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 ...

READ ON »


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 ...

READ ON »


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.

READ ON »


[-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.

READ ON »


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]

READ ON »



Discussions (909) Opportunities (8) Events (16) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Re: Does Barney Wear Nikes?


> "The role of a librarian is to make sense of the world of information.
> If
> that's not a qualification for superhero-dom, what is?"

great! thanks joy - that made me feel better, even without the cor-ten steel ;)
gotta love a site that can bring Regis Philbin and Jorge Luis Borges to the defense of librarians!
i like the albino bowler personally
"Soon everyone in the alley will be gathered around his lane to witness his extraordinary display of bowling virtuosity and his thick white sideburns."
http://www.accoutrements.com/actionfigures/11006.html
take care,
ryan

DISCUSSION

Does Barney Wear Nikes?


hi,
atomic elroy wrote:

> The sad thing is that most people find commercialization comforting.

yeah... it's kind of hard not to feel comforted when it's all most of us know (that tylenol/shirt/car will make me feel better). i guess that's why i find the nikeplatz work one of 01's more interesting pieces. they dealt with desire and dis/comfort within the space we usually encounter it. in a way this relates to the discussion going on about M.Barney's work... they executed the piece in corporate, polished form and that's partly why there's a reaction from the swoosh guys - a cardboard display and amateur web site would probably not have generated any reaction from the Viennese publi, let alone Nike. but , i find this work much more interesting than Barney's because it's using its production and distribution very self-consciously and reflexively. Barney is just creating esoteric and insular narratives (could vaseline be a better metonym?) with amazing visuals (not unlike the fashion world art is ever so connected with) in a format that is isolated and hermetic by nature - they're not even distributed in a way that larger audiences could see them, that way us sophisticated artists can have our own celebrity encrusted spectacle to applaud alongside T3 without worrying about the philistines making too much noise with their popcorn and jujyfruits. there's commercialism for comfort. i'm personally waiting for the swivel wrist Serra action figure. that would make me feel better. :)
ryan

DISCUSSION

Re: Why doesn't Nike want to play with me?


atomic elroy wrote:

> NIKE marketing WINS!
>
> you just spent a lot of time thinking, talking, writing, about NIKE.
>
> they win.
>
> did you ever visualize the swoosh while you were doing it?
> then they REALLY won!

yeah, i don't know about that... are you saying that any criticism that names the thing it criticizes is just advertising for that same thing? When we criticize the current US administration in name we're just advertising for it? did you feel compelled to go out and buy Nike shoes just because you read the name or saw the swoosh?
in some ways i see the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" argument, but come on, the viennese public apparently got very upset and even formed organizations to confront the (false) Nike encroachment.
we could certainly argue the way that this work is performing in its context - is it merely preparing people for a real campaign yet to come, making them cynically accept corporate control of space, or is it inciting and inflammatory to the point that it makes people see that it's already happening and giving them a reason to do something about it. i think it's important to make the distinction between generic statements that "corporations are bad" and "this corporation is bad because of X" sure it's reactionary in that it uses and relies on the name of an already global corporate image, but if a phony corporation were invented, one could say they took the easy way out. it's much easier to resign oneself to fictions and celebrate that the system works - "see we can make critical statements and not get in trouble." then we can all say, "yeah, but that's fiction. it could happen in the future, but we wouldn't let it." But honestly, i think the legall battle is part of the work - is Nike not itself part of public space?
anyway, just my 2 cents.
ryan

DISCUSSION

Re: Why doesn't Nike want to play with me?


atomic elroy wrote:

> NIKE marketing WINS!
>
> you just spent a lot of time thinking, talking, writing, about NIKE.
>
> they win.
>
> did you ever visualize the swoosh while you were doing it?
> then they REALLY won!

yeah, i don't know about that... are you saying that any criticism that names the thing it criticizes is just advertising for that same thing? When we criticize the current US administration in name we're just advertising for it? did you feel compelled to go out and buy Nike shoes just because you read the name or saw the swoosh?
in some ways i see the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" argument, but come on, the viennese public apparently got very upset and even formed organizations to confront the (false) Nike encroachment.
we could certainly argue the way that this work is performing in its context - is it merely preparing people for a real campaign yet to come, making them cynically accept corporate control of space, or is it inciting and inflammatory to the point that it makes people see that it's already happening and giving them a reason to do something about it. i think it's important to make the distinction between generic statements that "corporations are bad" and "this corporation is bad because of X" sure it's reactionary in that it uses and relies on the name of an already global corporate image, but if a phony corporation were invented, one could say they took the easy way out. it's much easier to resign oneself to fictions and celebrate that the system works - "see we can make critical statements and not get in trouble." then we can all say, "yeah, but that's fiction. it could happen in the future, but we wouldn't let it." But honestly, i think the legall battle is part of the work - is Nike not itself part of public space?
anyway, just my 2 cents.
ryan

