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: Commissions


On Apr 27, 2006, at 4:39 PM, curt cloninger wrote:
>
> Not the entire art world. And not grant programs (most of them) where
> previous work samples are required and integral. Just a granting
> scheme where you get a thumbs up or thumbs down based on a paragraph.
> And not "conceptual artists who use critical theory." Just
> "conceptual art projects."

but there are work samples required for these proposals, right? i
thought there was anyway... up to 5 or something if i remember
correctly. are people just not looking at them? if someone doesn't
include work samples, that says something in and of itself.
i guess this is why i'm confused about this line of critique... i don't
see how the work samples are disadvantaged here.
or are we talking about a hypothetical situation?
>
>> if you want to make work that functions in the "market" (i.e.
>> "attention
>> economy") well, you shouldn't need grants for that. Your work is
>> either
>> "successful" or it's not, based on its sheer ability to grab people,
>> or
>> not.
>
> True dat. And to make outsider art, all you need are some broken
> shards of glass and/or some rusty bicycle parts.

i thought it was driftwood and a buck knife :)
ryan

DISCUSSION

Re: proposal order


That's a good point Jim... i kind of assumed it was random, but if it's
not, that could be very prejudicial.
ryan

On Apr 27, 2006, at 4:09 PM, Jim Andrews wrote:

> A question for Patrick May. Is the order in which voters view the
> proposals
> fixed? In other words, does everyone view proposal X0 first, then
> proposal
> X1 etc? I've heard a couple of people so far say they only got through
> 30 or
> so of the proposals.
>
> Perhaps 'ideally', the order in which the proposals are viewed would be
> random for each viewer/reader. I guess that'd be a 'next year' thing
> though.
> You probably wouldn't want to muck with it at this point.
>
> ja
> http://vispo.com


DISCUSSION

Re: Commissions


maybe i'm reading this all wrong, but i don't get the problem people
are finding between reading a description or conceptual sketch of work
and viewing work examples. both are required of the proposal, no? do
you read a description of a movie usually, and go, "well, don't need to
see that now."? sometimes, yes, if the description contains nothing
that sounds interesting. but then the movie would probably equally fail
to get your interest.
i'm also wary of the "the art world favors conceptual artists who use
critical theory" complaint. i have seen no evidence that the majority
of arts funding, public or private, is going towards the kind of work
that Curt is somewhat bemoaning. Just look at the majority of arts
council fundees.
as Lauren said, the larger problem with grant funding isn't about
language, but name recognition and the self perpetuating tendency of
awards.
i don't know, this all sounds very similar to the claims of
conservatives that academia is governed by left wing ideologues while
millions of dollars are flowing into corporate research facilities and
business schools. of course, i don't mean to equate the people criting
the grant system with Lynn Cheney. well, not entirely ;)
we all know a linguistic description of an image is not the image. but
sometimes you have to tell people about the image to get them to look
at it. isn't that the whole point of the parallel metadata discussion
we're having?
i'm not saying that a description should replace the work, but for
God's sake, it's not that complicated. and a lot of the ab ex painters
did talk about their work in ways that obviously resonated with the
critical canon of the time. hell, they became the canon for 30+ years.
but they didn't need grant funding, they had Castelli, etc. if you want
to make work that functions in the "market" (i.e. "attention economy")
well, you shouldn't need grants for that. Your work is either
"successful" or it's not, based on its sheer ability to grab people, or
not.

DISCUSSION

Fwd: Jane Jacobs dies at 89


Begin forwarded message:
>
> Jane Jacobs, an author and community activist of singular influence
> whose classic "The Death and Life of Great American Cities"
> transformed ideas about urban planning, died Tuesday, her publisher
> said. Jacobs, a longtime resident of Toronto, was 89.
>
> http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/news/celebrity/sns-ap-obit-jane-
> jacobs,0,1699706.story?coll=mmx-celebrity_heds
>