Really enjoyed reading the review of The Fear Of Missing Out exhibition titled Data-Driven Artists And Their Critics written by Rob Myers for Further Field.

What is novel about The Fear Of Missing Out is that the program dictating the artworks is doing so based on a database derived from data about artworks, art galleries, and art sales. This is the aesthetic of “Big Data”, although is not a big dataset by the definition of the term. Its source, and the database, are not publicly available but assuming it functions as specified the description of the program in the Huffington Post article about it is complete enough that we could re-implement it. To do so we would scrape Art Sales Index and/or Artsy and pull out keywords from entries to populate a database keyed on artist, gallery and sales details. Then we would generate text from those details that match a desired set of criteria such as gallery size and desired price of artwork.

The Fear Of Missing Out at Showroom Mama is featured in Huffington Post’s Arts & Culture section in the article ‘Controversial New Project Uses Algorithm To Predict Art’.

We’re all susceptible to FOMO, the dreaded Fear Of Missing Out.

Popularized by Sherry Turkle’s 2011 bestseller, Alone Together, the acronym refers to the uniquely alienating experience of scrolling through social media hubs like Facebook and feeling like everyone’s doing things without you and before you.

But what if that same technology told you what to do before everyone else? That’s the premise of a futuristic new project, “The Fear Of Missing Out,” by artist Jonas Lund. While Lund roots his experiment in art creation, his concerns are widely resonant: Can data be used to predict cultural flashpoints before we can? And if so, should we harness that power?

Thanks for the nice article Mallika!

See the full documentation from the ‘The Fear Of Missing Out’ exhibition at Showroom Mama here

Opening: Friday 11 October, 17:00 – 21:00.
Exhibition dates: 12 October – 3 November 2013
Location: Showroom MAMA, Rotterdam
Curated by: Gerben Willers

MAMA presents The Fear Of Missing Out, the latest exhibition by Swedish artist Jonas Lund (SE, 1984). The title derives from a social network induced anxiety condition. One brought on by trying to keep up with a rapidly moving world. A fear of constantly being one-step behind, in the wrong place, and missing out on the most exciting events. The Fear Of Missing Out proposes that it is possible to be one step ahead of the art world by using well-crafted algorithms and computational logic.

The works in the show are the result of a computer algorithm written by Lund. By analysing and categorizing a wide range of artworks, by the most successful contemporary artists, a set of instructions were generated explaining, step by step, how to make the most successful works of art. The artist then simply made the work following the instructions. In The Fear of Missing Out, important categories from the art world such as authenticity, artistry, talent, and creativity are questioned. The title also refers to the urge to be a part of a transparent information society made up of an overarching digital network.

Last year, Jonas Lund worked intensively with MAMA´s curator, Gerben Willers. The pre-opening of The Fear of Missing Out takes place on Friday 27 September. Lund will then work in-situ, on the realization of works, until the exhibition opens on 11 October.

As an art institute, MAMA is home to a large group of young people and provides a place for the latest talent. Young artists and art professionals are intensively supported through the making of new exhibitions, publications, artworks, etc., with the help of MAMA’s staff.

• Installation Views from Unseen Fair

The Top 100 Highest Ranked Curators In The World at Unseen Photo Fair at Cokkie Snoei’s stand, from 26th – 29th of September 10:00–18:00.

I will be showing a new piece at the group exhibition local.#non.access at Km Temporaer called Link Removal Request

21 September – 27 September 2013
Opening 20 September 2013 7pm

participating artists:
Sebastian Schmieg / Kim Asendorf / Rick Silva / Johannes P. Osterhoff / eteam / Jan Robert Leegte / Jonas Lund / Niko Princen / Fabian Hesse / Stefan Riebel / Alexander Dekker / Karl Heinz Jeron / Florian Kuhlmann / Silvio Lorusso / Daniel Schwarz / Timothy Shearer / Thomas Spallek / Karen Eliot / Ubermorgen.com / Constant Dullaart

curators:
Florian Kuhlmann / Elisa R. Linn / Lennart Wolff

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• CINDY SHERMAN,’Woman in Pool’, 2007 (beach towel)

OPENING in Galerie Van Gelder AP: saturday 7 september, 17.00 – 19.00 uur
7 september – 12 oktober 2013

Curate This is the first project of guest cuarator Gerben Willers in AP. He invited Swedish artist Jonas Lund (SE 1984) and asked him to use his curatorial rank algorithm to determine what works from the collection of multiples and editions of Galerie van Gelder would generate the biggest positive impact on his curatorial rank. Lund supplied Willers with detailed analysis on all the works in the collections and what influence they would have on his curatorial rank.

The exhibition features works from Cindy Sherman, Damien Hirst, Bruce Nauman, Gerhard Richter, Nam June Paik, Olafur Eliasson and more.

• Design: Metahaven, Dread.

