BwO (Body without Organs): All the words of the text from 'Mille Plateaux' are floating in space, disembodied from their pages, interconnected by a luminous thread; the code follows each word in its reading order, embodying a meta-body-without-organs in 3d space, charting diffuse abstract paths united by generative's logic thread. (Source: Author's homepage)
Today, where information is continually transferred in the form of data, the word “information” has all but been exchanged for the word “data.” This shift of terms has aided in effectively transforming the world into a network-world of data. In many areas, and for many professionals, condensing information has become an almost exclusive preoccupation. This need to condense information through selecting and summarizing events—via the use of statistics, infography, visualization software, reports, databases, and animations—has dominated our mental landscape; it dominates the way we structure our perception of reality. Therefore, it is important to rethink what this phenomenon represents and how artists are responding to it. In this network-world of data, spam (which is unsolicited e-mail or electronic data sent en mass) has become one of the symbols representing the flux of disinformation, and/or unsolicited, information. Anti-spam is, therefore, a method of eliminating and screening the source data, a tool I call impedance. If we apply this point of view to contemporary art, we could consider the works of Pavel Braila, R. Luke DuBois and André Sier as anti-spam filters that allow the detection, screening, elimination, and subsequent reinvention of existing or non-existent data. In this essay, I propose considering the fundamental aspects of data mining, data visualization, projection mapping. From such considerations emerges the ability to generate, process, and recreate data from the work of these three artists. Finally, I introduce the perspective of the artist as a data miner, this reinvents its source in the new visual, social and political datascape. (Source: Author's Abstract)
From Guy Debord in the early 1950s, to Richard Long, Janet Cardiff and Esther Polak more recently, contemporary artists have returned again and again to the walking motif. Debord and his friends tracked the urban ambiences of Paris to map the experience of walking at street level. Long trampled a path in the grass and snapped a picture of the result (A Line Made by Walking). Cardiff created sound walks in London, New York and San Francisco that sent the audience out walking. Mapping is a way for us to locate ourselves in the world, physically, culturally, or psychologically. Debord produced maps like collages that traced the “psychogeography” of Paris, while Polak and her team equipped nomadic Fulani herders in Nigeria and Cameroun (West Africa) with GPS devices and developed a robot to map their itineraries in the sand. Today, the convergence of global networks, online databases, and new tools for mobile mapping coincides with a resurgence of interest in walking as an art form. In Walking and Mapping, Karen O’Rourke explores a series of walking/mapping projects by contemporary artists. Some chart “emotional GPS”; some use GPS for creating landscapes made of data --“datascapes”-- while others use their legs to do “speculative mapping.” Many work with scientists, designers, and engineers. O’Rourke offers close readings of these projects--many of which she was able to experience firsthand--and situates them in relation to landmark works from the past half-century. She shows that the infinitesimal details of each work she considers take on more significance in conjunction with others. Together, they form a new entity, a dynamic whole greater than the sum of its parts. By alternating close study of selected projects with a broader view of their place in a bigger picture, Walking and Mapping itself maps a complex phenomenon.