At first I believed this image to be that of a constellation. Starry Night makes me think that I should be looking for the Big and Little Dipper. The stars don’t seem to be lined up in any sort of order. The “survelliance” in the middle makes me believe that this is some sort of satellite that monitors something in our world. The lines are fairly straight, but do add some curves. There are far more stars not connected than those that are.
Come to find out that Mark Tribe’s Starry Night actually represents text. Each of the stars on Starry Night connects to one of the texts in the archive. The brightness of each star is determined by the number of times the corresponding text has been read. Each time someone reads a text, the corresponding star gets a little bit brighter. So, the brightest stars represent the most popular texts.
Mark Tribe is an artist of technology. His interests include politics, digital art and survelliance. He is Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media Studies at Brown University. He teaches courses on Digital Art, Curating, Radical Media and Surveliiance . His art has been exhibited throughout the world. Mr. Tribe founded Rhizome.org, an online research for new media artists.
