[spectre] Furtherfield Reviews and Interviews November 07

[marc garrett]

Furtherfield Reviews and Interviews November 07
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Welcome to the latest reviews/interviews on Furtherfield.
http://www.furtherfield.org


 From Entropy8Zuper! to Tales of Tales: Games and the Endless Forest Part 2
Interview with Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn by Maria 
Chatzichristodoulou (aka Maria X).
In 2002 E8Z! founded the for-profit company Tale of Tales. Their aim is 
to produce alternative commercial video games for a niche market that 
does not enjoy the violence and blood-shedding of most mainstream games. 
They design and develop 'immersive web sites and multimedia environments 
with a strong emphasis on narration, play, emotion and sensuality.' In 
their 1st interview they discussed the culture and history of their 
previous incarnations as net art collaborators, Entropy8Zuper!
This 2nd part of the interview by Maria Chatzichristodoulou (aka Maria 
X) with Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn is part of a retrospective on 
work on Furtherfield. They discuss their gradual mutation and growth 
into the prolific and challenging games group Tale of Tales; why and how 
this change came about.
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=287

A review of THE THIRD MIND at Le Palais de Tokyo by Joseph Nechvatal.
THE THIRD MIND, curated by Ugo Rondinone is a group show that 
criss-crosses an assortment of generational frontiers and stylistic 
barriers, including works of Brion Gysin - William S. Burroughs, Ronald 
Bladen, Lee Bontecou, Andy Warhol, Nancy Grossman, Cady Noland, Martin 
Boyce, Paul Thek and Emma Kunz.
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=289

Review of Olia Lialina's Vernacular Web 2 by Natasha Chuk.
With nostalgia for an earlier era of web identity and exploration, Olia 
Lialina brings light to these first elements of discovery in Vernacular 
Web 2, a project that serves as an archive and ode to a time when one 
wasn't able to fully grasp the potential of the medium but experimented 
with the freedom that only infancy can provide. 'Lialina carefully 
studies this notion of first-run web creator, sacrificial trial and 
error as a way of reaching our contemporary web styles and functions. 
Vernacular Web 2 aims to classify and describe those very elements that 
later became relics of the web world and objects of current mass 
produced amateur web design.'
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=288

IF/THEN -  by Joseph Nechvatal.
A Book Review of 'Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer 
Viruses' by Jussi Parikka (Peter Lang Books, 2007, 327 pages)
One could be forgiven for assuming that a book with the title 'Digital 
Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses' would be of sole 
interest to those sniggering hornrimmed programmers who harbor an 
erudite loathing of Bill Gates and an affection for the Viennese 
witch-doctor. Actually, it is a rather game and enthralling look, via a 
media-ecological approach, into the acutely frightening, yet 
hysterically glittering, networked world in which we now reside. A world 
where the distinct individual is pitted against - and thoroughly 
processed by - post-human semi-autonomous software programs which often 
ferment anomalous feelings of being eaten alive by some great 
indifferent artificiality that apparently functions semi-independently 
as a natural being.
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=290

If you are interested in either having a media art project, exhibition 
reviewed, or wish to become a reviewer - please contact 
marc.garrett at furtherfield.org