From download to upload the selected videos mine the internet to explore analyze, mimic, remix the methods and materials of network culture. Does the internet stimulate a different aesthetic? different behavior patterns? are we all public personae now? how can existing platforms be subverted? how are artists responding to youtube?

For Annie Abrahams the internet is a public presentation space: in Mutant II six actors each in a separate webcam station become manipulators of their own image working out their privacy in public. Casey Neistat‘s video Chatroulette analyzes his short-lived obsession with that site which he determines is “creepy” while Merton, in Funny Piano Improv #1, uses the platform to serenade his visitors with varying results. In VV webcam Petra Cortright describes the life of a websurfer, staring at her screen to an electronic beat while a range of animated gifs (dancing pizzas, lightning) float by.

Youtube is a database through which Natalie Bookchin assembles isolated voices into choreogaphed montages creating a selective sociology of the site. (Laid Off, Mass Ornament). Josh Bricker’s video Post Newtonianism (War Footage/Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare Footage) juxtaposes a loop of actual war footage with gameplay from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, mixing the in-game audio with a Wikileaks-released video of the U.S. military killing of two Reuters reporters and unarmed civilians. Lorie Novak addresses collective memory in Reverb mixing family and news photos with internet downloads while software programmed to update world news from BBC and NPR podcasts provides the audio track.

Formal/aesthetic concerns guide the works of three artists who make visible their relationships to the softwares they are using or abusing. Mistakes define the aesthetic of Jon Satrom who uses the accidents generated by his process in Qzturk. In Background Story by Kristin Lucas fair use background images are arranged for aesthetic and formal reasons, and paired with a short story assignment generated through Amazon's Mechanical Turk in response to the image sequence. In Moonwalk Martin Kohout builds a time-based pyramid using YouTube visuals as form and content.

The crowd is assembled by Raol Woeters and Jonathan Puckey in Now Take A Bow where a self-portrait of the audience is built by users following instructions to shoot and upload their take.

Utopia or dystopia? Life on The Screen
Perry Bard