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: new name for Net Art News?


i think the ones below are getting somewhere interesting...

sprout out (abe)

pop3 (abe)

artHive (Dirk)

Rhizomedia (from Jack Stenner)

i think i'm kinda into "Rhizomedia"
ryan

On Dec 5, 2005, at 9:53 AM, abe linkoln wrote:

>
> pop3
>
>
>> (the) hamster gazette
>> m.
>>> (the) sprout out

DISCUSSION

Re: new name for Net Art News?


I like Pall's suggestion for using "tomorrow"...
but i don't like the avant garde associations of being "ahead" as a
qualifier... ahead of what exactly?
how about something like "Art Connections" (with the "media" or not)
since most of the pieces are really about introducing then linking
people to work or more info about work?
Or running with Marc's "radar" concept: "Art Blips" (again, with or w/o
"media")
?
ryan

On Dec 4, 2005, at 10:38 PM, Pall Thayer wrote:

> I agree that "Media Art Today" sounds good but we can go a step
> further and call it, "Media Art Tomorrow". I think we have to stop
> there though, "Media Art Next Week" is just too long.
>
> Or, what say we put ourselves on top of everything and call it "Art
> Tomorrow". That actually has a cool ring to it. I've always disliked
> the terms "media art" (what art is NOT "media art"?) and "new media
> art" (what's so new about media that's been around for decades?).

DISCUSSION

Fwd: dorkbot at machine saturday afternoon 1pm


Begin forwarded message:
>
> Hello,
>
> We're pleased to inform you Machine will be hosting the first of a
> regular monthly meeting of Dorkbot this Saturday afternoon at 1pm.
>
> For those not familar, Dorkbot is a show and tell get together for
> people interested in doing strange things with electricity. It's
> casual, mildly educational, free, and a good way to meet fellow
> electronics dorks. This meeting features gps/mobile device gaming,
> TI99/4a circuit bending, and a robotic spherical lens camera 3D
> invention. More details at the end of the email.
>
> Non-dorks also welcome.
>
> love,
>
> Machine.
>
> Dorkbot meeting
> Saturday Dec 3rd, 1pm
> 1200D North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles, CA 90026
> 213-483-8761
> http://www.machineproject.com
> http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotsocal/
>
> presenters:
>
> Julian Bleecker & Peter Brinson: Vis-a-Vis Games
> http://www.visavisgames.org/
> We're developing a new kind of game experience using outdoor
> viewable mobile devices that anticipate the near-future of
> pervasive electronic gaming. These devices range in size from
> about that of a tiny laptop, to the size of a small book. We
> then configure these portable mobile devices with a GPS sensor
> that measure your location in the real world, and orientation
> sensors that can tell precisely where you're looking. This
> combination makes for designs that represent a true innovation
> in game play. Vis-a-Vis Games is an enterprise of the Mobile
> and Pervasive Lab at the University of Southern California.
>
> //--------------------
>
> Phil Stearns: TI99/4a Circuit Bending
> Through "circuit bending" and creative analog to digital
> switching, I've managed to turn a friendly TI99/4a computer (c
> 1981) into a pixel-spewing entity that likes to feed on sound
> waves and spit out garbled, colorful, and highly pixelated
> images in realtime.A The device was born out of a desire to
> explore the artistic possibilities of what happens when our
> discarded technology is forcefully but carefully coaxed into
> modes of failure.
>
> //--------------------
>
> Jay Mark Johnson: Robotic Spherical Lens Camera 3D Invention
> http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0425323/
> Jay Mark Johnson will be presenting a robotic camera with a
> spherical lens that takes High Dynamic Range images and
> converts them to lighting rigs to be used in 3D applications
> for image based rendering. He also has some "top secret" stuff
> he's doing with the camera, which he may be talking about.
> He's worked on a pile of movies, including "A Day Withought a
> Mexican", "Nomad", "The Matrix" and "Titanic".

