| :// h o m e | :// s u b s c r i b e | :// c o m m e n t | :// p a r k h a u s |
| M E T A B O L I C S # 8 |
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THURSDAY 9 AUGUST 2001 20:00 +0100 (MET) Feat.: Graham Harwood/Mongrel (UK) Stream: > > Live |
| RE: UNFOLDING THE SOCIAL |
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What you see is always less than what you get: Software interfaces, websites, even apparently neutral computer functions always hide and deliver invisible structures and codes which are either socially or culturally predefined or create a new framework for the perception of the world themselves. The work of Graham Harwood, cofounder of the London based artist group Mongrel, always blurs the border of the obvious and the subconscious, between the surface and the subtexts. In best bastard manner, Harwood questions common classifications, irritates limited views and usages of technology and ignores any boundaries between what is art-on-the-first-view and whatever it could be. "Mongrel is a mixed bunch of people, machines and intelligences working to celebrate the methods of London street culture. We make socially engaged culture, which sometimes means making art, sometimes software, sometimes setting up workshops, or helping other mongrels to set things up." |
| There is no summer break. At METABOLICS//STOFFWECHSEL#8 Graham Harwood will draw a bow of some the most exciting experiments in networking environments to his most recent projects. As the Mongrelization of Web Browsers and Search Engines revealed, that there is more behind the screen than standard interpretations of popular engines may show, the Harwoodization of the Tate Galllery's website smashed the online-exposition in pieces and provided us with the shadow history of Britain's famous museum. |
| HARWOOD started out as an artist during the 1980s. He was involved with publishing initiatives such as the Working Press, underground newspaper, and books such as Unnatural - techno theory for a contaminated culture. During this time, he produced the first computer-generated graphic novel If Comics Mental. After Harwood trained in new media and learned programming at the end of the 1980s, he was invited to make a piece of work for Video Positive '95 (international video art festival in Liverpool). Disappointed with the state of academic education, Harwood was invited to work at Artec (London Arts Technology Centre) where he provided innovative training for the long-term unemployed. It was here that he received his Arts Council funding to develop Rehearsal of Memory with Artec and ex-trainees to produce the CD-ROM version of the installation. In 1997 Harwood left Artec to form Mongrel, with Matsuko Yokokoji and Richard Pierre-Davis. Mongrel has created collaborative, socially engaged cultural products including National Heritage and the Natural Selection search engine to international acclaim. In 1999 Harwood/Mongrel received two national awards, The Clarks Digital Bursary and the Imaginaria Award from which emerged the software Linker. In 2000, Harwood designed "Uncomfortable Proximity", the Tate Gallery's first commission of Net.Art, that opens like a double of the official page when visitors log on the site. Since taking a back seat in Mongrel, Harwood has been able to concentrate on research in two key areas, software as culture and the history of medicine. Currently he is a Artist in Residence at the Waag Society in Amsterdam, where he is developing an online version of Linker and working on Text FM, a project in which sms messages are translated into speech using text-to-speech software. |
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