>What's going on in your neck of the woods?

After a relatively sparse time, things seem to be gathering speed in
London. Theres' a scene, centred around the magazine Mute (run by Simon
Worthington and Pauline Van Moerik Broekman, mute@skyscr.demon.co.uk),
which showcases digital art, and contains excellent essays and fiction (at
this point I should confess I write for it…). Other interesting groups
include Technosphere, who have set up a kind of world-sim on the web.
Participants can submit 'creatures' which mutate, go forth, multiply and
generally interact with each other. Feedback is in the form of email from
your creature, though they're working on stuff like JPEGs, Quicktime movies
and so on. Also Orphan Drift, who published a great eponymous book, whose
text tunes in and out of a white noise of ones and zeroes. Among the people
I rate, there's a lot of interest in the work of Deleuze and Guattari,
often influenced by the philosophy scene at Warwick University's Centre for
Research in Cybernetic Culture.

William Latham and Mark Atkinson's genetic algorithm-based 'organic art' is
crossing over into the mainstream, as they get contracts from games
companies and film studios. There's an increasingly sophisticated
web-design scene - a company called Obsolete seem to be becoming rated as
top dogs there. Multimedia collectives like AntiRom and Tui are doing
interesting work with interactivity, especially music stuff. A lot of it is
for corporate clients, and as ever in London, it's all very driven by the
music scene. The fine art scene is very resistant to everything digital,
most mainstream art magazines refusing to cover it.

Hope this is of interest

Hari