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: NYTimes.com Article--Online Games Grab Grim Reality


At the very least the violent action at the heart of many games accurately reflects the world that game players confront when they step away from their screens."

just my offhand comments... which aren't worth much.
i found this article very useful in thinking about the documentary/social realism possibilities of gaming... but the quote above, i'm not too sure about. there are, no doubt, many (at least way more than there should be) people that face violence on a daily basis, and to a certain extent, it's everywhere. but comparing the symbolic violence portrayed in games to the "world that game players confront...away from their screens" seems ridiculous. if anything, most game players experience as much, and one could argue more, violence through screens than outside of them. if we're talking about a western European/US context - which the article no doubt was - than what gaming audience are we talking about that's experiencing all this violence? and do most games "accurately reflect" the experience of those populations subjected to direct violence in this country - driven by economic disparity, racism and sexism? i'm not not much of a gamer, but my sense is that it doesn't, that it rather utilizes violence as an escape/release mechanism for (mostly) dominant population's fantasies and desires.
i see the work mentioned in the article as countering this, but that one statement's assertion that "many games accurately reflect the world" is a bit troubling...

DISCUSSION

Contextin' Art :: Fall 03 installment open


9.15.03

Fall installment of Contextin

DISCUSSION

FWD: CLUI announcement


Dispatch: 9/5/03

CLUI Exhibit + Tour announcement

Ground Up: Photographs of the Ground in the Margins
of Los Angeles

September 19 - November 2, 2003

This new exhibit opening at the Center for Land Use
Interpretation,
Los Angeles uses, as a point of departure, soil maps
of Los Angeles
County published by the United States Department of
Agriculture.
These maps, created by soil scientists from the
National Soil Survey
Center, a division of the USDA, consist of aerial
photos with soil
types superimposed. Soil Maps provide evidence of a
great variety of
human interventions in the landscape, from landfills
to new
construction, from mining to agriculture.

Visit http://www.clui.org for more information

-------

As part of this exhibit the Center is conducting a
one-time only
bus tour:

Margins in our Midst: A Journey Into Irwindale

Price: $20
Saturday, September 20, 2003

Tickets for the tour are limited and must be purchased
in advance,
and will be sold on a first come, first served basis.
Tickets
will go on sale online at http://www.clui.org on
Monday, September
8th at noon.

-----------------

The CLUI Los Angeles Exhibit Hall is open noon to five
PM, Fridays,
Saturdays, and Sundays, or by appointment.

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DISCUSSION

FWD: Class C project (LA area)


new announcement for those in LA area:

CLASS: C

DISCUSSION

FWD: carbon defense league update


FWD msg from the CDL:

Update September 02, 2003

Carbon Defense League has a new website. Expect more
information to be
added
beginning in October - until then I am very busy.
Thanks to Hans for
the new
design and help finishing the site.

http://www.carbondefense.org

The new web site is launched! After many months of
putting it off and
pulling materials off the site for fear of legal
ramifications, we have
updated the site providing more content than ever
before. The CDL is
very
busy right now. We have new projects coming out in the
next few months
and
have been travelling extensively promoting the group
through workshops
and
panel discussions. We are still looking for more
members so email us if
you
would like to help out or have a project idea. We will
be in Amsterdam
presenting work as well as contributing a performance
to the No Escape
event
at Paradiso on September 12th. We will also be in San
Francisco and
Oakland
early October for the DSLR West event with many of our
friends.

Currently we are seeking more Java programmers. We are
also seeking
help
from people willing to contribute time to wheatpasting
advertisements
for
upcoming CDL projects.

We are also looking for payphone that have been
retired. We need access
to
the insides of the phones for modification purposes.

Attention Amsterdam!
We will be at the Next 5 Minutes Festival
(www.next5minutes.org) from
september 10th to september 15th. The new HMA Project
will be performed
at
that event.

Attention Lawyers!
We need your input. Please discreetly contact us if
you can offer free
counseling.

Thanks

Nathan Martin
Hactivist Tactical Media Network :
http://www.hactivist.com
Carbon Defense League : http://www.carbondefense.org
Creation is Crucifixion : http://www.creationiscrucifixion.com

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