DISCUSSION

EFF press release: diebold and e-voting


Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release

For Immediate Release: Thursday, October 16, 2003

Contact:

Wendy Seltzer
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
wendy@eff.org
+1 415 436-9333 x125 (office), +1 914 374-0613
(cell)

Will Doherty
Executive Director
Online Policy Group
press@onlinepolicy.org
+1 415 826-3532 (please leave message)

ISP Rejects Diebold Copyright Claims Against News
Website

EFF Defends Right to Publish Links to Electronic
Voting Memos

San Francisco - Defending the right to link to
controversial
information about flaws in electronic voting systems,
EFF
announced today it will defend an Internet Service
Provider
(ISP) and a news website publisher against claims of
indirect copyright infringement from the electronic
voting
machines' manufacturer.

On October 10, 2003, electronic voting company
Diebold,
Inc., sent a cease-and-desist letter to the nonprofit
Online
Policy Group (OPG) ISP demanding that OPG remove a
page of
links published on an Independent Media Center
(IndyMedia)
website located on a computer server hosted by OPG.

Diebold sent out dozens of similar notices to ISPs
hosting
IndyMedia and other websites linking to or publishing
copies
of Diebold internal memos. OPG is the only ISP so far
to
resist the takedown demand from Diebold.

"What topic could be more important to our democracy
than
discussions about the mechanics and legitimacy of
electronic
voting systems now being introduced nationwide?" said
EFF
Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer. "EFF won't stand by as
corporations like Diebold chill important online
debate by
churning out legal notices to ISPs that usually just
take
down legitimate content rather than face the legal
risk."

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed by
Congress in 1998 provides a "safe harbor" as an
incentive
for ISPs to take down user-posted content when they
receive
cease-and-desist letters such as the ones sent by
Diebold.
By removing the content, or forcing the user to do so,
for a
minimum of 10 days, an ISP can take itself out of the
middle
of any copyright claim. As a result, few ISPs have
tested
whether they would face any liability for such user
activity
in the first place. EFF has been exposing some of the
ways
the safe harbor limits online speech through the
Chilling
Effects Clearinghouse.

"We defend strongly the free speech right of our
client
IndyMedia to publish links to Diebold memos relevant
to the
public debate about electronic voting machine
security,"
explained OPG Executive Director Will Doherty.
"Diebold's
claim of copyright infringement from linking to
information
posted elsewhere on the Web is ridiculous, and even
more
silly is the claim that we as an ISP could be liable
for our
client's web links."

For this release:
http://www.eff.org/Legal/ISP_liability/20031016_eff_pr.php

Cease-and-desist letter Diebold sent to OPG:
http://www.eff.org/Legal/ISP_liability/cease_desist_letter.php

IndyMedia Web page subject to Diebold cease-and-desist
letter:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/09/1649419_comment.php

Security researchers discover huge flaws in e-voting
system:
http://www.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/20030723_eff_pr.php

Link to Chilling Effects on DMCA safe harbor
provisions:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/

About EFF:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading
civil
liberties organization working to protect rights in
the
digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively
encourages and
challenges industry and government to support free
expression and privacy online. EFF is a
member-supported
organization and maintains one of the most linked-to
websites in the world at
http://www.eff.org/

About Online Policy Group:

The Online Policy Group (OPG) is a nonprofit
organization
dedicated to online policy research, outreach, and
action on
issues such as access, privacy, the digital divide,
and
digital defamation. The organization fulfills its
motto of
"One Internet With Equal Access for All" through
programs
such as donation-based email, email list hosting,
website
hosting, domain registrations, colocation services,
technical consulting, educational training, and
refurbished
computer donations. The California Community
Colocation
Project (CCCP) and QueerNet are OPG projects. OPG
focuses on
Internet participants' civil liberties and human
rights,
like access, privacy, safety, and serving schools,
libraries, disabled, elderly, youth, women, and
sexual,
gender, and ethnic minorities. Find out more at
http://www.onlinepolicy.org/

About IndyMedia:

Indymedia is an international network working to build
a
decentralized, non-commercial media infrastructure to
counter an increasingly consolidated corporate media.
Indymedia collectives have spread rapidly since the
WTO
protests in Seattle 1999, with IMC groups now working
throughout North & South America, the Middle East,
Europe,
Africa, Asia and Oceania, accessible through
http://www.indymedia.org/

-end-

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com