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]
Fwd: Former Officials Fail to Prevent Recession in Mock Energy Crisis
$40-a-barrel range. As they fantasized where oil prices would be for
the war
game's start in an imagined late 2005, they said, they set them at $58
but
worried they were being absurdly pessimistic. Yesterday, the closing
price
for a barrel of oil was $59.42."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/23/
AR2005062301896.html
Begin forwarded message:
>
> Former Officials Fail to Prevent Recession in Mock Energy Crisis
>
> By John Mintz
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Friday, June 24, 2005; Page A19
>
> The United States would be all but powerless to protect the American
> economy
> in the face of a catastrophic disruption of oil markets, high-level
> participants in a war game concluded yesterday.
>
> The exercise, called "Oil Shockwave" and played out in a Washington
> hotel
> ballroom, had real-life former top U.S. officials taking on the role of
> members of the president's Cabinet convening to respond to escalating
> energy
> crises, culminating in $5.32-a-gallon gasoline and a world wobbling
> into
> recession.
>
> Former CIA director R. James Woolsey and former EPA administrator Carol
> Browner said the United States needs to reduce dependence on overseas
> oil.
> (Michael Williamson - The Washington Post)
>
> "The American people are going to pay a terrible price for not having
> had an
> energy strategy," said former CIA director Robert M. Gates, who took
> on the
> role of national security adviser. Stepping out of character, he added
> that
> "the scenarios portrayed were absolutely not alarmist; they're
> realistic."
>
> The exercise began with ethnic unrest in Nigeria, leading to the
> collapse of
> the oil industry in that west African nation. Then al Qaeda launched
> crippling attacks on key energy facilities in Valdez, Alaska, and Saudi
> Arabia.
>
> But the war game's participants -- including former CIA director R.
> James
> Woolsey, former Marine Corps commandant Gen. P.X. Kelley and former EPA
> administrator Carol Browner, soon realized the U.S. government had few
> options in the short term to prevent an economic crash in this country
> and
> worldwide.
>
> When the exercise's planners first met last year, oil was in the
> $40-a-barrel range. As they fantasized where oil prices would be for
> the war
> game's start in an imagined late 2005, they said, they set them at $58
> but
> worried they were being absurdly pessimistic. Yesterday, the closing
> price
> for a barrel of oil was $59.42.
>
> The war game players also referred several times to other real-life
> events
> of today. A major feature of the exercise was how China's voracious
> appetite
> for oil is driving up world prices, and only yesterday it was
> announced the
> Beijing government, in a bold and unprecedented act, is bidding to buy
> the
> U.S. oil company Unocal.
>
> The exercise was organized by two nonprofit groups that focus on the
> national security implications of U.S. dependence on foreign oil: the
> National Commission on Energy Policy and Securing America's Future
> Energy
> (SAFE). The scenarios were dreamed up by a team of former oil industry
> executives and government officials, including Rand Beers, a White
> House
> counterterrorism official who quit in 2003 to protest the Iraq war.
>
> The underlying situation dramatized in the exercise -- and accepted by
> most
> energy analysts -- is that tolerances are so tight between supply and
> demand, that even small disruptions in the delivery of oil and natural
> gas
> can cause cascades of unpleasant developments.
>
> The war game contemplated that when oil prices spiked and the Cabinet
> met to
> consider its options, it realized it had almost no clout to influence
> events.
>
> The standard response, drawing on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, was
> symbolic at best. The president should not give in to Saudi offers
> that the
> kingdom would lower prices if he stopped pressing for Saudi democracy,
> the
> participants agreed. Within weeks conditions were worsening -- the
> Valdez
> oil terminal was on fire, as was a major Saudi oil port, and Western
> technicians were being killed there.
>
> Foreign oil firms soon pulled tens of thousands of workers out of Saudi
> Arabia. Suddenly lacking technical expertise, Saudi facilities could no
> longer play their decades-long role of guaranteed "swing" provider of
> oil in
> response to disruptions elsewhere. As the global recession deepened,
> there
> was no "central banker" of oil to smooth out temporary dislocations.
