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Net.art works by Russian artist Alexei Shulgin. Shulgin was quite active in the early years of Internet based art and culture, here, his website chock full of these early works which use and abuse the affordances of the medium at that time.

Internet -based art in an online venue, housed on the servers of the 'brick-and-mortar' art institution, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Then curator Steve Dietz initiating this collection which remains accessible, an incredible archive of early net.art works.

Another noteworthy supporter of Internet based artworks is Turbulence. Here, in the archives, dated chronologically by year (96 - 04 for this assignment) an array of artists works commissioned by this wing of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc, a project that started in 1981 to support artists' experiments with earlier forms of networked media.

RTMark is a digital platform that is used to post and fund "projects" to be completed both online, and in the "real world". Many of the projects act as subtle jabs at commercialism, standardized education, and other social and political issues. The "past projects" tab acts as an exhibition of projects completed, giving details into what the purpose of the piece was, and how it was beneficial. RTMark uses the internet to form a community that is geared towards creating and completing projects, transferring funds and creating disturbances and awareness within society. "RTMark" Trademark 2000 www.rtmark.com

Through the Rhizome website, I found Net.artist, Cornelia Sollfrank. Sollfrank with the help of four other artists, created a program that would comb the internet for content and then assemble it into a sort of collage of text and images. This is the Net.art Generator. It seems to me that the project is a comment on the proliferation of net.art at the time and whether or not certain net.art could even be considered art. The piece also seems to question authorship and appropriation. There is also a link on the site to a video of the generator in an art show somewhere, being used. "A smart artist makes the machine do the work" Sollfrank, Cornelia. Rhizome.org, "The Net.art Generator." Last modified 2011. Accessed February 21, 2014. http://archive.rhizome.org/artbase/33601/. Hasty, Nick. Rhizome, "Rhizome." Last modified 01 17, 2011. Accessed February 21, 2014. http://rhizome.org/.

The Circle by David Eggers is an interesting take on social networks and the possibility of a future dystopia cyber landscape. It is about a young woman who starts working at a facebook/google like company called The Circle and looses her private life her job. This novel is similar to design fiction in presenting what could possibly happen in the future, but in this case it is a negative view. If you are interested in context collapse, social media, communication and interaction this book is really interesting. I have linked to a 45 minute audio recording in which David Eggers reads a excerpt from his book. Here is a better summary of the entire story if you like the exerpt: "When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users' personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company's modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can't believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world-even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman's ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge" E

Eggars, David. The Circle. Knopf, 2013.

This is an NPR discussion about the effects that the internet has on us that I thought related to the Wesch article we read.

As I was reading the Cyber Space Alarm article at term struck my interest, "Cyber-Democray." So I Googled it and I found this very interesting article written in 1995 which discusses a lot of the key points that we have been addressing in class. Everything from the technology to the political involvement of the internet. This article also discusses MOOs and the internist as a "public sphere." All of these topics are addressed with the explaining the "cyber democracy. Poster, Mark . "democ.htm." democ.htm. http://www.hnet.uci.edu/mposter/writings/democ.html

Here's a collection of the NSA slides, revealed by Edward Snowden by way of the Guardian news. The slides detail the various pervasive and invasive methods of surveillance, tapping into phone and social media networks, as orchestrated by the National Security Agency. This is the internet-of-things-that-go-bump-in-the-night. Also, as discussed in class, the layout and design of these slides is often horrendous, complicating or obstructing clear communication of information. "NSA Prism program slides" The Guardian News. Published Friday 1 November 2013 http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/prism-slides-nsa-document. Accessed April 6, 2014

I found this a little unusual and not exactly what I was expecting for part of my Meta-Data links. But I thought it was relative and intriguing. The reading section titled "Half-Inch Tape Network" discussed the interaction between guerrilla tape and media and commercial cable programs. Points of interest surfaced about the development from the first television to cable to video cassettes and the underground distribution of tapes. "The half-inch tape network has strong similarities to the shape and ambitions of the Internet, which was being developed at that same time, and one might easily see the similarities between the 'alternative channels' created by the half-inch tape network and websites like YouTube" (15 of 20). This research lead me to find the launch of the VHS mode permitted to some YouTube videos in honor of the video cassette's 57th birthday. In the article(s) provided, each mentions something about the warping of visuals in the video, white flecks and a kind of buzzing that is featured. I have also provided a link to an example of the VHS mode on a YouTube video. Prigg, Mark. Mail Online, "Google reveals new 'VHS mode' for YouTube as video tape celebrates 57th birthday." Last modified April 16, 2013. Accessed February 5, 2014. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2309482/Google-reveals-new-VHS-mode-YouTube-video-tape-celebrates-57th-birthday.html. LINK FOR VIDEO EXAMPLE: http://youtu.be/wbesAd3YxaE?t=38s LINK FOR ANOTHER WEBSITE'S INFO: http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/15/youtube-adds-tape-mode-to-select-videos-in-celebration-of-video-casette-recorders-57th-birthday/

Linus Torvalds is one of the principal forces behind the development of the LINUX kernal and now acts as the coordinator for the project. He has also been responsible for the development of several other pieces of software, such as Git, a revision control system, and Subsurface, which is a logging program used by single- and multi-tank divers. He is the winner of numerous awards given in recognition of his contributions, including the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize, and was one of the first inductees into the Internet Hall of Fame. Wikimedia Foundation. "Linus Torvalds." Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds (accessed February 7, 2014).

