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]
FREEDOM FESTIVAL in CHICAGO
From: edmar <ed@lumpen.com>
Subject: FREEDOM FESTIVAL in CHICAGO
Hi all..
This is a not-so-early-warning announcement of a super
grass roots
Do-It-Together no budget radical summer camp thing we
are
organising for June in Chicago called FREEDOM
FESTIVAL... We need some
advice and inspiration. It is a follow up to and is
related to another
festival I work on called Version.
http://www.versionfest.org
We want to rev up and rejuvenate a wandering and
depressed movement.
Ok.. So:
Freedom Festivals are gatherings of artists, thinkers,
activists,
citizens
and friends who wish to celebrate and strengthen,
through performance
and
art, music , discussions and theater, the spirit and
intent of the
founding
documents of this state and other free and democratic
societies --
freedom
of expression, pursuit of happiness, freedom from
persecution, and
other
various civil liberties.
FREEDOM FESTIVAL is an open attempt to use our
remaining rights,
understand
how to keep them, and reclaim the ones we have lost.
FREEDOM FESTIVAL is a gathering of cultural, social,
and artistic
communities seeking to expand our networks, challenge
the dominant
assumptions, strengthen our activities, and work
towards defending our
rights to work outside, beside, or without the
privatized life.
Creative responses, satiric guerrilla theater,
infowarfare, music,
workshops, video screenings, performances, debates,
talks, and fashion
coalesce into one evening to help kick off a Summer of
Reaction and
Resistance to Un-american Activities
FREEDOM FESTIVAL is a look at Free Speech, Open
Cultures,
Do-It-Together
media, and tools of expression. It
Re: rent-a-negro.com
> > So, I ask, how do we address these problems? Is new media
> hopelessly
> > inbred, inscribed by cultural boundaries, or what? Can we make the
> > boundaries more porous? How?
what about the work of groups like OnRamp Arts, KAOS and others that function through educational and performative structures using new media?
i know one can point to the issue of exploitation as some do for Tim Rollins' KOS project, but at least with OnRamp and KAOS, the "artists" fade into the background while the work and those making it become the focus. i'm sure there are things that need criticism here, as everything does and should, but do these offer anything for anyone?
could organizational tactics be useful?
best,
ryan
Re: rent-a-negro.com
> Georgians plan whites-only prom party
>
> ++
> What sort of bizarro world is the south?
hey... i'm from the south. well, the atlantic side of florida, so i guess it was really more of a "colonized" south. ;)
but seriously, georgia can surprise you.
rent-a-negro.com
http://rent-a-negro.com/
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FWD: WTO Transparency Services letter to WTO
From: WTO Transparency Services
<transparency@gatt.org>
Subject: <nettime>
Participation_in_your_upcoming_Fifth_Ministerial_in_Cancun_Mexico
[This letter was sent last week by postal mail as
well.]
Dear World Trade Organization,
We would very much like to participate in your
upcoming Fifth Ministerial in Cancun, Mexico (10 to 14
September 2003). You have announced that you are open
to the participation of Non-Governmental Organizations
"concerned with matters related to those of the WTO"
(http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min03_e/ngo_acc_e.htm);
as such we are hereby applying to attend, as per the
instructions on your website.
Over the course of the last four years, our
organization has consistently demonstrated a strong
concern with and commitment to matters relating to the
WTO. In fact, our organization's sole mission has been
to bring an honest and fair representation of WTO
policies to as broad a public as possible.
We have done this through impersonation and
subterfuge. Because our website, GATT.org, is often
mistaken for your website, WTO.org (the GATT being, of
course, the more moderate predecessor of the WTO.), we
have on five separate occasions received invitations
to deliver lectures on behalf of your organization to
audiences who were for the most part intimately
involved with WTO policy in their daily professional
lives.
These people were, in order of appearance:
international trade lawyers; business viewers of a
satellite television program devoted to global
markets; textile industry figures including business
leaders, engineers, and academics; university students
of economics and business; and accountants with a
special interest in international trade.
The content of our first three presentations was as
follows. Please note that, in these three lectures,
none of the audiences seemed to feel there was any
fundamental clash between what we presented and the
spirit and aims of the WTO. Each time, we took a
number of elaborate steps to discover anyone harboring
such feelings, but we never succeeded.
I. In 1999, before a meeting of international trade
lawyers in Salzburg, Austria we gave a lecture
promoting, in the WTO's name, (a) the elimination of
cultural differences in the interest of economic
efficiency, and (b) the privatization of voting, for
the same reasons. One lawyer objected to our insults
to Italians, but the corporate buying of citizen votes
encountered no objection at all.
II. On CNBC's July 19, 2001 Marketwatch Europe
program, we argued on behalf of the WTO that might
equaled right and that "justice vouchers" might make a
nice addition to the panoply of tools at the disposal
of economic streamliners. The show's producers thanked
us and sent us a copy of the program for our archives.
III. At the "Textiles of the Future" conference in
Tampere, Finland (August 14-16, 2001) we explained
that the sort of remote-labor arrangements the GATS
agreement facilitates are merely an "improved" version
of slavery--and we applauded that improvement. We then
unveiled a three-foot golden phallus that would enable
managers of the future to more easily control their
distant sweatshop "slaves." (One audience member
objected to the shape, which she felt implied that
women could not be managers.)
It is clear from these audiences' positive or absent
reactions that, in each of these instances, we
represented the WTO faithfully and truthfully enough,
despite the seeming extremeness and actual inhumanity
of our material. We obviously had our finger on the
pulse of WTO policy, since those who live and breathe
it every day recognized our versions as normal.
For this reason, we are not only quite "concerned
with" WTO policy in the sense that you meant it--"busy
with," "engaged by," etc.--but in the sense of
"disturbed by" as well. The reasons should be quite
obvious. (The additional definition of "concerned
with"--"affected by," as in "This problem concerns all
of us"--we assume you did not mean, as that would
encompass everyone on the planet, more and more
disastrously every
year.)
Fortunately for our sense of optimism, however, our
fourth lecture had a quite different outcome.
IV. At a university in Plattsburgh, New York, we
suggested to a student audience that a good market
solution to starvation and hunger in the Third World
would be to have poor people recycle hamburgers. This
lecture, in great contrast with the previous ones, met
with horror and catcalls from the very first
paragraph--giving us hope that perhaps only those who
live WTO policy for years are able to stomach its
logical extensions.
V. Finally, at an accounting conference in Sydney, we
announced that the WTO, having seen the failure of its
policies, was disbanding entirely, to be replaced by a
new organization, solidly founded on humanitarian
principles. As in the first three lectures, the
audience was delighted--but a great deal more so, and
with a deeper elan andengagement.
The improvements to the WTO that the Sydney
accountants suggested were,
in
fact, so terrific and potentially transformative, that
we would very much like to share them with you at
Cancun in person.
We hope very much to hear from you soon, and to meet
you not long after that.
With very best wishes,
Andrew Bichlbaum and Michael Bonanno
WTO Transparency Services
www.gatt.org
www.theyesmen.org
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