Focus Archives • Digicult | Digital Art, Design and Culture

Memesis: community and self-definition in the age of memes

Pierre Chaumont examines Memes, visual jokes that are made of an image of pop culture on which is added a humoristic text, and "Memesis", the process of a community creating itself through the spreading of its culture.... READ MORE...

Digital Unpleasant Design: Uncomfortable Websites and Demanding Services

The way we navigate the internet is increasingly processed and shaped by algorithms. Selena Savic will look into the design of algorithms that we interact with on a day-to-day basis, from online purchases to social networks or surveillance systems.... READ MORE...

Tagging Aesthetics #0: a cultural critique of categorization in the age of social media

Nicola Bozzi is interested in the double-edged nature of stereotypes and how categorization is a key part of the way we organize our online self.... READ MORE...

The dark mirror. Interview with Clément Lambelet.

Never more than today human beings live in symbiosis with technologies that he created himself. Today as in the past, technologies are accurate mirrors of their societies, of human desires, fears and needs. Bianca Cavuti discusses these topics with Clément Lambelet, who handles issues about the relationship between society and technology, control ideologies and Artificial Intelligence.... READ MORE...

Computer poems. Dall’archeologia al source code poetry

Scopo di questo breve excursus di Francesco Aprile è indagare le dinamiche di quella pratica ascrivibile sotto il nome di source code poetry, passando anche in rassegna una serie di eventi che, pur non rappresentando tale esperienza, contribuiscono a rendere sempre più contigua l’operazione autoriale all’uso del computer.... READ MORE...

Taking the aurora into a reservoir – A space to meditate on water

Kirsten Hawkins shares her experience of visiting Aurora, a site-specific installation by Leeds-based ensemble Invisible Flock with international collaborators with the intention of opening up art to the city of Liverpool, and open hearts to the magic of something we take for granted daily.... READ MORE...

The Numerical Self: a step inside Flora Miranda future fashion

Self-optimisation and self-tracking have been around for quite a while; as Deborah Lupton noticed, the “Quantified Self Movement” is not only as a practice of self-improvement, but also an extension of memory in computerised form. Flora Miranda translates data and the whole idea of an immaterial body into 3D printed garments, offering a step inside the future through fashion and addressing the idea of becoming eternal online.... READ MORE...

The punctum as glitch in contemporary art: the art of Rosa Menkman

In our ever increasing technological world, glitches and crashes that are a result of error have become a part of our culture. It is an event that can provide a sense of curiosity; similar to the Roland Barthes idea of the punctum. In this article Claire Burke will look at how this idea can be applied today within contemporary culture and in the work by artist Rosa Menkman... READ MORE...

Nan Hoover Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 1

The artist Nan Hoover noted internationally for her pioneering work with video, light and time, died in Berlin in 2008. In her memory, the online Nan Hoover Catalogue Raisonné has been published by the Nan Hoover Foundation. Kathy Rae Huffman interest in this publication stems from her personal research on e-publishing and her memories of Nan Hoover as a friend.... READ MORE...

“Anura”: Ornamental and transdermal patches printed in 3D

DIY and digital manufacturing are playing a fundamental role in experimentation and technological advancement also in the fields of health and personal care and will be among the sectors with the highest potential in the coming years for improving living conditions. The Anura project is an example of a 3D printing application in the healthcare field, born from the vision of possible futures.... READ MORE...

Has The Exhibition Started Yet?

Art is one matryoshka-like frame maker: an image is framed on a piece of paper, which is then framed, put in a thematic room inside a museum or an art gallery complex, etc…But how is this process constructed in the digital world and how does it affect the viewers? Pierre Chaumont examines Deridda's concept of frame in relation to new media.... READ MORE...

Negapedia: the battle behind the research.

Internet lists among its highest purposes the collaborative utopia and the sharing, but it also shows in itself the exact opposite: battles, polemics, contrasts, that are nothing more than a reflection of today's society, interests and positions. This is the idea behind the project Negapedia Italia, a website that quantifies and measures the contrasts hidden behind each Wikipedia page.... READ MORE...

Artificial Languages, the lingua franca of the Post Digital

Technology has revolutionised modern life at a global level, especially the written language where technology has had the biggest influence. In this article, Claire Burke explores the effect technology has had on human language and how coding and programming languages have made an impact on the creation of contemporary art.... READ MORE...

Intimate surveillance and extreme users for security design

Around 48% of domestic abuse victims reported that perpetrators were using technology to further stalk, harass and intimidate them. This article argues that security design, which is soon to be made exponentially more complex by the internet-of-things, could benefit from looking at so called extreme users across a broad spectrum of circumstances.... READ MORE...

Dreams and Nightmares in the Application of Blockchain Technology in Music Industry

The present essay considers the emergence of the so-called blockchain technology in the context of the music industry: while the emerging crowd-based infrastructures based on it offer the dream of an alternative to the exploitation of music creativity displaced by digital companies, they can however become actual nightmares, in which music will result into an increasingly integrated and automated form of financial investments.... READ MORE...

The repeated image: the variation of the identical in contemporary image world

In the last years, memes have undergone an evolution that brought them into parts of society that they hadn’t reached before. This coexistence between different types of images, that was made possible by the web, has created new questions in the arena of contemporary art as well. How will this relationship develop in the future?... READ MORE...

Critical Interfaces Cultures. Broken hearts, purple hearts, beating hearts

We can understand interfaces by how they make us feel, how they modify the way we think we own a place, how they give us a module on identity, and even how we seduce others through them. A new column, better yet new palimpsest, that will guide you through interviews, dialogues and short papers exploring surfaces, gestures, authors, and digital visions.... READ MORE...

Not only a matter of genes: the human genome on display at MUSE

Today more than ever the hot topics of the scientific debate are able to spread into our homes from the labs of the research centers, provoking no less hot discussions. In a similar scenario, MUSE in Trento has just opened the exhibition Genoma Umano: quello che ci rende unici (Human Genome: what makes us unique) for a better understanding of our genetic heritage and its fundamental role in defining ourselves as individuals.... READ MORE...