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

Re: New Media Art in the New York Times


It was gracious of Joy to make the response she did.
as someone who values criticism from both sides, i feel the need to
respond even though i wasn't part of the original discussion.
After reading the post Steven responded to, I don't see the vitriolic
criticism or "ignorance" claimed, only a small group of posters who
found specific things they saw lacking in the article (i didn't notice
any personal attacks). And just because the article was
"groundbreaking" shouldn't shield it from criticism - especially from
those with an investment in the matter, as those on Rhizome would have
been. Criticism has a symbiotic relationship (when it's good) with
what's being criticized, usually in an attempt to point out other
perspectives that have been overlooked. Even in this instance, where it
was more of a back-room discussion, the writers were discussing from a
position of involvement. If a journalist, or any writer, can't take
that kind of criticism, what the hell are they doing writing anything
in a public forum? If the criticism misses/misinterprets something,
then respond with a rebuttal. But don't cry foul.
best,
ryan

On Oct 27, 2004, at 2:04 PM, Joy Garnett wrote:

> Dear Steven,
>
> I think probably someone should respond to your beef; I didn't know
> what it referred to so I did a Rhizome search and came up with the
> orginal post from Feb. 1999--as you say, this is ancient history.
> Interesting to read what we were thinking about then:

DISCUSSION

Fwd: BUSH CAMPAIGN COMES OUT FOR KERRY


>
> October 27, 2004
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
>
> Contact: mailto:press@yesbushcan.com
> Website: http://www.yesbushcan.com/
> Act: http://www.yesbushcan.com/act.shtml
>
> BUSH CAMPAIGN GROUP ENDORSES KERRY
> "Yes, Bush Can" now says "no, Bush can't!"
>
> Yes, Bush Can, an independent group dedicated to communicating Bush
> policies directly to the public, has abandoned its campaign and is
> officially endorsing John Kerry for President.
>
> Before changing sides, the Yes, Bush Can team drove around the
> country supporting the President in a campaign bus they had equipped
> with sound and light systems, confetti cannons, and various props and
> costumes. They gave dozens of stump speeches, distributed campaign
> videos and "USA Patriot Pledges," and performed patriotic songs to
> audiences across the country. (See
> http://www.yesbushcan.com/media.shtml and
> http://www.yesbushcan.com/pledge.shtml.)
>
> Last week, the group officially split with Bush. "In the course of
> our travels, we ended up learning more about Bush's policies than he
> wanted us to know," said Harmon Spellmeyer, one of the Yes, Bush Can
> team. "We came to see that this administration is a catastrophe for
> most people."
>
> Before breaking with Bush, the Yes, Bush Can team worked earnestly to
> support him. They went to the Pacific Northwest to promote Bush's
> Healthy Forests Initiative--and discovered it was enabling the
> logging industry to cut down our last old-growth forests. They
> visited a nuclear power plant in Ohio to promote Bush's domestic
> security policies--and found no one in the guard booth to meet them.
> In western Pennsylvania, while promoting the President's energy
> policy, they learned that it allows coal emissions which kill 23,000
> people a year. Finally, while defending Bush's war on terrorism, they
> found out that even Donald Rumsfeld feels the Iraq War has made the
> world a more dangerous place.
>
> After many similar discoveries and much internal turmoil, the Yes,
> Bush Can group arrived at the difficult conclusion that they could no
> longer continue their work. At a press conference Tuesday, in order
> to demonstrate how profoundly they are rejecting their former boss's
> ideas and policies, the team defaced and abandoned the bus they had
> purchased and outfitted.
>
> Until the election, the former Bush campaigners will be doing all
> they can to make sure that Bush is prevented from winning the
> presidency. They will be joining many thousands of others in going
> door-to-door to "get out the vote" in cities throughout Florida--
> beginning with Jacksonville, a mostly Black city where 11,000 votes
> were never counted in 2000. (Statewide, 179,000 votes weren't
> counted, more than half of them Black. 90% of Blacks voted for Gore.)
>
> The former Yes, Bush Can team recommends the following websites to
> those who wish to help "get out the vote":
>
> http://acthere.com/ http://drivingvotes.org/
> http://www.democrats.org/roadtrip/
> http://volunteer.johnkerry.com/traveler/
> http://www.moveonpac.org/lnvb/travel/
> http://www.aflcio.org/issuespolitics/politics/volunteernow.cfm
>
> To canvas by phone, visit http://www.partyforamerica.org/phone/ or
> http://calls.johnkerry.com/. Send a "vote" eCard at
> http://www.aflcio.org/familyfunresources/ecards/. To offer financial
> support to "get out the vote" efforts, visit
> http://acthere.com/gotv-contribute/ or
> https://www.democrats.org/support/.
>
> Finally, visit the Yes, Bush Can website to follow the Yes, Bush Can
> team as they join thousands of others in helping make sure that Bush
> can do no more damage to America's economy, security, and dignity.
>
> # 30 #
>
>

