We forgot to mention that Macroscope, a WebTake for Bruce Sterling's new book, is ready.

We put two new texts online (written for De:Bug Magazine).

We are happy to produce a Webtake for Bruce Sterlings forthcoming book "Shaping things" as part of Peter Lunenfeld's mediawork pamphlet series using a response by John Thackara. Will be released late August.

We'll join the conversation roundtable on "Reading as a Social Practice". Keynoters and Speakers will be Walter Bender, Anne Balsamo, Adrian Johns and Christiane Paul.

We will visit and speak at Peter Lunenfeld's Design Dialogues seminar at the Graduate Media Design Program.

We're invited to participate in this very interesting conference in Amsterdam and talk at the Meaning Structures session. Organized by Matthew Fuller and The Institute of Network Cultures.

The first DVD publication to come from MIT Press includes, in addition to the work of Lev Manovich & Andreas Kratky and other contributions, our Matchboxes data visualization .

Minitasking on tour: you can see it at FILE - Electronic Language International Festival, Saõ Paulo (Brazil) and CYNETart_04areale Festival für computergestützte Kunst, Dresden (Germany)

We'll give a talk at the upcoming DORKBOT event in Los Angeles organized by Casey Reas. The evening has a emphasis on Germany, due to origin of the speakers.

Guest curator Casey REAS has selected Minitasking for the exhibition at Microwave Festival, Hong Kong.

Minitasking will be presented at the Language of Networks Exhibition during the Ars Electronica Festival

Minitasking was part of a exhibition curated by Andreas Broeckmann in Zagreb (Croatia) from June 1-6.

txtkit presentation for the Interface Design classes at FH Design Potsdam.

Thanks to the Net Vision jury of Prix Ars Electronica 2004!

about Information Design at Goldrausch Kuenstlerinnenprojekt

This update features an improved parser and one additional text source - the new book "Free Culture" by Lawrence Lessig.

These are just appetizers!

Today we released txtkit 1.1.0 - which has the ability to use .txtkit files to access various text databases. We start with Lev Manovich and Hans Ulrich Reck texts in english language. Any suggestions for further free text sources are welcome!

txtkit final research report is available (only german)

We've added a Demo Movie of txtkit. Have a look!

New website finished. Yup! We will constantly add more content.

txtkit 1.0.0 is the first public release. This version uses the german text collection by Hans Ulrich Reck. If no new bugs are found, we will release a version with english texts soon.

We are very happy to announce that we finally finished the work on the CD-Rom which contains the software and 2 reference cards (german only) for easy access.

The famous InfoWorld Columnist Brian Livingston strangely interprets the visuals provided by Minitasking: "Depicted in this fragment is the number of people at Microsoft, IBM, Sun, and elsewhere who are using the Gnutella peer-to-peer network to share songs by the alt-rock group The Cranberries."

We were asked to design a new invitation for the Frankfurter Kunstverein. Fortunately our concept was considered as too playful and we will save it for a better occasion. Have a look:

SW/OfCD participates in a workshop about
filesharer values [Ökonomien des (Aus-)Tauschs Utopien und Realitäten von Kulturproduktion unter Netzbedingungen]

First presentation of txtkit during a one-day conference about Art - Computer Science - Theory at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Open to the public!

We are presenting an evening with Casey Reas in Berlins bootlab raum3 in cooperation with bootlab and transmediale.

Minitasking will be presented in the Web division. For further information please check Fantoche Festival site

We are very happy to be invited to participate in the Electrolobby 03 as part of
proce55ing.net by Casey Reas and Ben Fry. Other invited artists are: Golan Levin, Zach Lieberman, lia, Marius Watz, Amit Pitaru, Carlos Rocha, Herrnando Barragan

Minitasking has been accepted for presentation & publication at IV 2003.

Minitasking was the first "featured Project of the Week" at Blogwork by PixelDNA, a community project for the Biennale Of Venice/art 03.

