James Bridle: A Ship Adrift

Date
3 February 2012

We were thrilled to welcome artist, publisher and writer James Bridle to kick off our Words Words Words talks’ series last night, and as usual, he has an unbelievably interesting project on the go, based on Artangel’s South Bank boat-el we featured last month. James has set up a weather station next to the installation and is charting where the boat would blow if it was subject to the wind conditions (it’s currently heading into Belarus). On the way it’s searching geo-tagged tweets and internet adverts to “learn” about its surroundings and trying to communicate via Twitter using the information it is processing. Imaginative, intelligent, mischievous stuff.

The project stems from James’ interest in internet bots (pretty much the only accounts he follows on Twitter) and the way in which they are gradually acquiring a semblance of communication skills through all the information they can access.

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About the Author

Rob Alderson

Rob joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in July 2011 before becoming Editor-in-Chief and working across all editorial projects including itsnicethat.com, Printed Pages, Here and Nicer Tuesdays. Rob left It’s Nice That in June 2015.

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