Ucantekme.com started in June 2001 as a blog for publishing commentary about internet culture and politics. After the 9/11 attacks, it became an active community where participants discussed related events in custom forums and voting systems about related issues. The liberal Turkish newspaper Radikal selected Ucantekme.com as one of the best community websites in 2001.

The custom publishing software, forums, voting systems, and visual templates were designed and developed by Burak Arikan and Engin Erdogan. Ucantekme.com went offline in 2005.

A virtual camera follows geometric instructions instead of the shooting paths used in conventional cinematography. It moves along three geometric paths –-flower, helix, star-– while looking at the abstract object, and generates the resulting movies.

Dynamic Compositions includes 35 programs for exporing the medium of computation by organizing the elements in space and time to create unified structures. It has 5 sets, Active, Reflexive, Reactive, Image-Video, and Information/Noise.

Active set elements change with time. Modulation of movement and phase shifting is used to create patterns in time.

Reflexive set elements change in relation to environment, such as reponse to inputs of mouse, keyboard and time. These inputs are used to alter position, size, direction, and speed of movement.

Reactive set elements have ability to remember their properties such as position, size, color, speed and switch between modes.

Image-Video set explores computational expression in the context of scene-capture, image-play, and interaction.

Information / Noise set explores the information as figure noise as ground relationship through rendering the same structured and unstructured data in the same visible space.

View all applets

http://plw.media.mit.edu/people/arikan/2003/dynamic_compositions/

ActiviXML is a dialect of XML that intends to abstract the information flow particularly between large scale social activist communities and individuals in order to reinforce the impact of social activism events.

ActiviXML proposes a standard format, ActiviXML Schema, for the documents that describe a social activism event. This standard format categorizes information and builds information hierarchy.

In collaboration with Engin Erdogan.

ActiviXML Sample
ActiviXML Schema (XSD)

SPS (Simple Project Syndication) is a dialect of XML for project syndication over the Internet. It proposes an open schema for the organization of information flow between people, documents, and tasks in a distributed ecosystem rather than a hierarchical one.

SPS Sample (XML)
SPS Schema (XSD)

Open-tasking (2004-2005) was an experimental web application that utilized the SPS schema. It enabled people to create and manage tasks that can be altered by other people to include more detail. In Open-tasking, people collectively designed vertically deep or horizontally wide projects based on other people’s skills. The distributed and open architecture of the Open-tasking system enabled people to manage their own complexity, so as the project develops, a worker becomes a manager and vice versa.

When a digital camera is placed close to a computer screen we can discover a new disharmony. The intersection of the limits of the devices – the camera’s zoom and the screen’s resolution – creates blurry images. Having world flags on the screen to which the camera moves too close reminds the problem of having physically distinct but politically blurry borders between nations.

Five animations made through spatial relationships of points rather than explicitly specified coordinates.

Mapping of the global economic data to a dynamic visual system. Representation of two hundred and thirty-two world nations with visual cells. Economic information – GDP, GDP growth rate, inflation rate – is mapped to the geometry and speed of the circles. Military power is simulated by the physical power relationship between the cells.

The system of fashion is set on the continuous change of styles and speculations of the image of clothing that are represented through mass media and network of individual expressions. This work aims to explore the effect of the fashion system by creating a micro fashion network with the basic elements color and time.

A fixed camera and the custom software processed and stored dominant colors of moving people in Cambridge’s busy neighborhoods. Similar colors connected to each other form a large color network over time. As the network grow, the new vertices are connected to existing similar colors; because of this preferential attachment model, we see the power law distribution, and highly connected dense color hubs in the resulting images. In the result demonstration, three different artistic representations put side by side: captured human figures, color information as abstract boxes, and the complex network of colors.

In collaboration with Ben Dalton.

Auction Machine was an online-onsite hybrid art auction software for the OPENSTUDIO art market. Utilizing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to interface the auction system, Auction Machine demonstrated a participant-controlled time based auction for artworks in the OPENSTUDIO economy.

In this auction, each participant has an RFID tag that can send and receive data to the auction software through radio signals. After two or more registered participants are within the radio range of the base station, the auction starts. The Auction Machine displays the names of the current participants and the artwork that is to be auctioned. The price of the artwork changes according to the number of people in the auction. It increases slowly if there are few people, and speeds up as more people join the auction. People stay connected if they think that the art piece is worth the price, or, if not, they leave by turning off their RFID tags. At the end, the last person who stays in the auction automatically gets the artwork and pays the price. When the artwork is sold, all the related information in the database gets updated, and the sale becomes visible as a regular online transaction in the OPENSTUDIO online micro-economy. The Auction Machine connects the virtual OPENSTUDIO system to the activities of multiple people in physical space. Such an interconnected environment creates new types of scenography and spatial continuity that fundamentally affect the way we understand and use space.

The Auction Machine can be set up on any computer that has Internet connection, and its surrounding environment becomes an electronic auction space. The Auction Machine has been used by approximately 20 people (~10 people in the same session simultaneously) during the Media Lab Sponsor Week in Fall 2005.