De Hallen Haarlem’s Curatorial Grant
7 September–24 November 2013
De Hallen Haarlem

Timo Arnall (UK) / Micol Assaël (IT) / Mark Bain (US) / James Beckett (SA) / Dean Blunt (UK) / James Bridle (UK) / Constant (NL) / Emptyset (UK) / Alicia Framis (ES) / Laurent Grasso (FR) / Carl Michael von Hausswolff (SE) / Roger Hiorns (UK) / Thomas Hirschhorn (CH) & Marcus Steinweg (DE) / Paul Jebanasam (LK) / Krõõt Juurak (LT) / Jacob Kirkegaard (DK) / Jørn Knutsen (NO) / Gert Jan Kocken (NL) / Jonas Lund (SE) / Aditya Mandayam (IN) / Metahaven (NL) / Kianoosh Motallebi (UK) / Stephen O’Malley (US) / Trevor Paglen (US) / Yayati Papita (IN) / Roly Porter (UK) / Anri Sala (AL) / Einar Sneve Martinussen (NO) / Espen Sommer Eide (NO) / Sarah van Sonsbeeck (NL) / Berend Strik (NL)

“Dread, as a techno-dystopian zeitgeist, rests intangible and un-rendered inside the fibre-optic cables, below the grey surface of the drones, and behind the ominous speech acts of cyber war-waging strategists.”
–Metahaven

De Hallen Haarlem opens the new season with the international group exhibition Dread – Fear in the age of technological acceleration, curated by Juha van ‘t Zelfde, winner of the De Hallen Haarlem Curatorial Grant 2013. The exhibition presents works in various media, and by artists of different generations, that deal with apprehension and fear as a result of technological innovation.

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Paint Your Pizza will part of the upcoming exhibition “Und alle so yeah!” at Haus für elektronische Künste in Basel curated by Alain Bieber. The exhibition opens on Saturday the 24th of August. The show includes works by Alex von Bergen, Tracky Birthday/Hasi International, Cindy Sizer, Helene Dams, Matthias Fritsch, David Horvitz, Jonas Lund, Kent Rogowski, Evan Roth, and Mathieu Tremblin. Check out the press release here “Und alle so yeah!” (German) or read more about Paint Your Pizza here

The Top 100 Highest Ranked Curators In The World is currently showing at Tent in Rotterdam from the 28th July – 18th of August. Read more about the work and see more pictures here, The Top 100 Highest Ranked Curators In The World.

Since the launch over 9000 users from all over the world have used We See In Every Direction

Here’s some We See In Every Direction usage statistics. During the last five days there has been an average of 40 users surfing the web with the We See In Every Direction browser at the same time. Since the launch We See has been used by over 9000 people and they have surfed to over 300.000 URL’s. The new users come from all over the world and most of them found it through either Wired, Gizmodo or the Daily What. When Jandan.net, a very popular chinese website, published an article about the browser a big wave of Chinese users appeared which consequently crashed the Node.js server over and over again – it was too much data for the server to handle. During the peak the server was averaging 8MB/s of outbound traffic, that’s 480MB a minute or around 29GB an hour. Each mouse position is updated 20 times a second – so when there’s 50 people using We See, it’s around a 1000 mouse positions being sent to the server and to all the connected users every second. Next to that, We See is also sending the text in all input field, URL’s and the scroll position. As you can imagine, that doesn’t really scale all that well when it’s above 40 users.

Surfing chinese websites with around 70 users at the same time

After a day of total madness going on with around 60 users fighting for control I decided to split the users into rooms of 8, both to lower the load on the server and to make it possible to actually browse and not just fight for control. Since then the server runs a lot smoother. So now you can surf the webs with We See In Every Direction with a maximum of 8 people at the same time.

We See In Every Direction featured in Wired, This Wacky Web Browser Works Like a Ouija Board – thanks Liz for the nice review.

I decided to give Lund’s browser a test run. I launched We Seeand noticed two other cursors flitting about the screen. Suddenly, text started to fill the URL bar: “Are we the only ones on this browser at the moment,” one of my fellow surfers asked. We were. In the span of two minutes, the page jumped from the Google France home screen to a news story about soccer to an image search for “lovely shit.” That’s when I decided to lead our group over to Wired.com. We made brief stops by Gadget Lab, this story about whales and Underwire before hopping over to the Tumblr, “Local People With Their Arms Crossed.” My group appeared to have good taste. From there, things got a little weird and a little too NSFW to mention here, but what do you expect from the wild west of shared web surfing?

Here’s a short video from last week’s We See Surf party

When I lost my domain jonaslund.com Selfsurfing stopped working as it was synchronizing the tab data and scrolling position through that domain. I never got around to update the extension to reflect this change as I was hoping that I would get my domain name back and to change it would be to admit defeat. However, Now I finally updated Selfsurfing to reflect the move from .com to .biz. Get the updated version at the Chrome Webstore  (should auto update if it’s already installed) or check out the Selfsurfing source at Github.

I’m so looking forward to this event, a synchronized surf party!

Surf the Web with Jonas Lund and Rhizome at the We See In Every Direction Official Surf Party, Wednesday May 29th starting at 2PM EST/ 8PM CET. To join the party, you will need to download and install We See In Every Direction (available on The Download). The Official Surf Party begins 2PM EST/ 8PM CET. This event will take place online, and is free and open to the public.

Get We See here: http://rhizome.org/the-download/2013/may/

http://rhizome.org/events/we-see-surf-party/