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

DISCUSSION

Ian MacKaye on NPR about the Evens


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyIdF25784
i've had the new Evens record in heavy rotation for the last few months... i totally recommend it - and seeing them live. even if you've seen fugazi tens of times, it's an amazingly quiet and powerful show.

DISCUSSION

Fwd: DOW RELEASES 'ACCEPTABLE RISK' AT BANKING CONFERENCE


Begin forwarded message:
>
> May 3, 2005
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
>
> DOW RELEASES "ACCEPTABLE RISK" PROGRAM AT BANKING CONFERENCE
> "Risk Calculator" helps ensure sound business practice
>
> When government is made to take the back seat in regulatory matters,
> corporations must rely on their own judgment to determine what is, and
> what isn't, acceptable where human lives are at risk.
>
> Doing this has until now been more of an art than a science. With
> Acceptable Risk, business finally has a risk standard of its own,
> reflecting its values and allowing us to reliably factor human and
> environmental casualties into business decisions in accordance with
> the soundest of economic principles.
>
> Last Thursday in London, Dow representative Erastus Hamm unveiled
> Acceptable Risk, the Acceptable Risk Calculator, and the Acceptable
> Risk mascot--a life-sized golden skeleton named Gilda--to an audience
> of about 70 banking professionals, including some from Dow's largest
> investors. Many of the bankers in attendance excitedly signed up for
> licenses for the Calculator, which helps businesses scientifically
> determine the point where casualties start to cut into profit, while
> suggesting the best regions on earth to locate dangerous ventures.
>
> Hamm told the bankers how Acceptable Risk would have applied to some
> famous "skeletons in the closet" of big business: IBM's WWII sale of
> technology to the Nazis for use in identifying Jews; Dow's production
> of napalm and Agent Orange for use in Vietnam; and the plight of
> Dursban, a Dow pesticide whose main ingredient came out of Nazi nerve
> agent research, was tested on student volunteers as recently as 1998,
> and was finally banned two years later.
>
> Each of these cases entailed heavy casualties, Hamm noted, and yet
> each was immensely profitable and therefore consistent with sound
> business practice. Hamm said the case of the Bhopal gas disaster of
> 1984 was slightly more complicated--but so long as so-called "socially
> responsible" investor groups do not get away with forcing Dow to spend
> too much time on the matter at the May 12 AGM and elsewhere, that case
> could end up being a "golden skeleton" too.
>
> Please visit http://www.dowethics.com/risk/ to try out the Acceptable
> Risk Calculator for yourself, and for text, photos and video of the
> London announcement.

DISCUSSION

PBS's republican chairman


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/arts/television/02public.html?
ex72686400&enN1a4fc43fa3d5db&eiP90&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is
aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other
conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting
leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his
actions pose a threat to editorial independence.

DISCUSSION

Art Critic Misses Big Picture


Since others were discussing the NYT review of the cyberarts festival,
i thought i'd post Steve Dietz's response from his blog. he rightly
criticizes the author not for a lack of knowledge about interactive art
per se, but contemporary art in general.
http://www.yproductions.com/WebWalkAbout/archives/000701.html

Art Critic Misses the Big Picture
It's not that Sarah Boxer is clueless. I don't believe that someone
has to "get" interactive art to write about it. Maybe some of the
artwork she skewers in her April 26 New York Times review of the Boston
Cyberarts Festival, Art That Puts You in the Picture, Like It Or Not,
is as "irritating" as she claims it is. What should concern her
readers, and even more so her editors, is her apparent lack of
perspective about contemporary art. Let us count the ways.

Boxer: Problem No. 1: potty-mouthed machines. "PS," by Gretchen
Skogerson and Garth Zeglin at the Stata Center, is an oval mirror with
a sign that bids you "lean in close." You do. A voice says, "I like to
masturbate in public." Ack. Did anyone else hear that?
Can anyone say Seedbed?

For his notorious and influential performance at Sonabend Gallery in
1972, Vito Acconci lay beneath the floorboards of a constructed ramp
masturbating while his fantasies about the visitors above him were
broadcast over loudspeakers. Ack.

Boxer: Problem No. 2: too much ritual, too little time. "1-Bit Love,"
by Noah Vawter, is a musical altar, a totem covered in foil and exuding
a synthetic rhythm (a one-bit wave form). The pillar has red velvet
knobs. People are supposed to lay hands on it and turn the knobs to
modulate the sound. No one wants to be the first to paw the idol. And
once you do, it's not clear what effect you are having. [emphasis
added]
Compare: Nam June Paik, Participation TV, 1963 - 1966
[Participation TV I] concerns a purely acoustic-oriented type of , with
an integrated microphone. The later version serves a television showing
in the middle of its screen a colored bundle of lines which explosively
spread out to form bizarre-looking line formations the moment someone
speaks into the microphone or produces any other type of sound.
Depending on the sound's inherent quality or volume, the signals are
intensified by a sound-frequency amplifier to produce an endless
variety of line formations which never seem to repeat themselves or be
in any way predictable. [emphasis added] (via Media Art Net)
Boxer: [P]roblem No. 3: ungraciousness. Machines make no bones about
their own flaws, but are unbending about yours.
Let's just stick to photography (another machine art). Gary Winogrand.
Diane Arbus. Lee Friedlander. Tina Barney. Lisette Modell. Shelby Lee
Adams. Susan Meiselas (Carnival Strippers). Bill Owens. Walker Evans.
Bruce Gilden. Nan Goldin, Richard Avedon (The American West). Stop me,
please.
Boxer: [P]roblem No. 4: moral superiority. Consider "Applause," by Jeff
Lieberman, Josh Lifton, David Merrill and Hayes Raffle. You stoop to
enter a curtained booth. (Already you're in the weak position.) There's
a movie screen divided into three parts, and in front of each is a
microphone. Clap vigorously into one of the microphones and the movie
screen in front of it comes to life, playing its movie. Stop clapping
and the action grinds to a halt.

Now, wouldn't it be great if you could get all three screens going at
once? You can! Just run from mike to mike, clapping in front of all
three. Now they're all going! Uh-oh. It's Hitler giving a speech. And
there you are clapping like crazy, you idiot.
Compare: Paul McCarthy, Documents(1995-1999). "Selections of 8 x 10
photographs with images of Disneyland and other American pop items and
images from Nazi Germany, mounted and framed." (via) You should hear
the docents trying to explain that one without making the public feel
like idiots.

My point is not that the work at the Cyberarts Festival necessarily
compares favorably with these iconic works of contemporary art, but
Boxer's reasoning is lazy at best. And yet it is so commmonplace in the
mainstream press as to be almost not worth mentioning, except that this
hasn't always been true at the Times. To give Boxer credit, she does
not fixate on the cost, collectability, or technology of the works, but
neither does she provide even the most minimal sense of context, except
her own apparent discomfort at being in the picture. This despite
almost a half century of contemporary art that does just that from
Michelangelo Pistoletto to Bruce Nauman to Dan Graham to Andrea Fraser
to Janet Cardiff to ...

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.