by Michael Anthony Farley on November 10, 2015

Here at AFC, we’re pretty excited about The Wrong Biennale, the world’s largest digital art biennial. Paddy interviewed founder David Quiles Guillo just before the site went live, and Rea curated the online pavilion The BiWay Art Foundation. I’ve just been wandering The Wrong’s many links for days, perusing the insane amount of digital art suddenly made a little more accessible to the masses. I’ll talk about my findings tomorrow, but this GIF is a great example of the kind of pieces I’ve been enjoying.
Artist Juane Odriozola posted this advertisement for a used “greeting from the Pope” on MercadoLibre.com (which is pretty much the Ebay of Argentina). It was originally published for one week in 2012. When a user clicks through the preview images, they form an animation of the Pope waving, which the artist documented in GIF form. This is exactly the kind of project with a playful consideration of site-specificity on the internet that makes getting lost in The Wrong so worthwhile. This, and other artworks are 0n view in the online pavilion Tiempo Circular, curated by Merlina Rañi & Celina Pla.
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by Rea McNamara on November 2, 2015

Time. In Patrick Romeo’s “Emoji Hourglass”, it cycles through algebraic concepts, computer programming, and the Facebook thumbs up. The thumb sparkles, shoots, then multiplies, and eventually piles up, only to become all the keys on the keyboard.
In some ways, this seems to evoke the tragedy of the commons—we’re all acting independently of one another, in our own self-interest, exploiting a shared resource to the extent that demand overwhelms supply. Attention? Power sources? Pick and choose your economic measure. We generate these self-expressions using the same interfaces, and the intent behind those gestures become short-hand for approval, care, liking. Your ego counts the number of “likes”—we want all of our shared experiences to be applauded, but most importantly, acknowledged.
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