The digital decomposition of 10 Ruston Close, an installation and online work by John Wild opens on Thursday, September 1st at the Gallery & Project Space, Great Western Studios, London. The online part of the work is already online and can be viewed at http//:10-ruston-close.com/ (note a Java enabled browser is required).

The work, titled after the former residence of mass murderer John Christie:

explores the relationships between trauma, memory and architecture within the digital age. A photograph of 10 Ruston Close, formally 10 Rillington Place, will be both projected within the gallery…Each time the image is viewed, either online or within the space, a single pixel will be removed from the image. Over the period of the exhibition the image will decompose directly in response to the number of views it receives.

There are some interesting ideas about online work here. The use of a network and the activity around the work (in a sense looking at the work) leads to the works destruction or erasure. This emphasises through process (as well as through the visual) the works subject matter, a location/site which has itself has been destroyed/erased over time.

To read more about the work and it’s subject matter, see the gallery site here.

An event last January that I wished I’d known about was the Signal:Noise event at The Show Room in London. The event seems to have been a historical overview of the influence of Cybernetics on new media art. How concepts such as communication and conversation theory, feedback etc. have influenced it’s development and become fundamental to the form.

Through the application of mechanical and scientific models for the understanding of social and political life, cybernetic theory – in particular notions of feedback – informed the development of many early conceptual and participatory artistic practices in the 1960s/70s, yet its influence is still under-recognized. Signal:Noise aims to bring together people who are working with these ideas in the fields of art, design, architecture and theory in order to re-open discussion around this discourse, looking at how it has informed cultural, social and political life, in the past and present.

I expected to see Professor Roy Ascott mentioned at some point in the documentation of this event however surprisingly no but it has introduced me to artist Stephen Willats and his recently republished essay The Artist as an Instigator of Changes in Social Cognition and Behaviour (image below from publication). More on this at a later date as I need to get hold of a copy and compare it to another text I’m reading.

There is a good review on the Furtherfield site summing up the event.

Views From The Internet by Penelope Umbrico

is a project that investigates the views through windows on home improvement Internet sites. The windows in these places always present views of idyllic suburban or country landscapes. There, these views are an invitation: completing the fantasy of the space of the website, they invite retreat and the promise of escape.

This is an interesting work where the isolation of views, from interiors to exteriors, through windows highlights the virtualisation of the scenes. We realise that we, online, are peering though a window at a work which itself is from a window which looks out on a distant landscape. Evidence of buildings is removed however their presence is still visible as we see skylines cut out.

Originally seen on VVork.

Sunny n shiiite (Ustream here) by Katja Novitskova is a one week long live stream on Ustream consisting of the artist making:

arrangements of found and created objects in a geographically unlocated and thus ‘virtual’ space. With irregular intervals I will be coming in and developing the setup further, about once a day. The breaks in the stream will only be caused by possible technical problems, and the scene will most of the time appear to be a static image.

The work finishes tomorrow the 16th of March 2011.

Originally Seen on VVork.

REFF – Remix the world! Reinvent reality! opened last Friday (25/02/11) at Furtherfield Gallery in London and runs until Saturday 26th of March 2011 (images below). I performed Trav—erse at the opening (image above of setup) to a packed gallery (don’t be fooled by the empty photos taken before the opening). Good to perform somewhere where both the audience and myself are in the same location (lots of mixed reality work recently) – feedback seemed positive.

The REFF show is part of the launch/publicity/awareness raising of the book published last November and forms part of a whole series of events in London this month – see the Art is Open Source website for more details.