ryan griffis
Since 2002
Works in United States of America

ARTBASE (3)
PORTFOLIO (1)
BIO
Ryan Griffis currently teaches new media art at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He often works under the name Temporary Travel Office and collaborates with many other writers, artists, activists and interesting people in the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor.
The Temporary Travel Office produces a variety of services relating to tourism and technology aimed at exploring the non-rational connections existing between public and private spaces. The Travel Office has operated in a variety of locations, including Missouri, Chicago, Southern California and Norway.

Is MySpace a Place?


Networked Performance pointed me toward an interview (download in PDF)with Networked Publics speaker Henry Jenkins and Networked Publics friend danah boyd about Myspace. The site, popular with teenagers, has become increasingly controversial as parents and the press raise concerns about the openness of information on the site and the vulnerability this supposedly poses to predators (Henry points out that only .1% of abductions are by strangers) and the behavior of teens towards each other (certainly nothing new, only now in persistent form). In another essay on Identity Production in Networked Culture, danah suggests that Myspace is popular not only because the technology makes new forms of interaction possible, but because older hang-outs such as the mall and the convenience store are prohibiting teens from congregating and roller rinks and burger joints are disappearing.

This begs the question, is Myspace media or is it space? Architecture theorists have long had this thorn in their side. "This will kill that," wrote Victor Hugo with respect to the book and the building. In the early 1990s, concern about a dwindling public culture and the character of late twentieth century urban space led us to investigate Jürgen Habermas's idea of the public sphere. But the public sphere, for Habermas is a forum, something that, for the most part, emerges in media and in the institutions of the state:

The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor. The medium of this political confrontation was peculiar and without historical precedent: people's ...

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SWITCH: Issue 22



Carlos Castellanos:

HI everyone. Just wanted to announce the new issue of SWITCH:

SWITCH : The online New Media Art Journal of the CADRE Laboratory for
New Media at San Jose State University

http://switch.sjsu.edu switch@cadre.sjsu.edu

SWITCH Journal is proud to announce the launch of Issue 22: A Special
Preview Edition to ISEA 2006/ ZeroOne San Jose.

As San Jose State University and the CADRE Laboratory are serving as
the academic host for the ZeroOne San Jose /ISEA 2006 Symposium,
SWITCH has dedicated itself to serving as an official media
correspondent of the Festival and Symposium. SWITCH has focused the
past three issues of publication prior to ZeroOne San Jose/ISEA2006
on publishing content reflecting on the themes of the symposium. Our
editorial staff has interviewed and reported on artists, theorists,
and practitioners interested in the intersections of Art & Technology
as related to the themes of ZeroOne San Jose/ ISEA 2006. While some
of those featured in SWITCH are part of the festival and symposium,
others provide a complimentary perspective.

Issue 22 focuses on the intersections of CADRE and ZeroOne San Jose/
ISEA 2006. Over the past year, students at the CADRE Laboratory for
New Media have been working intensely with artists on two different
residency projects for the festival – “Social Networking” with Antoni
Muntadas and the City as Interface Residency, “Karaoke Ice” with
Nancy Nowacek, Marina Zurkow & Katie Salen. Carlos Castellanos,
James Morgan, Aaron Siegel, all give us a sneak preview of their
projects which will be featured at the ISEA 2006 exhibition. Alumni
Sheila Malone introduces ex_XX:: post position, an exhibition
celebrating the 20th anniversary of the CADRE Institute that will run
as a parallel exhibition to ZeroOne San Jose/ ISEA 2006. LeE
Montgomery provides a preview of NPR (Neighborhood Public Radio)
presence at ...

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Art & Mapping



The North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) has released a special issue of their journal, Cartographic Perspectives:
Art and Mapping Issue 53, Winter 2006 Edited by Denis Wood and and John Krygier Price: $25
The issue includes articles by kanarinka, Denis Wood, Dalia Varanka and John Krygier, and an extensive catalogue of map artists compiled by Denis Wood.

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[-empyre-] Liquid Narrative for June 2006


Christina McPhee:

hi all, I am not sure we got this message out to Rhizome!

Please join our guests this month, Dene Grigar (US), Jim Barrett
(AU/SE), Lucio Santaella (BR), and Sergio Basbaum (BR) , with
moderator Marcus Bastos (BR), for a spirited discussion of "Liquid
Narratives" ----- digital media story telling with a dash, perhaps,
of 'aura' .

Here's the intro from Marcus:

The topic of June at the - empyre - mailing list will be Liquid Narratives. The concept of 'liquid narrative' is interesting in that it allows to think about the unfoldings of contemporary languages beyond tech achievements, by relating user controlled applications with formats such as the essay (as described by Adorno in "Der Essay als Form", The essay as a form) and procedures related to the figure of the narrator (as described by Benjamin in his writings about Nikolai Leskov). Both authors are accute critics of modern culture, but a lot of his ideas can be expanded towards contemporary culture. As a matter of fact, one of the main concerns in Benjamin's essay is a description of how the rise of modernism happens on account of an increasing nprivilege of information over knowledge, which is even more intense nowadays. To understand this proposal, it is important to remember how Benjamin distinguishes between an oral oriented knowledge, that results from 'an experience that goes from person to person' and is sometimes anonymous, from the information and authoritative oriented print culture. One of the aspects of this discussion is how contemporary networked culture rescues this 'person to person' dimension, given the distributed and non-authoritative procedures that technologies such as the GPS, mobile phones and others stimulate.

