Michael Takeo Magruder has examined the topic of media and society in his previous work. "A brief summation would be that my work is an exploration of the relationships which exist between the media and the individual/society," he explains. An American national living in the UK, Magruder holds a BA in Biology from the University of Virginia. He practices visual art through gallery exhibition as well as net art. "Conceptually it was my intention to deconstructively separate the news media itself into its constitute components (audio, image, text, and video) and then process-mutate the data streams into semi-abstract forms in which the original 'information' would only be partially discernable," says Magruder of <event>, "Once recombined, the elements would still constitute an empirical representation of the event, but one in which the perspective had been altered though its transformation into an aesthetic entity - thus allowing for a reinterpretation of the event concerned."

As net-art, <event> reaches the viewer through the same medium that it attempts to examine. Since the Internet is such a large vehicle of information delivery, a net-art piece functions as an effective way to explore the media from the inside. The images in <event> are different enough from a news report to avoid being confused with one, but still maintain enough resemblance to news media as to avoid confusion. The message can be clearly derived from the convoluted news reports that <event> produces. However, as net-art, <event> must eventually face a problem of becoming as valueless as the news reports it features. Thanks to the same progress in information technology methods that this art piece examines, <event> runs the danger of becoming outdated. As new technologies emerge, the delivery format, Flash, for this piece may become obsolete in as little as several years. The work in the future may be seen as technologically primitive. Its unique visual way of representing the news media could become as banal as the news media itself. If this happens, <event> will have fulfilled its vision of banality through information overload.

As a critique of information flow in modern society, <event> succeeds in underlining the low value of a news report. Since every event is reduced to a homogenous garble of data, the aesthetic value of each report becomes equal, as it is stripped of any valuable information. As the future brings us newer and faster ways to view information, <event> could offer a final insight by becoming lost in the trash yard of obsolete ways of communication, slipping into the banality it critiques.