The Internet is Here

I hear that the Internet is disappearing - from our screens into our stuff.

To try to think about it I have created a series of triptychs. A small start.

The central image of each triptych is a drawing I have made of a thing I own, including 2 drawings of screenshots of video calls (which are now a feature of daily life)

The other images are the results of two searches made using Google on 17th March 2015.

The left hand image is the result of a word search based on an action ascribed to the thing drawn. This word is also the title of each triptych.

The right hand image is the result of a search using image matching function.

Meaning-making across digital and physical realms is slippery at best.

And I am thinking harder now about what it will mean for art that we can now make so many different kinds of "things" act as the collection point for different kinds of sense data- heat, pressure, acceleration, radiation, tilt, sound, light, electric charge etc- and then do something with it.

This emerging "Internet of Things" underpins torrents of rhetoric (from politicians, big-business and entrepreneurland) about all manner of things which are getting "smarter" as a result of these developments: homes, cities, shopping.

I'm interested in how they might also help people, communities, organisations, institutions to get smarter. And whether smarter is the right priority. Perhaps we need more equitable, loving, critical, philosophical, cooperative and wise homes, cities and shopping.