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]
YOUgenics news items + Travel Office update
>> Biometric ID Card Bill (UK)
http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r142500409
>> State Bill Labels GM Seeds
http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r142687833
>> Israeli Biotech Cos and US Marketing
http://new.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?didx7167&fid
why the future needs us
but at least one student seemed to get it.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/view.html?pg=5
Creative Computing Manifesto (stolen from nettime)
From: Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@rmit.edu.au>
Subject: <nettime> manifest(o)
below is a manifesto written by myself and Jeremy Yuille for how we wish
and intend to use university facilities in our teaching. it is a
manifesto
for ourselves, for our students, and the IT staff that we work with.
comments, additions, amendments welcome.
Adrian Miles and Jeremy Yuille.
MANIFESTO FOR RESPONSIBLE CREATIVE COMPUTING v.0.3
[april 7 2004]
*context*
We teach students who work in the creative industries. In creative
computing contexts the products and processes of these industries are
soft
artifacts. They may be ideas, interfaces, or media. All remain
malleable ,
before, during and after completion.
Their graduate computing context consists of small enterprises where IT
skills are distributed amongst the work group. These skills are informal
and self developed. There is no IT department and IT systems are self
managed. It is common for graduates in these industries to be self
employed.
This manifesto defines how we use computers in teaching and learning for
creative industries in these contexts.
*manifesto*
Creative computing is being creative with a computer/network, not being
creative on a computer/network.
Creative computing requires computer and network literacy. This literacy
is analogous to, and as significant as print literacy.
Computer literacy is not the same as knowing how to use professional
software.
Network literacy is not the same as knowing how to Google.
Network literacy is the ability to engage with and represent yourself
within the network.
Computer literacy is synonymous with network literacy.
This literacy is demonstrated in the responsible use of computers which
understands that the network includes social, ideological, legal,
political, ethical and ecological contexts.
Computer literacy requires basic understanding of the principles of
human-computer interaction.
This literacy is demonstrated in the ability to transfer knowledge
between
computing environments.
These literacies are learnt by doing.
Breaking, gleaning and assembling is a theory of praxis for these
literacies.
Learning happens when things work, different learning occurs when things
don't work.
These literacies are an essential requirement for responsible creative
computing in pervasive digital networks.
cheers
Adrian Miles
.................................................................
hypertext.rmit || hypertext.rmit.edu.au/adrian
interactive networked video || hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog
research blog || hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/vlog/
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# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
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# more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg
body
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Re: Paradox of Political Art
> Lets take it back to Goya, and I am not talking about the brand of
> beans.
good beans though ;)
> You can take it back through history as far as you want.
> It wasn't until the 60's, when people like us had too much time on
> their hands.
but haven't artists always been in the class that has "too much time on
their hands?" maybe there's more of us now, as global economics can
displace our subsistence labor somewhere else.
> It wasn't until the 60's that political art became a fad
i'm assuming your leaving out socialist realism ( of the various CCCP,
US, and Nazi varieties) on purpose. but even prior to that... what
about American genre and history painting, regionalism, political
portraiture? (sorry for leaving out other sources, but i'm more versed
in US history) but i guess the word "fad" wasn't used so maybe you're
right. but don;t you think it's important to contextualize the form of
political art you're referring to and the 60s? people greatly effected
by the various movements of the 60s are now in institutional positions.
they may not be able to (or want to) structurally change the
institutions, but they can make pictures of it. just look at the
popularity of artists like Sam Durant.
>
> We should all be happy for this war. It really get the blood flowing
> (ah ya)
> Artists get worked up, Writers get worked up, Society gets worked up.
> Unfortunately our brothers and fathers and friends and friends of
> friends have to die for our inspiration.
> I wonder how boring art will look after 50 years of world peace and
> happiness.
> I look forward to the fact that I may still be alive to see that day.
again, this just seems to assume political art as reactionary and one
dimensional. is it just because it has subject matter that is tied to a
specific issue? why aren't the larger sets of values contained in any
activity considered?
political art is not just critique of specific issues. quite a bit of
the more interesting work is as utopian and gestural as anything. to
give a digital example, try the futurefarmers or Natalie Bookchin or
Ricardo Miranda Zuniga.
but i'm with you on wishing to be alive in peaceful utopia, if not
counting on it.
ryan