Archive for November, 2006
Make’s open source gift guide
Our pals over at MAKE magazine have put together a fabulous list of open source gifts for geeks that encourage tinkering, riffing, remixing, building and tweaking:
There are hundreds of gift guides this holiday season filled with junk you can buy - but a lot of time you actually don’t own it, you can’t improve upon it, you can’t share it or make it better, you certainly can’t post the plans, schematics and source code either. We want to change that, we’ve put together our picks of interesting open source hardware projects, open source software, services and things that have the Maker-spirit of open source.
The list includes a DIY MP3 player, a wifi router running Linux, a high speed photography kit and even some open source beer (!). Make readers are adding to this one continuously, so be sure to add it to your holiday bookmarks.
Originally
from Lifehacker
reBlogged
by michael
on Nov 28, 2006, 12:00AM
The Captives
Jimmy Baker’s upcoming show in New York, The Captives, is rewiring found objects and familiar scenes to construct a flow of emotion and thought on the costs of progress and the relationship between war and technology.
Two of the works particularly called my attention:
In Ghost (picture on the left), two skeletal arms hold CD players. Each plays a disc with the image of an abductee upon it. On one CD, Baker plays a Slayer song on drums, while on the other Eminem rages against war. Both tracks are overlaid with news reports of Slayer and Eminem’s music being used in psychological torture sessions.
Controlled Room is a series of photographs, gleaned from Google Earth, of CIA detainment camps from across the globe. Evoking a war nerve center, the work not only documents sites of inhumanity, but it also explores the growing functionality of the Internet as a dynamic archive of human activity. The viewer becomes a voyeur, witness, and supervisor all at once.
Images of the works on view at Foxy Production, Chelsea, NYc, November 30 - January 6, 2007.
Via ArtCal.
Much in the same spirit, the work of Trevor Paglen who has spent the past five years collecting evidences (using what he calls limit telephotography strategies) of the existence of secret military bases. The US governement has recently acknowledged the existence (but not locations) of these secret prisons (often called Black sites) overseas.
The artist recently co-authored a book on CIA’s torture taxis, airplanes chartered to circumvent human rights laws by carrying out tortuous interrogations of bogusly-imprisoned and untried subjects, in air. His collaboration with the Institute for Applied Autonomy has led to artistic visualization of otherwise dire data sets.
Paglen’s videos, and images and other information, including a rare collection of patches and symbols worn by people working on secret military programs and forged signatures from the corporate documents of CIA front companies, are on view at New York’s Bellwether gallery, through December 23 (via rhizome.)
Originally
from we make money not art
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Nov 27, 2006, 10:18AM
The Second Life code performer
Second Life has been recently overwhelmed by a flood of “self-replicating” objects, dubbed “grey goo“, after the concept of out-of-control self-replicating nanotechnology.
It all started with gold rings that popped up in several areas of the virtual world. As users touched these rings, they starting replicating wildly and, eventually, the servers began creaking under the strain of the additional activity, forcing SL’s owners to block all logins but their own for 25 minutes. The event caused quite a stir in the blogosphere and at the Linden Lab HQ. Now, Grey Goo is also the name of a “code performance” by artist Gazira.
Gazira Babeli was born Second Life in March 2006. “Unlike other avatars,” explains curator and art critic Domenico Quaranta, “Gazira doesn’t pretend to be in a world made of objects and atoms, she’s aware to be in a world made of codes and to be part of the code herself.” Therefore it’s the essence of the 3-D virtual universe that she challenges with her “code performance”. She manipulates codes and shares them with the public on her website, under a Creative Commons licence.
Back in April, she invaded Ars Virtua, a gallery located in the synthetic world of Second Life, with pizzas flying and dancing on the sound of O’ sole mio. The performance was called –who would have guessed?– Singing Pizza.
In November, Gazira was back at Ars Virtua, attending the opening of 13 Most Beautiful Avatars, a series of portraits of Second Life “stars” made by Eva and Franco Mattes. At some point, bananas were raining over the gallery space. Not any kind of bananas though. These ones were exact copies of the bright yellow fruit that graced the Velvet Underground cover in 1967. Was Gazira challenging the Mattes in a kind of “who’s the pop-est” war? Does it mean that she loves pop art? Not so sure. Last May, she paid another homage to Warhol with a Second Soup performance that saw her fighting a formidable giant Campbell soup can. Her sole comment: “You Love Pop Art - Pop Art Hates You”.