DISCUSSION

Lynn Hershman article in today's NYT


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/arts/design/27fink.html?
pagewanted=print

November 27, 2005
Pardon Me, but the Art Is Mouthing Off
By JORI FINKEL

IT was late in the day, rain was streaking the windows of a converted
warehouse in San Francisco and the robot was not behaving. Represented
by a talking head on a flat-screen monitor, and equipped with
voice-recognition software, the artificial intelligence computer -
known as DiNA - was designed to chat with visitors about current
affairs. She is supposed to be a political animal, or more precisely,
machine. But at this point in early November, just a few weeks before
making her New York debut, she sounded rather clueless. When asked her
opinion of the war in Iraq, she called it a "silly question." When
asked whether she supported President Bush, she didn't recognize his
name.

The robot's programmer, Colin Klingman, was taken aback. "She has a lot
to say on Bush, believe me," he said. "I'll have to check the code."

The robot's creator, on the other hand, seemed unfazed. "She still has
a lot to learn," said Lynn Hershman Leeson, the 64-year-old
digital-media artist. "And she's not yet connected to the Internet,
where she can gather information on anything from the mayor of Pasadena
to the capital of Pakistan."

An animated exchange with the programmer followed: could that Internet
integration happen in time for DiNA's New York debut at Bitforms
gallery? Ms. Hershman Leeson calmly insisted it was important. The
programmer relented: "Well, then, that's it. Whatever Lynn says will
happen, will happen."

The next day, relaxing on a brown couch in her studio, Ms. Hershman
Leeson talked about what it was like to be an artist forever bumping up
against the limits of technology. "I'm always trying to do something
that doesn't exist yet," she said. "Voice recognition for DiNA, for
example - everyone said that we couldn't do it, that the technology
wasn't far enough along. But I've learned over the years that you can
never stop at the first no."

Steve Dietz, who showed her work at the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis when he was curator of new media there, said: "Like most
great artists, Lynn is amazingly tenacious. Anyone can have a sci-fi
imagination and daydream about what is possible, but not everyone has
the doggedness and determination to make it happen."

For more than 30 years, she has made artwork across many platforms -
from painting, photography and performance art to video, laserdisc,
DVD, Web-based work and interactive sculpture. She has also made two
feature-length films: "Conceiving Ada," in 1997, and "Teknolust," in
2002. Like the rest of her work, they explore mind-bending questions
about reality and identity. How can we tell in an age of digital and
genetic sampling what is real? Can another mode of existence become
more real or powerful than ours? Does a robot have its own personality?
Does a clone have its own identity?

Such interests anticipated popular Hollywood themes, not to mention the
obsessions of the video game industry, and art historians have begun to
credit her as a pioneer. But until recently the technology has been
recalcitrant. And so has the art world.

"Lynn should be much better known than she is," Mr. Dietz said. "Part
of the problem is that she started in the 70's, when so many women
artists were fighting an uphill battle for recognition. And since then
she's been working with technology, which has more support from museums
in Europe than the U.S." He pointed out that her biggest awards have
come from Germany.

Ms. Hershman Leeson said: "When I started making interactive art during
the 1980's, it didn't really exist as a genre. There were no grants, no
collectors, no audience and no language for describing it. But now,
more and more, it's considered a valid art form."

And now it appears that she is finally receiving her due. The
University of California Press has just published an anthology, 10
years in the making, that documents her various projects in critical
essays and samples them on a DVD. "Hershmanlandia," her first American
museum retrospective, opened earlier this month at the Henry Art
Gallery in Seattle, covering work from the 1970's to today. A survey of
recent photographs opened on Nov. 23 at her longtime San Francisco
gallery, Paule Anglim. And "Selected Works: 1976 - 2005" opens at
Bitforms on Dec. 10, with an appearance by DiNA and prints from her
series "Phantom Limbs" (1986-94), among others.

DiNA first arrived on the scene in September 2004 as part of a group
show in Paris, where visitors could communicate with her only through a
keyboard. Now, she has evolved to speech recognition, as has her
predecessor, Ruby, an older robot in the Seattle retrospective who
originated as a character in "Teknolust."

The two robots look alike: they both have the face of the actress Tilda
Swinton, who starred in the film. But they don't think alike. Ms.
Hershman Leeson says DiNA is smarter than Ruby, containing twice as
much programming code; Ruby is more likely to make wild leaps in logic.

