Using the VonHippel module and a simple c program compiled for the ARM, BUG can talk to the Arduino (in the picture, the USB cable and USB to serial chip on the breadboard are probably superfluous as the VonHippel has serial on it).

I’m waiting – and have been for over ten years – for the arrival of an art form that is truly net native.  I don’t mean something "virtual".  And I’m not talking about collaborative story-telling and memes of that ilk.  In fact, I don’t really know what I mean, which is exactly the point.  My frames of reference are all old and worn out.

I’d rate the Internet up there with paint in terms of its importance to the art world.  Yet there has emerged neither prominent artist nor movement that one could identify as clearly "of the net".  There is no Internet Andy Warhol.  I find this surprising and somewhat frustrating.  Pick up any art magazine and you’d swear that you were still in the 1980s.  In fact Julian Schnabel is still making headlines – a certain indicator that we’re in desperate need of something new. 

Part of the problem has been computers which are, in effect, a complicated and intimidating barrier to entry.  Sure, iMovie, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. are easy enough but to do anything truly creative on a computer you need to learn how to program; an effort distinctly lacking in appeal for most artists.  And for good reason.  It’s arcane, fussy and unforgiving.  Not things that normally inspire great creativity.

Don’t get me wrong.  The best coders I have ever known are all extremely creative.   And the best artists are all technical masters.  It’s just when you approach the intersection of high tech and art you encounter an unmoving traffic jam because no one is building bridges between the two worlds.  Again, I find this surprising.

To me, the Internet is a vast frontier of artistic opportunity that is still completely unexplored.  It will take coders and poets, hackers and musicians, right brain and left to craft a way forward.  For the first time, I actually feel like we’re approaching a place where it could happen.  With computing power, storage, bandwidth, web services and other previously inscrutable technologies now fading into the background, becoming normal, I believe there is finally the foundation to build the necessary tools; interfaces to the Net that do not resemble computers – don’t resemble, in fact, anything we’ve seen before.