Only the Good/Bad News

BACKGROUND To Deleuze and Guattari, "affects are becomings" (1987) and distinct to the phenomenological experience of feelings. This research attempts to identify and question the transformative forces of affect, as encoded in the flow of information from global "news machines" (another Deleuzian notion), on our body's capacities for happiness or sadness (Angel and Gibbs, 2006). This research tests established theories of affect (Garde-Hansen and Gorton, 2013) against syndicated Internet news consumption. CONTRIBUTION "Only the Good/Bad news" is an Internet based artwork which algorithmically categorises internationally syndicated news stories as good or bad, in real time, and renders these online to 'Only the Good' and 'Only the Bad' pages. OTG attempts to disrupt established flows of commercial news through the broadcast of alternating good-bad news cycles, highlighting their affect and dependence in the reader. On a long term scale, the project permits a glimpse of the affectual landscape created by news cycles, through data visualisation of an 'Emotional News Map.' Simionato designed the concept and graphics of OTG, both online and the in situ installation for the KVN solo show, which comprised twin thermal printers automatically emitting ticker-tape printouts from the artwork. SIGNIFICANCE "Only the Good/Bad News" premiered with a 5 week solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Neuhausen, Germany (2011), curated by the director, Susanne Jakob. KVN (1995-) specialises in site-specific installation projects and is part of the Association of German art (AdKV Berlin) since 2007. The co-authors of this project, Antonio Riello and Karen Ann Donnachie, are leading international artists working in Internet and new media art. Donnachie received a grant from DCA, WA (2011) for the OTG exhibition. OTG has been reviewed in press and included in www.net-art.org archive-an online-only exhibition of the early (and continuous) history of Internet art.