"Men seem to like Ruby more," she added. "She's funnier and quirkier,
and they are put off by DiNA's intelligence."

The artist has been exploring artificial intelligence and virtual
reality of one sort or another since she was a student. While
completing her master's in art at San Francisco State in the early
1970's, Ms. Hershman Leeson was frustrated by her lack of recognition.
So she began writing reviews of her own work and publishing them, under
pseudonyms in local newspapers. Another early project involved taking a
room at the Dante Hotel in San Francisco and spreading out personal
items - books, cosmetics, clothes - to create portraits of imaginary
inhabitants.

Then she conjured up Roberta Breitmore, her most sustained character
study. From 1974 to 1978, while Ms. Hershman Leeson was a wife and
mother trying to make it in San Francisco as an artist, Roberta was a
divorced woman new to town, trying to make it on her own. The artist
brought her to life by wearing a blond wig, applying heavy makeup and
adopting a set of rather depressive tendencies.

Other performance artists in the 1970's were also creating characters
to untangle the knots of identity and gender, but Roberta was no
one-act wonder. She had her own slumped posture, slow gait, colorful
outfit, loopy handwriting, odd jobs and romantic encounters. In time,
Roberta acquired a driver's license, two credit cards and her own
apartment.

"Everyone thought I was crazy," the artist said. "But I rented Roberta
an apartment across the street from my house. I just didn't feel her
life would be complete without her own space."

Still, being Roberta was not easy. She went to Weight Watchers and
gained weight. She met a man through a personal ad who tried to recruit
her into a prostitution ring. Ms. Hershman Leeson also found it hard to
sit through psychoanalysis as someone else when "my marriage was ending
and I had so much going on that I could have really used the therapy
myself."

By the third year, she asked other women to become Roberta to see if
they would attract more positive experiences. The first was Kristine
Stiles, then a graduate student at the University of California at
Berkeley and now a professor of art history at Duke University. Going
out on the town as Roberta was rather unsettling, Ms. Stiles recalled:
"The persona of Roberta was such a part of Lynn's psychological makeup,
it felt like I was assuming someone else's pathology."

Still, Ms. Hershman Leeson documented the project like a work of art.
She kept letters written to and from Roberta. She had surveillance
photographs taken of Roberta in her various escapades, and had the
comic-book artist Spain Rodriguez dramatize a few memorable episodes,
including the brush with the prostitution ring. Ultimately, after
Roberta was "exorcised" in an elaborate ritual, the project was
exhibited at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. The show ended with
a Roberta lookalike contest that drew a sizable crowd, mainly gay men.

Since then, Roberta has fallen out of the spotlight. "Hardly anybody
today knows the richness of this project," said Robin Held, who curated
the Henry Art Gallery retrospective. "And it could not be more
important in terms of Lynn's practice - from her preoccupation with the
dispersal of identity over different bodies to her interest in the
shifting boundaries between real and virtual. Roberta was a sketch for
everything to come."

Indeed, the artist soon found in computers and new technology other
means to "test the edges of reality." In 1984, she completed Lorna,
recognized today as the first interactive laserdisc by an artist.
"Lorna was originally conceived of as a game," the artist explained.
"If you freeze the right frame, you can find an airline ticket hidden
inside her body that I was offering as a prize." But like Roberta,
Lorna doubled as a portrait of a rather sad woman - "agoraphobic,
lonely, alienated" - whose adventures were directed by remote control.

Another pivotal year was 1993, when the Napa Valley winemaker Donald
Hess bought the entire Roberta archives, some 300 images and documents.
That was also the year the artist went online for the first time. She
saw rather quickly the Internet's power for hyperconnectivity and
imagined spreading a kind of computer virus that she called an
antibody. But the law stood in her way, so the virus notion evolved
into plans for a self-replicating automaton.

This idea for the robot inspired her to write and direct "Teknolust."
"Not that financing a movie is easy, but it's really hard to get
funding to a make a robot that nobody has seen," she explained.

