Falling Times /// 2007 /// Interactive Net Installation /// Michael Bielicky / Dirk Reinbold / Kamila B. Richter
Falling Times is an everlasting and growing real-time news translation machine representing permanently appearing and disappearing information about our times. Falling Times refers to the heavy InfoPollution we live in. The InfoSociety has created a new kind of consumer - the InfoConsumer! The most consumed information is the news today. The news has been turning more and more into an entertainment - the Infotainment. The news producers are the biggest info polluters of our time and thus are the biggest contributors to the infoEcological calamity. In our visualization we reduce the content only to headlines and key words that appear in the news most frequently. These reduced news are translated into a dynamic pictogram language that is considered to be universal and instantly understandable. Online users have the opportunity to define collectively the meaning associated with each icon we created. In this way the users decide not only which icon represents which news but also the news that are going to be searched for and finally displayed. This open platform permanently grows and transforms itself by learning from the collective contributions. We hope to contribute with this minimalist data visualization to the infoEcology discourse and to question the perception of the news and information in general. Information industry produces less and less meaning while creating a pattern that decorates our daily life and persuades us that we are connected to reality.
Michael Bielicky (*1954 Prague) 1969 immigration to the FRG, 1989 student of Nam June Paik’s master class in Düsseldorf; 1991–2006 founder and Professor of the New Media Class at the Art Academy of Prague; since 2006 Professor at the HfG Karlsruhe (State Academy of Design) in the field of digital Media. Over the past twenty years Michael Bielicky has participated in many international exhibitions, festivals and symposia, presenting projects that experiment with navigation, video-communication and virtual reality technologies.
Dirk Reinbold (*1982 Rheinfelden, Baden) grew up in Grenzach-Wyhlen near Basel, since 2003 student at the University of Karlsruhe and at the HfG Karlsruhe (State Academy of Design) in the field of Media art.
Kamila B. Richter (*1976 Olomouc, Tschechien) 2005–2007 urban screenings (Prague, Berlin, Bucharest, Barcelona) in cooperation with Michael Bielicky; 2002–2005 independent anonymous projects in public spaces (Zlin, Prague, Dresden, Berlin), from 2004 PhD. Candidate, Academy of Fine Arts in Prague; research project: Visualization and Sonification of Complex Data.
Photo: Michael Bielicky
Michael Bielicky / Dirk Reinbold / Kamila B. Richter, Falling Times, 2007, interactive Net Installation, video projectors, loaned by the artists