Minitasking is the new Map of the Month, text by Martin Dodge, Researcher in the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), University College London and is the creator of the Atlas of Cyberspaces

Minitasking is presented at the exhibition "adonnaM.mp3 - File Sharing, the hidden revolution in the Internet ", produced by the digitalcraft department at the Museum of Applied Arts Frankfurt. The exhibition is concerned with the phenomenon of audio file sharing, including the most widely used file compression format, mp3, and peer-to-peer technology. It asks what radical changes in society, the economy, art and design might be brought about by the use of digital tools.

Minitasking is the winning project in the category Software. Jury Statement: Minitasking is a graphical, functional Gnutella client that at first appears to be a network data visualization project. While it is part of that genre, Minitasking goes beyond traditional data visualization. Computers connected to the Gnutella network are represented as colored circles - the number of files served from each computer determines the size of the circle. However, this abstract, birds-eye view of the distributed, idealized peer-to-peer network in action is superimposed with wiggling text representations of the actual search terms other Gnutella users are entering. (These search queries are typically available in conventional Gnutella applications as well, but usually appear in a fairly inconspicuous part of the interface, away from the main functionality.) The Minitasking user sees the character of the Gnutella net at the moment - with all its warts. At certain times of day, one is overwhelmed with wiggling porn searches. At other times, it's Britney Spears and game warez. The simultaneous juxtaposition of the qualitative and quantitative representations of the network gives Minitasking's visualization an interesting texture. This texture reveals something about the subject that a conventional data visualization would likely obscure: the macro-utopia of peer-to-peer vs. its micro-reality.
Jury: Amy Alexander, Margarethe Jahrmann, David Rokeby

Minitasking was presented at the Mapping the World- Panel Discussion moderated by Susanne Jaschko, Contributors: Aske Hopman, Jussi Angesleva, Ross Cooper, Dietmar Offenhuber

Minitasking is presented at the All Star Data Mappers Exhibition. The inter/national survey of artists, designers and scientists who build information visualisation software to navigate the complex terrain of the electronic datasphere, was curated by John Tonkin. Other Contributors: Ben Fry, Mary Flanagan, Golan Levin, Josh On

Matchboxes is presented at the Future Cinema Exhibition, it is a database visualisation by Schoenerwissen for Lev Manovichs Soft Cinema Project. Matchboxes is done with Proce55ing.

Minitasking was part of the Change the Map Exhibition. Current world map projections in which geography legitimated by the nation-state system is overlaid by the reciprocities and points of rupture in our modern Information Society?cyber-graphies of a world of data and information systems whose meridians are lines of economic and political power. Artists as cartographers: a confrontation with topological world models is meant to formulate and / or inspire a critique of the topographic Weltanschauung and patterns of behavior on which it has had an impact.

Now available: Minitasking Demoversion. The semi-automatic browser-based version uses real recorded datasets of the gnutella network. the demo shows hosts, queries (incoming/outgoing), replies and downloads. mac users should try this one and report about their speed experience. (corresponds not to the animation speed, that you get on a fast wintel-pc)

The award winning works of Prix Ars Electronica 2002 are documented in 'CyberArts 2002 - International Compendium Prix Ars Electronica'. Edited by Hannes Leopoldseder, Christine Schöpf, Texts by Pete Barr-Watson, Hannes Leopoldseder, Christine Schöpf

Jarrett Kertesz interviewed Schoenerwissen to find out more about their visual Gnutella client, Minitasking.

Minitasking got an Award of Distinction in the Net Excellence Category!

Statement of the Net Vision / Net Excellence Jury 2002
"Gnutella is the famous file sharing protocol that is widely used by the general public for, well, sharing files! The usual course of action involves downloading a client application (such as Limewire, although there are many others) and entering a search string for the file you're looking for. This could be anything from a music file to video to electronic book. Of course, you also share your own files with the other users, thereby extending the network. Pretty normal computer activity today-

"Minitasking" is an application that utilizes the Gnutella network for another reason. It monitors the search strings from other people?s computers and displays the data it gathers as beautiful visual elements that move and constantly provide visual feedback. This project will bring out the voyeuristic tendencies in anyone as you watch the search strings appear. Almost a view into people?s minds.

This is a brilliant use of common technology on the Internet."

Jury Members: Joichi Ito (J)(USA), Pete Barr-Watson (GB), Tanja Diezmann (D), TNC Network (F), Joshua Davis (USA)