I found Michael Whitelaw’s “Art Against Information” to be a little dry and academic. It was hard for me to get into.

I did find it interesting that Whitelaw mentions that Alex Dragulecu didn’t reveal the process he used to map data from spam emails from Spam Architecture. We’ve been focusing a lot on open source technology and concepts that I was almost surprised, even though with other kinds of art I would never expect the artist to reveal how they did it like a magic trick. I guess that could be because with sculpture or painting, even if I don’t have the skills to make something myself, I have some idea of what that process would be like and I can see the materials. With Spam Architecture and Spam Plants, I have no clue how spam email would be used to create the forms, and I am really just taking the guy’s word for it. Whitelaw seems to think that ineffability adds to the work, but in reading Carlos and Felix’s posts it looks like we were all a bit suspicious of it.

In contrast, Brad Borevitz’s State of the Union is easier to comprehend, since the source material (the text) is visible in the piece. I do like that in the screenshot provided, you can see that the interface includes the grade level for each speech, which makes me want to compare the various presidents. I wish I could see the piece in action, but it wouldn’t load for me.