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state of the planet infographics


stateoftheplanet.jpg
a small collection of beautiful information graphics documenting the current state of the planet.
see also gapminder & 3d data globe.
[seedmagazine.com]

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Discussions (909) Opportunities (8) Events (16) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Re: Re: The Myth of Meritocracy in Fine Arts - to Michael


> I'm living a perfectly good life here. So, relax: Deconstruction does
> not
> lead to chaos. You'll live your life just the same way you live your
> life
> now. You'll build your houses based on assumptions. The only
> difference is
> that you would not have any deep attachments to those assumptions,
> because
> you have been deconstructed.

quite the contrary... i wouldn't be interested in a critique of deconstruction as such. it is its conservative element that i want to see dissected. it's the "relax: deconstruction does not lead to chaos" element that i'm interested in watching. right now chaos seems liberating if i consider the current situation stable.
just my assumptions - sorry to reply to a personal note.
best,
ryan

DISCUSSION

Re: The Myth of Meritocracy in Fine Arts - addendum


hi Rob et al,

> Relativism is a "myth", but like any myth it can be a useful one.
> Recognising that one's position is contingent does not prevent one
> from maintaining that position. But recognising that one's position
> relies on suspect socio-economic-political "givens" may require action
> if one is to remain honest and the conditions of one's practice are to
> remain realistic.

This sounds like a real politik take over of culture to me. How does one determine honesty and realism without looking at how any particular version of reality benefits (or not) certain people. This is neither relativism, nor deconstruction (proper) necessarily. If economics (the Market) can be accepted as a myth (what isn't according to Joseph Campbell), then why not aesthetics? and aren't myths/worldviews merely tools for ordering experience to serve whatever interests are creating them? What makes some 'givens' suspect and not others?
best,
ryan

DISCUSSION

Re: The Myth of Meritocracy in Fine Arts


whoa - lots of directions in this argument...
anyway, i wanted to riff off of Dyske's responses and Rob's counter responses - which i'm not sure i quite get - you mean the snow doesn't effect how full my iPod is ;)
anyway, i do understand the empircist drive that says there is no X (why art is successful) but we can 'see' Y (what is mainstream/makes money/has a big house). but this seems a conservative truism (and the use of philisophical abstract logic seems absurd here btw)? if you're satified with the status quo, it's all good. sure i can say bill gates and matthew barney are successful. so what? this is stating the obvious as i see it, and stating it in a frank stella kinda way "what you see is what you get." but why write that barney is successful because he is successful? are you saying that there are no reasons that can be even attempted to be understood to explain the success (either cultural or economic - and of course the overlaps)? so even patron studies have nothing to gain here?
you don't have to get all metaphysical or moralistic to see the surface as layered. Dyske's early mention of insider networks and such as a vehicle for upward mobility in art is one example - that can be looked at, and it can be explored 'beyond' the truism of success. i don't understand why we're trying to bypass the study of rhetoric and social sciences here (with all their problems). art's not in its own isolated world.

DISCUSSION

FWD: Notes on recent Gates lecture


Notes below by Nathan Martin, Carbon Defense League
http://www.carbondefense.org
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"We're Writing Too Much Code"

Bill Gates Speaks About Context, Abstract Code, and
Software's Future
at
Carnegie Mellon University

Feb 25, 2004

11:30 AM

Fifteen minutes ago I was released from a lecture at
Carnegie Mellon by
the
super-billionaire Bill Gates. I thought it apt that I
compose this
series of
notes using Microsoft Word on my office copy of
Microsoft Windows XP
and
send it off as an email using Microsoft Outlook.
Unfortunately the
ubiquitous computing that Bill touted was all branded
Microsoft.

These are primarily a set of lecture notes I am
copying and expanding
on. I
did not bring a notebook or notepad with me to the
lecture so these are
being copied from a torn up CD sleeve I was given
outside the lecture
hall
containing a distribution of Knoppix (a bootable Linux
CD). They might
be
interesting to some of you since well Bill Gates
doesn't speak at
universities that often to the "future innovators of
computer science,"

Or better the future employees of Microsoft since his
visit comes the
day
after a Career Fair for CMU undergrads was held in the
same building as
Bill
's lecture.

Bill seemed most interested, as many of us are, in the
possibilities
associated with wireless. In particular he spoke of
experiments with FM
sideband, where signals piggyback off existing
frequencies. He talked
about
ad hoc networks, wi-mesh, and p2p configurations. He
spoke about the
potential for this use and rural areas and areas with
highly limited
access.
"Low cost computing is about empowerment," said Bill
in reference to
his won
discussion about issues of access. He stressed the
overall importance
of
productivity and talked of his own interest in
expanding opportunities
as
part of the global expansion that has been going on
the past thirty
years.
These were his social agendas that were mixed in
throughout the one
hour
lecture with showcases of new devices and explanations
of Microsoft R &
D.
Primarily he was touting Microsoft's philanthropic
efforts, which are
numerous but pale in comparison to the company's
profit margin.

