Marc Lee
TV-Bot 2.0

Since the end of the 1990s, the Swiss artist Marc Lee has been an important representative of net-based art. He is known for his experiments with digital-information and communication-technology strategies and also, increasingly, with user-generated content. 

The work TV-Bot 2.0 is a net-based, real-time television program, which collects extracts that are at the most one hour old from radio and TV livestreams, newspaper and Google News headlines as well as webcam images and Twitter messages. As a result, TV-Bot 2.0 is even more current than the familiar news formats. The software, which is an update of the software developed in 2004 for TV-Bot 1.0, does not, however, distinguish between relevant and irrelevant facts. Global information in real time results in an ocean of background noise: On its own, the criterion of topicality proves to be unhelpful in clarifying our view of the world and improving our ability to understand international contexts. At the same time, the multiplicity of sources demonstrates the drastic limitation of viewing world events only through individual news channels. 

(Text: Bettina Back)