NETworking 

Net Art From the Computer Fine Arts Collection  

Thomson & Craighead

www.computerfinearts.com/collection/thomson_craighead/beacon/

Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead, two artists who have been collaborating since the early 1990s, are among Britain's leading New Media artists. In their early works, the two incorporated videos and technological elements into gallery installations. Since 1995, they have been integrating Internet technologies into their installations. The Beacon project (2005), which was activated in January 2005, constantly broadcasts data flowing through the Web - such as search words and sound blasts; it thus exists as a kind of mute testimony to the endless flow of online information, while underscoring the fluid and parasitical qualities of the relations between user and community. This software voyeuristically attaches itself to Web searches around the world; it exhibits them in real time at a pre-established rhythm, as an endless flow of concrete poetry.

Alison Craighead, born in Aberdeen, Scotland, 1971; Jon Thomson, born in London, 1969; they live and work in London and Scotland