HEXEN 2.0 by Suzanne Treister is a series of works with strong network related concerns spanning across a number of forms including alchemical diagrams, a Tarot deck, photo-text works, pencil drawings, a video and a website. The works investigate:

histories of scientific research behind government programmes of mass control, investigating parallel histories of countercultural and grass roots movements. HEXEN 2.0 charts, within a framework of post-WWII U.S. governmental and military imperatives, the coming together of scientific and social sciences through the development of cybernetics, the history of the internet, the rise of Web 2.0 and increased intelligence gathering, and implications for the future of new systems of societal manipulation towards a control society…Treister’s body of work presents a unique critical overview of modern intellectual and scientific history. Key to her artistic strategy is her decision to represent her visions of past interrelated histories by employing alternative systems for divining meaning or creating knowledge: alchemical drawings, tarot cards, gematria and the seance. She writes, ‘By representing these subjects and histories through the lens of the alchemical and the occult, HEXEN 2.0 offers a space where one may use the works as a tool to envision possible alternative futures.’

HEXEN 2.0 is currently showing at the Science Museum in London. Originally seen on the E-Flux announcements list.

rep.licants.org is:

a web service allowing users to install an artificial intelligence (bot) on their Facebook and/or Twitter account. From a different set of techniques, the bot attempts to simulate the activity of the user, to improve it by feeding his account and to create new contacts with other users.

The bot does not born [sic] with a fictitious identity, but will be added to the real identity of the user to modify it at his convenience. Thus, this bot can be seen as a virtual prothesis added to an user’s account, with the aim to build him a greater social reputation. Moreover, this bot can be perceived as a threat by defrauding even more the reality of who is really who on the cyberspace and by showing the poverty of our social interactions on these so-called social networks.

Above is an example conversation created by an instance of the bot (see more here). For similar work on artificial lifeforms / bots (albeit visualised very differently) see EKKAH.

rep.licants.org is currently showing at the Robots and Avatars exhibition at Fact in Liverpool until 27/05/12.

Infinite Glitch is a online automated system that generates a live audio-visual stream from media files freely available on the web.

Every day an incomprehensible number of new digital media files are uploaded to hosting sites across the internet. Far too many for any one person to consume. Infinite Glitch is a stream-of-conciousness representation of this overwhelming flood of media, its fractured and degraded sounds and images reflecting how little we as an audience are able to retain from this daily barrage…Source audio and video files are ripped from a variety of popular media hosting sites, torn apart, and recombined using collage and glitch techniques to create an organic, chaotic flood of sensory input.

Your Word is my Landscape by Sergio Albiac are compositions produced by text in emails.

Words are pseudo randomly placed with varied sizes and then rendered as moody misty lands and waters. Reflections on connections between words and images, as well as the secrecy of private live.

More works with a textual/language theme. SMSlingshot by VR/Urban is

an autonom working device, equipped with an ultra-high frequency radio, hacked arduino board, laser and batteries. Text messages can be typed on a phone-sized wooden keypad which is integrated in the also [sic] wooden slingshot. After the message is finished, the user can aim on a media facade and send/shoot the message straight to the targeted point. It will then appear as a colored splash with the message written within. The text message will also be real-time twittered – just in case.

For similar work see The Media Cartridge, TXTual Healing, Light Attack and The Artvertiser.

Originally seen on Networked_Performance.