Two networked art works by Mary Flanagan. Ineffable (image above, video below) is a software work which reads emails between two correspondents and maps the use of language to explore the questions:

How are different kinds of language, and thus sounds, used in correspondences with different people? How do we “sound” to those reading our emails, and how does the email of others sound to us?

The mappings of the emails structure, phoneme’s syllables etc. are displayed as visuals and sound. To do this:

[ineffable] collects chronological information, time between emails, length of correspondence, and most importantly, the kinds of phonetic sounds used by a correspondent in his or her writing and generates a sonification and visualization of this content. Written in Java, [ineffable] analyzes a user’s emails to or from a particular person and maps the language used by examining the phonemic makeup of the words utilized in the correspondence. The work “reads” a pair of user’s email archives and, side by side, analyzes the words therein, grouping them based on the recipient, date, time elapse between correspondences, overall amount of correspondence. Most importantly, we have the program find a “sound signature” to the words used in words, paragraphs, sentences and finally, the overall email set.

Phage (image above left) and Collection (image above right) bear strong resemblances to each other and seem like a reworking of what is essentially the same software. Phage creates sculptural spaces from the content of your hard drive. It is:

is a computer application which is viral– an artificial life form. [phage] filters through all available material on a specified workstation and places it in an alternate context-a visible and audible moving 3D spatialized world. I encourage this virus lifeform to spread via email (but only by the consent of the host)…By mapping a user’s unique experiences– through images, downloads, web sites visited, emails–the computer program creates spatial memory maps that not only reflect the computer and technoculture in content, but the user’s artifacts from his or her interactions. In this way, the [phage] program reflects each user as an individual. The work, in fact, becomes about the user’s experience with the particular computer.

Collection creates similar sculptural spaces but by a different means, it:

gathers up found material from various users’ hard drives and collects them on a centralized server. Going from computer to computer, [collection] scours drives and collects bits and pieces of user’s data - sentences from emails, graphics, web browser cached images, business letters, sound files-and creates a mobile mix of user experiences, operating system files, and normally hidden materials… [collection] is significant because it calls into question the nature of memory as a network through its allegorical use of the internet as a collective memory space. By mapping a user’s, or group of users’, unique experiences-through images, downloads, web sites visited, emails-it creates spatial memory maps that not only reflect the computer and technoculture in content, but the user’s artifacts from his or her interactions.

Bestiario, a Spanish based company thats specialise in:

computer-based applications in the domains of information visualisation, social networks, creative collaboration and expositions where there is a link between art and science

will be exhibition some of their latest work, The Atlas of Electromagnetic Space at AV Festival 08 in Middlesbrough on 04/03/08.

The radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum is something which can’t normally be seen with the naked eye, but the innovators of Bestiario will put it on view, by deploying the forces of art, science and technology. Displayed on several large plasma screens located in the central foyer of Middlesbrough’s brand new Institute for Digital Innovation, this impressive new installation enables visitors to interact with the electromagnetic spectrum, and learn more about it. Visitors can choose to see the structure and topology of the spectrum and find out what kinds of activities happen there, from television and radio, to mobile telephony and wireless internet. The Atlas of Electromagnetic Space will also show the assignation of frequencies to different communication protocols, and the cultural, social and artistic interventions that are currently taking place in the spectrum.

Both AV Festival website and programme suggest that Bestario’s work Mnemosyne (images above, video below) is indicative of their new work but that remains to be seen.

Related work includes: the Wifi Camera Obscura.

The publication, The Exploit: A Theory of Networks by Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker, came through Nettime in October. I saved it as a draft and then completely forgot about it until I saw Rhizome posted it through their news list / widget a few weeks ago. Not sure if there is a slight conflict of interest there but regardless it looks well worth a look:

The network has become the core organizational structure for postmodern politics, culture, and life, replacing the modern era’s hierarchical systems…the network form has become so invasive that nearly every aspect of contemporary society can be located within it.

Borrowing their title from the hacker term for a program that takes advantage of a flaw in a network system, Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker challenge the widespread assumption that networks are inherently egalitarian. Instead, they contend that there exist new modes of control entirely native to networks, modes that are at once highly centralized and dispersed, corporate and subversive.

In this provocative book-length essay, Galloway and Thacker argue that a whole new topology must be invented to resist and reshape the network form, one that is as asymmetrical in relationship to networks as the network is in relation to hierarchy.

For more information, including the table of contents, visit the books webpage.

I mentioned Jeremy Deller a few weeks ago within the context of drawing (Mark Lombardi: Global Networks). Deller won the turner prize in 2004, the same year Langlands & Bell were nominated and presented works such as The House of Osama bin Laden (above, top left and bottom left) and Frozen Sky (above right). They seem particularly fitting to look at within the context of network research as their work centres on the exploration of:

the complex web of relationships linking people and architecture and the coded systems of circulation and exchange which surround us.

but their works Air Routes of Europe (Night) (above), Air Routes of Britain (Night) (below left) and www. (below right) also fit appropriately with the drawing / graphing theme which has developed into the recent post on Drawing with GPS.

Ulises Ali Mejias’ research “analyzing the nature of Virtuality and its relation to Reality” is currently focused on a dissertation, a work in progress, which he is trickling through his weblog section by section. It seems like an interesting read, I haven’t quite managed to go through it yet, but some of the points sound as if they elaborate on issues raised by theorists such as Michael Heim in his book Virtual Realism whose ideas I first became aware of through The Cyberspace Dialectic in The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media edited by Peter Lunenfeld. Ulises Ali Mejias describes his dissertation as follows:

Networked Proximity: ICT’s and the Mediation of Nearness

In a nutshell, it’s about how social relevancy is being redefined by the new media. It’s about what happens when we approach the local through the same mediated distancelessness that networks afford towards the global. It’s about trying to understand the role that technology plays in the production of this networked proximity. And it’s about the new forms of being and social participation that are engendered in the process. It is also an exploration of the limits of the network as metaphor and model for organizing social realities.

As you can probably already tell, my dissertation is a philosophical treatise and an attempt at doing critical theory, not an empirical study. In other words, don’t expect any data (if anything, expect a critique of the scientism that informs social network theories).

Under the current plan the dissertation contains the following sections, which will be posted separately over the course of the next few months:

1. Introduction: Far Away, So Close
2. Networks as Metaphors and Models
3. Agency in the Network
4. The Social Agency of Code
5. The Networked Public Sphere
6. Networks and Social Change
7. The Local as Paralogy
8. Virtuality and the Near
9. Desire and Sociality
10. Networked Proximity: A Research Agenda

Currently the weblog is up as far as section 7. Lets hope that once finialised this manifests itself as a pdf file as well.

Originally seen at Turbulance.org.