Re:TheAshLad - Sandbooks

independently of the limits of space and time of the. artists involved.
Joy's work in fact combines the infrastructures of. the net with those of
traditional art inviting anyone wanting to. take part to make their tracks
available at a publicly accessible. internet address. Periodically he then
organizes and exhibits them. via a real jukebox with thousands of files
which are used in some. kind of public space such as a museum or caf.
Furthermore the. opportunity for reciprocal interaction opens further
chances of. processing carried out together with others introducing a
new social. side into the production of sound. A musical artifact may
indeed be. the result of something done by more people than those
normally in a. band and so open up to an indefinite number of active
participants. who make a significant contribution to the final product.
This. concept is applied to particular advantage in 'Sound Injury' a.
mailing list for electronic musicians which ends interaction between.
members every month with a piece composed collectively. The list.
follows a simple procedure a sound is distributed to all members who.
modify it and then resubmit it to the other participants. The process.
lasts thirty days with all the chaotic intermediate stages until the.
definitive version.. A more playful sort of exchange recasts PeertoPeer
networks as an. easy hiding place for suitably disguised data. In
'Siren's Voice' by. the media company 'plinq' the user is invited to
take part in the. plot of a story by locating its missing parts hidden in
exchange. networks. The story is structured so that some parts are
located in. networks and which can be recognized by working together
which. enables the story to be completed. These search mechanisms
have a. structure of data flows which only materialize in the minds of
those. involved in the interaction. The antipodes of this approach is the.
art of constructing software showing real images inside the.
abstractions that are files and producing a sort of microscope. showing
the normally invisible processes of the formation of blocks. of digital
numbers. 'Minitasking' by German duo Schoenerwissen. follows this
principle working on a particularly large data flow. generated by the
Gnutella network. Coloured 'balls' as the artists. call them represent the
content of the file in size and colour. bringing out their intrinsic
instability by dynamically mapping the. data involved. MP is now a
medium in itself as shown by a number of. media operations which can
easily be defined as performances.. Currently on PeertoPeer networks
intentionally wrong names and. makes the user realize the fallible
nature of 'packages' of. nonmaterial goods.. This approach is
sometimes taken by small labels in search of glory. such as Evolution
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