IFTTT – CSB – Post-Scarcity Economics/Asteroid Mining, Bitcoin Market Collapse House Alarm, Tumblr FB Group Dump, CMU Campus Entry/Exit Spreadsheet

Most of these speculative rather than practical, except for the last two, which I will be using as methods of self-quantification.

 

Jer Thorp’s opinion article Art and the API introduces the technique of the “conceptual API,” a way to connect the API’s of various services to make some sort of conceptual statement. He believes the technique is suitable for media artists, who have long worked via the mashup of services, processes, and physical media. I agree, specifically in terms of the ease of combining / manipulating APIs currently. Moreover, artists/hackers/etc can reclaim the processes underlying efficiency in computing/networking and subvert them more easily than ever before for alternative agendas. IFTTT takes this a step further, giving users the ability to create new connections between the APIs of the online services they use.

Jim Cambell’s Formula for Computer Art raises the issue that media artists simply bridge some input and output, a critique that could easily be leveled at Thorp’s “conceptual API” and at art made with IFTTT. As in, it doesn’t matter whether your inputs/outputs are more or less complex (ie physical media, networks, or services). Campbell’s ‘formula’ problematizes what media artists make under the guise of efficiency and techno-optimism and instead asks what sort of conceptual complexities, critiques, and politics can be embedded within media art.