[#DIGART] 10 New Media Tumblrs To Follow Religiously

This week we’re exploring the Digital Arts Market (or lack thereof). We’re asking the tough questions: What will it take for a sustainable digital arts market to form? Is that even a possibility? Can the digital arts make money? And will they ever be incorporated into the contemporary arts dialogue? We invite you to participate in the discussion in the comments section, on your own blog (send us the link!), and on Facebook and Twitter (#DIGART). Let's get the conversation started!

Even for those of us who spend the majority of our days hunting around the strange corners of the internet, it can still hold plenty of surprises. Tumblr—difficult to search, hard to organize, endless—is one of those online wilderness zones. To help in the daily search for provocative images, art, and multimedia, I've collected some of my favorite Tumblrs run by new media artists. Whether it's Nicholas O'Brien's compendium of landscape-driven internet art or Philip Stearns' exploration of the visual glitch, these are all worth adding to your follow list.

Phone Arts

Phone Arts is a Tumblr run by internet artist Michael Manning that collects original images usable as phone backgrounds. He contributes his own digital oil paintings (which are my iPhone background of choice), but also features artists like Jeremiah Johnson and Brian Metcalf.

Kim Asendorf

As co-proprietor of the online-only Fach & Asendorf gallery (with Ole Fach), Asendorf booth snoops out inspiring new media art and posts his own, recently focusing on the Noog augmented reality project and his Sim City-driven video projections.

The New Aesthetic

The New Aesthetic is the now infamous Tumblr run by media innovator James Bridle that gathers together examples of the New Aesthetic (i.e. the digital erupting into the physical, to paraphrase Bruce Sterling). It's a must-read for any technology and art-savvy social media power user. Though the New Aesthetic tumblelog officially closed last Sunday, it lives on as an archive that is worthy of your attention and investigation.

RGB+D

RGB+D is a blog focusing on the 3D-imaging work of technology artist James George and photographer Alexander Porter (the "D" stands for "depth"). Hacking together an Xbox Kinect camera and a digital SLR, the pair has created an accessible way for artists to explore point-cloud data intuitively. Check out the recent coverage of their Barcelona video workshops.

OKFocus

OKFocus is the Tumblr of the creative agency of the same name, founded by Ryder Ripps and Jonathan Vingiano, and recently profiled in our own pages. Follow for updates on their net trolling antics and hints at what's coming up.

Notes on a New Nature

Artist, writer, researcher, and curator Nicholas O'Brien maintains this stately Tumblr, which collects new media art that riffs on the ideas of nature and the landscape. O'Brien also posts his own work and in-progress snapshots, treading the same virtual territory.

Year of the Glitch

Artist Philip Stearns maintains this Tumblr, which is rapidly becoming a major innovator and proponent of glitch art. It's a year-long project that explores familiar media formats interrupted and mediated by glitches, from hacked digital cameras to corrupted files and skipping CDs. Don't miss Stearns' glitch blankets, woven by computers from his own original images.

Hypergeography

Probably the best Tumblr art project out there, Hypergeography is the work of artist Joe Hamilton. Taken as a whole, Hypergeography is a massive virtual landscape knitted together from discrete images, textures, landscape photos, and any spare digital scrap Hamilton can get his hands on. This is one for the books, so follow along.

Eyes Say Yes

Adam Sipe and Arati Rao create this surreal collage of Internet odds and ends. If you're looking for inspiration, find it in psychedelic posters, dripping eyeballs, fruit graphics, and Egyptian icons.

Internet Poetry

If you're into the writing side of new media at al, this is the one and only place to be. Collecting work from net-friendly writers like Steve Roggenbuck, Crispin Best, and Gabby Gabby (also included in the "alt lit" moniker), Internet Poetry is a mélange of image macros, found screenshots, and very, very weird Gchats.

@chaykak