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.

Casey Reas is in town, leading to two exhibitions today at Bitforms and the Pratt Gallery. His new work from the Process series are really nice. Both shows are open through the first week in April.

ABSOLUT QUARTET, an interactive robotic musical installation by Jeff Lieberman and Dan Paluska is currently on display until April 25th at 186 Orchard Street, Lower East Side (map). You can enter a melody through the absolutmachines website, initiating an original and unique piece of music to be played live by the machine in its lower Manhattan home. A short lo-res movie of the piece in action can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e9AJVtuCKc

I have attended the Wizard of OS conference in Berlin. Main discussions were around free open software culture technology privacy copyrights licenses and so on. In yesterday’s keynote, Lawrence Lessig simplified the “everybody is producer” paradigm into RO (Read Only) vs. RW (Read Write) culture. Mixing media is good, fight DRM, use open source software, build open source software… He also mentioned that contemporary media technologies are freeing the media production as printing technology did for written words. However there were missing perspectives:

1. Software and hardware are seen as tools for creating media such as image, text, music, movie etc. Today artists use software and hardware as the medium of the artwork itself. We write custom programs running on custom hardware. People not only stare at the artwork, they also interact with them. Furthermore, we produce artwork that run on network of machines. We develop platforms and environments as artwork in which people not only interact with it but also live in it. Issues such as DRM or copyright can not even be discussed in this type of work, because we create cultural systems, not cultural objects.
2. Cultural production is seen only as the work done in the studio or the work done with tools for media production. However, we also do work out of the designated working time and space. This is known as immaterial labor, that is the work done by just living. During the day, in our blend of work and leisure, we not only browse things on the web but also actively contribute to various information aggregation systems from website statistics to search engines, increasing the value of advertising sales or the quality of search algorithms. Moreover, we consciously tag images on image sharing services, we bookmark links in social bookmarking services, we write our opinions about books and so on. These metadata are informational and cultural content of the commodity that contribute to our zeitgeist, aesthetic views, political ideas, and economic wealth. This production can be criticized as art or not, but what is more important is these service providers (Google, Yahoo, Amazon etc.) accumulate data from us, and under US laws, corporations own our cultural products.

View from a dinner and the sleeping spots.

The French pavilion in Venice Architecture Biennale is my favorite. While the rest of the biennale pavilions are showing images and concepts, creators of the French pavilion are living in the given space. They have a kitchen, a sleeping place, a bar, an office, a party space, a watch tower, storage space, and a sauna. Plus wireless internet and wine for everybody. They cook right in front of the visitors and serve them lunch and dinner. They have full on parties with homemade music and drinks. This place, Metavilla, is constructed out of scaffolding, the temporary framework used for construction. This modular system of metal pipes creates a raw aesthetic blended into the honest atmosphere and we experience a great architectural statement. Some architects naively criticized this as the revival of the 60’s commune life. However I think they are the real in the reality of architecture.

The exyzt group is the curator of this living environment. They will be living in this place during the biennale, you can keep up with their blogs, see pictures and movies on their website.

This kitchen was the most active place.