NetMonster

Images from the "ROUGH TRADE" series, a NetMonster project by Francesca da Rimini/Mongrel, 2005

Do I have anything to say – or does the network already take care of it?

"I collect images, thousands of them - farm them, stick them together, filter them - rotate them, stick them on myself. I translate text to image to text, building storm clouds approaching the Thames on the eve of war. The image itself is not reasonable, reducible or answerable".

"NetMonster" is designed to generate, edit and continuously update a composite image made up out of the results of internet searches guided by various keywords. It allows people to collaboratively build up a composite ‘networked image’ out of the images, text and addresses returned. The “NetMonster” will continuously rebuild itself based on users edits and changing search parameters, offering up new content and configurations. In this way the empty gesture of a political icon (e.g. Abu Gharib) can learn to detect the context of its own existence, automatically creating dialogue between itself and its users.

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A “NetMonster” project starts with a set of key search terms. The “Monster” then starts to construct itself from the search results. This resultant "networked image" can then be navigated, edited and directed by its users using various browser based authoring features - allowing them to edit text, turn images off and on, etc. Based on these new settings, the “NetMonster” conducts another search and rebuilds the image. The result over many such iterations is a collaboratively built networked image which continuously changes and offers up new content and configurations. In this way the software autonomously generates thematic content, composes it and displays it and then allows its content and thematic focus to be modified by people after each stage.

Has montage now reached the end of its cultural usefulness?

Montage was the main gift of twentieth century art, valuing fragmentation and conflict over continuity and organic unity - ripping images out of their contexts and sticking them back together to reveal new images, meanings and poetics from the interplay. But do networked images in their proliferation and multiple contexts undermine the assumptions of montage or reinforce them?

The question is not what the network does to pictures but what do pictures want from the network.

Pictures in networks no longer have the same representational or poetic functions as before. The way young people use pictures on their mobile phones is a primary example of the image as notation - they are skimmed over, turned into marginalia or instantly deleted. How can we give the image a new expressive function that is more than an arbitrary icon or thumbnail ‘managed’ by a database engine?

How can I reply to a picture found on a network?

It is difficult to know how images can truly enter a public debate when our encounters with them are so disconnected. How can we give networked imagery a voice yet still be able to hold that voice to account?

The “NetMonster” software will not only be a means of artistic expression and critique but will also have the potential for other functions. Its ability to gather, edit and organize search results or databases in general makes it a research tool for conceptualizing large amounts of data. The “NetMonster” could simplistically be said to result in a “snapshot” of the current state of knowledge in the network about a given subject.

Current NetMonsters:

“Hollerith”

“Mohammed b”

“TRADE”