Tuning in Rorschach Maps

Abstract

Many contemporary artists are working with strategies to remap public, informational and social space. Their processes often involve setting up a prescriptive, algorithmic and participatory work that yields an unknown product. What can we observe about the results? What is audience reception of these works? In addition to visiting historical precedents in performance and music, this paper will explore how real-time Internet statistical, geographic and textual mapping has become available for both practical and recreational purposes and how new media artists are engaging these methods to test the possibilities of situational mapping. Two models of analogy will be explored, the Rorschach test and the musical mode of tuning.