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 ...
SWITCH: Issue 22
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 ...
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.
[-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.state of the planet infographics
a small collection of beautiful information graphics documenting the current state of the planet.
see also gapminder & 3d data globe.
[seedmagazine.com]
connect the dots
collaborating with the high-end color laser printer industry in order
to track the origin of every color copy made."
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/25165/
Get off the F-ing Freeway
IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=1&NrIssue$&NrSection=5&NrArticle23
'Get Off The Fucking Freeway': The Sinking State Loots its Own Survivors
by Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky
Two paramedics stranded in New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina
give their account of self-organisation and abandonment in the disaster
zone
Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's
store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The
dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now
48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk,
yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The
owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and
prescriptions and fled the City.
Outside Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly
thirsty and hungry.
The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and
the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an
alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and
distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized
and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours
playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.
We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived
home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or
look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video
images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists
looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.
We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images
of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the
"victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we
witnessed,were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief
effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who
used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who
rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who
improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the
little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop
parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent
many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious
patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in
elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats
to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters.
Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry
people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the
commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those
stranded.
Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from
members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only
infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.
On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the
French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees
like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and
shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and
friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts
of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were
pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must have
been invisible because none of us had seen them.
We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up
with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those
who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by
those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses,
spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water,
food, and clothes we had.
We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born
babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the
buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the
arrived to the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.
By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was
dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street
crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out
and locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to
report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered
the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard.
The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the
City's primary shelter had been descended into a humanitarian and
health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other
shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and
squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite
naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the
City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our
problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would
be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law
enforcement".
We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and
were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not
have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass
meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the
police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would
constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The
police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle
in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across
the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we
should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New
Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of
the City. The crowed cheered and began to move. We called everyone back
and explained to the commander that there had been lots of
misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were
buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated
emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there."
We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with
great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center,
many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we
were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately
grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then
doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using
crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We
marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the
Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our
enthusiasm.
As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across
the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they
began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing
in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of
us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in
conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police
commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us
there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to
move.
We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as
there
was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West
Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no
Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and
black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not
getting out of New Orleans.
Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the
rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided
to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on
the center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We
reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we would have some security
being on an elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for the
arrival of the yet to be seen buses.
All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the
same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be
turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no,
others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New
Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City
on foot. Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into
squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle.
We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any
car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to
escape the misery New Orleans had become.
Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery
truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so
down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations
on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping
carts. Now secure with the two necessities, food and water;
cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean
up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood
pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and
the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic,
broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling
system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce
for babies and candies for kids!).
This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When
individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out
for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for
your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met,
people began to look out for each other, working together and
constructing a community.
If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water
in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the
ugliness would not have set in.
Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing
families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our
encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.
From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was
talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news
organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being
asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on
the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of
us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an
ominous tone to it.
Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was
correct.
Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his
patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the
fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its
blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff
loaded up his truck with our food and water.
Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law
enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or
congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims"
they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay
together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small
atomized groups.
In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered
once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we
sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo
Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and
definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their
martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.
The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with
New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an
urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and
managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young
guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards.
They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that
meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks
they were assigned.
We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The
airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of
humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush
landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on
a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.
There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort
continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we
were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have
air-conditioners.
In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filthy overflowing
porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions
(often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were subjected to
two different dog-sniffing searches.
Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been
confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal
detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women, children,
elderly, disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be "medically
screened" to make sure we were not carrying any communicable diseases.
This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt
reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker
give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street
offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome.
Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist.
There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not
need to be lost.
Fwd: The last Radical Read-In of the Summer: Saturday, September 10, 2005 5-7 PM
> The Last Radical Read-In of the Summer
>
> Saturday, September 10, 2005, 5-7 PM
>
> Come to Printed Matter this Saturday, September 10 from 5 to 7 PM for
> one last Radical Read-In and end the summer with a bang! Share your
> ideas, opinions, questions, visions, rants, raves and reactions to
> artists' books with the rest of the world while there's still time.
> Printed Matter is located at 535 West 22nd Street between 10th and
> 11th Avenues.
>
> All summer long Radical Read-Ins have been bringing members of the
> community into Printed Matter to share their favorite books or parts
> of books with each other. While browsing through the shelves, having
> afternoon refreshments and sitting on Justin Lowe's parquet floor made
> of tightly packed books in the Back Room, visitors exchange ideas
> about the books they are drawn to or want to draw others to. They can
> flag books on Printed Matter's table tops and bookshelves with
> specially designed bookmarks that have room to note particular pages,
> make written comments, or leave a name and contact information for
> future off-site discussions. Through the Radical Read-Ins, LTTR
> promotes reading as an activist undertaking, one that can band people
> together, revolutionize thinking, mobilize groups, or just expand a
> single person's view of the world or the self. Come see what it's all
> about!
>
> LTTR is a collective of artists, writers, activists and cultural
> producers who publish the annual queer feminist art journal, LTTR, and
> who initiate events, organize exhibitions, and promote the work of
> critical thinkers who reject absolute self-definition and
> identification. Come participate in the collaborative spirit of LTTR
> at Printed Matter this Saturday, September 10 from 5 to 7 PM and save
> the date of September 24 for the Block Party that will celebrate the
> publication and release of LTTR #4: "Do You Wish to Direct Me?" and
> the closing of Justin Lowe's Back Room exhibition.
>
> For additional information, please contact Rachel Bers, Programming
> and Website Coordinator at (212) 925-0325 or rbers@printedmatter.org
>
> Printed Matter, Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit
> organization founded in 1976 by artists and art workers with the
> mission to foster the appreciation, dissemination, and understanding
> of artists' books and other artists' publications.
>
> Printed Matter has received support, in part, through grants from the
> New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of
> Cultural Affairs, The Altria Group, Inc., Milton & Sally Avery Arts
> Foundation, the Consulate and the Government of Canada, The Cowles
> Charitable Trust, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Fifth Floor
> Foundation, Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, The Horace
> W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Kettering Family Foundation, LEF
> Foundation, The Peter S. Reed Foundation, the Schoenstadt Family
> Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and
> private foundations and individuals worldwide.
>
> Printed Matter, Inc.
> 535 West 22nd St
> New York, NY 10011
> www.printedmatter.org
>
> T: 212 925 0325
> F: 212 925 0464