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]
silly bill, syllables are for kids.
Microsoft Takes on Teen Over Web Site
AP
Mon Jan 19, 8:05 AM ET
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Mike Rowe thinks it's
funny that his catchy name for a Web site design
company sounds a lot like Microsoft.
The software giant, however, is not amused.
"Since my name is Mike Rowe, I thought it would be
funny to add 'soft' to the end of it," said Rowe, a
17-year-old computer geek and Grade 12 student in
Victoria, British Columbia.
Microsoft Corp. and its attorneys have demanded that
he give up his domain name, the Vancouver Province
newspaper reported Sunday.
Rowe registered the name in August. In November, he
received a letter from Microsoft's Canadian lawyers,
Smart & Biggar, informing him he was committing
copyright infringement.
He was advised to transfer the name to the Redmond,
Wash.-based corporation.
"I didn't think they would get all their high-priced
lawyers to come after me," Rowe said.
He wrote back asking to be compensated for giving up
his name. Microsoft's lawyers offered him $10 in U.S.
funds. Then he asked for $10,000.
On Thursday, he received a 25-page letter accusing him
of trying to force Microsoft into giving him a large
settlement.
"I never even thought of getting anything out of
them," he said, adding that he only asked for the
$10,000 because he was "sort of mad at them for only
offering 10 bucks."
He said family and friends are backing him and a
lawyer has offered to advise him for free.
He's also keeping his sense of humor.
"It's not their name. It's my name. I just think it's
kind of funny that they'd go after a 17-year-old,"
Rowe said.
Company spokesman Jim Desler said Sunday, "Microsoft
has been in communication with Mr. Rowe in a good
faith effort to reach a mutually agreeable resolution.
And we remain hopeful we can resolve this issue to
everyone's satisfaction."
___
On the web:
www.mikerowesoft.com
www.microsoft.com
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
FWD: LA-area event, ClassC
JONES SANCHEZ
The Southland Sketches Redux
1st STOP:
Saturday, January 24, 2004
7:00
Re: US military 'brutalised' journalists
http://www.democracynow.org/static/miamimodel.shtml
nevermind eduardo kac, here come the glofish
Mon Jan 12,11:12 AM ET
Chicago Tribune
By John Keilman, Tribune staff reporter
Past the shark lagoon and piranha tanks at a Park
Ridge pet store dart tiny fish that some consider far
more alarming.
The glowing red and green swimmers at the Living Sea
Aquarium represent the vanguard in the brave new world
of genetically engineered pets being sold across the
United States. Marketed under such names as "Night
Light Fish" and selling for up to $30 apiece, they
gleam like inch-long neon signs, thanks to DNA
transferred from sea coral and jellyfish.
The fish have existed for years and have been deemed
safe by numerous scientists and government agencies.
But their recent introduction to the American
public--and the lack of regulations covering
them--makes some people worry what other manmade
critters might follow.
"Not to make a pun, but I think it's shedding a light
on serious regulatory and safety issues that are not
getting much attention," said Art Caplan, director of
the Center for Bioethics at the University of
Pennsylvania. "This is going to be a very important
issue. The fish is just the first wave on the beach."
The species that has jump-started the debate over
genetically altered pets is the GloFish. Yorktown
Technologies, an Austin, Texas-based company, has sold
it for a month and rolled it out nationally last week
at a suggested price of $5 per fish.
The GloFish's red glimmer comes from a coral gene that
was added to the embryo of a normal zebra fish, said
Alan Blake, Yorktown's chief executive officer.
Scientists in Singapore came up with the idea to
monitor water quality, trying to get the fish to glow
in the presence of toxins.
Yorktown got the right to sell the fish in the U.S.,
but consulted with scientists and federal agencies for
two years before offering it to hobbyists, Blake said.
FDA passes on fish
Food and Drug Administration officials said they
didn't need to regulate the fish because people would
not eat them, and because there was no evidence of an
environmental threat. Scientists who reviewed research
for California's Fish and Game Commission said the
fish, if released into the wild, was unlikely to
survive in the state's relatively cold waters.
