to create and operate a machine to create media content. The aim is to alter, even in a small scale, media 'official' scenario. Originally from Brazil, mimaSa 's project aim is to interfere at the current mediascape pushing people's creative reinvention of media and technologies to reveal places, people and their tales. On the online version, user can click the marks on the map to find texts, pictures, sounds and videos produced in different urban interventions using mimoSa .
Misplaced Reliquary
by Paul Catanese (2005)
http://archive.rhizome.org/mexhibition/diy_or_die/misplaced_reliquary.php
Misplaced Reliquary is a handheld curiosity cabinet of relics collected by an eccentric curator. The relics are contained within a virtual repository taking the form of a Gameboy Advance ROM that can be played online or downloaded and used with a gameboy advance emulator.
N.A.G.
by Jason Freeman (2003)
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/freeman/
N.A.G. (Network Auralization for Gnutella) is interactive software art which turns the process of searching and downloading MP3 files into a chaotic musical collage. Typing one or more search keywords, N.A.G. looks for matches on the Gnutella peer-to-peer file sharing network. The software then downloads MP3 files which match the search keyword(s) and remixes these audio files in real time based on the structure of the Gnutella network itself.
OilStandard
by Michael Mandiberg (2006)
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/oilstandard/
Oil Standard is a web browser plug-in that converts all prices from U.S. Dollars into the equivalent value in barrels of crude oil. When the user loads a web page, the script seamlessly inserts converted prices into the page. As the cost of oil fluctuates on the commodities exchange, prices rise and fall in real-time.
Panel Junction
by Andy Deck (2005)
http://artcontext.org/act/05/panel/
Panel Junction is a graphic novel that was made through shared, online authorship. Many people from across the world contributed to the graphic novel with suggestions, graphics, narrative ideas, layouts, and sketches through online forums and discussions. Panel Junction culminated online and is a printable (PDF) twelve-page graphic novel.
SWIPE Toolkit
by Preemptive Media (2004)
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/swipe/main.html
The SWIPE Toolkit by Preemptive Media is a collection of web-based tools that sheds light on personal data collection and usage practices in the United States . The tools demonstrate the value of personal information on the open market and enable people to access information encoded on a driver's license or stored in some of the many commercial data warehouses.
To Be Listened To
by MTAA (2005)
http://archive.rhizome.org/exhibition/diy_or_die/2bl2.php
To Be Listened To (2bl2 for short) is an open relay for sound art, audio blogs, mashups, re-mixes, dance mixes or any other sort of experimental audio.2bl2 is comprised of 10 thematic podcast feeds with 8 open feeds to which anyone may post anaudio file. Each feed's name, along with the original 'seed' post, sets its tone.
Collaborating Organizations :
Upgrade! New York started in 1999 as a casual meeting of net artists in an East Village bar. Since than, it partnered with Eyebeam to promote dialog and discussion between new media makers in the area. Upgrade! New York's website include an archive of presentations by many of the leading new media artists in the US.
Turbulence proudly celebrates ten years of service to artists. One of the "premiere sites for net art", it has commissioned over 110 net art works ($450,000) and exhibited and promoted numerous artists' work through its Artists Studios, Guest Curator, and Spotlight sections. As networking technologies have developed mobile capabilities, Turbulence has remained at the forefront of the field by supporting the hybrid networked art forms that have emerged. Its networked_performance blog, has become an essential resource for artists, scholars and the general public.
Rhizome supports contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways. Our programs include commissioning, exhibitions and journalism; we also maintain resources such as opportunities listings and two online archives, one of digital art, one of new media art-related writing. In 2006, we are celebrating our tenth anniversary with a festival encompassing events, exhibitions and performance around New York as well as online programs and participatory projects.
Exhibit on view at:
IAO was established in 1979 by three poets who envisioned an
alternative art space in Oklahoma where artists of all levels and in
all media could hone their talents and build audiences. They wanted
to provide a venue so that contemporary artists have the opportunity
to remain in Oklahoma while exploring their art forms. The
organization now operates under the mission that Individual Artists of
Oklahoma is committed to sustaining and encouraging emerging and
established artists in all media who are intellectually and
aesthetically provocative or experimental in subject matter or
technique.