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 ...

READ ON »


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 ...

READ ON »


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.

READ ON »


[-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.

READ ON »


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]

READ ON »



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

Can the FBI Monitor Your Web Browsing Without a Warrant?


* Can the FBI Monitor Your Web Browsing Without a Warrant?

EFF Demands Answers from DOJ about PATRIOT Act Surveillance

Washington, DC - Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request
with the FBI and other offices of the US Department of
Justice, seeking the release of documents that would reveal
whether the government has been using the USA PATRIOT Act
to spy on Internet users' reading habits without a search
warrant.

At issue is PATRIOT Section 216, which expanded the
government's authority to conduct surveillance in criminal
investigations using pen registers or trap and trace
devices ("pen-traps"). Pen-traps collect information about
the numbers dialed on a telephone but do not record the
actual content of phone conversations. Because of this
limitation, court orders authorizing pen-trap surveillance
are easy to get - instead of having to show probable
cause, the government need only certify relevance to its
investigation. Also, the government never has to inform
people that they are or were the subjects of pen-trap
surveillance.

PATRIOT expanded pen-traps to include devices that monitor
Internet communications. But the line between non-content
and content is a lot blurrier online than it is on phone
networks. The DOJ has said openly that the new definitions
allow pen-traps to collect email and IP addresses.
However, the DOJ has not been so forthcoming about web
surveillance. It won't reveal whether it believes URLs can
be collected using pen-traps, despite the fact that URLs
clearly reveal content by identifying the web pages being
read. EFF made its FOIA request specifically to gain
access to documents that might reveal whether the DOJ is
using pen-traps to monitor web browsing.

"It's been over three years since the USA PATRIOT Act was
passed, and the DOJ still hasn't answered the public's
simple question: 'Can you see what we're reading on the
Web without probable cause?'" said Kevin Bankston, EFF
Staff Attorney and Bruce J. Ennis Equal Justice Works
Fellow. "Much of PATRIOT is coming up for review this
year, but we can never have a full and informed debate of
the issues when the DOJ won't explain how it has been using
these new surveillance powers."

The law firm of DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary assisted EFF in
preparing the FOIA request and will help with any
litigation if the DOJ fails to respond.

FOIA request:
<http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID78>

For this release:
<http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_01.php#002213>

DISCUSSION

DISCUSSION

Re: Fwd: This Week on NOW


> SIAW:
> "Instead, here's something from a few days ago that's worth bearing in
> mind the next time someone tells you that Al Jazeera is a wholly
> reliable news source."
>
> http://slate.msn.com/id/2111888/

If Al Jazeera took a cue from Fox News, they would use "wholly reliable
news source" as their byline ;)
but it was an Al Jazeera Op Ed discussed in the Slate article - a form
of "journalism" that has never held up as a "reliable" source of facts.
isn't that how Bill O'Reilly gets away with his "reporting"? So saying
that "Al Jazeera says..." is misleading, negating the source, given
later under the headline:
"...via an op-ed by one Mohammed al-Obaidi, spokesman for Al-Kifah
al-Shabi in Iraq. (Al-Kifah al-Shabi is a political party that is
boycotting the Iraqi elections scheduled later this month.)"
if media outlets are to give voice to conflicting perspectives, are
they "saying" every perspective aired?
what's funny is when someone starts using CIA reports as a reliable
source.
Timothy Noah of Slate says "A CIA report released last November plainly
lists the Halabja massacre as one of many examples of chemical-weapons
use by Iraq. This was a genuine horror wrought by Saddam Hussein."
Funny that they didn't release such a report when the gassing was
actually taking place. i'm not denying the gassing, just the desire to
uncritically use the CIA as a source.

DISCUSSION

Fwd: This Week on NOW


Begin forwarded message:

> Josh Rushing was a spokesman for the Marines during the Iraq war,
> serving as the military's liaison to the controversial Arab news
> channel
> Al-Jazeera. When he returned home, he discovered that he was an
> unwitting player-a central character-in CONTROL ROOM, the blockbuster
> documentary that sparked a raging national debate about the network,
> which speaks to 40 million Arabs everyday. What Rushing said on camera
> made him a hero to some and a villain to others, including his
> superiors. David Brancaccio sits down with Rushing, who left the
> military in the wake of the controversy, for his take on whether or not
> Al-Jazeera is just a propaganda machine, or a valuable shaper of public
> opinion that is too powerful for the US to ignore. "Looking back on
> it," says Rushing, "Al-Jazeera may be a more important front in the war
> on terror than Iraq was...it's the largest shaper of Arab opinion and
> perspective in the world."
>
> ===================================================================
> NOW continues online at PBS.org (www.pbs.org/now). Log onto the site
> to
> find out more about who's watching over nuclear plants; to check out
> environmental security concerns in your neighborhood with an
> interactive
> resource map; to learn more about Al-Jazeera and how to explore Arab
> media perspectives online; and more.

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: citizen king-mystery of truth


> This is the sort of thing I
> mean by 'spirituality'. Not necessarily a conventionally religious
> thing but
> a desire to act in accordance with the greater good.
>
> My dad liked to make things out of wood. He wasn't a master craftsman,
> in
> fact much of his work consisted of simple bowls. But I got this vibe
> from
> them. They were embodiments of his kindness and generosity and desire
> to act
> in accordance with the greater good. They were offerings to other
> people and
> also to the world.

This is sort of what i meant by wanting to separating creation from the
mechanisms that allow for a field. not in isolation, to be sure, but a
division that allows one to consider art and Art as overlapping and
codependent, but not the same activity, necessarily.
anyway, i used to work at a contemporary crafts gallery, and i would
say anyone who can make a bowl from wood, by hand, is pretty damn close
to a master craftsman.
take care, ryan