INPUT FIELDS FOREVER (2015/16)
New additions: Input Fields Forever: Bullseye and Input Fields Forever: Teeth

by Ursula Endlicher | ursenal.net _________________________________________

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Input Fields that ask for personal data build the entry points to almost every activity and interaction on the Internet. User data is collected and submitted to servers to be stored there forever. In Input Fields Forever Input Fields are "freed" from this original task and transcend their usual format - by not taking but giving back to their users...

The HTML/Java-script/PHP-based series Input Fields Forever (2014-16) reflects on Input Fields as Web-based executors of control and personal data collection, while nullifying this function by transforming the "fields" into visual containers for ever-changing poetry.

In the new works shown at the Expo during Creative Tech Week in April 2016, Input Fields are constantly populated with real-time data from online newspapers, inserting sometimes slightly disturbing, sometimes more playful sets of keywords based on current news feeds.

In the two pieces from the series Input Fields Forever: Bullseye, thirty US online newspapers are constantly searched for the use of keywords, ranging in one version from "gun" to "dead", and in the second version, from "data", to "online" and "offline", while being placed into the corresponding area within the target interface.

In Input Fields Forever: Teeth data becomes ornament. Thirty international online newspapers are continuously searched for commonly used text symbols such as "#", "@", "?" or "©", which in turn deliver their real-time "value" right back into the Input Fields to form a short koan-like summary of momentary news blasts right in the (artist's) smile.

The works shown at Air Circulation in the winter of 2015/16 - Input Fields Forever: Flower, Snow, and Clouds, told each their own "story" - filling out content or playing with random data - at their own pace...

The interactive online version of Input Fields Forever: Flower, Snow, and Clouds, was shown in the online exhibit "NetArtizens - 0p3nr3p0" in March 2015.

Input Fields Forever is part of a larger context of works that reflects on Input Fields on Websites and Mobile Applications and questions their underlying structures, while transcending their initial functionality in transforming them into Internet "objects" turned physical.