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.

Here is a list of writings about Mongrel, by Mongrel members or including examples of our work.

ARTICLES, REVIEWS, TEXTS

2004

Homeland: Into a World of Hate, Nick Ryan, Mainstream Publishing, 2004. “Natural Selection” used for front cover illustration.

New Media Art: Practice and Context in the UK 1994 – 2004, ed. by Lucy Kimbell, Arts Council England 2004. “Linker” section, pp 178 – 179. “The Bank of Time” section pp 260 - 261.

“Software Art after Programming”, article by Richard Wright, MUTE no. 28, summer 2004. “Linker” and “Nine” discussion and illustrations.

Our Telephony research programme is aimed at developing new interfaces for arts projects and for finding ways to build social networks between people. Telephony is central to our aim of designing more proactive forms of collaborative media that seek out potential participants.

TextFm is a piece of software that broadcasts text messages. Anyone with access to a mobile phone can send a message to a specified number. A computer receives the message and reads it out using a text-to-speech program. This speech is broadcast by a radio transmitter. It is a way of creating a simple, lightweight, open media system.

TextFm was installed by groups in a number of cities over the end of 2001 and beginning of 2002. Each installation is a variant on the software. Languages other than English are being added. The program is also available for download and use for any other non-commercial purpose, pirate radio, community radio, or other localised broadcast system.

Go to the site here

NINE (9) SOCIAL SOFTWARE RESEARCH PROGRAMME

Mongrel’s most ambitious project of recent years was its social software development which began with the release of the “Linker” software system in 1999 and culminated with the release of “Nine(9)” in 2003. These works were among the first examples of multimedia authoring software designed by artists themselves for running collaborative arts projects that were sensitive to the cultural expressions of marginalised social groups. These two works alone resulted in invitations by arts organisations to run hundreds of workshops around the world and won numerous citations and awards.

Up to now most ‘social software’ has been quite functional and similar to stripped down content management system. This means that it has lacked an artistic form that would make it graspable and meaningful and lacked a motivation for people to use it beyond the enthusiasm of a workshop organiser. In this research we seek to design more proactive collaborative software systems that answer the question of how to engage people and how to keep them in an ongoing productive relationship.

SCOTOMA

Scotoma.org is an on-line project and in the future will feature many archives that relate to Harwood's past and present illnesses, Underground, Matthew Fuller's Natural, Mental Comix and many others.

It is the place to find out about some of the more obscure research we are doing. Mainly used by Harwood for notes and projects that are too naughty for the main Mongrel.org.uk site

check it out here

Linker

Linker 1.2 is an off-line Free downloadable software product. This software offers you an experimental way of linking data together into a multimedia matrix.

The Linker software comes out of a specific need that Mongrel found doing workshops. Our dialogues allow us to produce fast artefacts of digital culture with other mongrels. A crucial thing about these workshops is that we found people want to produce something that looks good, and means something, but don't want to have to invest months in teaching themselves up to know something like Photoshop or Director. We don't particularly want to knock these programs, but they're cultured up to be useful really only to experts.