[1st published on fffffat]

Art aware hackers!! Your code can be art! Yes, no kidding!! Just follow the super easy tutorial below and make art today!!

Recent events have shown again that computer code and its power is still underestimated by the public and governments. The way software is written, it s quality, openess, closedness etc. has a very high impact on which way society is taking.  Some small changes or features in code can result in an enormous loss of democratic values or lead to a hidden surveillance state.  Because comparably only few people can read and understand code it is so important we communicate it, discuss it in public and make it art! :)

Here’s a reportback from the Plastic Forever project — an ongoing art collaboration by Richard Lang and Judith Selby — at the Mountain Film Festival in Telluride. Their process involves finding discarded plastic debris and displaying aggregates of toys, lighters and other knickknacks in photos, sculptures and other works, breathing aesthetic life into these (mostly) non-reusable items.

For the festival, they built trophies from found plastic materials in Telluride itself.

And here is an award recipient, who is displaying her prize.

Last week, I installed Playing Duchamp — a Turbulence commission — at Futherfield Gallery for the “Made Real” show. The work is a net art piece, existing only on the web, which presented obvious difficulties in a gallery setup where: (1) people tend not to engage with an online chess game and (2) the gallery doesn’t want to give access to the operating system or other applications.

Here’s how we solved this. First, we used a monitor embedded in the wall and then placed a 5′ x 5′ white platform in front of it. Adding a step, a white chair and white table, made it so that the player crossed an invisible threshold, making them part of a “living sculpture”

Yesterday, Victoria Scott, my collaborator on the Gift Horse — a 13-foot high sculpture of the Trojan Horse — managed the installation of the giant sculpture for ArtMRKT San Francisco, from May 19th-May 22nd. Who wasn’t there? That’s right, me — I was busy installing my “2049″ exhibition at The Dump — and am so thankful that Victoria was able to run this one out.