La lettre n°18


What's new on the Observatoire critique's website ?

As every month, we are suggesting a new artwork and a new artist's screen to you.

Version française

To be part of it… What is simpler ? I am your friend ! At what cost ? The price of the click ! Would it be enough to sustain the delusion of universal communion ? The radical nursery rhyme, hummed by the robot pictogram lowers the aggregate from which the simpler networked social instinct proceeds. From the relationship economy of the web, Nicolas Frespech makes a counter saving. This time, I am your friend... is played off balance : the gates have been shut again where the unutterable words were pouring, inaudible for the AUTHORITIES which interpret everything literally. Eagerly waiting relationship configurations in perpetual invention, Nicolas Frespech’s eye has decided on the MySpace and other Facebook , civilized systems making a urbane friendness, to doubt the overcelebrated reunion of the intimate self and the social self. But the exercise is worth as a final slap in the face of the censors....

The month's work of art

Bluetooth
Add To Friends
Nicolas Frespech, 2007-2008

Electric Sheep is a free, open source screen saver created by Scott Draves. It's run by thousands of people all over the world, and can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers "sleep", the screen saver comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as "sheep". The result is a collective "android dream", an homage to Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Anyone watching one of these computers may vote for their favorite animations using the keyboard. The more popular sheep live longer and reproduce according to a genetic algorithm with mutation and cross-over. Hence the flock evolves to please its global audience. You can also design your own sheep and submit them to the gene pool.


Artiste's screen
Drive Scroll
Electric Sheep
Scott Draves, 1999-2008


The Grand Tour in the  Digital Humanities' age
Our special feature is more than ever topical with the holding of the Digital Humanities Conference in Oulu this month. Read more...

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