Mark Hancock

Abstracted reality and the hidden world. A fragmented report from Resonate 2017

Mark Hancock
Amongst the usual slew of corporate-funded projects that many of the artists and designers presented at Belgrade's Resonate festival this year, it was good to see a strand of work revealing ideas addressing cultural engagement and the contemporary political landscape. With Nora O'Murcha at the helm of the arts programme, it was reassuring to see her once again bringing her art and design take to the festival, following her 2015 curating of the "New Black" exhibition .... READ MORE...
ArtArticles

Kim Asendorf. Censored Censored Chinese News

Mark Hancock
At a time when the Propaganda Department of the Chinese government has even more power than Prime Minister Wen Jiabao himself, it is worth considering exactly how powerful spin and government propaganda can be in the contemporary world. Of course, the Chinese censorship debate has been argued in many arenas. Certainly, everyone is familiar with the debate's around Google's enforcing of the government's strict censorship laws and then their about-face.... READ MORE...
ActivismArticlesDigimag - Issue 61, February 2011

Decode Exhibition. Software Art At Victoria & Albert Museum

Mark Hancock
When is a work of art a design object? When it has a utilitarian purpose? When it has no purpose but is designed to encapsulate a concept that relates to human experience and attempting to capture something about the essence of our existence? Or when the sign on the gallery wall says so? This was the first question that crossed my mind when I arrived the the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to view the Decode exhibition. The exhibition ran from 8th December 2009 until 11th April 2010... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 53, April 2010

Vlogging, Networked Cinematic Poetics

Mark Hancock
Hegemonic systems of mainstream culture depict the World Wide Web as host to a number of large, central (but none-the-less global) sites controlled by a few corporate bodies. The names are ubiquitous for anyone trying to explore the modern media world: Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter, YouTube, and others that have either fallen by the wayside or are just bobbing below the surface of our awareness. These platforms all have their place of course, and most of us are making use of them.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 46, July / August 2009

_augmentology 1[l]0[l]1_:interface Between Two Worlds

Mark Hancock
The _Augmentology 1[L]0[L]1_ project reaches out into a multitude of networked environments, like a multi-tendrilled creature, it explores and reports back information to a central hub, located at the _Augmentology 1[L]0[L]1_ blog. Existing in the virtual, the task is to explore other synthetic worlds and attempt to reflect back something of the nature of living within them and our own world. The resultant collection of projects and ideas can be considered a 'Synthetic Reality Manual' as Mez Breeze, who initiated the project, describes it.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 45, June 2009