michael takeo magruder
| Michael Takeo Magruder is an American artist based in the UK who works within the fields of New and Interactive Media. He received his formal education at the University of Virginia, USA, graduating with a degree in Biological Sciences. For the past eight years his artistic practice has reflected upon society's data-driven and information saturated existence through the examination of international news communications. By recombining the notions of art and media, It has been his intention to analyse the interconnections which have been forged between the individual and the pervasive media network. It is a questioning of product vs. process, knowledge vs. stimulation, fact vs. perspective. His artistic production has been exhibited worldwide and encompasses an eclectic mix of forms, ranging from futuristic stained-glass windows, digital lightscreens and modular light-sculptures to architectural manipulations, ephemeral video projections and interactive network installations. His current explorations and research embrace 3D stereoscopic projection, immersive multi-sensory environments and interactive non-linear narratives for network/gallery settings. His work in these fields is presently supported by Turbulence.org, 3D Visualisation Group: University of Warwick and Arts Council England. | artist artist homepage |
work
 world[s] is a series of dynamic audio-visual constructs that can only exist in a virtual space unbound by the laws of physical reality. These data-sculptures are created exclusively from the word 'world' translated into the native script of society's most prevalent 25 languages. The work reflects upon the multifaceted aspects of human interpretation with respect to language and the information it conveys.
World[s] was commissioned by Stanza for soundtoys.net. Thanks to the Arts Council Of England, The Watershed Media Center. World[s] was supported by King's Visualisation Lab, Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London. |
 The {Matrix} series of artwork is concerned with the conversion of small data extracts from internet news media into audio-visual virtual sculptures which are abstract in an informational sense to human perception. The artworks have each been created entirely from a single news item parsed from the BBC International web-site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/). From each article, 1000 bits of text (a 150 character 8-bit ASCII text string), image (a 20x10 pixel bitmap with a 5-bit colour table), and audio (a .125 second, 1kHz, 8-bit, uncompressed sound clip) information were sampled and utilized as the exclusive material to generate a sculptural form. Although these audio-visual entities are unintelligible to the human mind, it is possible through the use of computer technology to reverse engineer the works and extract the three 1000 bit elements in a lossless manner. |
 Event is composed exclusively from news articles which have been parsed from the BBC News International website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/) between December 29 and February 1. Each day during January 2004 a random news item was selected. An equal and predefined amount of video, text, still-image, and audio information was sampled from each news item to create a database of source material. These data extracts were then reassembled via a predetermined and automated process thus reforming hybrid constructs based upon the original news articles. The final artistic 'product' was then authored in Flash (the ubiquitous corporate advertisement mechanism) and redistributed via the Internet for public consumption.
Event is a 2003 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence website. It was made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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