The SMSMS project is a computer-based interactive installation that derives from the author's previous work, Computer sigillati, in which 200 machines have been programmed to produce an endless flow of random images and left to work indefinitely without being connected to a monitor. In SMSMS, one of the Computer sigillati programs is employed to create images that are visible and can be modified by the public using cell phones. SMSMS could be considered as either an exercise in collective intelligence or, in contrast, as a disturbance to the unpredictable working of the machine. Some implications concerning art and new technologies are discussed.

This article presents the netzspannung.org Internet platform, a media laboratory on the Internet that not only collects high-quality information on digital culture and media production but also interlinks this information, contextualizes it and makes it available on-line as a constantly expanding knowledge space that, like a library, can be explored by the public as an interactive installation and an educational space. In the broadest sense, the aim of this project is to visualize and semantically network information to create “knowledge spaces” that can be explored interactively and in real time and that are accessible to the user through play. Technologies, online tools and intuitive interfaces are being developed that support communication between the digital and physical spaces and investigate new forms of knowledge acquisition as “knowledge-based arts.”