What the WTF is WTFING going on here.

Being a net artist can be a painfully alone experience. The screen is your only light source, and your half-dressed and food stained appearance is at odds with the glorious digital creatures you birth. And yet sometimes, when you released an artwork into the net, its electric propeller spinning fast, rudders chaotically shifting, the artwork stops long enough on some else’s screen to inspire. They then write about their experience, rewind the rubber band and release the artwork again out airy web.

And with that in mind, I thought I would share some recent reviews/comments/mentions (and I do so not to be the dreaded and much maligned “tall poppy”, but instead to offer up how strange spreading brings curious results:

From a Japanese blog, about my work Between Treacherous Objects: http://karapaia.livedoor.biz/archives/51742570.html

The games site and magazine Games Radar added my Evidence of Everything Exploding to their list of the top 15 WTF games: http://www.gamesradar.com/f/the-pcs-most-wtf-games/a-20100721111716868027/p-3

Some guy evidently feels my games determine your lifespan: http://trippygames.blogspot.com/2010/07/game-game-game-and-again-game-also.html

Our Aussie-free-art-mag Realtime was kind enough to take a gander: http://www.realtimearts.net/article/96/9844

A rather long interview in a design magazine:http://joshspear.com/item/spear-talks-jason-nelson/

An odd and honest review from a Professor in NYC: http://carlos-hernandez.net/main/?p=349

And some lovely other decided to do a walk-through video of my game, game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cz4UuTx-Fl

I wish I could list all the more terrible and oddly suss/elicit ways people write about my work. But alas, this is not that form.   cheers, Jason Nelson

I have created a bunch of flash files and mixed them up into this interface… have a play around, if you like the look of something, or if your curiosity gets the better of you, download the .fla file and take it apart, remix it and enjoy.

It has been uploaded to The Edge Resources Blog – there will be plenty of workshop tutorials, source files and more. So keep an eye out.

While not making this, I still agree with the sentiment.

I’ve been called crazy for a variety of reasons. My digital artwork elicits ever strange and wondrous reactions, my demeanor and always shifting conversational style certainly inspire words like strange and weird and odd. None of this bothers me. Most choose their fashion from a narrow range of “off-the-shelf” belief/culture systems, so strange is an honorable badge, a sign that what one does is interesting to remark.

But what I find most alarming are the reactions I get when I proudly tell others that I do not, have not ever owned a cellular telephony device (you know a mobile phone). This does not make me a Luddite. Indeed I own, or at least use, two laptops (mac and pc), three desktops (high and low end), a range of video gaming systems, from the first Atari to the most recent PlayStation and a range between. I love robots (not love as in marry, but love is in like to break) and am always scouring the net for curious software and new code and devices. And yet when I am on a train or bus, walking through the mall, eating expensive and tasteless food in restaurants decorated for cost, and a ding-a-ring-a-ling chimes its urgent beeps and tones, I am the only one not searching my pockets.

Why do I not own a cell phone? I am not a farmer. I do not have kids as of yet. I am not a banker or vital public servant. In essence, I do not need to be reached at all times. If my car breaks down I walk. If I am going to be late, I move faster. If I want to send someone a message of love or hate or encouragement or advice or scheduling, I do so in long flowering sentences that flow on and allure tears and bitter acceptances. I spell out things and describe in detail. My pictures are not haphazard low-light half directed shots of two-thirds of what I intended. And instead I pull out one of those cameras that gets you into music gigs based solely on the lens size.

Some day. Yes, some day I’ll be connected as I half-jaunt into some forest or abandoned tunnel. But that will be when cloud computing and micro-chips make everyone’s existence the business of everyone else’s existence. But until that day when screens are paper thin and entire lives are meta-data tagged for cataloging and then forgetting, I’ll stay just outside of reach. And besides when some future medical researcher discovers all those cellular waves pumping to and  from your iPhone are causing mass brain damage, I’ll be one of the smartest, least brain damaged persons on earth. And then I won’t need a portable telephone, as flying robot eagle-monkeys will fetch my every whim.

Or maybe I just waiting until I have something interesting to text. Either way.

cheers, Jason Nelson     http://www.secrettechnology.com

Sydney's Siberia

While on a recent arts residency in the curious city of Newcastle, I soaked in enough local lore and culture and hidden secrets to create a large scale digital poem. Sydney’s Siberia is an infinitely zooming, mosaic generating, entirely interactive artwork that explores Newcastle through 121 poetic image/tiles. As with most digital poems there is no accurate way to describe the experience, and instead these works demand play and exploration.

So go play and explore and lose yourself within Sydney’s Siberia.   And the first person to guess the title’s origin might win a prize (or great admiration).

ARTWORK LINK again just in case   ARTWORK LINK

cheers, Jason Nelson