Rhizome Presents: Seven on Seven

Rhizome is pleased to announce Seven on Seven a new major initiative that reflects our mission to connect art and new technology. Seven on Seven will pair seven artists with seven technologists in teams of two, and challenge them to develop something new --be it an application, social media, artwork, product, or whatever they imagine-- over the course of a single day. The seven teams will present their ideas at a one-day event at the New Museum on April 17th. Recalling the groundbreaking 1966 event 9 Evenings, in which dancers, visual artists and musicians were paired with engineers and scientists, Seven on Seven is aimed at enriching all involved, and putting forth important, new projects that tie to Rhizome’s mission of openness and innovation in art. Documentation of the event will be made available online following the event.

Seven on Seven Participants include, on the technology side, Ayah Bdeir, Jeff Hammerbacher, David Karp, Andrew Kortina, Hilary Mason, Matt Mullenweg, and Josh Schachter, and on the art side, Tauba Auerbach, Cao Fei, Aaron Koblin, Monica Narula, Marc Andre Robinson, Evan Roth and Ryan Trecartin.

Full details and ticket purchase: http://www.rhizome.org/sevenonseven

Seven on Seven is a new program set to recur annually, and raise support for Rhizome. In its first year, Seven on Seven is made possible through the generous support and collaboration of Wieden + Kennedy / PIE. Additional lead support was provided by Betaworks and Mozilla. We would also like to thank our media partner, Mashable, and Kickstarter for donating space for the teams to work Thanks to FUTURE FRIENDS for Seven on Seven's logo design..

Sampling #1 (2009) - Eva Paulitsch and Uta Weyrich

Since 2006, the two artists have been collecting films from mobile phones in the public sphere. It is the mixture of amateurish documentation of your own life, of a direct, unhampered view on your own reality, of unmotivated, unguided camera movements as the expression of boredom but also of directed little scenarios that aroused our collector's instincts. Paulitsch and Weyrich are accepting all films into their archive uncensored. This is increasingly developing into a fascinating document of our times, to a sort of evidence-gathering on and siting of the present. Above all, however, it resembles a bizarre album of weltering digital imagery.

For the exhibition YOU_ser 2.0 in the ZKM | Media Museum, the two artists make their mobile film archive accessible for visitors via mobile tagging. The mobile films are concealed behind the colourful QR codes, which visitors can decipher with their own WLAN-mobiles or with the mobiles provided by the museum. In this way, the content of the films Paulitsch and Weyrich are collecting on the street and publishing on the Net returns to the private sphere and into the medium where they originate. The video blog serves to show new extracts from this archive and offers a platform to films currently being collected.

-- FROM THE DESCRIPTION OF "SAMPLING #1" FROM THE EXHIBITION "YOU_ser 2.0: CELEBRATION OF THE CONSUMER"

Google Portrait Series (2007-2009) - Aram Bartholl

Each code represents a visual enryption of a search on 'Aram Bartholl' in a specific language on Google.

A Google Portrait is a drawing which contains the Google URL search string of the portrayed person in encoded form. Any camera smart phone is capable to decode the matrix-code with the help of barcode reader like software. The result points the mobile phone browser to a search on the portrayed person's name at Google.

A large number of people can be found by name on Google today. Everyone who is working on a computer and uses the internet regularly can be found on Google. Even people who don't use computers can be found sometimes because their names appear in 'old' media (i.e. books) on the net.

'Egosurfing' is a popular way for a user to find out what websites and information Google returns on his/her name search.

How many hits does Google show on my name? Am I popular? Do I want to be found at all? Who writes about me? What do people find out about me when they google my name? Am I in concurrence to other persons with the same name? Do I rely on the results Google shows me on a person's name? In which way do I relate to someone which I only known by Google results?

-- FROM THE ARTIST'S STATEMENT

You Are What You Buy (2007) - Michele Pred

I chose to create an embroidered version of a barcode to represent how technology has become interwoven, fused with our lives and our identity- to represent how we have become one and the same with technology.

Through new technology cell phones are now capable of scanning and decoding barcodes. However, these barcodes are a little different than the ones you see scanned at the grocery store: they are called 2D barcodes and are composed of black and white squares that encode the URLs to any website of creator's choice. In other words, these Data Matrix format barcodes are a physical hyperlink. Through my research I have learned how to create and program 2D barcodes with embedded text messages. I have also discovered that these barcodes can be reproduced in a variety of materials and are still capable of being scanned/read with a mobile phone.

-- FROM THE ARTIST'S STATEMENT

N Building (2009) - Teradadesign and Qosmo

N Building is a commercial structure located near Tachikawa station amidst a shopping district. Being a commercial building signs or billboards are typically attached to its facade which we feel undermines the structures' identity. As a solution we thought to use a QR Code as the facade itself. By reading the QR Code with your mobile device you will be taken to a site which includes up to date shop information. In this manner we envision a cityscape unhindered by ubiquitous signage and also an improvement to the quality and accuracy of the information itself.

-- PRESS RELEASE FOR "N BUILDING"