GREEN < S C R E E N >

#favartOL - twitter emoji compositions... and it being lost in translation due to different presentation; iPhone, iMac, PC and varied operating systems dictate whether you see the icons or not, often meaning the "art" can't be seen by those on older systems.

Meet Alex Flowers

Alex is the Digital Programmes Manager at V&A Museum, Lecturer at Institute of Education and University of London. Alex specialises in visitor studies, evaluation and research methods, digital media instruction, creative interpretive media for museums and cultural organisations as well as community engagement. He published a book in 2011 titled: Transforming Museum Spaces Through Gaming. The publication focuses on how gaming can reinvent and reconfigure the visitor’s experience of gallery. Drawing on examples from a range of institutions and even sport, the article discusses how games change our experience of an environment and provide powerful opportunities for learning.

More on/with Alex:

Linked In

Interview w/ Digital Learning Network

Happy Bot (@happyB0T) and Sad Bot (@sadB0T)

by Plummer Fernandez (@M_PF)

Two language learning bots that re-post vocabulary based on tweets containing either happy :) or sad :( faces. 

Meet Aram Bartholl

Aram is an artist thematising the relationship of net data space and every day life often including public intervention. He asks; “In which form does the network data world manifest itself in our everyday life? What comes back from cyberspace into physical space? How do digital innovations influence our everyday actions?”. Bartholl studied architecture at the University of the Arts UdK Berlin and has been commissioned by Rhizome and founded 'Dead Drops' "an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space" and 'Speed Show' a format to curate digital artworks in internet cafes. 

More on/with Aram: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aram_Bartholl

http://datenform.de/

http://fffff.at/aram-bartholl/

"Crash Text" exq=.s.te =n.c&de/s (@crashtxt)

by Jim Punk - "prolific and anonymous" net artist (Rhizome) uses keyboard characters, symbols and pictorials to create 'visual tweets'. The work references minimal art and early net art aesthetics.

The paramaters of Twitter commonly utilised for individual speech are manipulated as @crashtxt characters extend from their 'designated area' interrupting and interfering with other tweets in the feed. 

Working On My Novel (@WrknOnMyNovel)

by Cory Arcangel 

Selecting the "best tweets of ppl tweeting the phrase 'working on my novel' ".

This months Artforum brings to light the timely discussion of "a disavowal of the digital" by Claire Bishop, described as such in the Introduction by [Editor] Michelle Kuo which is aptly titled 'Arts New Media'.

As well as highlighting "our strange attachment to outmoded 16-mm projectors, slide shows, and musty archival vitrines" Bishop states "While many artists use digital technology, how many really confront the question of what it means to think, see, and filter affect through the digital? How many thematize this, or reflect deeply on how we experience, and are altered by, the digitization of our existence?".

While readers of this blog may think - "uhhh... there are hundreds of artists out there doing this!?" we must remind ourself Brice is speaking from the perspective of "the mainstream art world (commercial galleries, the Turner Prize, national pavilions at Venice)." knowing "There is, of course, an entire sphere of “new media” art, but this is a specialized field of its own".

Green Screen is interested in why "new media art" still is so rooted in this "specialized field of its own", after all we are - as Brice seems to be interested in the affects of "new media" and digital technology has on us, and of course on the arts.

For further reading:

Arts New Media - Michelle Kuo

Claire Bishop - The Digital Divide

Talkback on The Digital Divide

From the same issue:

Data Mine - Bruce Sterling on Petra Cortright's HELL_TREE, 2012

Next Level Spleen - John Kelsey

She Ratchet ™ ‏‪@Ratchet2English‬ U still won’t buy a decent weave.. #ButUGotThatiPhone5Tho Retweeted 9737 times

16m ♪♫ RayShawnFrostz ♪♫ ‏‪@RaySongzHD‬ u cant pay me back my $5 cause u say u broke and times are hard #ButUGotThatiPhone5Tho

17m

San Antonio Probz ‏‪@SanAntonioProbz‬ No job, no money, 5 kids, #ButUGotThatiPhone5Tho

17m

♪♫ RayShawnFrostz ♪♫ ‏‪@RaySongzHD‬ your kids eatin leftover mcdonalds #ButUGotThatiPhone5Tho

25m

♪♫ RayShawnFrostz ♪♫ ‏‪@RaySongzHD‬ cant pay your light bill this month #ButUGotThatiPhone5Tho

Surprise surprise - we are still discussing it 22 years later... 

Excerpt from CYBERPUNK documentary from1990 after Neuromancer by William Gibson 1983 and the documentary in 1990

Transcription: 

I think there are deeper fears I think people think technology will make them less free make them less powerful, in a personal way.

And in fact there are lots of good examples of how this has happened - the defence industry being a major one.

But technology can also empower - you could take that argument all the way back to the first ape like humanoid who used a tool put the nail in our coffin right?

Because our tools OMG you know… Its not my arm its a hammer - does that mean I have lost power to the hammer? Or does it mean I can build a cathedral?

Is it half full or is it half empty?

The question isn't whether or not the medium is intrinsically evil or scary. The question is whether or not we have a culture and a society and a group of artists who can rise to the occasion and be using it in a way that enhances us...

"@G_SCREEN those sites are a secret garden in which no one is invited to know, like the trampoline in Community." via @therealhennessy

Incase you didn't know what "the trampoline in Community" is (we didn't). . .

Meet Katrina Sluis

Katrina is a writer,  curator of the Digital Programme at The Photographers’ Gallery  London and is a Lecturer in Digital Media at London South Bank University. Katrina discusses the challenges and possibilities faced when curating photography on digital platforms. Her research examines the way in which software and hardware structures mediate the circulation and consumption of digital images in contemporary culture.

For more on/with Katrina:

http://lsbu.academia.edu/KatrinaSluis

http://www.digital-light.net.au/node/34

With “People Staring at Computers,” I saw something new: a massive audience engaged in a collective decision-making about the culture they wanted to adopt, in realtime, via comment threads strewn across blog posts and news articles.