A net.art project, is launched at Terrorvision, in Exit Art Gallery, NY, 05/04

Memolog honors the memory of children, up to the age of 14, who have been murdered in terror attacks since the year 2000. Terror acts that involved killing since the year 2000 are represented by cards designated for countries. Memolog is a quilt-generator inspired by the Aids Quilt. With your help and participation, a quilt of memory will be created to honor and remember the many victims in the war of terror.
http://www.memolog.net

About Memolog
The Memolog quilt generator allows you to create your own patches and post them to a collective virtual quilt.

The quilt generator contains a list of 81 terror victims and 36 countries. The signs are arranged in a spiraled time line. In the center you will find country cards and around them memory cards are arranged from the past to the present. Each victim and country is represented by the first letter of their name.

As a representation of common values, and common loss, the letters used in Memolog are from the ancient Phoenician alphabet.

The Phoenician alphabet is the common ancestor of many of our modern alphabets. By going back in history, we are reminded of our common roots, and how memory can serve to link us together in contexts of war and conflict.

In Memory of Victims of Terror
All information about the victims was gathered from the internet.
Each card includes a reference, general information and a picture when available.

How to Create your Quilt
When you click on a letter, a card will open, telling you about a terror-victim.
Once the card is open the letter representing him will turn into a star of Ishtar (see legend). You can pay your respects by adding embroidered 'memory leaves' to the patch. In this way, you can trace your footsteps within Memolog. (If you choose not to add 'memory leaves' the letter will be restored once you close the card). Each time you visit 8 cards you will be asked to post your patch.

An Exploration of How Personal, Spiritual, Political and Physical Events
Influence Ideas of Terror

New York, NY - Recent historical events have compelled us to move through our lives in fear of what lies ahead. At this moment in history, Exit Art, a nonprofit contemporary art center, presents Terrorvision from May 1 to July 31, 2004. Terrorvision is a multidisciplinary arts project that examines how definitions of terror in today's society are shaped by individual and collective visions, experiences, memories and histories.

Terrorvision explores how personal, spiritual and physical events influence our notions of terror. How these unforgettable moments, and the cultural and media artifacts that represent them, have come to define our most extreme fears. Terrorvision investigates the interplay among the historical, personal, spiritual, political, ethical and metaphorical ideas of terror, and, even further, how these definitions and relationships change based on geography, generation and personal experience. Terrorvision is designed to serve as a study of terror as depicted through the ingenuity and inventiveness of today's artists.

Threats and demonstrations of terror have most certainly infiltrated our daily lives. We experience heightened security on the subway, in airports and near entrances to tunnels and bridges. The news media validates and often even encourages these extreme fears by immediately and constantly presenting stories of suicide bombers, kidnapped children, natural catastrophes, environmental disasters, Anthrax threats, domestic violence, and devastating global diseases.

While Exit Art conceived of Terrorvision before September 11, 2001, the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center make this exhibition seem even more significant. This show responds to the renewed urgency with which contemporary artists are presently addressing the concept of terror. To visualize these responses, Exit Art invited 59 international artists who created works that define their most extreme fears. Terrorvision is composed of five, inter-related programs: an exhibition of 36 artworks, 18 videos that are part of ongoing daily screenings, a discussion series, performance, and video evenings. The public programs will further explore the themes raised in the exhibition and present works that show a history of artists who have come to define what terror means to them through their artwork.

Oodlala is a browsable data-base of interlinked objects that will grow over time. The users are invited to upload images of personal memory objects along their stories. The overall experience of Oodlala should resemble fumbling through Items in a flee market, forgotten drawers, dusty attics etc. The objects will appear on the interface when they are invited and linked to an existing object according to found similarities. Lonely items appear on a "stand-by" card where other item-owners may choose to include them in the Oodlala web

The dots representing items within Oodlala dynamically readjust their location and size. The highly linked items are positioned at the center of the stage; hence a dynamic "fight" over dominance may occur. A top-ten gallery and other features will hopefully encourage users to acquire more links. Items, linked and interlinked will reveal underlying hidden stories and connections. They will be redeemed from oblivion and forgotten corners of one's house and will join an ever growing chain of associations that will serve as the building blocks of the interface. The interface is based on visualization of accumulative data. Its mere evolvement will be determined by user's participation. It is the vehicle, the image and the identifier of both the content and the meaning.

Oodlala, was inspired by "Linked" by Barabasi. "Linked" deals with the new science of networks. Detailed explanations about the nature and dynamics of nets had led me to investigate the role of hubs in artistic context. A personal interest in memory, communal behavior, and their transformations in an on-line environment had led to the formulation of this piece.

An object undergoes a transition from a commodity to a personal carrier of a cherished moment. These transitions will take place on yet another level in Oodlala when other layers of meaning will emerge from the links formed by item-owners.

Moving the object from its original personal context to the context of Oodlala forms a participatory experience. Oodlala harnesses fetishism and romance to enable the emergence of a collective story that lures you into participation. It's the links and level of participation that will dictate its' evolution.

http://www.oodlala.net

'Tehom' – Abyss

"Tehom", deals with matter. A Matter that yields to break loose of the restraints of gravity but remains encased within its boundaries. A Matter that may react, remember and forget. A matter that is reversible and flexible due to its inner qualities. An archetypical matter that bare resemblance to the Prima Materia (The primal matter, or the black stone in alchemy). Matter that evokes empathy and identification, that may lure and mesmerize. Simply matter.

As a new media artist I find it slightly amusing to return to matter. One of the challenges common to various practices of new media art is the creation of an open random system that is unpredicted, and operates within a flexible set of rules that generate an abandon of forms and behaviors. The substance in "Tehom" was selected because it operates under the same guidelines.

Ferrofluid, the matter at hand, is part liquid part magnet. It is prepared by grinding magnetite in oil. The magnet's particles should be small enough to resemble liquid molecules. They should be small enough to "forget" their magnetic qualities and yet big enough to adopt magnetic behavior at the presence of a magnetic field. In the absence of a magnetic field it behaves like liquid. When placed in a magnetic field, the conflicting attractions of gravity, magnetism, and surface tension shape the ferrofluid in a way unseen elsewhere in nature.

According to phenomenological theories the magic experienced when seeing matter in motion stems from the human inclination to identify them-selves with archetypal matter: air, fire, water and earth. The human imagination tends to find echoes of his primal existence and of non-verbal signs in matter. On the verge of our conscious we find interest and pleasure in a rain drop, a candles flame etc. This is the reason for the hypnotic powers of "Tehom"

Telecommunication had changed the status of matter. According to Paul Virilio the physical space, the geographical distance, the distance between object and subject, are all collapsing in the face of the big optics, where information can be transformed at the speed of light regardless of the locations of both sender and receiver. The innovation lies in Tele-presence where a user may influence distant physical realities in real-time.

What is a touch in an augmented world of vision? How does a mediated touch feel? These questions and others will be handled in e.mia.me', a future interactive installation that will use the ferrofluid as a medium and that will enable users' to remotely affect ferrofluid.

Credits: photography: Alon Eilat; Ferrofluid was kindly provided by Ferrotec

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