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

Open Letter from Jem Cohen


Begin forwarded message:

> Hello. I'm attaching an open letter regarding an incident that took
> place in
> January. I was stopped from filming out of a train window and had my
> film
> confiscated and turned over to the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the
> FBI.
>
> I went to the ACLU, and have been assisted by a lawyer at the NYCLU
> (New
> York Civil Liberties Union). I wrote a piece about it and included the
> attached letter in the last issue of Filmmaker Magazine.
>
> Recently, the lawyer called to say that the FBI was returning the
> film, as
> it had been cleared by the authorities. When I went to pick it up, I
> found
> that the original box and reel had been sent back, but the reel was
> empty,
> save for a few inches of film. The matter remains unresolved, and for
> me,
> deeply disturbing.
>
> Most of us are inundated with email, and I had mixed feelings about
> sending
> yet another mass missive. Please forgive the intrusion.
> I'm not asking for you to do anything, and that includes write me back.
> I'm sending this simply because I feel that people should know about
> such
> incidents. You are welcome to pass along the attached letter, although
> I
> would prefer that my email address not be made entirely public.
> I would be glad to talk to the press about it, although an editor I
> spoke to
> at the New York Times suggested that it might not be of interest to the
> media because such incidents are becoming too commonplace.
>
> Thank you for having a look.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Jem Cohen
>
>
>
> ----------------
>
> An open letter to the film and arts community:
>
> On January 7th, 2005, I was filming from the window of an Amtrak train
> going
> from New York to Washington D.C., and my film was confiscated by
> police, due
> to supposed national security concerns. At first, I was told by a
> ticket
> taker that I couldn't shoot because I was in the 'quiet car,' but when
> I got
> ready to move, he said I couldn't shoot at all. I explained that I was
> a
> filmmaker who'd done this for years, and politely asked to speak with
> someone else about it. I stopped filming, waited, and asked again, but
> no
> one came. When the train stopped in Philadelphia, at least four
> uniformed
> officers entered the car and demanded that I step off the train with
> the
> camera. They took my personal information and told me to give them the
> film
> from the camera. Not wanting to ruin it, I insisted on rewinding the
> roll,
> which I then gave up. Upon arrival in D.C., I was immediately met and
> questioned by more officials, this time out of uniform. My film has
> apparently been given to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and then to
> the
> F.B.I. As of this writing, I have not been able to get it back. (I
> took my
> case to the American Civil Liberties Union, who are working on it).
>
> I'd been shooting in 16mm, using an old, hand-wound Bolex. I was
> filming the
> passing landscape as I've often done over the past 15 years. As a
> filmmaker
> who does most of my work in a documentary mode and often on the
> street, my
> role is to record the world as it is and as it unfolds. I build
> projects
> from an archive of footage collected in my daily wanderings, and in
> travels
> across this country and overseas. I film buildings and passersby, the
> sky,
> streets, and waterways; the structures that make up our cities, life
> as it
> is lived. I cannot pre-plan and attempt to obtain permits every time
> that I
> shoot; it is an inherently spontaneous act done in response to daily
> life
> and unannounced events.
>
> I believe that it is the work and responsibility of artists to create
> such a
> record so that we can better understand, and future generations can
> know,
> how we lived, what we build, what changes, and what disappears. This
> has
> been the work of documentarians and artists including Mathew Brady,
> Lewis
> Hine, Walker Evans, Helen Levitt, Gary Winogrand, Robert Frank, and so
> on.
> Street shooting is one of the cornerstones of photography itself, and
> it is
> facing serious new threats, some declared, many not. In New York, the
> MTA
> apparently intends to forbid all unpermitted photography of and from
> its
> trains and subways. I have heard about a film location scout in
> upstate New
> York being interrogated for hours, even after presenting clear
> documentation
> that he was working for a legitimate production company; about
> documentary
> crews having their license plates called in and being visited by the
> FBI;
> about photojournalists working for the New York Times being stopped
> from
> doing the work that they have always done.
>
> As a filmmaker, I am concerned about what this kind of clampdown means
> both
> to our livelihood and to the public, historical record. As a citizen,
> I am
> concerned about a climate in which a person can be pulled off of a
> train and
> have their property confiscated without warning or redress.
>
> I am also, frankly, concerned about terrorism, and genuine threats to
> our
> lives and cities. This leads me to ask if these are efficient,
> intelligent
> allotments of limited law enforcement resources and personnel. Does
> stopping
> us from photographing a bridge make us safer when anybody can search
> the
> internet and see countless photographs of the same bridge? Are all of
> those
> photographs to be somehow suppressed? Given that anyone can purchase a
> video
> recorder with a lens the size of a shirtbutton or any number of hidden
> camera devices, are the people openly taking pictures such an actual
> threat?
> What about all of those cell phones with cameras? As Ben Franklin said:
> "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
> safety
> deserve neither liberty nor safety." Are we even gaining any safety?
> Given that intimidation and the curtailing of our freedom are exactly
> what
> terrorists want, I wonder if these infringements of our civil
> liberties are
> not in fact a form of capitulation.
>
> I write this to urge the film and arts communities to keep
> a
> record of such incidents and to notify their representatives in
> Congress and
> such organizations as the ACLU when they occur. This is also a call to
> publications, curators, and programmers: I recommend that you make the
> public aware of what important past work would not exist if these
> restrictions had been in place.
>
> Lastly, I write this to encourage a more general awareness of the ways
> in
> which, under the rubric of an endless "war on terror," we are seeing
> the
> denigration of due process, free speech, and the right to privacy,
> which are
> crucial safeguards of a free and democratic society.
>
>
> As printed in Filmmaker Magazine, Spring 2005
>
>
>
> Postscript:
>
> I was recently informed by my contact lawyer at the New York Civil
> Liberties
> Union office that the FBI was returning my film, as it had been
> cleared by
> the authorities. When I got to the office I was relieved to see the
> original
> film container. Unfortunately, the reel inside it was empty, save for
> a few
> inches of film.
>
> One bit of great news: faced with opposition from the public and the
> NYCLU,
> the MTA has backed down from its proposal to ban photography in and of
> the
> subways.

