One of the many activities associated with the exhibition was Recode Decode: the opportunity to remix the exhibition’s ident created by Karsten  Schmidt, with the winner’s submission being displayed on screens in London Underground stations.

This is a great idea, and a lot of remixes are appearing in various places on the web in addition to the V&A’s website, especially Flickr and Vimeo, so it seems to have captured people’s imaginations.

http://vimeo.com/10885776

http://vimeo.com/9590019

http://vimeo.com/9496288

http://vimeo.com/8658509

http://vimeo.com/8636469

http://vimeo.com/8217274

http://vimeo.com/8217357

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ambgab/4262661874/in/pool-13813978@N00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dietapete/4193219903/in/pool-13813978@N00

 I wonder if we could borrow and adapt this idea for our exhibition?

• computer art and cybernetics
• computer art and time
• computer art and space
• computer art and output
• computer art and technocultures

Starting the following day is the two-day conference at the V&A on Decoding the Digital. Bonnie Mitchell, one of the speakers at the symposium, will also be talking in Brighton on 2nd February on Interactive Art Environments and Experimental Animation. There’s suddenly so much going on – it’s a shame it’s all down south. Or do you know of things away from the capital?

It wasn’t until entering the exhibition that the three underlying themes became apparent; Code, Interactivity and Network. The code, whilst perhaps interesting to the code connoisseur, was little more than a display of pretty patterns that the average Joe Bloggs on the street might relate to screensavers or those annoying sound responsive illustrations on Microsoft Media Player. There seemed to be little concept behind what was essentially a demonstration of the different techniques available to Digital Artists. Then came Network; in the style of The Public in West Bromwich half of the exhibits in this section were turned off and re-booted whilst we were there. Of those that were working there was one of note ‘We Feel Fine: an almanac of human emotion’ where text found on weblogs including the phrases ‘I feel’ and ‘I am feeling’ has been collected and arranged for your perusal. By far the most popular section of the exhibition was the Interactive display. There were many fun digital based activities that you could explore, mostly consisting of wall based projections that responded to you moving past. Again there was little concept behind the artworks but that didn’t seem to matter when there were children and adults alike running around excitedly trying out all the activities.

The exhibition as a whole was made an exciting experience with the use of atmosphere. Darkened lighting and black walls created a sense of discovery; there was an anticipation of what new and exciting technology would be waiting around the next corner. It was great to see an exhibition focussing wholly on digital media but I do feel a little disappointed that all we were shown was essentially a demonstration of the different techniques available; would a theme have been too ambitious?

Here’s a link to Body Paint which is one of the items in the exhibition, and to onedotzero’s events website page, which lists all of the works.

In brief, accompanying sixteen images of work on show, there are short statements from several of the artists, including a tribute to the role of Casey Reas and Ben Fry, the creators of Processing, whose influence is threaded throughout the exhibition.

The exhibition looks fascinating, and I for one will be going to see it as soon as possible.