Over the past couple of years, i’ve been observing the way artists were embracing, manipulating and subverting virtual worlds. I still have a lot to learn and read and see before regarding myself as an expert worth listening to so i’ll just speak with my guts: watch out for that Gazira, she has only started to rock your virtual boat.
Gazira’s work will be presented at the Pescara Electronic Artist Meeting (pretty good programme this year!), Pescara (It), 6-10 December, 2006.
Big big thanks to Domenico Quaranta. I owe you one!
Originally
from we make money not art
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Nov 27, 2006, 2:57PM
Volume
Volume at the V&A’s John Madejski Garden until january 28 (and more about it soon, when i’m in London.)
A collaboration between United Visual Artists + Robert Del Naja (aka 3D) of Massive Attack and Neil Davidge (as part of their music production company, one point six). Photo by John Adrian.
Originally
from we make money not art
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Nov 27, 2006, 8:56PM
Acura’s bid for a resonant brand
We hope every brand will resonate with
something in our culture, it’s
deep structure or recent churn. Brands that don’t resonate, don’t
flourish. They don’t sell. They die.
But sometimes we build
a brand so perfect it makes culture resonate in turn. The brand gives
off something clear and powerful and culture begins to stack around it
in a gravitational array. In their time, Coca-Cola, Mustang, Levi’s,
Jeep, iPod, all had this effect. They resonated till culture
began to hum.
The new campaign for Acura’s MDX is ambitious
in this way. Acura would like to bend the culture to its brand. The
point of this post is to ponder their chances.
It’s an urgent
matter. MDX sales are off 16% this year. This is partly due to the
downturn in the luxury SUV market. It’s also because, as Susie
Rossick, national advertising manager for Acura says, "it held on for
so many years, but it was time for a redesign."
So far, not so
good. The design of the MDX itself is disappointing. Jason Kavanagh
says his team drove the tester all over the Southwestern states
"without drawing a single murmur or sideways glance." MDX
competitors are well designed or at least conspicuous: Porsche Cayenne,
the BMW X5 and the Lexus RX 350. Resonant brands almost always begin
with brilliant design work.
So Acura has dug itself a hole. The
resonant brand will have to come from other parts of the marketing
proposition. Some from the West coast agency, Independent RPA, which
has built a campaign around the "advanced" theme. And Acura has given
them license to explore this in interesting and ambitious ways. As
Rossick puts it, the Acura has forsaken the numbing predictabilities of
the luxury car market, and positioning the brand for "independent
thinkers." Excellent.
Here’s copy for one Acura ad:
At
Acura, we help people advance from where they are to where they could
be. Advancing technology, advancing design, advancing life.
Now,
this is in fact a modernist theme, developed in our culture in the late
19th century, intensifying in the 20th century, dropping into the
mainstream around mid century. In fact, that’s what we call it, "mid
century" modernism.
Mid-century modernism helped confirm and
create a new way of thinking about time. It is characteristic of First
World, industrial, cultures to think of time as something open ended
(This marks them as very different from traditional, face to face
societies, who are inclined to think of time as something repetitive,
redundant, in a word, circular.) Western time is a bullet train. It
hurtles away from the present, taking us with it as it goes. In it’s
mid-century formula, individuals suppose that this future will be
better than the past. Both collectivities and individuals looked
forward with pleasure and anticipation. (I think the only place on the
planet that still entertains this concept of time is China. Ok,
there’s also a small community outside Bergen, Norway, and a guy in
Munich.)
At mid-century, everyone quickened to the theme.
Nations, companies, cities, individuals, were seen to be committed to
progress and charging into the future. The very idea of "forward
motion" was elevated from a technical description to a collective
enthusiasm, a cultural desideratum.
So when Acura claims "advance" as their theme they are tapping
something that exists in our culture. The question is whether it is
still active and compelling. Does Acura want to put its eggs in this
basket? Is this the culture of the moment?
The answer has to be
"no." The mid century notion of progress is now on life support. We
have lost our sense of optimism. We do feel ourselves to be hurtling
into the future, but we have our doubts about what will happen there.
Political and economic instabilities give us pause. The big question
is what will happen to the environment. How badly have we f*cked this
up?
Technology, so admired in the 1950s, is now seen as the
culprit. We suspect that our fate will depend upon a foot race between
the new technology and the effects of the old technology. It’s going
to be a squeaker. When Acura promises, "advancing
technology, advancing design, advancing life" our hearts no longer fill
with joyful anticipation. No, what we think is, "Geez, Louise, it’s
going to be a close one."