DISCUSSION

FWD: Pond Update


> Hello Fellow Pond Supporters:
> Pond has closed its gallery venue at 324 14th St. but continues to
> focus its programming on experimental art. As of June 15th, send
> correspondence to our mailbox at 1855 Mission St. #229, San Francisco,
> CA 94103. Stay current with our events by checking our website at
> www.mucketymuck.org and with our mailing list updates.
> Warmly and Fondly, Pond Co-Directors (Marisa Jahn, David Forster
> Rudolph, Steve Shada)
>
> Social Sculpture Mural Project at PostsovkhoZ
> August 5-15, 2005 | Location: Mooste, Estonia

OPPORTUNITY

call for projects


Deadline:
Sat Jun 25, 2005 19:25

>
>
> UNFURLED IN ESTONIA
> CALL FOR PROJECTS
>
> Opening Reception: Friday August 12, 2005
>
> Exhibition Run: Aug 1


DISCUSSION

Re: Fwd: rally to end "owner occupancy" mass evictions this weekend


> Cut the shit ryan and stop trying to sound so smart by asking
> questions... answer them for us please. And for gawd sakes keep it
> short.
>
> joseph

i'll stop "trying to sound so smart" (astute analysis, btw) if you stop
trying to sound so tough. deal?
sorry if i take some issues to be more complicated than a one liner, i
know how precious bandwidth is.