Despite those findings, the commission last month
still refused to exempt the GloFish from California's
ban on genetically engineered aquatic creatures,
imposed in May. Commissioner Sam Schuchat wrote that
"creating a novelty pet is a frivolous use of this
technology. No matter how low the risk is, there needs
to be a public benefit that is higher than this."
Blake responded that GloFish were a byproduct of
serious research, and that some of the proceeds would
fund further studies, though a company spokesman
declined to say how much.
"We absolutely recognize that genetic technology
carries with it incredible potential and incredible
responsibility," Blake said. "We take that
responsibility very seriously."
The potential environmental effects of the other
genetically engineered fish available in the U.S.--a
rice fish whose implanted jellyfish DNA causes it to
glow green--have proven worrisome elsewhere in the
world. The Japanese government last year raised
concerns that it could disrupt native species.
Fish may be the first genetically altered creatures to
reach the marketplace, but others may not be far
behind. A New York company is trying to use gene
splicing to create a cat that does not inflame
allergies.
The cloning expert doing the research, Dr. Jerry Yang
of the University of Connecticut, said funding
problems have slowed the work but that initial results
are promising. He's been able to create embryos that
are missing the allergen gene.
He said his project was different from the glowing
fish because allergen-free cats can occasionally be
found in nature.
"We don't think we're creating anything new," he said.
"We're creating existing animals."
Though Yang said his work is reviewed by university
panels and animal welfare inspectors from the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (news - web sites), critics
say the government is not paying enough attention to
genetically engineered pets.
No single federal agency regulates transgenic animals,
though USDA officials say they are evaluating whether
they should play a role. Craig Culp of the Center for
Food Safety, an advocacy group that works to curb
technologies it says are harmful to health, worries
that indifference could allow some altered species to
get loose, wreaking havoc on the environment and food
supply.
"We're buying a fish that's been genetically
engineered for our amusement and putting it into our
kids' bedrooms without thinking of the ethical
dimensions," he said. "It staggers the mind to think
of what could come down the pike."
States concerned
Such concerns prompted California to restrict
transgenic aquatic animals to research use, and
Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm has three bills on her
desk that would allow the state to outlaw certain
genetically engineered creatures.
"The GloFish is not our issue, but this technology
could conceivably create species that would threaten
our native fish stock," said spokesman Brad Wurfel of
the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
The Illinois Department of Natural Resources is not
considering a similar step, officials said.
Some scientists fear that a public furor over
transgenic pets could harm more serious inquiries.
"There is the potential of the public not seeing the
full application of genetic research," said Richard
Winn, a University of Georgia professor who uses
genetically engineered fish to examine the effects of
pesticides and other chemicals. "If it seems trivial
or unnecessary or a Frankenfish, it makes people turn
off or be afraid of it."
The GloFish has been selling briskly around the
country, according to Yorktown Technologies. Sales of
luminous fish have been good but not overwhelming at
the Living Sea Aquarium, where a tank aglow with blue
light accentuates their blazing color.
"I see it as a popular color variation, but I don't
see it dominating," said manager Daryl Szyska. "There
are so many species, why would you limit yourself to one?"
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
FWD: New CLUI newsletter online
Interpretation
newsletter "The Lay of the Land" is now online:
http://www.clui.org/clui_4_1/lotl/
+++
Winter 2003 Contents:
Margins in Our Midst
A Journey Into Irwindale
Farm Animals View of Farm Displayed
In the Exhibit "Live Stock Footage By Livestock"
Detailed Dirt Exposed at CLUI Los Angeles
Photographs of the Ground Featured in Exhibit
Cultural Exchange Through Bombing Program
A Joint UK/USA Production
Reports from the CLUI Interpretive District Field
Offices
The Best Dead Mall?
A Photographic Documentation and Indefinite
Installation
Editorial Commentary
Book Reviews
+++
If you do not currently receive a print copy and would
like to,
a minimum donation of $25 will get you on the hard
copy mailing list.
You can do so at:
http://www.clui.org/clui_4_1/shop/
Click on "donate"
In addition the Land Use Database has many new site
additions:
http://www.clui.org/clui_4_1/ludb/
Thank you for your continued interest in the Center.
-----------------
The CLUI Los Angeles Exhibit Hall is open noon to five
PM,
Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, or by appointment.
Admission is free.
-----------------
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus