Scrambled_Bites

Description:

Scrambled_Bites was a year-long project, with a residency component with artists Diana Burgoyne, Ken Gregory, Matt Smith, and Sandra Wintner. The project was intended as a forum for research, demonstration, and critical dialogue. It included artist talks, discussion groups and presentations, an Art's Birthday streaming event, and a publication. 

The central theme of the project was to experiment with data collection that could be used and manipulated in artistic works by different artists via an online server. The artists worked with a variety of technologies including handmade electronic materials, GPS, Max/MSP software, micro-controllers, short range wireless transceivers, sledge hammers, and eggs. The project resulted in the development of the Scrambler (a data streaming platform for artwork) and a data stream that received messages from the artists’ electronic installation and performance works. These messages were mixed into a single online stream and composed of numbers relating to audience interaction, temperature, light, wind, and other parameters from artists and arts venues around the world. This data stream was sampled and fed into different software and robotics systems at various locations. In this way, the data of one artwork informed the output (or content) of others.

The project was inspired in part by the article “Entropy and Imagination” by Christopher Locke and the desire to strip back complex systems to reveal the basic underpinnings of data flow, exchange, and intersection.

Curated by Peter Courtemanche.