A few days ago my grandmother asked me, ‘What channel is the Netflix?’ While I tried to explain her the concept of on-demand internet streaming, I realized that most of the gadgetry and technology for her is indistinguishable from magic.
It is an astounding fact that our civilization made more technological progress in the last century than it did compared to all of the progress made over the span of humanity’s entire history. Most of us carry a far more superior computer compared to the ones used in Apollo missions. These computers have enabled us to shop, study, socialize and do many other things in front of our screens. In this system of humans and machines, enormous amounts of information is consumed, generated and transmitted around the clock.
It is an astounding fact that our civilization made more technological progress in the last century than it did compared to all of the progress made over the span of humanity’s entire history. Most of us carry a far more superior computer compared to the ones used in Apollo missions. These computers have enabled us to shop, study, socialize and do many other things in front of our screens. In this system of humans and machines, enormous amounts of information is consumed, generated and transmitted around the clock.
What inspire me even more are the software algorithms that tell the machines what to do with all the information. From ‘What to watch’ recommendations on Netflix to high speed trading on Wall Street and from point A to point B navigation on Google Maps to highly sophisticated scientific research at the Large Hadron Collider, the algorithms are definitely taking over the world.
But, can we craft algorithms that create art? Would that fall under the realm of Fine Arts? Is the code part of the piece or merely a tool? I am still not sure about the answers. However, I believe that the culture of the twenty first century will be shaped primarily by big data and algorithms.
I want to share a few pieces by the artists that work in the domain where art and modern technology collide. Some reflect on the integration of technology and culture while others use it in the art production process.
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| What If You Could See WiFi? Nickolay Lamm Scientifically accurate representation of WiFi signals. |
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| What If You Could See Your Cellular Network? Nickolay Lamm We are surrounded by blazing cell phone towers. Lamm is depicting what we would see if our eyes could detect the electromagnetic wavelength ranges emitted by the cell phone towers. |
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| The Obelisk Fabio Lattanzi Antinori Video The Obelisk is a kinetic sculpture that scans online news websites in real-time and changes from opaque to transparent, according to the amount of references to the four main crimes against peace. |
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| Dow Jones Michael Najjar Michael took this photograph in Argentina and digitally manipulated the contours of the mountains to follow the ups and downs of the index data of Dow Jones stock exchange in New York. The dip on the right represents the global financial crisis of 2008. |
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| Here is Today Luke Twyman http://hereistoday.com/ 'Here is Today' is an online interactive piece built with web programming languages. It illustrates the scale of time on Earth. |
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| Unnamed Soundsculpture Daniel Franke & Cedric Kiefer Video 'Unnamed Soundsculpture' is a digital sculpture built upon the consideration of creating a moving sculpture from the recorded motion data of a real person using Microsoft Kinect. |
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