THE COLORS OF THE TIMES
SHERVIN AFSHAR
THE COLORS OF THE TIMES, 2008
Every day, the text content from a list of local newspapers websites, blogs, and twitter feeds from Linz and the province of Upper-Austria would be aggregated. These contents will be stored and analyzed using computational and psycholinguistic methods which results the characteristics of the text (i.e. positivity, negativity, formality, informality). These characteristics will be mapped using varying shades, colours, and patterns to give a general feeling of the texts collected during the day. The outcome will be projected on the facade of Ars Electronica Center 5 minutes every night at the same time.
Potograph:
The Colours of the Times by Shervin Afshar © Shervin Afshar
Artist biography
After graduating as a software engineer in 2006, he started working as an independent media artist in Tehran, Iran. Between 2006 and 2008, he collaborated with Iranian young curator and media artist Amirali Ghasemi and his artist initiative called Parkingallery. In September 2008, he joined Ars Electronica Futurelab as a creative engineer. His works and collaborative projects have been presented in various exhibitions in Tehran, Budapest, Istanbul
(SocialBits exhibition), Germany (TypoBerlin 2009), and United States (Digital Ritual). The focus of his works is on the role of time-based and live online data and textual information as a base for creating new experiences using the digital media. He is currently attends the graduate programme in Interface Cultures at the University of Arts and Design in Linz, Austria.