The News Is Obsolete (2006)

The News Is Obsolete is a series of generative online artworks by Stanza that explores the circulation, consumption and obsolescence of news imagery in a networked world.

Using images scraped from news sources across the internet, bespoke software collects and processes visual material from around the globe, assembling it into a continually evolving digital composition. The images accumulate on screen as a visual cacophony of events, crises and everyday occurrences, reflecting the relentless production and circulation of information through global media networks.

The work transforms news imagery into a generative system in which individual events become fragments within a larger, constantly shifting visual landscape. As new images enter the system, their original contexts are disrupted and their meanings are reconfigured. The result questions how we consume news, how attention is directed, and how images that once appeared urgent can quickly become obsolete, displaced by the next wave of information.

Created in 2006, the series anticipates contemporary concerns surrounding information overload, the speed of digital media and the endless recycling of images across online platforms. It presents the news not as a stable record of events, but as a continuous stream of visual data in which significance competes with repetition and the sheer volume of information.

Exhibition and technical information

The series is a custom-built generative software system comprising computer code and an online artwork interface.

Year: 2006

Format: Generative art, net art, custom software, computer code.

Availability: Available for exhibition.

Technical note: The original online works were taken offline on 20 August 2020. They relied on Adobe Shockwave, which is no longer supported. The accompanying video example documents the artwork’s visual behaviour.

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1. Title " Vertical Trajectories Of History".

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2. Title " Horizontal Forces Of Influence and Power"

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3. Title "Augmentation and Fabrication "

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Also Available: Selected artworks made using this custom made software.

History Is Your For The Making. Size 120 by 100 cm unique signed artwork.

Rhythms Of Information And Power. 100 cm by 100cm. Unique signed artwork.

People Of Lost Dreams. 100 cm by 100cm. Unique signed artwork.