Binarykatwalk

Binarykatwalk announces the launch of its first edition. Binary Katwalk is an on-line New Media exhibition focusing on work that is experimental and would benefit from this non-traditional exhibition space. The goal of the site is to unify works over time into one expanding and unified exhibition as opposed to specific exhibitions that open and then close or go to a secondary archive. It is co-curated by Jeremy Hight and Sindee Nakatani. Come to Binary Katwalk to see the work of 5 strong artists from very different points in the spectrum of New Media.

Binarykatwalk presents the work of :

AGRICLOA DE COLOGNE

OLIVER DYENS

CATHY DAVIES

LISA TAO

BJORN WANGEN

Human Zoo

London Zoo is finally exhibiting Homo Sapiens.

Inner Motivation

Inner Motivation

This is the driving force to create, not for reward but for its own sake. For the enjoyment, satisfaction, challenge. Research has consistently shown that work evaluation, supervision, competition for prizes, and restricted choices in how to perform an activity—all these undermine intrinsic motivation and inhibit creativity in workers. Research on children has also supported these results. A June 25, 1994 summary article in Science News magazine (which summarizes papers and publications in various science fields) reported that, in studies with children, creativity in artwork and written stories drops significantly for children who receive or expect to receive prizes or other rewards.

from http://tarakharper.com/k_creatv.htm via Willard McCarty

Mainstream Music Distribution Models Changing (Slowly)

From The Guardian Unlimited:

"Online music fans will for the first time be able to legally share tracks by big names such as Oasis, Beyonce, David Bowie and Elvis Presley after the artists' record label signed a ground-breaking deal with a new internet service provider.
In what some see as signaling a dramatic shift in the way consumers buy music, the provider, Playlouder, has licensed acts from SonyBMG, the world's second largest record label, and is confident that the other two big record labels, Universal and EMI, will follow suit."

Although I am not so interested personally in the music of "Beyonce" and Co. It is clear that despite the huffing and puffing the three biggest distributors of music in the world will eventually realize that there are other ways to shift units than selling them out of a overpriced megastore in the mall. Once the Big 3 fashion distribution to fit technology then they will see to the laws surrounding copyright fit their preferred distribution model. The creative commons license could well be a model for the mass market of the future, where "try-before-you-buy" becomes the norm and purchased CD's hold large amounts of extra multimedia content that is constantly being updated from sites where it can be downloaded.

Mediatopia.2 Fresh

For those of us who still belive the internet can be a force for free speech and self-publicising (hey that's us right!!); Mediatopia2:

"Mediatopia.2 fresh! assembles an exciting mix of recent net-based work by a diverse group of neoteric artists, creatives and thinkers. Their fresh, networked interfaces look to a variety of means to utilize the Internet, both as creative medium and as a channel to share and distribute their output. The Internet, with its network functionality and potential for user interaction, is their creative playground: a form to manipulate and a means of social or political expression."

Don't Know What to Say..........

Want to write but have only bits to think about just now. Busy days but not much finished. Many things on their way but not much arriving. Played didge alone in the forest today and the trees seemed happy. I seems to have found a rhythm that is sweet and wicked.
Here's a poem by me about virtual reality, which is everywhere...first time I have ever put one here I think...something written in a moment of spiritual contemplation of my computer, which I think I love (Computer or poem??):

Ritual Vanity

My computer screen filled with flies
Real ones.
We cramped screaming fly to light
Like as
The moths we never believed ourselves
To be.
This month I have taken to the scrapings
Alive sound.

Ritual vanity is assembled about me
The sparkling ruins of a species
Battle ready by dissent and indulgence
Gather upon the edges of the game
Poised for a few seconds of connection
The timid blows of word sound
Images fall and rise again before
The Falling for how are we to have found
Our way out of this endless tiny labyrinth
Dead quiet.

Eyes look closer to the light
It suddenly becomes reflective
But the source is somehow
Behind me I notice shadows
Moving upon the edges of the screen
Gathering up my hands for taking
The trees appear to pass
Right through.

Facade

I have been spending a bit of time with Trip and Grace lately. They are having a rough time at the moment. After 10 years of marriage and life in the fast lane of Manhattan they are feeling it in the relationship. I was invited around for dinner and it ended up being a series of arguments and accusations. I think with time they may sort it out. I hope so as they are great people and good friends.

This is Facade, from Interactive Story. They call it a "game" but it seems more like a cybertext based on narrative choices. Its a free download and although simple in its design it has a strong sense of presence and immersion.

Darknet: Scared of the Dark?

