Ursula Endlicher turns code into physical form. A pioneering media artist who has worked since the mid ‘90s with the Internet, she has translated the structural components, systems and interfaces of our Internetworked world into material formats. Combining her background in Fine Art, Theater Studies and Computer Art, she has built frameworks for Internet art, installations, objects and performances, with real-time data and code determining their layout and choreographies.
Among her most well known pieces is html_butoh, an Internet Art work and movement database for the HTML language, commissioned by one of the first leading websites supporting Internet Art, Turbulence.org. Light and Dark Networks, part of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s permanent collection, populated the museum’s website with different “data performances” driven by changes in New York City’s weather and air quality.
Endlicher’s performative installation FAR-FLUNG’s (fx) form – Module 2, presented at Eyebeam in NY in 2017, an “intelligent” space rewarded the audience with a re-enactment of their collective data. In her most recent and ongoing installation Input Field Form #2 she transformed the Artist Residency application form – the HTML form that gathers user information through Input Fields – into an agricultural field at ChaNorth in Upstate NY during the “Process Park” residency. In 2017 Input Field Form #1 took place during agrikultura in Malmö, Sweden.
Input Fields Forever, 2014-16
Bullseye I, 2015/16
iPad Display, HTML Code & JavaScript Animation,
PHP, Real-Time Data, Digital Images, Customized
Aluminum Frame and Shadow Box
Frame: 17.5” x 15” x 1.4” (Screen: 6.3” x 4.7”)
Edition of 3
Flower, 2014/15
iPad Display, HTML Code & JavaScript Animation,
Digital Images, Customized Aluminum Frame and Shadow Box
Frame: 17.5” x 15” x 1.4” (Screen: 6.3” x 4.7”)
Edition of 3
Teeth, 2015/16
iPad Display, HTML Code & JavaScript Animation,
PHP, Real-Time Data, Digital Images, Customized
Aluminum Frame and Shadow Box
Frame: 17.5” x 15” x 1.4” (Screen: 6.3” x 4.7”)
Edition of 3
HTML <input> fields that ask for personal data build the entry points to almost every activity and interaction on the Internet. User data is collected and submitted to servers to be stored there forever. In Input Fields Forever Input Fields are “freed” from this original task and transcend their usual format – by not taking but giving back to their users: They feed their visitors with visual poetry composed by real-time data.
In Bullseye I, thirty US-based news sites are constantly queried in real-time for keywords such as “kill”, “shot”, or “gun”, and written into the appropriate section in the target. By continuously filling out themselves the Input Fields in Flower reward their visitors with visual, absurd and poetic answers instead. Teeth makes data ornamental and news feeds poetic…with a twist. Thirty international news websites are constantly queried for key symbols such as “#”, “@”, or “©”. The real-time value attached to these signs is written into the smile of the artist, delivering a Koan-like summary of the current news.