POKE! Artists and Social Media - A Fotofest Exhibition, Houston, USA

POKE! explores the inter-personal intentions of social media technology and the nature of modern internet-mediated relationships with work that references and uses source material from popular online social media websites such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Craigslist, and YouTube.

Penelope Umbrico, Suns from Flickr, 2006-2007

Christopher Baker (Minneapolis, MN) compiles a wall full of personal, diarist messages by teenage users of YouTube and Facebook. The wall-sized video installation is a cacophonous monument to the individual’s voice and the confessional nature of self-made video.

Penelope Umbrico (New York, NY) obsessively appropriates images from Craigslist, where merchants selling second-hand televisions make unwitting self portraits of themselves. These images of TVs, branded with their owners faces, are reproduced life-sized and sold for the same price as their real-life counterparts, questioning the worth of the consumable (the TV) and the original (the photograph).

Freeze Frame - Powercut Circus, Bands, Sri Lanka.

If you haven't heard of them, well its time you did. Powercut circus is one of the most original bands I have come across. I just wish they would come out with an album... Their lyrics are quirky yet profound. Visit them at - http://www.myspace.com/powercutcircus listen to their music! If you can get a hold of this months Serendib Mag, there is an feature about them "Circus at the Folly". Thanks to Helga Folly's again for the generous hospitality. Thanks guys for letting me SHOOT you! & Feroze and Sonali for the attire!