December 25th, 2008. I went to Istanbul for doing a 3 day workshop on networked information visualization, which was kindly supported by Istanbul Bilgi University. Worked with a diverse group of participants from various schools with backgrounds from visual arts to computer science. We covered basic network structure, network topologies, and clustering. We did hand drawn diagrams. Collected data by hand and by programmatic methods. Visualized relations using templates. As the final project, we worked on the database of the national elections in Turkey from 1960 to 2007. Turkey generally has 10 to 20 political parties per election. We looked at how the same representatives elected from different parties at each election. Above image shows the network of all the political parties between 1961 and 2007 (some parties do not exist today). The diagram is created by Mumin Aydin. Line thickness shows the amount of transfers between the parties. I didn’t know that politicians can change their ideology this much. Participants created network of political parties as well as cities connected by representatives. We concluded the workshop with a mini exhibition on the corridor, which was ironically overlapping with a conference titled Marxism 2008. Full documentation will be up sooner than later.

December 27th, 2008. Did a performance at the Gozel Geceler party, which was a technical fiasco. After the disastrous NYC Minitek Festival, this was the second time I had to go on the stage without sound / image check. Never recommended.

January 6th, 2009. New year’s first lecture at Bogazici University Complex Systems Research Lab. First, presented the principles for what I do, how I use the network structures and dynamics in my thinking and the network itself as the medium in my practice. Second, showed examples of work from 2005 to 2008. Discussed large scale networks and creative processes with Chris Stephenson, Haluk Bingol, Suzan Uskudarli, Onur Gungor and students from the Bogazici University.

January 22nd, 2009. Participated in Stuttgart Filmwinter’s Media-Space exhibition with MYPOCKET (movie from the installation) and Meta-Markets. Flickr set 1. Flickr set 2. The main question was: How do artists react to the complexity of this self-made global [financial] crisis? Other participants were Derivart, Interstella, Ge Jin, Ben Rivers, Semiconductor, SIDL Spatial Information Design Lab, Various Artists of NYTimes SE, UBERMORGEN, and Marius Watz. Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied organized a Wii Tennis Tournament at the Media-Space. Also I felt bad that I missed Daniel García Andújar‘s POSTCAPITAL exhibition at Kunstverein Stuttgart.

January 28th, 2009. Basak Senova kindly invited me to do a presentation at the Upgrade! Istanbul meeting. I organized the talk around the criticism of micro labor in social network services. Started with a recipe on how to create a social network service. Followed with the measurability of the contemporary social environment, and discussed how even physical activities can easily be measured and are part of the digital cloud. Showed instances from the MYPOCKET project. Described the relations between a platform owner, an application developer, and a user in terms of the social web services. Showed instances from the Meta-Markets project.

Meta-Control at Peyote, Istanbul 2009 from arikan on Vimeo.

January 28th, 2009. After the Upgrade! Istanbul meeting did a Meta-Control performance with Klaustro‘s music at Peyote. A fascinating Istanbul night of electronic music and live computer visuals. Video above by Devrim Kadirbeyoglu.

February 05th, 2008. Did a 2 day Networked Information Visualization Workshop in Kayitdisi Events at Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul. Participants studied the structure of networks and did basic network visualizations based on hand picked data.

Currently working on two upcoming exhibitions:

February 18th, 2009. Ergenekon.tc exhibition at Delüks, Istanbul.

March 12th, 2009. “New Media: Why” exhibition at Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY.

Today I am giving a lecture titled “User Labor” at Neuberger Museum of Art. I will speak about the flaws I see in the Architecture of Participation –-data ownership, data valuation-– in relation to the User Labor project. We will discuss living physical/digital processes and aesthetics of extreme use in networks and their relation to contemporary art making. I will present instances from “MYPOCKET,” “Meta-Markets,” and “User Labor Markup Language (ULML).”

Also I am happy to announce that my work will be featured in the Neuberger Museum exhibition New Media: Why in March 2009.

* Image above is a shot from MYPOCKET Transaction Graph.

User Labor Markup Language (ULML), is an open data structure to outline the metrics of user participation in social web services. Our aim is to construct criteria and context for determining the value of user labor for distribution. We believe that universality, transparency, and accessibility of user labor metrics will ultimately lead to more sustainable service cycles in social web.

Please see the examples on the User Labor website. Your feedback and contribution is very important to improve this project.

http://userlabor.org/

User Labor was first implemented in Meta-Markets.com, the online stock market for social web labor (learn more about Meta-Markets). Below image is a screenshot of my profile page on Meta-Markets. By clicking on the “View User Labor” link any Meta-Markets user can see how much work I’ve done at Meta-Markets in the ULML xml format (will be displayed as a chart soon).

Also see Engin Erdogan’s “Happy User Labor Day”blog post.

Will participate in a contemporary arts talk series at the Mimar Sinan University Department of Sociology on Thursday, April 17.

Will be presenting MYPOCKET and Meta-Markets in the context of the new generation of media and networked arts.

Keywords include immaterial labor, distributed power, open web services, networked conceptual art, complex systems.

This post acts as my Twitter, each paragraph is limited to 140 character.

Read more at Dugumkume.org (in Turkish only).