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 ...
SWITCH: Issue 22
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 ...
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.
[-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.state of the planet infographics
a small collection of beautiful information graphics documenting the current state of the planet.
see also gapminder & 3d data globe.
[seedmagazine.com]
Re: Surveillance of UCLA Professors
http://www.bruinalumni.com/advisoryboard/advisoryboard.html
here's a sample:
Linda Chavez:
Chavez was enrolled from 1970-71 in UCLA
Sharing Broadband to Increase Speed
that take to heart Benjamin Franklin's exhortation to hang together
rather than hang separately.
Both Mushroom Networks, which was started at the University of
California, San Diego, and WiBoost Inc., based in Seattle, have built
prototypes of simple wireless systems that make it possible for groups
of neighbors to share their D.S.L. or cable Internet connections.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/technology/16mushroom.html?
ex95067600&enDHff852e7864ef73&eiP90&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
CFP: Fair Trade
Calling All North American Artists
Outpost for Contemporary Art is pleased to invite artist proposals for
a group series called "Fair Trade" that will take place in Los Angeles
in Fall 2006 at sites appropriate to each accepted proposal.
The deadline for proposals has been extended to February 13, 2006
The goals for "Fair Trade" are:
1. To activate untraditional and/or underutilized space in Los Angeles
to promote artistic experimentation to a broader public
2. To develop positive and productive collaborations with artists to
produce projects that are speculative, intellectually challenging, and
risk-taking
3. To consider how the three nations of the North American continent
assert strong identities while simultaneously engaging in mutually
beneficial partnerships
As with Outpost's past collaborations with individual artists and
artist groups, appropriate sites will be found for each accepted
proposal we facilitate. Projects that are event-oriented and either
participatory in nature or geared toward activating public space will
be favored. All projects will be coordinated to occur over a set period
of time in Fall 2006 and to take place in untraditional spaces and/or
in collaboration with other organizations throughout Los Angeles.
Download guidelines at http://www.outpost-art.org/calendar.php
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Fwd: A USER'S GUIDE TO LOS ANGELES this Monday, January 16th at LACE
The Shed Research Institute presents
As a part of Civic Matters
A User
Re: Pardon, Your Dress Is Singing
On Jan 13, 2006, at 1:01 PM, Marjan van Mourik wrote:
>
>
> Think those mix tapes are passe? More like haute couture.
>
> Sound and visual artist Alyce Santoro has created Sonic Fabric, a
> cloth made from pre-recorded, recycled cassette tape combined with
> other fibers. Using a minimally hacked Walkman, the fabric becomes an
> audible reminder of its musical past.
>
> Sonic Fabric feels a bit like flexible plastic tarp, and is durable
> and hand-washable. Santoro's work has drawn lots of oohs and aahs, and
> is making waves in the design world.
>
> She came up with the idea in 2001 as a conceptual art project where
> she used strands of cassette tape to determine the direction of the
> wind, combining the idea of wind-activated prayers on Tibetan prayer
> flags with her childhood love of sailing.