1) Banksy Rescinds Art for Votes Offer 

Banksy was forced to withdraw an offer to provide artworks to those voting against the British Conservative Party after being informed that this could invalidate those votes. The artist had originally offered prints of his well-known “Girl With Balloon” artwork to voters who provided a photograph of their ballot. Police informed Banksy that this would constitute accepting gifts in exchange for strategic voting, a crime that would invalidate any ballot that was exchanged for his work. The enigmatic street artist later rescinded his offer, calling it “ill-conceived and legally dubious.”

2) Sculpture Stolen Outside NY Studio

A sculpture by New York artist Paul Villinski was stolen from just outside the artist’s studio over the weekend. The sculpture, which was set to be installed in the atrium of the Taubman Museum of Art as part of an exhibition entitled “Farther,” was placed in a rental truck outside Villinski’s Long Island City studio, along with a few other works, on Saturday. The following morning Villinski went outside to find the truck and the artworks inside gone. The exhibition, which opens June 16th, will go on, but will feature some different works.

3) Art by Automated Bots on Twitter

If Twitter has become a stressful landscape for you, these art bots might be the relief you need. This article explores a small number of artistic Twitter bots that present the world with original, code-based works on a periodic basis from automated accounts. One of the bots, whose handle is @veilbymist, produces hazy, sweeping abstracts by drawing from, and randomizing, image code from a library of work by Icelandic artist Michael Christophersson. Another bot, @tiny_star_field, creates random arrangements of ASCII “stars.”

4) Artists Present a New Way of Looking at Data

In a similar vein, here’s a fascinating look at the way data becomes art in the information age. With so much information available, much of it in raw numeric form, creative ways of visualizing information have become an important currency. The artists in this article take it beyond the field of infographics, creating wonderfully aesthetic works of contemporary art using data about everything from weather patterns to film plots. Among those listed are Ryoji Ikeda, David McCandless, and various artists at Google.