I've been thinking a while about how the expressive means of the Semantic Web could be used for art, how those abstract but powerful mechanisms and vocabularies could be used for artistic reflection on this new meta-medium.
I don't actually have too good an overview on the net art scene, perhaps there are already lots of folks playing and producing? Hello, is there anybody?
Anyway, I guess I might have found something at Viper Basel today: GeneralNews - Ein Plädoyer für die Abstraktion by Daniela Alina Plewe et al., a web-based software using the Princeton WordNet for semantic alteration of text on the axis abstract<->specific:

General News is an interactive metabrowser which substitutes in real-time the words on websites. The substitutions may be synonym, abstract or more specific than the original expressions. By these variations new descriptions of the world and descriptions of "new" worlds are created.

More, please!

Pictures above are from the Viper exhibition that opened today in Basel, which is the self-proclaimed "swiss-made internationel trend barometer" and one of the world's leading new media art events, including an exhibition, a little conference and quite some events at different locations in the city.
The event seems to be even a bit poshier than last time I went, but I can't tell much about it yet, I just quickly strolled through the (free) exposition tonight. There's lots of screen, of course (see topmost image), some really good (IMHO) installations and presentations (e.g genoTyp) and of course video art both of the instantly charming and the rather inaccessible kind (second and third image).
I hope to meet Miss Strebel and Mister Lovink Friday or Saturday and perhaps to listen a bit to what's being discussed at the Viper Conference titled "GENERATIONS ON THE MOVE".
But alas, I have work waiting for me this weekend. Let's see if I can be a good boy and to my homework before going out to play :)

I'm currently reviewing the 109 submission for LOTS 2005 as a member of the jury, basically doing the quality assurance probably usual at such conferences. I did have to decline some proposals already, mostly because they were just too blurry or because the projects did look like being much too far from being ready and presentable.
Some Swiss FOSS companies seem to be missing this time, but then there are some new and interesting projects and presentation from businesses both local and international and the Swiss public sector.
Promises to be an interesting event, if the other guys in the Fachkommission don't decline my proposals I'll be there, too, speaking about two rather different topics: 'PHP and the Semantic Web' and a presenation on Moodle's success story, free software and open standards in education. We'll see.

I was too busy (girl, company, etc) to report about it, but last week I had the luck to attend a soirée about and by Woody Vasulka, the video legend and founder of the legendary kitchen. His mastery of the medium is really admirable, the corpus of this works is both amazingly broad and deep, the early studies on the lowest level of the video machinery, magnetics and stuff, were indeed striking.
He spoke a bit about his ongoing project, OASIS ("Open Archiving System with Internet Sharing"), a large-scale distributed media art conservation project he leads with Jürgen Enge, formerly at ZKM, but soon at HGKZ. But that highly interesting project does not seem to have a website (?).