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)
OPPORTUNITY

Fwd:_Subject:_Call_for_Submissions:__


Deadline:
Tue Jul 26, 2005 18:26

Begin forwarded message:

> From: orlo
> Date: July 26, 2005 2:48:06 PM PDT
> To: ALL
> Subject: Subject: Call for Submissions:


DISCUSSION

BBC\_lets\_public\_


http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7724&feedId=online-
news\_atom03

Following the example of internet titans Google and Amazon, the BBC has
released software tools which allow programmers to borrow and "remix"
its web content for free.

Tools have been made available through a project called BBC Backstage,
which was launched at Open Tech 2005, a technology conference held in
London, UK, on Saturday 23 July.

BBC Backstage provides a way for programmers to integrate BBC content
into their web applications - the only caveat being that it must not be
used commercially. Information is made available through "application
programming interfaces" (API)

DISCUSSION

Digital Opportunity Investment Trust


Begin forwarded message:

> The Digital Promise Project recommends creation of the Digital
> Opportunity =
> Investment Trust (DO IT), a nonprofit, nongovernmental agency designed
> to =
> meet the urgent need to transform learning in the 21st century. From
> the =
> Digital Promise home page:
>
> Our emerging knowledge-based economy makes the people's access to =
> knowledge and learning-across-a-lifetime in the sciences and
> humanities a =
> national imperative. DO IT will do for education what NIH does for
> health, =
> NSF does for science, and DARPA does for national defense. It is the
> 21st =
> century counterpart of the 19th century's Land-Grant Colleges Act and
> the =
> 20th century's GI Bill.
>
> DO IT's charge will be to unlock the potential of the Internet and
> other =
> new information technologies for education in the broadest sense; to =
> stimulate public and private sector research into the development and
> use =
> of new learning techniques, and to encourage public and private sector
> =
> partnerships and alliances in education, science, the humanities, the =
> arts, civic affairs and government. For example, DO IT will commission
> =
> research and fund the development of models and prototypes to:
>
> * Digitize America's collected memory stored in our nation's
> universities, =
> libraries, and museums to make these materials available for use at
> home, =
> school, and work.
> * Develop learning models and simulations that invite the learner to =
> explore a virtual solar system, an authentic three-dimensional model
> of =
> the human body, a realistic trip to Mars, or an historic recreation of
> =
> Mark Twain's America.
> * Create voice sensitive computer programs to teach language to new =
> immigrants as well as fourth graders.
> * Create inviting training materials for workforce development, adult =
> learning, skills improvement, and civic engagement.
> * Develop programs that measure the learning progress of individual =
> students so teachers can adjust their teaching to the specific needs
> and =
> abilities of each learner.
> * Utilize new technologies to disseminate the best of our arts and
> culture =
> locally, regionally, nationally, and even globally.
>
> The proposed Trust will be financed by revenues earned from investing
> $18 =
> billion received from the mandated FCC auctions of the radio spectrum.
> =
> This parallels the historic use of revenues from the sale of public
> lands, =
> which helped finance public education in every new state and created
> the =
> great system of land-grant colleges voted by Congress and signed by =
> President Lincoln during the darkest days of the Civil War.
>
> In this digital age, libraries, archives, museums, school systems, =
> community colleges, universities, arts and cultural centers, public =
> broadcasting stations, and other such institutions need to make
> innovative =
> use of advanced information technologies to continue to serve their =
> essential public purposes. DO IT will help make that happen.
>
> Before joining the coalition, AMIA was asked to provide examples of
> how =
> our field might benefit from DO IT, being as explicit as possible. We =
> cited the following:
>
> * Develop advanced digital rights management strategies that support =
> widespread, equitable access to digital moving images and active
> privacy =
> for users, allowing the immersion of moving images into the
> information =
> landscape, in support of education.
>
> * Develop an integrated and comprehensive search system combining =
> phoneme-based search tools for audio streams with metadata, closed =
> captions, transcripts and shot and segment log books to enable end
> users =
> to identify and compile digital video segments for use in scholarly =
> publications or as learning objects.
>
> * Negotiate and implement access portals that represent a common
> ground =
> between the needs of educators, the public and commercial entities.
> For =
> example, create a digital news portal for journalism studies
> incorporating =
> applications and resources to improve literacy skills for using
> digital =
> video resources in education. An understanding of convergences and
> forces =
> that are shaping television news requires the ability to compare
> practice =
> and performance across many news sources and over many time periods,
> and =
> these resources have heretofore been difficult and expensive to access.
>
> * Develop a standards-based cataloging utility that integrates
> administrati=
> ve, technical, rights, and descriptive metadata to allow archives of
> all =
> sizes to create the standard but customizable metadata required for =
> effective management of digital information throughout its lifecycle,
> to =
> meet goals of preservation, access, and educational use.

