Mark Cypher

Biogram is a net-art work that generates real-time topological visual and aural models based on the sentiment analysis of tweets that reference ‘experience.’

The artwork contends that rather than being a singular subjective event, the space of experience is entangled with multiple networks of human and nonhuman objects that help us perform what we might express as ‘experience’. To tweet is to perform a prescribed script that, in turn, orders our actions with and through devices. In Brian Massumi’s words, these tweets are Biograms, event-perceptions irretrievably entangled with combinations of senses, times, networks, and software; in constant flux. Likewise in the artwork, the generated images, animations, and sounds are intimate signatures of this networked and partially ephemeral activity.

The river is everywhere at once, is a net-art work that generates animated topographical compositions and sounds derived from the text in tweets that include the keyword landscape. The Twitter tweet refers to a point in time that takes on a new form and meaning when viewed in different contexts. When seen in this way, a tweet contributes to an expanded sense of place as a composite of space and time, network and process, or in Michel Serres’s terms, a topology. The emergence of new topologies and their connotations in a tweet’s re-translation in new contexts is revealed in the asynchronous, overlapping, and cyclical flow of our connections in different networks. The net-art work “The river is everywhere at once” references how tweets move us to a point in time quickly made composite, ambiguous, and unanticipated through the ever-changing nature of our relations in a network.

A house, for all intense purposes, looks like a static object. But a house is actually in constant movement, made up of and indeed constantly altered by many intersecting and dynamic interests from both within and without. In this way, a house is seen as a navigation through a negotiated data scape, and a contested gathering of many conflicting demands. This work attempts to show how various trajectories of data that surround and intersect with a house render it as a moving project.

Rather than follow the machinations of a singular artist in the production and exhibition of an interactive artwork. This paper uses an actor-network approach to collectively hold to account a whole host of actors that literally make a difference in the production of an interactive artwork, Biophilia (2004-2007). My main argument is that in order for any action to take place, both humans and nonhumans must on some level collectively work together, or, in actor-network terms translate one another. This has implications for reconceptualising practice not only in terms of who is actually involved, why they are involved but problematizes our assumptions about how ‘production’ happens at all...

The proliferation of Web 2.0 applications and services - characterized by dynamic interactivity, social software and the growth of user-generated content (UGC - is having a significant impact on university learning environments. However, to date, much of the teaching and learning literature and research projects in this area have concentrated on the social networking potential of Web 2.0 (i.e. the integration of blogs, wikis and social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter into pedagogical practice). This paper presents the findings and outcomes of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) project that focuses on an equally important yet under-researched aspect of Web 2.0, pedagogy, and digital content production: that is, remixing and produsage. These terms describe the emergence of a type of content production that is collaborative, shared, and more significantly, often comprises the re-use of existing media content, or the 'mashing-up' and aggregation of existing services and applications, practices that effectively conflate the activities of 'user' and 'producer'. The project, entitled Remix, Mash-Up, Share: Authentic Web 2.0 Assessment Scenarios and Criteria for Interactive Media, Games and Digital Design (ALTC, 2010-2011) explores the implications of remix and produsage for the development of effective and real-world teaching and learning tools and practices. Although remixed, collaborative and 'derivative' digital content production is becoming increasingly common in professional new media contexts, it has not been successfully integrated into undergraduate assessment components and criteria, resulting in 'inauthentic' assessment tasks. As a number of theorists have noted, this is because it presents a fundamental paradigm shift away from the traditional notion of student-authored, original, 'discrete' and summative assessments, and goes against the grain of both conventional copyright regulations, and current assessment and plagiarism policies in universities both Australia-wide and overseas. Seeking to tackle these issues, the Remix, Mash-Up, Share project has developed and implemented a series of authentic Web 2.0 assessment components across two semesters, six courses and three Australian universities, with a view to (i) determining specific assessment criteria for work that involves re-use, remixing, 'bricolage' and aggregation, as a way to prepare interactive media, games and digital design students for professional practice and increase their literacy of the 'platform ontology' of Web 2.0, and (ii) developing guidelines to present to university Assessment Committees for the trialling of revised assessment policies and plagiarism regulations to accommodate Web 2.0 assessment components and criteria. This paper will discuss the findings of the project, and more specifically focus on (i) the conundrum of copyright and authorship in relation to remixed and/or shared digital content, from the perspective of both learner and teacher, and (ii) the need for more informed, critical and flexible approaches to both copyright and assessment policy in university learning.

The installation "Darwin" attempts to chart the real-time evolution of the ‘Darwinism’ meme. The work is generated from the activity of neo-Darwinist and Intelligent Design blogs. Computer software harvests semantic information gathered from these internet sites and then transforms this data into a virtual three-dimensional construction. Effectively spotlighting the traffic of these internet sites, Darwin is a graphic portrayal of real-time internet activity. Appropriating technologies designed for gaming software and internet data harvesting, Cypher has created a work that offers the viewer/participant a glimpse of the internet in action. From the foundation of a virtual still point of reference – the head of Charles Darwin - the activity seems to visibly grow as it interacts with the rendered portrait. The forms and patterns that result are snapshots in time of the mutating “memory-in-the-system” that was once Charles Darwin and Darwinism.

CRITICAL MASSES is a multidisciplinary pilot project that seeks to graphically represent and mediate the histories, spaces and narratives informing former nuclear installations within central Australia. These include the abandoned British atomic test sites at Emu Field and Maralinga, the ICBM/IRBM rocket launchers at Woomera, and the decommissioned US National Security Agency early-warning satellite base at Nurrungar. Significantly, each of these Cold War sites are situated in either hazardous, remote, secure and/or culturally sensitive areas and require sophisticated analysis and negotiation in order to best render their complexity for both online access and on-site tourism. A multi-tiered approach (re)creating these locations is being modeled across platforms for diverse audiences. Digital materials are being authored and designed for stand-alone DVDs, online interactive sites and archives, an immersive/simulated space for interpretation centres, and augmented/enhanced reality interfaces via GPS and mobile/handheld devices in-situ at key sites. In this presentation Murdoch University team members will demonstrate strategies for presenting audio-visual archives, remote topographies and oral histories for both virtual and physical tourists accessing these 'compromised' locales.

In this paper we apply some of the insights of Bruno Latour and actor network theory to suggest that games and virtual spaces can be interpreted as aesthetic forms which are established and stabilised by a 'collective' of humans and technologies. The 'agents' that comprise any collective or network -- whether it be a simple human-tool relation or a far more complex assemblage of actors in massively multiplayer games - are equally human and non human, social and material, corporeal and technical. Yet the collective impact of these factors is not often given serious attention in the discourses of ludology and game studies, which we argue can be attributed to a number of historical and technical reasons. The application of actor-network theory to games and virtual environments aims to facilitate a nuanced understanding that exceeds more conventional user-- and viewer-centred interpretations in game studies, and is therefore more organic to the open-ended and constantly changing nature of our engagement with online games and virtual environments.