DISCUSSION

History's actors


the quote below is from the current Underfire list, but i thought i'd
send it here, for no good reason.
It seems the Bush Administration represents the current avant garde in
Pomo theory:

<begin quotation>
In the October 17 issue of the NYT magazine, Ron Suskind reported a
conversation with a Bush aide who told him that "guys like me were ''in
what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people
who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of
discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about
enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the
way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire
now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're
studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again,
creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how
things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you,
will be left to just study what we do.'"
<end quotation>

DISCUSSION

Fwd: [CAE_Defense] Leonardo award


> For immediate release
> October 25, 2004
> Contact: isast@leonardo.info
>
> Leonardo/ISAST Announces:
>
> Leonardo/ISAST gives New Horizons Award for
> Innovation to Critical Art
> Ensemble
>
> The Leonardo/International Society for the Arts,
> Sciences and Technology
> Governing Board (Leonardo/ISAST) is pleased to
> announce a special Leonardo
> New Horizons Award given to Critical Art Ensemble
> (CAE). CAE is
> internationally acclaimed for their artistic work in
> fields such as
> biotechnology, robotics and tactical media. Their
> performances and
> installations have reached viewers around the world
> and have broken new
> ground in the often controversial area of new
> technologies.
>
> The Leonardo/ISAST Governing Board voted to give CAE
> this special award to
> affirm the principle that artists should engage
> emerging technologies and be
> willing to take critical stances that may be at odds
> with those of the
> mainstream. Freedom of artistic expression and
> research form a part of the
> foundation of an open society. For more information
> on Critical Art
> Ensemble, please visit http://www.critical-art.net.
>
> Leonardo/ISAST recognizes the challenges that
> artists face as they strive
> for exposure and recognition. These challenges are
> amplified for artists
> working with new media and new
> techniques---especially for those artists who
> are pushing the boundaries of the integration of art
> and technology. The
> Leonardo New Horizons Award for Innovation was
> initiated to recognize new
> and emerging artists for innovation in new media.
> Evelyn Edelson-Rosenberg,
> Jean-Marc Philippe, Jaroslav Belik, Peter Callas,
> Patrick Boyd, Christian
> Schiess, I Wayan Sadra, Kitsou Dubois, Gregory
> Barsamian, Graham Harwood and
> Ewen Chardronett have received this award.
>
> More information on previous Leonardo New Horizons
> Award winners can be
> found at: http://leonardo.info/isast/awards.html.
>
> For over 35 years, Leonardo/ISAST has served the
> international arts
> community by promoting and documenting work at the
> intersection of the arts,
> sciences, and technology, and by encouraging and
> stimulating collaboration
> between artists, scientists, and technologists.
> Leonardo/ISAST activities
> include publication of the art, science and
> technology journal Leonardo;
> Leonardo Music Journal; the Leonardo Book Series;
> the electronic journal,
> Leonardo Electronic Almanac; and our World Wide Web
> Site, Leonardo On-Line
> (all published by The MIT Press). More information
> about Leonardo/ISAST
> membership and activities can be found online at:
> http://www.leonardo.info.
>
>
>
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>
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DISCUSSION

blogumentary


http://blogumentary.org/
from the front page:

Welcome to Blogumentary.

Hi there. My name is Chuck Olsen, and I'm producing an independent
documentary about blogs.

We live in an age where everyone is a mediamaker. Blogs empower us to
tell our story, spout and debate our politics, and share ourselves with
the rest of the world