DISCUSSION

Re: microwave weapon tests revealed


damn... that's good. would that really work?

On Jul 21, 2005, at 11:57 AM, Patrick Lichty wrote:

> no, no, no! I have it! Walk down the road with fluorescent tubes
> like a host of mad jedi. When they turn on the juice, it'd freak the
> marines out for sure.

DISCUSSION

microwave weapon tests revealed


so, does this mean the 95-gigahertz band is unlicensed?

Begin forwarded message:

>
> http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725095.600
>
> New Scientist
> 23 July 2005
>
>
> Details of US microwave-weapon tests revealed
>
> VOLUNTEERS taking part in tests of the Pentagon's "less-lethal"
> microwave weapon were banned from wearing glasses or contact lenses
> due to safety fears. The precautions raise concerns about how safe
> the Active Denial System (ADS) weapon would be if used in real
> crowd-control situations.
>
> The ADS fires a 95-gigahertz microwave beam, which is supposed to
> heat skin and to cause pain but no physical damage (New Scientist, 27
> October 2001, p 26). Little information about its effects has been
> released, but details of tests in 2003 and 2004 were revealed after
> Edward Hammond, director of the US Sunshine Project - an organisation
> campaigning against the use of biological and non-lethal weapons -
> requested them under the Freedom of Information Act.
>
> The tests were carried out at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque,
> New Mexico. Two experiments tested pain tolerance levels, while in a
> third, a "limited military utility assessment", volunteers played the
> part of rioters or intruders and the ADS was used to drive them away.
>
> The experimenters banned glasses and contact lenses to prevent
> possible eye damage to the subjects, and in the second and third
> tests removed any metallic objects such as coins and keys to stop hot
> spots being created on the skin. They also checked the volunteers'
> clothes for certain seams, buttons and zips which might also cause
> hot spots.
>
> The ADS weapon's beam causes pain within 2 to 3 seconds and it
> becomes intolerable after less than 5 seconds. People's reflex
> responses to the pain is expected to force them to move out of the
> beam before their skin can be burnt.
>
> But Neil Davison, co-ordinator of the non-lethal weapons research
> project at the University of Bradford in the UK, says controlling the
> amount of radiation received may not be that simple. "How do you
> ensure that the dose doesn't cross the threshold for permanent
> damage?" he asks. "What happens if someone in a crowd is unable, for
> whatever reason, to move away from the beam? Does the weapon cut out
> to prevent overexposure?"
>
> During the experiments, people playing rioters put up their hands
> when hit and were given a 15-second cooling-down period before being
> targeted again. One person suffered a burn in a previous test when
> the beam was accidentally used on the wrong power setting.
>
> A vehicle-mounted version of ADS called Sheriff could be in service
> in Iraq in 2006 according to the Department of Defense, and it is
> also being evaluated by the US Department of Energy for use in
> defending nuclear facilities. The US marines and police are both
> working on portable versions, and the US air force is building a
> system for controlling riots from the air.
>
> From issue 2509 of New Scientist magazine, 23 July 2005, page 26