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

DISCUSSION

Re: web evolution


and it's important, IMHO, to ask how the "evolution" of the web is
impacting "society" any differently than all the other paradigm
shifting communication technologies. this is not to take away from the
innovations taking place, but i'm wary (still) of the broad,
humanity-shifting language used to discuss computing - in both its
utopian and dystopic forms.
some US stats
http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/User_Demo_03.07.05.htm
http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/InternetAdoption.jpg
notice the plateau since 2002...

On Mar 31, 2005, at 2:21 PM, Geert Dekkers wrote:

> I'd like to contradict this -- one of the signs of the fact we (=
> humanity) haven't really started appreciating computer technology is
> that we're not thinking and forming our lives in analogy to these
> technologies. There may be a lot of readers of this list who know what
> a database is but outside of our barn I assure you there are very many
> who most certainly do not. We may have come a long way since '95 (or
> so) but I'd guess it will take a while still before a programming
> language gets put on a primary school curriculum.
> Cheers
> Geert
> (http://nznl.com)

DISCUSSION

RFID passports


* New US Passports Will Serve as Terrorist Beacons

The US State Department is pushing for what may be the
most misguided and dangerous travel "security" plan
ever proposed: putting insecure radio-frequency
identification (RFID) chips in all new US passports.
These chips would broadcast your name, date of birth,
nationality, unique passport number, and any other
personal information contained in the passport to anyone
with a compatible RFID reader. That's right - anyone,
not just passport control.

"The upshot of this is that travelers carrying around
RFID passports are broadcasting their identity,"
observes security expert Bruce Schneier. "It means
that anyone with a reader can learn that information,
without the passport holder's knowledge or consent.
It means that pickpockets, kidnappers, and terrorists
can easily - and surreptitiously - pick Americans or
nationals of other participating countries out of a
crowd."

Astonishingly, the State Department proposal abandons
even the most fundamental security protections. Why
broadcast passport data at all? With machine-readable
travel documents that require physical contact between
passport and reader, you can rest assured that your
passport will only be read when you intend to show it,
eliminating any risk of surreptitious reading. But the
State Department isn't only endorsing contactless RFID
technology for passports - it wants to broadcast your
personal information *in the clear.* In other words,
it wants to use digital signatures for authentication,
but doesn't want to encrypt or otherwise protect
passport data, claiming that the information isn't
worth protecting and that encryption would interfere
with "global interoperability."

This is especially disturbing in light of the fact
that safer options are readily available; the
government already uses a line-of-sight LaserCard
optical memory card that can't be read from your
wallet or purse for multiple-entry visa Border
Control Cards ("LaserVisas").

Privacy advocate Bill Scannell calls RFID-embedded
passports "terrorist beacons" - and that's precisely
what they'll become if we allow the State Department
to move ahead with this plan. The Department
is soliciting the public's input on the new passports,
and the time to act is now - the deadline for
submitting comments is this coming Monday, April 4.
Follow the links below to learn more and submit your
comments today:

US State Department Notice of Proposed Rule Making:
<http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlIDC6>
(Federal Register; please note that all comments
must include the Regulatory Identification Number,
RIN 1400-AB93, in the message subject line.)

Bruce Schneier: "RFID Passports":
<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/rfid_passports.html>

Bill Scannell's website: "RFID Kills":
<http://www.rfidkills.com>

Edward Hasbrouck: "Deadlines Loom for RFID Tracking Chips
in USA Passports":
<http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/000542.html>

DISCUSSION

DISCUSSION

Doug Henwood's radio show archive


http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html

shows:
March 24, 2005 Simon Head, author of an excellent roundup-on Wal-Mart
in the New York Review of Books (which prompted a two-page rebuttal
ad from Wal-Mart!) and of The New Ruthless Economy, on what's wrong
with Wal-Mart * three staffers from $pread magazine (Mary Christmas,
Eliyanna, and Mercedes) on sex work

March 17, 2005 Anatol Lieven, author of America Right or Wrong, on
Wolfowitz, "democracy," and Bush II * Jennifer Gordon, author of
Suburban Sweatshops, on organizing immigrant workers on Long Island

March 10, 2005 Artist and writer Sunny Taylor on art, disability, and
being censored by NPR * Naila Kabeer, author of The Power to Choose,
on women, development, and the unwisdom of labor standards in trade
agreements [Musical note: about halfway into the show is an excerpt
from "Democracy Suspends Relevance," by "Jed Whitaker," a piece that
includes samples from the interview with Slavoj Zizek broadcast in
April 2003.]

March 3, 2005 Tamara Draut of Demos on debt * Steve Fraser, author of
Every Man a Speculator, on the cultural and political history of Wall
Street in American life

and
- ---

* Chalmers Johnson on the U.S. empire
* Jagdish Bhatwati on globalization
* Bill Fletcher on war and peace
* Slavoj Zizek on war, imperialism, and fantasy
* Naomi Klein on Argentina and the global justice movement
* Susie Bright on sex and politics
* Anatol Lieven on Iraq
* Cynthia Enloe on masculinity in the Bush administration (and oil)
* Laura Flanders on Bushwomen
* Carlos Mejia, deserter from Iraq
* Jennifer Washburn on the corporate university
* Norman Kelley on the crisis in black politics
* Joseph Stiglitz on the IMF and the Wall St-Treasury axis
* Lisa Jervis on feminism & pop culture
* Joel Schalit on anti-Semitism
* Robert Fatton on Haiti
* Elizabeth Warren on bankruptcy
* Gary Younge on a foreign journalist's view of the U.S.
* Ursula Huws on work and why capitalism has avoided crisis
* Michael Albert on participatory economics (parecon)
* Marta Russell on the UN conference on disability
* Sara Roy on the Palestinian economy
* Michael Hardt on Empire (several times, the last June 2004)
* Walden Bello on the World Social Forum and alternative development
models