30 Days of Running in Place

http://www.artpractical.com/uploads/reviews/_1246_1246/AhmedBasiony.jpgAhmed Basiony‘s 30 Days of Running in Place was first presented at the Why Not exhibition in Cairo in 2010. Basiony performed daily for 30 days in a room enclosed in transparent plastic outside the Cairo Opera House and Palace of Arts – The artist jogged around the room wearing a plastic suit fitted with digital sensors that gathered and wirelessly transmitted data on his movements and physiological parameters – This information was in turn processed and projected on a large screen as an ever-changing visual and aesthetic reflection of the artist’s physical state. As a five-channel installation exhibited at Egyptian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2011, 30 Days was juxtaposed with videos recorded by Basiony during his participation in the January revolution, until he was killed by gunshot wounds inflicted by Egyptian Police snipers on January 28, 2011.

The Girlfriend Experience

[video src=http://vimeo.com/8795185 height: 220 align: right] The growth of online communities such as Second Life and World of Warcraft enabled the creation of personal online social and economic existence. This raises many questions about our own existence and about the consequences and even the dangers of online communities, for example, the well-known “Rape in Cyberspace” reported in 1993. Artist Martin Butler pushes these ideas with his work, Girlfriend Experience, a multiplayer game allowing one to enter into a real-life person and use this person as an avatar. Because the avatars are real people, in order to win their trust and have them perform special tasks, one first need to get to know them and find out what is possible.