DISCUSSION

Re: Fwd: rally to end "owner occupancy" mass evictions this weekend


hi judsoN, joseph + all,

>> call me stupid
>
> what's wrong with "ryan"??

it's OK i guess ;)

> then you will trust, that if you do loose your home to some disaster,
> a better opportunity can come out of it. when it does, you'll be open
> enough to snatch it. now, you will still know the odds of winning the
> lottery and buying a house exasctly like your old one, but maybe you
> meet a disaster relief person, decide to join, they send you to zaire
> and you decide this the greatest opportunity of your life. you had
> never even considered it before. we can't always stay open to every
> possibility at all times. but you have to have faith that when
> disaster strikes, it will point you where you should open up.

i can relate to this on a first-person level, i.e. trying to make the
best of a situation, but i don't know that it's always possible to find
that beneficial hook to events that seem bad. and i don't know that i
can agree about protests being anachronistic. i do think that their
function has changed, and i think they have become more of a
collectivizing/carnivalesque form of organization. i see them as trying
to make an opportunity out of a "negative" event, and in a way that is
not exclusively reactionary. it can be a moment of forming community
around issues/places/ideas that extends beyond notions of "anti-war"
for example. kind of like how religious gatherings are about
practicing/learning how to live based on metaphysical levels,
demonstrations/protests can be seen as exercises in collective civics,
dissent, and/or spontaneous fun. (not that these things need to be
mutually exclusive)

Joseph wrote:
"The argument for rent control is often put forth on grounds of equity.
Tenants as a group have less wealth than landlords, and this housing
policy is a way of increasing the income of the latter and decreasing
that of the former. This is not to say that rent control /transfers
/wealth from landlord to tenant. It cannot be doubted that controls
dissipate the wealth of the owners of residential rental units. But it
is the rare tenant who actually gains thereby. Certainly this does not
apply to the renter who is frozen out of the controlled sector, and
must avail himself of what is available in the newer uncontrolled area.
Nor does it hold true for the tenant, such as in the South Bronx, who
sees the services supplied by his unit deteriorate to the low level of
this rent, and even below. No, gains go only to the relatively rare
tenant in a good neighborhood, located in a high rise with many vacancy
decontrols (so that the landlord has both the wherewithal and the
incentive to maintain the building in good repair). Rent control thus
not so much transfers money from poor tenants to rich landlords as it
impoverishes both" Walter Block (you might note that Prof Block has a
nice little resume).

thanks for that link, i'll have to read more. but based on the quote
above, i have the following questions:
what does it mean to say that the tenant in the south bronx sees
her/his quality of service "deteriorate to the low level of this rent"?
i don't understand the monetary value that is being discussed here. as
my example of LA earlier mentioned, the market rate of housing in LA is
seemingly based on something other than wages, the national (or even
local) rate of inflation or what HUD deems is fair market value. this
is where my problem with classical economics (and the dominant model of
supply and demand) comes in. the quote above, maybe a major misreading,
sounds an awful lot like arguments against regulation of economics in
any form, as if any of our economy works as a natural ecosystem that
has its own "equilibrium" established by some geo-biological
mechanisms. i just can't buy it, when the evidence of hard core
regulations (the case of the FHA, auto manufacturers and redlining
being the most obvious related examples, along with the earlier example
of section 8 i gave before) to make it work in favor of those that
espouse "free market" rhetoric is so visible (to non-specialists). if
the incentive to maintain a building properly is diminished by rent
control (land value regulation), why is that?
the other major question i have is: what renter is "frozen out of the
controlled sector"? and why is that (who is doing the "freezing")? i
don't think we can discuss the pitfalls of housing regulation (which
rent control is obviously part of) without looking at the context it
operates in. i'm not arguing for everyone to fight for "upwardly
mobile" residents and their renters' rights, but i don't think it's
either realistic or more progressive to claim deregulation as the
answer to housing problems. paying for health insurance undoubtedly
dissipates the wealth of CEOs and middle managers, but many argue this
benefits the employer as well as the employee (unless one takes
walmart's view that employees are pretty much expendable and there are
more than enough unskilled people to take over for the sick). if the
monetary value of land is regulated in a comprehensive way, i don't see
how this negatively impacts the owners in a way that justifies not
regulating it. if their cost for housing is also regulated - which
would include property taxation, general construction, utilities -
owners would benefit as well as renters. i'm sure some, or all, of this
is discussed by Block, so this is a quick response without having read
through, so i apologize for that.
i can anticipate a real politik answer to this, but i just don't accept
the "that's the way things work" answer to policy problems. policies
are created, maintained and abandoned everyday, and i don't think it's
idealism to work for different policy. it's not changing the weather.