He talked about p2p networks and file sharing in
particular. He spoke
highly
of them in fact and was in support of the potential
for amazing and
legal
use to further access and pervasive networking. He
spoke of the need
for a
system that supports the artists but creates a
filetype of usage that
is
across platform rather than proprietary. Bill focused
much of the
lecture on
ubiquitous computing being able to have your media on
demand on any
device
anywhere you are. He showed some new devices but spoke
of course of
bandwidth limitations being the biggest hurdle in that
field.

The other major hurdle stopping media from flying
through the air more
regularly are the issues around trustworthy computing.
Some of the
systems
he proposed to push ahead trustworthy computing are
obviously taken
from
many of the web experiments in friend schemes and peer
approval ratings
systems we have seen. He spoke of course of the
internet as a democracy
(do
people still believe this rhetoric?). He spoke of one
idea of search
engines
that would return content rated by a friend or a
friend of a friend.
That we
would all be willing to rate movies, media, web sites
is maybe a bit
far
fetched. This does relate to some smaller networks we
see emerging but
is
not a breakthrough. Interesting though to my own work
and much of what
I see
others involved in are these small communities and
primarily
experimental
databases. Bill spoke a lot about databases. He has
yet to look past
this
model, which admittedly neither have I so let's go
with it. Bill
exclaimed
that there is too much code. Programmers are producing
low level code
that
will never cooperate and that this is why there are
numerous similar
projects going on that cannot share as much as they
would benefit from
sharing. This does not mean he supported Linux or
FreeBSD or open
source
strategies with this statement since he did expand on
his statement to
declare the need for interesting and contextual visual
interfaces. He
was
calling for what he called "abstract code." He saw
this being supported
by
accepted standards.

The most interesting area of the lecture was around
this concept of
contextual information. He showed some UI experiments
done at Microsoft
around creating contextual information: images
searchable for faces,
choosing day or night photos, text searching in
movies, etc. This
information could be visualized in various 3D ways on
the screen. He
talked
about his continued support for eventual fruition of
good speech
recognition
and image recognition and spoke of the triumphs so far
in text
recognition.
This all related to his concept for software that
enables an
intelligent and
quick database. An intelligent database would be able
to relate and
organize
what he said within this decade would be a lifetime of
media for each
individual user depending on what we want and when. A
scheduler based
on
this system might know where we are and what device we
have and how
information should be ideally distributed to you
depending on your
habits -
your context. Humans understand context - software as
yet does not.
This is
where he saw the future of software coming from,
contextual software
and
data management. Creating programming environments
that are not about
code
but are useable graphically and based on some
standards as well as
interfaces to media that are across device, have some
intelligence, and
learn based on users habits, and human contexts. This
is reiterating a
lot
of the research I had seen in SF in 2000/2001 working
in a research
environment at a design firm. This was a reiteration
of the promises of
ubiquitous or pervasive computing which have yet to
fully come to
fruition.
However, what Bill was right about is the need for
existing management
systems that organize our expanding media collections
according to our
desires and preferences - not just date and filetype.
He spoke of
cameras
that would upload images to a server and stamp them
with time as well
as GPS
coordinates. He demanded software that was about
priorities and
contexts and
somehow Microsoft is the coming that will bring this
all to us, and the
world.

Bill talked a bit about the future of AI and its uses
and laughed
through a
description of the robotic vacuum cleaner, the only
commercial device
on the
market that uses AI (according to Bill and I have no
data to challenge
this). I only throw this in as a member of my own
collective is
involved in
research specifically about a community of hackers
that mod such
devices.

Most interestingly, Bill seemed most excited about the
connection
between
mobile gadgets, WiFi ad hoc networks, and friend
networks - not to
mention
blogs, Wikis, etc.. He talked about these things
working together to
create
a comment and approval system that would then solve
many issues with
trustworthy computing (as long as SMTP standards are
trashed as well).
Unfortunately for me, an artist who scammed a ticket
into the event,
Bill
explained that all of these innovations will come from
CS and EE. He
said
that the two areas of research that will improve the
world in this
decade
are CS/EE and Biology/Biotech. He laughed about how
these areas
determine
the focus of other areas like law practice, etc. He
also talked about
the
need for cross discipline working but several times
said that the real
innovations will come from students with a CS
background. Perhaps Bill
should sponsor some artist's grant programs? So all of
you interesting
people that I know and don't know doing amazing
research and
experimentation - beware Microsoft has similar
interests and they are
cutthroat. When I worked for Palm Computing two
Microsoft spies were
arrested on the 3Com campus. If they are going after
Palm, they will
likely
be showing up at media arts events. With so much work
in the media arts
or
tactical media or locative media or whatever you call
it relating to
friend
approval schemes, GPS, mapping, location, UI
experimentation, etc, we
are
likely to see that invasion soon if not already. Watch
your back - Bill
might steal your ideas!

Nathan Martin

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DISCUSSION