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

folkstreams


http://www.folkstreams.net/

The mission of Folkstreams.net is to build a national preserve of
documentary films about American folk or roots culture. Produced by
independent filmmakers, these hard-to-find films give voice to the arts
and experience of diverse American groups. They are streamed on the
website together with background materials that highlight the history
and aesthetic importance of the traditions and the films.

Folkstreams.net makes these films easy to find and to see by
video-streaming them on the Internet, and also provides in-depth and
reliable contextual materials about the subjects and the filmmaking.
Folkstreams.net also encourages alternative forms of filmmaking about
subjects neglected by mainstream corporate media.

DISCUSSION

Fwd: [Vers04_invisiNet] VERSION>05 update


Begin forwarded message:

>
> From April 22 to May 1, over 350 artists, performers, media makers,
> cultural
> workers and community activists will be participating in over over 200
> different projects, performances, presentations, talks and
> interventions,
> during Version>05 Invincible Desire. We have posted a pdf of the
> Version>05
> program

DISCUSSION

Re: RRR Revving: Up:the rapture and anti-environmentalism


> vroooooommmm!!!!

i make a "swoosh" sound when i send mail. don't tell nike

DISCUSSION

Re: the rapture and anti-environmentalism


francis, curt, etc...

> But then, when other people are loudly hijacking a thing that you
> yourself stand for, what is your moral and social responsibility to
> stand up and be counted as a moderate?

i agree with where francis is coming from regarding confronting those
that use "Christianity" to oppress others, but i don't think it's an
issue of being moderate. what does it mean to be "moderate"? you sit
somewhere in the middle between wanting to kill people and wanting to
save them? i don't think i want to even exist on the same spectrum as
the Falwell's, Robertson's and Bush's. this problem goes beyond the
religious discussion. i don't understand the concept of a "political
moderate" that exists between the "right" and the "left" - 2 completely
arbitrary political labels that represent how to act in the world. how
can there be a middle ground between violence and non-violence? Between
oppression and liberation? i think this kind of logic allows it to seem
necessary to say things like "we need a balance of opinions represented
in our political process," even when one of the "sides" wants to deny
the right of speech to anyone else. how is the denial of marriage
rights to anyone something that should even be considered? why is that
a legitimate perspective for the political process?
how can we listen to Bush requesting our laws to "err on the side of
life" seriously. how many people has he put to death, both in Texas and
abroad? there's certainly more at work here than a fucked up
interpretation of "Christianity."
to get back to moyers, i think this is his point - the influence of a
small, yet very powerful, group's desires and fears on a larger
political process in a highly opaque manner that exhibits some huge
contradictions in how we imagine our social and political imaginary. i
don't know that there's room for moderation here.
how about human rights fundamentalism?

DISCUSSION

Fwd: [event} Wednesday Version party ::Preversion at sonotheque.


> Hi please post this as far and wide as you can.
>
>
> PREVERSION
> March 23, 9pm
> Sonotheque 1444 W Chicago Ave.
>
> We are throwing down at sonotheque.
> It's our first fundraiser for version.
> Come take a peak at our upcoming program, help us produce the festival
> and
> volunteer!
>
> Featuring the work of:
> DJ Charlie and the Americas with Ken the Explorer
> Coco Le Roq
> Dj Logan Bay
> DJ Rotten Milk
> All American VJ team
>
> We want to make it worth the trip and your philanthropic support. If
> you
> didn't get a copy on the streets of the recent antiwar march on March
> 19
> then come to our party to get a copy of the really bad ass War News, a
> project published by Lumpen Media Group. This 18"x22" tabloid
> newspaper It
> contains a series of posters that are kick ass. Take a look for
> yourself>>
> http://www.lumpen.com/events/preversion.html
>
> Your $5-10 donation will help us put on the ten day dream machine
> called
> Version festival. Version>05 takes place April 22- May1,
> http://www.versionfest.org
>
> It's a dance party. $2 PBRs.
> Free hugs.
>
>
> What is it?
> Version is a festival focusing on intersections of art, media,
> technology
> and politics. Our fourth annual convergence, Version>05 Invincible
> Desire,
> is an experiment in navigating (sub)cultures which strategically
> combine
> visual arts, interventionist activism, and the creative use of
> technologies.
>
> For ten days Version>05 will highlight territories of the
> countercultures
> with a diverse program featuring an experimental art expo, networked
> urban
> events, video screenings, pirate broadcasts, public interventions,
> performances, workshops, discussions, parties and street action. We
> envision
> a New Renaissance of aggressive cultural workers organizing their
> shared
> interests and networking the distribution of ideas; a rendez-vous of
> friends
> & lovers who've never yet met.
>
> Ok see u all.
>
> ////