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)
DISCUSSION

Cyber War on Frontline


April 24, 9pm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cyberwar/

The Slammer hit on Super Bowl Sunday. Nimda struck
one week after 9/11. Code Red had ripped through the
system that summer. Moonlight Maze moved from the
Russian Academy of Science and into the U.S.
Department of Defense. A new form of warfare has
broken out and the battleground is cyberspace. With
weapons like embedded malicious code, probes and
pings, there are surgical strikes, reverse neutron
bombs, and the potential for massive assaults aimed
directly at America's infrastructure -- the power
grid, the water supply, the complex air traffic
control system, and the nation's railroads. FRONTLINE
investigates the threat of cyber war and reveals what
the White House knows that the rest of us don't.

The companion web site will include:


DISCUSSION

ABC No Rio Announcement 4.4.03


ABC No Rio Announces
Letters to America
COMA
Our Unorganicized Reading
Music at Umbrella House
--------------------

--------------------
LETTERS TO AMERICA

A transatlantic engaged art action for the advancement
of peace within.

During the Christian season of Lent Live Artist Denis
Buckley has travelled to New York in a blanket. He has
brought pledges from Londoners who are committing
themselves to acting peacefully in their lives for a
period of their choice. In New York he has installed
these letters at ABC No Rio and now asks New Yorkers
to make the same commitment. He will return with the
US pledges to install in London.

Saturday April 5: 10:00am - 2:00pm
Sunday April 6: noon - 6:00pm

Please make a decision to act peacefully in your life.

Change our surroundings by changing within.
--------------------

--------------------
COMA -- $3
Sunday April 6 at 8:00pm
Jacek Majewski (Gdansk Poland) - percussion - (STUCK
ON CEILING)
&
Craig Flanagin (NYC) - multi instru. - (godco and the
sunnyside boys)

followed by solos/duets/ensemble
--------------------

--------------------
Every Sunday at 3:00pm
Our Unorganicized Reading
an open poetry reading
No features. No sign-up. No time limit. No b.s.
$2
--------------------

--------------------
No Rio Volunteers, Supporters and Others Perform:
Saturday April 5 at 8:00pm

POLITICALLY SUSPECT STRING BAND (Roger Manning & Vajra
Kilgour!!)
SEREGON (the manic kids of ABC-No-Rio...YES!)
CLAQUE (members of HUASIPUNGO & DAWSON)
NIMBLE ONE MINDED ANIMALS HERE (Scott Moore and the
whole crew!!!)

at Umbrella House
21-23 Ave C, Manhattan
(btw. 2nd and 3rd Streets)
$ 5, all ages

--------------------
--------------------

----------
ABC No Rio
156 Rivington Street
New York, NY 10002
(212) 254-3697

ABC No Rio: http://www.abcnorio.org
InterActivist Network: http://www.interactivist.net
InterActivist INFO EXCHANGE:
http://slash.interactivist.net
SUPPORT ABC No Rio:
http://www.abcnorio.org/support/support.html
----------

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DISCUSSION

Re: Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates


hi eryk, chris, et al.

e. > You don't. I never mentioned anything about health care. Nor did I
> ever say
> "risking ones life," I said "dedicating ones life." And I don't find
> it so
> hard to believe that someone who really wants to change the government
> would
> run for office. I don't know why that is met with such skepticism. But
> that
> skepticism is why no one "good" runs for office.

i didn't mean to come off as totally skeptical of running for office or "working on the inside." i lived in Oregon for a few years and there was a vital form of direct and representative democracy that i found very engaging. and "spoiler" candidates, as the Green party is usually referred to, actually made huge impacts on what issues got discussed and how ballot measures were considered. i merely meant to suggest that we should expect (demand) that those instances of direct and rep. forms of democracy are actually active. some of what eryk says reminds me of the traditional liberal-state line (like that from E. Bernays and Samuel Huntington) that says the only political process that should make policy comes from the "educated" and "elected" classes. in other words, the rest of us dilettantes should just shut up, work at our jobs, and let democracy work - or let the media create our approving consent. i know that this isn't what eryk's saying, but if change can't happen through mediated discussion, we must give up on the myth of democracy, and decide that everything political is resolved in individualistic, Darwinian terms (you don't like it, YOU change it). i just can't accept that proposition for many reasons.
and i know we're just talking about the War and Iraqi lives, but i don't think this is a completely different project than other forms of sanctioned violence and oppression.
to restate, i think that working from "the inside" is necessary, but not everyone can be "inside," nor should everyone have to be to have a say in things that obviously impact their own lives.
as for the "dedication and integrity that most people haven't built up," sure, but that's a straw man argument. you want individual "integrity and dedication" to mold society according to some sort of paternalistic set of morals? maybe i'm misreading what eryk means, but if demonstrations and public opposition don't affect policy, then what sort of voice can non-specialists have (short of the polls)? or is that enough? and again, this assumes that electoral system is what it purports to be.
but this seems to be moving into heroic politics/business models that suggest that key figures shape history (sometimes such biographical analysis can be instructive, but is often wrong in my opinion, as it misses the point that support structures must be in place for any individual to be accepted as a vector of power). this can't all be discussed in such atomistic terms, there are systems that affect ideology that are important beyond the conservative notions of individual responsibility (without bowing to relativism either). and those systems are what i (and sounds like Chris too?) think can be made more or less open by discussion and demonstration.
best,
ryan

DISCUSSION

Re: CAN'T SEE THE TERRORIST FOR THE TREES


just realized that the links got garbled, and that the joke might be missed (it is after 4/1, i know) - sorry!

http://www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates


i just wanted to add my 2 cents to the discussion. i aggree with a lot of eryk's comments about actions in terms of political change, but come on. this sets up such a (flase) binary opposition between political life and "real" life (even though i know eryk's going to deny this). looking at protests as a means to an end is part of the discursive problem here (for me). Take Back The Streets isn't just about protesting specific issues to inact change, it is change itself. it's not how effective it is - if they occur that is their effectiveness. to relegate political action to representative politics (i even question it's existence in the US right now) and selfless or life-risking acts is dangerous.
the street demonstrations in other countries surely must be looked at when we're talking about their supposed ineffectiveness in "real" politics. i'm not ready to say protestors in Pakistan are people with "better things in their life than really enacting change."
the laws being debated right now about controlling protesting mean something as well.
and if protests, even if a majority position is represented by them (not referencing any thing particular here) are not effective because the power structure just doesn't care, then how effective are "human shields?" if authority can kill us at home, they'll sure as hell kill us in front of the "enemy." and if elections are becoming a mythological process run by the dominant power structure, how can we expect anyone to get elected that would substantially challenge it?
it should be obvious that the US "war on terror" has nothing to do with saving civilian lives while cutting health care for people who die of the flu. yet we're told that that's exactly what it's about. how does one risk their life to change this problem? because no one's going to get elected if they're going to say anything different right now (hell even 50 years ago the AMA made this pretty clear). or should anyone who cares about this stop protesting and become a doctor or insurance CEO - change things from the "inside"?
or are we talking now armed resistance? maybe if we want to trade one authoritarian regime for another.
these aren't my assertions, but my responses to what's been said. i assert that all levels of political (personal=political) action are necessary, and that the specialization of politics is deadly to democracy.
only authoritarian systems exist without conflict.
i apologize for simplifications and rhetoricalness. also for my US-centrism.
best,
ryan