Happily,
there is another arrow in the quill of this campaign. A second Acura
ad (pictured above) shows a car moving down a country road with a city scape springing
up around it. The voice over intones, "connect to the modern world or escape from it"
Ok, that’s
better. The Acura is not just all-terrain. It is also all-time, just the thing when we want that "off modernism"
driving experience.
A third spot shows, in black and white, a a guy standing in a city street surrounded by tall buildings. He is standing still but moving forward as if on a mobile platform. People move around him in a blur. The voice over:
The world is advancing.
Faster and faster.
Are you in or are you out?
Introducing the all new passenger Acura MDX.
Technology takes it to whole new place.
Acura.
Technology.
Well, this is not good at all. Now we have to choose? Are we in or are we out? (I would have preferred, "Is you in or is you ain’t," but that’s probably just me.) Come on. This does nothing to diminish the anxieties of our moment. Any one of us could find ourselves "ain’t" at any moment.
The question, the test, for any brand that wishes to resonate is 1) what is the culture of the moment, and 2) how can contact be accomplished? For Acura, it is not clear that the target is well chosen, and the really bad news is contact was successful.
References
Kavanagh, Jason. 2006. More than meets the eye. Edmonds.com Insideline. November 15, 2006. here. [for quotes and prices]
McCracken, Grant. 2006. When Cars Could Fly. Culture and Consumption II. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Solman,
Gregory. 2006. Acura MDX Cites Advances in Next Campaign.
Brandweek. October 17, 2006. here. [for sales figures and Rossick quotes]
For examples of the MDX campaign, go the the RPA site here. (You will have to wrestle with the "time line" but this proves to be quite good fun once you get used to it.)
Originally
from This Blog Sits at the
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Nov 28, 2006, 2:21AM
Getting Political About Media Studies
Two conferences taking place in Europe, this weekend, trace new political movements in the field of media theory. Both consider the role of representation in entrenching or perpetrating war. ‘Under Fire’ (underfire.eyebeam.org) at Spain’s University of Seville, in partnership with the city’s International Biennial of Contemporary Art, focuses on war and armed conflict, with a special component on media (mis)representations of Islamic culture. At Genoa, Italy’s Villa Croce Contemporary Art Museum, a conference entitled ‘Resistant Maps: artistic actions in the interconnected urban territory’ looks to cartography, that medium long problematized by postmodern scholars, for answers to questions about shifting balances of agency. Taking as its premise the idea that the ‘representation of territory holds a historical role in the privileges of power,’ participants will consider the role of psychogeography, new locative media devices, and other means of redrawing lines in reclaiming contested space. The two conferences seem catalyzed by current struggles in the Middle East, and the lineup for both features some of the most active media ecologists and activists in the field, including Jordan Crandell, Friedrich Kittler, Ana Valdes, and Eyal Weizman at ‘Under Fire,’ and Vittore Baroni, Nicola Bucci, Brian Holmes, and Alessandro Ludovico, at ‘Resistant Maps.’ The latter also coincides with an exhibition featuring work by Cartografia Resistente, Giuseppe Chiari, Guy Debord, and others, bringing a deeper artistic context to intervention. All in all, the conferences reflect a refreshing movement towards engagement with contemporary political issues and an effort to think not only of how new media contributes to these issues, but also how it might adequately address them. - Marisa Olson
Originally
from Rhizome News
reBlogged
by michael
on Nov 24, 2006, 8:00AM
Signposts for the Week ending November 24, 2006
Design theory edition! (C’mon, it’s a long weekend (in the US anyway), and you’ve got time to read!)
Generation C sees Products as Verbs and needs Experience Hooks
Dan finishes his exhaustive review of What Things Do
You can’t design experiences, says Tom Guariello in UXmatters
How much of product design is about overcoming unwelcome intimiacy? asks Tim Leberecht on the frog blog
What does interaction design have to do with bikes? Find out in An Interview with Grant Petersen of Rivendell Bicycle Works
Josh Porter predicts The Death of Information Architecture
Mobile TV is about the personal experience, says Jan Chipchase
How do we design accountability into our interfaces? asks Jono DiCarlo
Why Designing Systems is Difficult
Bill DeRouchey presses the reset button
Originally
from Adaptive Path
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Nov 25, 2006, 2:13AM
Soviet Photomontages 1917-1953
A Visual Weapon. Soviet Photomontages 1917-1953 is a fascinating exhibition currently running at Passage de Retz in Paris. The collection tried to demonstrate how the changing style of Russian photomontages reflects changes in the political system and daily life in the Soviet Union from the 1917 Revolution until Stalin’s death in 1953. It wasn’t that clear to me in the absence of any explanation in the gallery beyond the title of the works shown but it definitely brightened my Saturday in the French capital.
