Database Aesthetics Art in the Age of Information Overflow - Victoria Vesna (ed) - (University of Minnesota Press, Usa, 2007)

Database Aesthetics examines the database as cultural and aesthetic form, explaining how artists have participated in network culture by creating data art. The essays in this collection look at how an aesthetic emerges when artists use the vast amounts of available information as their medium. Here, the ways information is ordered and organized become artistic choices, and artists have an essential role in influencing and critiquing the digitization of daily life.

Contributors: Sharon Daniel, U of California, Santa Cruz; Steve Deitz, Carleton College; Lynn Hershman Leeson, U of California, Davis; George Legrady, U of California, Santa Barbara; Eduardo Kac, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Norman Klein, California Institute of the Arts; John Klima; Lev Manovich, U of California, San Diego; Robert F. Nideffer, U of California, Irvine; Nancy Paterson, Ontario College of Art and Design; Christiane Paul, School of Visual Arts in New York; Marko Peljhan, U of California, Santa Barbara; Warren Sack, U of California, Santa Cruz; Bill Seaman, Rhode Island School of Design; Grahame Weinbren, School of Visual Arts, New York. 

Discovering the role of data in creating a new way of experiencing—and making—art.

Database Aesthetics examines the database as cultural and aesthetic form, explaining how artists have participated in network culture by creating data art.

Contributors: Sharon Daniel, Steve Deitz, Lynn Hershman Leeson, George Legrady, Eduardo Kac, Norman Klein, John Klima, Lev Manovich, Robert F. Nideffer, Nancy Paterson, Christiane Paul, Marko Peljhan, Warren Sack, Bill Seaman, Grahame Weinbren.

Victoria Vesna is a media artist, and professor and chair of the Department of Design and Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles.  

This book ranges over a rich data bank of thoughts about and descriptions of digital media: from the software engines of video games to the conflicting interest of cinematic narratives, from the many skins of the stock market to the artificially intelligent spy, from the design of chip implants for the human body to the recombinant poetics of virtual worlds. Database Aesthetics claims the attention of anyone attuned to the design of current and incoming reality.

—

Michael Heim, author of Virtual Realism

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Naomi Kashiwagi: Gramophone & 78rpm DJ

Naomi Kashiwagi, 29, is based in Manchester where she also works as a student co-ordinator at the Whitworth Gallery. She makes art by reinventing obsolete or everyday technologies, including a performance piece which involves DJing using a wind-up gramophone and 78rpm records.


"I have 200 records made from shellac – the brittle material used before vinyl – ranging from jazz to classical, and I'm fascinated by the potential sounds that can be extracted through playful reappropriation. My performance,Wind-Up, involves gramophone turntables and 78rpm records. I place electrical tape on the records to create an additional tactile layer. This creates unexpected percussive discordances, harmonies and locked grooves. I'm always bewildered by the extraordinary sounds within these 80-year-old records. The gramophone has to be wound up to maintain the tempo. It requires physical skill and attention from the user to keep several records playing at once. The sound is surprisingly rich and clear, bespeckled with wonderful dusty grooves. It is an intuitive and experimental process, as I don't know how it is going to sound, but that's all part of it. I first performed in the acoustically impressive Great Hall in Manchester Central Library in November 2009, in what is supposed to be a silent space. The sounds were accentuated and distorted by the rotunda. I have performed in other unusual places, including the Victoria Baths in Manchester. I can easily crank my turntables up outside anywhere as they are wireless technologies. For headphones while DJing I use a contraption I invented – the gramoscope – which is a stethoscope with the chest piece replaced with an ear trumpet. It enables me to hear clearly enough to beat-match. I've also used the gramophone to draw – I manually engrave the records with the record needle, to produce subtle, deep marks that echo the existing grooves. (...) "


Interview by Kirsty Styles