The Aesthetics of Activism

Abstract

For this demonstration the authors intend to present the Aesthetics of Activism as a work-in-progress. The artwork is designed to aggregate visual material from social networks to form themed compositions that can be explored jointly within a shared interactive space. Visual elements are programmatically arranged according to formal aesthetic criteria, while motion within the exhibition space is detected via optical sensors. Artistry built into the algorithms used for creating the visual compositions and those used to present, filter and rank content within the social web are exposed for people interested in the relationships between the cultural and computer layers inherent to the system design.