The Institute for Digital Biology: tagging baby websites in the wild

i-5f670abc3a80b0336839a2847293ae8e-virus-thumb-510x297-60604.jpg

From NextNature, an intriguing post about the Institute for Digital Biology:

During the exhibition, visitors were able to feed a colony of microscopical pop-up creatures, save Chinese websites from a pageview-shortage, preserve an Amazone tribe from extinction by subscribing to its homepage and view a short documentary on how the living internet established itself.

Artist Walewijn den Boer also created a peculiar, twelve-minute faux-documentary, which uses animation to bring his digital biology concepts into meatspace (check it out below the fold).

Update 1:

I think the clunkiness of the animation is intentional - it's got sort of a jerky, video-cam effect (think Cloverfield or District 9) which is quite effective until the end of the first video. Then the baby website starts to look too hokey, like a science fair project using Claymation technology. (It's also moderately odd that, as you see at the start of the second video, the web-creature has an Ethernet jack. I mean, come on - wouldn't living manifestations of the digital world at least have Bluetooth?)

Update 2:

den Boer's website also hosts an intriguing "Institute for Electronic Zoology," which sounds similar to the Digital Biology project, but a little steampunkier. den Boer also has an installation upcoming at the Nanofestival at NEMO, which seems to be kind of like a Dutch Exploratorium.

More like this