I stumbled upon Teo Spiller while looking through different examples of Web Art. Spiller worked with some interesting concepts, and questioned many of the social norms that occur in the digital world. One of the most interesting pieces in my opinion, is titled "Nice Page" and was created in 2000. It is a webpage, completely overtaken with bright text, and segmented images. While this piece might seem to be a page that showcases a multitude of webpages, displayed for an audience, as if flipping through the pages of the web, it is actually meant to critique the superficial attitudes what are associated with the web. The piece itself bombards the viewer with a lot of information, acting as a protest to the way we are constantly flooded with information. Spiller, Teo. "Nice Page" 2000 http://rhizome.org/artbase/artwork/2516/

In an article published by Psychology Today, author Ray Williams writes about the affects of Facebook on a persons self-esteem and sense of self with an emphasis on Facebook's connection to narcissistic behaviors. The article references a study done at York University, which found that among Facebook users between the ages of 18 to 25, the people who used Facebook the most tended to have narcissistic personalities. In his research, Williams also found competing data that suggested Facebook may in fact boost self-esteem. Because the phenomena of social media is still so new to us, it is difficult to come to finite conclusions about the affects of social media. Williams, Ray. "Do Facebook and Other Social Media Encourage Narcissism?." Last modified June, 19th 2013, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201306/do-facebook-and-other-social-media-encourage-narcissism.

Janelle Monae's music is a steampunk mix of sixties jazz and pop that serves as a sort of story/soundtrack that stretches across several albums. In them she tells the story of an Android that falls in love with a human (which in the universe of the albums is forbidden) and all the conflicts/anxieties that take place as a result. The story of the android is one that Monae uses to talk about the other, the oppressed, in a sort of futuristic stranger in a strange land. I would highly encourage you to watch her short film, "Many Moons" that's imbedded into the link.

As I read 'Web Work: A History of Internet Art' by Rachel Greene, I highlighted some of the websites mentioned to go back to and explore. One of these sites was jodi.org. On my first visit to the site, I just typed in Jodi.org in my Chrome browser, which I will warn you right now: DON'T DO IT! I was brought to a blank black page with no information except that my pop up blocker informed me that it blocked a pop up. Being the fool that I am, I changed the setting to allow pop ups from jodi.org, thinking that maybe the pop up was part of the net.art I would find on the page. Immediately a half dozen or so pop ups popped up and started moving around the page, as I tried to close out of the windows they became more and more erratic and finally I just quit Chrome to get out of there. Then I went to Jodi.org throughout the portal of the Wayback Machine. It seemed like another one of those: "rabbit-hole-look-there-are-so-many-fucking-links-all-over-that-move-and-change-colors-and-shit-aren't-we-so-disruptive-type-sites." that Clae was talking about. Then as I was writing this up, in order to give a better description of the site I went to outside of The Wayback Machine, I went back to Jodi.org and a different page came up! Each time I closed the window and went back to Jodi.org, I was directed to a new and different page. It still seems sketchy and I only visited a few more pages, but I thought it was interesting anyways. "Jodi.org." Accessed February 20, 2014. http://jodi.org.

Aha! JODI, of course! This happened to me too---I couldn't remember which net.artist it was. It's certainly one way of engaging a viewer. This reminds me of something that the writer William Burroughs once said in an interview "If I really knew how to write, I could write something that someone would read and it would kill them" ---- JODI's site doesn't seem so fatal in intention, but there is a strong sense of panic induced by their clever coding!

I selected a name I found interesting in the reading, Ben Benjamin. His website "superbad" launched in 1997 takes participants down a spiral of bazar, unrelated, flashing, digital art loops. Like the article "A History of Internet Art" mentioned, "beware that, seen out of their native HTML, out of their networked, social habitats, they are the net.art equivalents of animals in zoos." So I went to see what one of the mentioned artists work was all about. As the article mentions Ben Benjamin's work was featured in the Whitney Museum Biennial in 2000. Wikipedia also informed me he won a Webby award in 1999. "Superbad." Superbad. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.

Write or Die is a browser based application that encourages the user to set goals when writing and achieve them, or else. The interface is relatively simple: the user defines how long they would like to write, the speed at which they intend to write, and the consequences for maintaining or dropping below these parameters. There are three basic modes: Reward, Stimulus, and Consequence. Reward mode displays positive reinforcement for completing your goals by displaying photos you happen to like in whatever frequency you think would best suit your Pavlovian response. Stimulus mode supplies nice, calming backgrounds and sounds as you maintain your words per minute, but if you drop below, they disappear. You can also include your own music, if you want the extra motivation to keep it playing. Finally, there is consequence mode. This mode punishes the user for dropping below quota by turning the screen bright, angry colors, emitting a horrible, grating tone, and finally slowly dissolving the vowels in your completed text. This mode isn't for the faint of heart. Supply your own corporal punishment! Good art hurts!

That sounds really terrifying and awesome. What would be difficult would be determining the sweet spot between pressure to work and a mental breakdown.

Tailorized Taylorism!

An interesting case of design fiction where they have actually programmed a washer to be connected to a smartphone through the cloud so that you may control changes from you phone as well as receive notifications. What they have done which I find interesting is that they have made this video as a way to "start a conversation" about this instance of design fiction. Unlike some design fiction they are not claiming to know what the future will look like or pretend like they have already created the product and worked out all of the bugs. Their approach to design fiction is very simplistic and honest. ""Cloudwash is a prototype connected washing machine. We prototype products at Berg to help us understand how our platform should work, and to encourage better design in connected things…" BERG, "Berg Case Studies/ Cloudwash." Accessed March 20, 2014. http://bergcloud.com/case-studies/cloudwash/.

This short essay by Julian Bleeker talks about exactly what is insinuated in the title design, science, fact, and fiction, and how all of these components come together in order to form what we know as design fiction. This short essay is not very short but there are a lot of interesting points and picture about how and why design fiction functions. Bleeker, Julian. Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact, and Fiction. http://drbfw5wfjlxon.cloudfront.net/writing/DesignFiction_WebEdition.pdf (accessed March 20, 2014).