"Search by Image" is a series of algorithmic and experimental videos analyzing Google's image search function of the same name. "Search by Image (Recursively, Transparent PNG, #1)" begins with an empty image. This image – a transparent PNG – served as the sarting point for an image search, whose result acted as the basis of yet another search. This recursive process was repeated 2951 times and then compiled into a video. While the video opens room for a lot of interpretation, what we actually get to see is a glimpse of Google's databases and secret algorithms. Other videos start with a photo of the artist himself, or with a search result for "earth". The experiments will be repeat over time.

Animation Short Film (2010) 3’38″ Commissioned by jotta.com for Intel‘s REMASTERED series on art history masterpieces. A contemporary reinterpretation of JMW Turner‘s painting “Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway“. This short animation examines the concept of the Technological Singularity, the point in human progress after which predictions become increasingly difficult to formulate. Industrialization and computational innovation are re-imagined in a minimalist environment, drawing from video game and runtime aesthetics.

Animation / Installation (2011-2012) 2’37″ Installation for 9 screens, on display at MUDAM from 23/11/2011 to 04/03/2012 in the exhibition I’ve Dreamt About. It displays a core operator creating, modifying, destroying and recycling habitats in a synthetic space of digital biology. Commissioned by the MUDAM Collection and loosely based on the 2008 work Syscapes # ELO for the exhibtion Inner Exiles – Outer Limits.

“The Best Is Yet To Come” is a webpage in which preloaders (animated gifs that frequently appear online while pages are loading) follow one another randomly and endlessly. Currently the series includes 87 animated gifs. The repetition of the circular movement allows the waiting moment to become a contemplation’s experience.

Facebook Bliss, 2012, HTML/JavaScript

The discrepancy in US and EU law has created an odd situation where geography determines legal constraints on the production of highly mobile images. Takeshi Murata wasn’t aware of the copyright issue when he began working on I, Popeye (2010), but it highlights the contradictions that interest him: the possibility of “unauthorized use” with images that are as deeply embedded in the popular consciousness as a song like “Happy Birthday.” Here, Murata twists a cartoon of heroic triumph into a litany of failure—the opposite of what Disney does when adapting a tale that, in the Grimms’ telling, doesn‘t end happily. The halting, minor-key version of the Popeye theme song in Devin Flynn and Ross Goldstein‘s soundtrack and the leering, moneyed Popeye pictured on the anti-hero‘s T-shirt—a caricature of pop-culture icon as commodity—are two details that contribute the video‘s effect. But the key factor is the medium itself. By rendering the characters in the kind of slick three-dimensional animation commonly associated with big-studio production, Murata intensifies and complicates the discrepancy between the official Popeye and his own “folk” version.

Chronology of events: 1. October 19: ASSEMBLY is posted to JstChillin.org as part of the website’s ongoing artists’ projects series a. Assembly mobilizes the combined efforts of digital peers to critique an institution/individual/network’s website through the oppositional use of bandwidth squatting. For 13 days, participants vote to decide what institution/individual/network’s website will be the subject of this act. On the 14th day of Assembly– November 1st – Jstchillin.org will be replaced by a single page that features 25 iFrames constantly reloading the democratically decided website of political opposition. To drain the maximum amount of bandwidth or potentially freeze the website to a standstill, on November 1st we encourage you to open as many tabs of Jstchillin.org as possible and leave them open all day. In doing so, participants may group together to temporarily remove this website’s existence on the internet, putting a halt to its undesired effects on our community and the world at large. Bandwidth squatting is a method of protest, a tool historically linked with the Civil Rights Movement’s sit ins of the 1960’s. Through their undesired mass presence, protesters are able to disrupt the informational function of the website they are intervening on– a detournement of digital visitation. a. Assembly mobilizes the combined efforts of digital peers in tributary celebration of an institution/individual/network’s website through a symbolicly supportive digital mass pilgrimage. For 13 days, participants vote to decide what institution/individual/network’s website will be the subject of this act. On the 14th day of Assembly– November 1– Jstchillin.org will be replaced by a single page that features 25 iFrames constantly reloading the democratically decided website of tributary celebration. To maximize the symbolic support for the decided website, on November 1st we encourage you to open as many tabs of Jstchillin.org as possible and leave them open all day. In doing so, participants may group together to create an honorific swell of attention, a mass of support for the legacy of the website’s effects on our community and the world at large. Digital mass pilgrimage is a method of praise that makes use of the fact that there is no such thing as negative attention online. Through bringing the website to a halt, tributary participants pose the undesired possibility of a world without the website– an eye-opening and appreciation-building event not unlike guardian angel Clarence Odbody’s intervention into George Bailey’s state of affairs in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. 2. October 21: Dreamhost deletes JstChillin for hosting ASSEMBLY 3. October 22: ASSEMBLY moves to Jogging 4. October 22: Tumblr officials give Jogging a 3-day ultimatum to delete the project or be removed from their service 5. October 22: Jogging holds a poll to decide what to do in response to Tumblr 6. October 25: The poll closes, voters choose to leave the project up and face the consequences 7. October 25: Jogging is deleted by Tumblr 8. October 28: ASSEMBLY is re-opened at http://assembly.typepad.com/, and NOTES ON ASSEMBLY is distributed 9. Rhizome.org is selected as the chosen target