The exhibition is divided in three parts: photomontages by great Soviet artists from the 1920s and ’30s (Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitsky, Gustav Klutsis, Piotr Galadzev, Varvara Stepanova, etc.); anonymous photomontages used in schools and factories; and photomontages dating from World War II.
Alexandre Rodtchenko, Syphilis, 1926 and Sergey Yakovlevic Senkin - Green plants for the workshops of the factories, 1931
The photomontage technique appeared in Russia and Europe during WWI and bloomed particularly at the Bauhaus in Weimar and in Moscow. The pioneers of the genre are Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitsky and Gustav Klutsis. Their work gets a boost after the October Revolution. Vladimir Lenin declares that photography is a super-powerful propaganda tool in a country where 70% of the population cannot read. During the civil war he even plans to give every soldier a camera in order to let them use it as a weapon able to demonstrate visually and precisely the political changes. The idea wasn’t pushed any further. It was technically tricky and the country was facing more ruins and bleak desolation than the State would admit. The photomontage would then be used to portrait a cheerful “reality” and bright future. The medium was perfect: it combined the realism of the photography with the revolutionary rhetoric
B. Klinch, May 1 in Moscow, 1936
In the early ’30s the themes and structures of photomontage are gradually modified. The composition featuring several characters (workers, soldiers, farmers, etc.) are turned into a homogenous human aggregate dominated by a unique figure: Joseph Stalin.
A.Jitomirski, Cover of the magazine “Ogonjok”, 1943 and Michael Dmitriev, On fire front, 1930s
During the WWII, the photomontage becomes the main propaganda weapon inside the country but also outside of it to demoralize the enemy. Jitomirski, for example, designed thousands of propaganda leaflets during the war. So many of them were thrown to German troops that Joseph Goebbels put the name of the artist on the list of the “Ennemies of the State” with a commentary that said “Find him and hang him!”
Because of the anti-cosmopolitan campaign, in 1949, many photographers lost the right to take any picture. And countless illustrated magazines had to close.
On view through January 7, 2007, at the Passage de Retz gallery in Paris.
My images on flickr. Mini-gallery on evene.fr and mdf.ru. Nice overview of the exhibition in Le Monde.
Image on top left corner: Soldiers of the Red Army by Varvana Stepanova, 1930.
Originally
from we make money not art
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Nov 21, 2006, 5:44PM
architectural-theory.pdf
The fellows at Archfarm have added to their series of architectural PDFs – unfortunately referred to as “fascicles” – with Peter Yeadon’s recent thoughts on nanotechnology. In that paper (download the fascicle), Yeadon introduces us to structures in “an age of molecular manipulation,” in which we’ll see “the dawn of nanofactories, robust molecular machine shops that harvest atoms from a reservoir of molecules to make sophisticated materials, devices, and systems one atom at a time.”
- What could such minuscule inventions possibly have to do with the making of architecture and cities? A nanometer is about a million times smaller than the diameter of a pinhead, and a thousand times smaller than the length of a typical bacterium… How could these tiny achievements possibly have any bearing on the work of an architect?
Read his fascicle and find out.
Archfarm has also published an interview with Sonia Cillari (download the PDF), about emotion and interactivity in architectural design, as well as Usman Haque’s rough guide to “open source architecture” (PDF), published last summer.
The series veers a tiny bit too close to the world of Deleuzian eyeglasses and trendy jargon, I have to say, but it’s a great format and I’ll be interested to see where they go next. For instance, might I humbly recommend they publish The Pruned Guide to Futurist Geo-Hydrology… That, or BLDGBLOG will start its own series of PDFs – and then everyone can stare in awe at my fascicles.
Originally
from BLDGBLOG
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Nov 21, 2006, 9:29PM
Art for Everyone
Meant as a response to how art ceases to exist if it is produced in mass quatities, The Shape project, as it is called, is artist Allan McCollum’s system of producing 31 billion unique graphic shapes – each one representing a single human being on this planet when the population growth peaks in 2050.
The ‘system’ used to create the pieces is a collection of shapes that can be combined and re-combined into several unique results. So far, Allan has created over 200 million versions of them and hopes to re-use them for creative experimentation for other design and art projects.
related links
Allan McCollum’s The Shape Project
Originally
from sensoryimpact.com
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Nov 23, 2006, 11:52PM