Both of her movies, which won awards on the film festival circuit, are
feminist sci-fi adventures. "Conceiving Ada" is a fantasy about
bringing Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's brilliant daughter, back to life
through computer programming - the language she helped to invent.
"Teknolust" tells the story of a geeky female biogeneticist who uses
her own DNA to create three computer-bred clones, rather personable and
sexy cyborgs named Marinne, Olive and Ruby. Ms. Swinton, who played all
four characters in the movie, said: " 'Teknolust' is either about a
sociopath who has a closet full of wigs or about something that Lynn
and I both play with all the time - the fact that no one has a stable
identity, we are many things at once."

What does she think of the robots who have her face? "They're like
sisters to me," she said.

The movies received some withering reviews, but the artist's supporters
don't seem to mind. "I'm fascinated by the way Lynn's films and art are
coming together," said Ms. Held, the Seattle curator, noting that the
film version of Ruby gave birth to a Web portal, which gave birth to
the stand-alone robot now in Seattle, which gave birth to the DiNA
robot heading to New York. And, of course, Roberta, that early
experiment in artificial intelligence and self-replication, could be
considered the mother of them all.

DISCUSSION

Fwd: An Art Auction to Benefit Sylvia Rivera Law Project


for people in/near NYC:

Begin forwarded message:

> Small Works for Big Change
> Art Auction Benefiting the Work of the Sylvia Rivera
> Law Project
> Orchard Street Gallery
> 47 Orchard Street, NYC @ Grand St.
> Opening with DJ spinning: Saturday, December 3, 6-8pm
> Auction Event: Sunday, December 4, 4-9pm
> Silent Auction: 4-8pm
>
> This December the Sylvia Rivera Law Project will be
> auctioning off exciting works of art to raise funds to
> support the project's fight for gender
> self-determination.
>
> The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) provides free
> legal services to low-income transgender communities
> and transgender communities of color. They also
> educate the public about trans oppression and support
> community organizing work that fights for the rights
> of their community. SRLP has assisted over 350 clients
> facing violence and discrimination in prisons,
> juvenile justice facilities, shelters, educational
> institutions and at the hands of the police since its
> inception in 2003. SRLP trains judges, health
> professionals, and other community organizations on
> how to provide respectful and affirming services. The
> most pressing issue faced daily at SRLP is the vast
> amount community members who are unable to access the
> most basic of services to meet the most vital of needs
> (such as shelter, health care, and education) because
> of rampant discrimination and violence.
>
> The art auction will be held at the Orchard Street
> Gallery at 139 Orchard Street on December 4, 2005.
> There will be a opening of the works from 6-8pm on
> December 3 with a featured DJ spinning. The main event
> on Sunday, December 4 will start at 4pm with a preview
> and silent auction of over 30 small works from a
> variety of artists including local artists, artwork by
> SRLP clients, and renowned artists. The silent auction
> closes at 8:00pm, so don't miss out on the bidding
> action. Artist's work to be featured at this event
> include William Wegman, Patty Chang, Deborah Edmeades,
> Richard Hell, Annie Sprinkle, Glenn Ligon, Andrea
> Geyer, Moyra Davey, Christy Gast, Hank O'Neal, Gregg
> Bordowitz, Mo Cassanova, Zoe Bissell, Sam Gordon,
> Emily Riedman, Allen Frame, Robert Melee, Any Sillman,
> Valerie Shaff, Yvonne Rainer, Klara Hobza, Sara
> Saltzman, Ulrike Mueller, A.L. Steiner, Josh Faught,
> Leah DeVun, Emily Roysdon, Felicia Murray, Matt
> Keegan, Zackary Drucker, and more! Don't miss a
> special performance by Def Jam poet Regie Cabico! The
> event will also include small crafts, artist books and
> limited edition silkscreen t-shirts for sale. This is
> really amazing work for a great cause!
>
> All proceeds will go towards supporting the work of
> the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. For more information
> about the event or to make a donation to SRLP please
> contact Ryder Diaz at (212) 337-8550. To make a
> donation to SRLP please visit www.srlp.org or send a
> check to 822 8th Ave., 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10001.