>
> The participants concluded almost unanimously that they must press the
> president to invest quickly in promising technologies to reduce
> dependence
> on overseas oil, such as hybrid cars powered by gasoline and plug-in
> electricity; and cars that run on fuels derived from prairie grasses,
> animal
> waste and other products. They all agreed these projects would take
> years to
> yield any benefit but should not wait for the kind of crisis they were
> dramatizing.
>
> "If you want to put a frown on the face of [Saudi] Wahhabis, talk about
> 100-mile-per-gallon vehicles," Woolsey said. "We don't need a Manhattan
> Project to do it."
>
>
Fwd: Job Opening for Festival Director
> From: Big Sky Documentary Film Festival <bigsky@highplainsfilms.org>
> Date: July 7, 2005 11:33:41 AM PDT
> To: Big Sky Documentary Film Festival <bigsky@highplainsfilms.org>
> Subject: Job Opening for Festival Director
>
> Job Opening -
> Big Sky Documentary Film Festival Seeks Director
> The Big Sky Documentary Film Festival is accepting applications for
> the position of Festival Director.
FWD: CLUI newsletter
The Spring 2005 edition of the "Lay of the Land" newsletter is now
availble in print and online.
http://www.clui.org/clui\_4\_1/lotl/index.html
Subscribers have been mailed a print copy.
(A minumum donation of $25 keeps you on our print mailing list)
Contents include:
- Immersed Remains: Towns Submerged In America
- Terminal Island: Touring The Edge Of America
- Jane Wolff Delves Into The Delta
- Tour Of The Monuments Of The Great American Void
- Report From CLUI Desert Research Station
- Report From CLUI Wendover
- Playas, New Mexico
- Wyoming's Powder River Basin
- A Visit To Dupont On The Brandywine
- Colorado Springs: Global Positioning, Time, and More
- Reflections On Chicago
- Dutch Crater On Hold
- CLUI Land Use Database Upgrades
----
Also, on Display at CLUI/LA:
Southern California Landscape Information Display
http://www.clui.org/clui\_4\_1/ondisplay/socaland/index.html
----
Thank you for your continued interest in the Center for Land Use
Interpretation!
----
The CLUI Los Angeles Exhibit Hall is open noon to five PM,
Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, or by appointment.
Admission is free.
Directions: http://www.clui.org/clui\_4\_1/contact/contact.html
Viva_arboles_felices
> If that's how art should be I'll have to erase my brain and run out
> to the local hobby store and pick up Bob Ross' Joy of Painting tapes.
> At least I can be fairly sure that my fellow teacher will keep
> complimenting me on my work.
http://site.angrypete.net/article/372/my-icons-are-gone
"One of my very first influences, in the artistic world was Bob Ross. I
remember clearly sitting with my two sisters on the couch, shoulder to
shoulder, watching in awe as Ross took a blank, vacant canvas, and in
thirty minutes painted a picture that was awe inspiring. Granted, no
art critic in their right mind would ever think that a Bob Ross
painting was a masterpeice, but in my mind, they were. Each brush
stroke, and each comment about wherever a cloud or tree lives in my
world helped shape my individuality.
As I've grown older, and I've learned more about him, and what he did
with his life, I'm impressed that someone so famous would be so humble,
and such a decent fellow. I'm sure he could have gotten quite a
considerable sum of money for the paintings he did, but he would rather
donate them to a charitable cause so that a charity would be better off
than he would. It helped me realize that by donating my own time to
those that need it, via web design, or anything of the like, I'd be a
decent human being as well.
Bob Ross passed away in 1995, taken by cancer, but, I can bet that he's
one of the people in heaven, talking to God about happy little trees,
happy little clouds, and thanking God that he gave him the ability to
share with the world a simple, elegant painting method.