[artinfo] Andy Deck

[marc]

Andy Deck's solo show, 'Open Vice/Virtue: The Online Art Context' runs at
HTTP Gallery from 9 March - 22 April 2006.
Preview: Thursday 9 March 7 - 9pm.
http://http.uk.net/

HTTP is London's first dedicated gallery for networked and new media 
art. Working with artists from around the world HTTP provides a 
public venue for experimental approaches to exhibiting artworks 
simultaneously in physical and virtual space, and for online projects 
that explore participative and collaborative art practice. Artists' 
projects on DVD, real-time, webcast, software art and live art also 
play a role in the curatorial work of HTTP.

Andy Deck has been making art software, public art for the internet,
since 1990. Deck's collaborative drawing spaces, game-like search engines,
problematic interfaces and informative art resist generic categorisation:
he uses the internet, the gallery and public space to challenge corporate
control over communication, tools and software, and by extension the
social imagination. Deck works with the web using the sites; artcontext.net,
andyland.net

He has received online commissions from New Radio and Performing Arts,
Rhizome.org, the Whitney Artport and the Tate, and exhibited
internationally at: Machida City Museum, ZKM, PS1, Museum of 
Contemporary Art Barcelona,
Walker Art Center and Ars Electronica.

Works on display at the Dana Centre include:

Open Studio:
An online graphic software which allows for public
contributions.  Visitors can go online, create a drawing, and have the
option to save the drawing.  The website acts as a databank for all
contributions, which can be seen animated on the site. 

Imprimatur:
Consists of online 'groupware' for poster illustration and layout
accessible through a computer workstation installed in the gallery
space. This piece provides a framework for visitors/participants to launch a
personal poster campaign based on their own social and political
concerns. Visitors can use the software to create their own poster in
collaboration with their online counterparts.

Icontext:
A free space on the Web that presents visitors with an
open-ended interplay of words and pictures. What you do with your
keyboard and mouse determines what appears on the screen and what subsequent
visitors see and read. It sets up a fluid correspondence between keystrokes and
blocks of colour. For example, when you type "dog," the word "dog"
appears, and so does a series of three colour blocks. Icontext also works on
other levels, allowing visitors to collaborate with each other and to upload,
archive, and reconfigure "icontexts."

glyphiti:
An online collaborative drawing project. A large-scale
projection forms an evolving graffiti wall and visitors to the space are
invited to edit and add graphical units or 'glyphs', which compose the
image, in real time.