Last night on SVT television (the state network) 6pm news we were informed of "new technology" that will make the internet a "paradise for pedophiles" and it is called "Darknet". Then a shadowy graphic of a pair of male hands moving over the keyboard which used a delay video feature to produce a sinister hallucinogenic effect.
The story went on to explain that Darknet was "en typ av mjukvara" a type of software, which allowed users to completely anonymous through ISP numbers being hidden in digital transactions, "aven fran experterna" even from experts.
An expert was interviewed, from ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking in Children for Sexual Purposes)and he was worried by such a development in technology, although he seemed to know not much about it.
Then a Swedish connection was established in a mathematician who played a part in formulating the maths surrounding Darknet. A complex equation was shown graphically during his short interview. He said in the interview it was nothing revolutionary in the maths.
Today the story has been removed from the SVT website news webcast (replaced by a story about workers cleaning up after a storm months ago in southern Sweden having a party).
I was interested by this story having followed things on the Darknet website for quite a while and not realizing what I thought was a book and "grassroots media network" was actually "a paradise for pedophiles". Looking more into it I can see it began with a fairly balanced New York Times article, which became a very unbalanced Svenska Dagbladet article, that was then taken up by SVT.
So what is Darknet?:
darknet n. The collection of networks and other technologies that enable people to illegally share copyrighted digital files with little or no fear of detection.
This could apply to many such networks that operate outside the big names like Gnutella etc.
Returning to the NYT article, I quote:

"Computer researchers say that the term "anonymous peer-to-peer," when applied to darknets, is actually a misnomer, because the networks must exist in the open Internet and thus must have identifiable addresses where they can be contacted by other nodes of the network."

So any network that is open can not be anonymous, closed networks can be so, but that is the same as secret societies which exist on our side of the screen. Darknet sounds more like a state of mind than a "type of software".

Space Ship Earth

For the past week I have been playing with Google Earth a new application from the Google Corporation. It is an amazing program which allow one to see the earths surface from satellite images. The quality goes from the poor to the spectacular, depending how close to the United States you are where the best images are found, although most of the sites I looked at were of great quality. If you want to see what I mean check out this collection of images.

Meme-ory to His-story

How history goes from memory to recorded fact is an interesting process. We may be witnessing this in the oral histories of the World Trade Center attacks. From the New York Times:

"more than 12,000 pages of oral histories rendered in the voices of 503 firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians, will be made public today."

Some are available online here.

Synchronicity and Rooster Teeth

Via Grand Text Auto.
When things seem to fall into place and connections are made which seem to be absolutely random, it makes me happy. This paper I am writing on The Sims2 focuses to a large extent on machinima film (films set in 3D game worlds). In The New York Times this week there is an article on Rooster Teeth, a collective of machinima film makers from Austin Texas who made the excellent The Strangerhood (download them NOW!), using The Sims2 for film environment. The Rooster Teeth site is HERE and I highly recommend their work.

Present Status and Location

I have not had much to blog on in the last couple of days due to being fully occupied. I am working on a paper which I blogged about on the HUMlab blog yesterday. It is almost finished..I think and will be mailed to Sodertorn on Monday I hope.
It is titled The Sims as Engine of Narrativity: A Hybrid of Digital (Cyborg) Media and I hope it is well received.
Today was mostly spent at Nolia,which was a cultural learning experience for me. Sort of like the Agricultural Shows I grew up with but without sideshow alley and massive amounts of drinking. I was in the University site were I played a bit of didgeridoo and spoke to people about everything from Aborigines to Cosplay. It was tiring day actually.
Now back to The Sims...

Detour this Concept

It seems I am not alone in spending my summer considering the idea of the Situationist International. I just found this great comment/short essay on the excellent Rhizome site (I hope you don't have to be a paid up member to see it).
Detour this Concept by Curt Cloninger, to my mind brings into the focus the spirit of dissent that one should approach such detoured works as the gnn video collective. I have been a fan of the Guerrilla News Network since I saw a hard techno sound track to Ronald Reagan B films as cut ups. However I do agree with;

"Don't fall into the easy dis Bush trap. Draw your horns on the
head of Warhol soup cans; paint your pitchfork into the hands of
Ozzie Nelson. Bush is the quintessential iconic bogey, luring
millions of potentially disruptive heads into an almost involuntary,
hypnotic, knee-jerk vilification of himself. He is the polarizing
agent that coaxes "radical artists" into the spectacle. We become
that upon which we gaze. To oppose Bush above all else is not to
oppose the spectacle. It is to participate in the spectacle at a
most ramped-up, self-deluded level. (If even now you feel disdain
rising up in you and an irresistible desire to write a scathingly
indignant response to this post, it's probably too late for you.) He
who has ears, let him hear."

Having witnessed the street theater that the squatting movement became in Holland in the late 1990's I believe that both sides of the left-right debate depend totally on each other. The anarchists in the television eye making another G8 summit difficult are those that bring about harsher restrictions on freedom of expression and right of assembly. Of course this does not mean that people should not be politically active. Just that they should be proactive in their activity, not reactive in their anger and dissatisfaction. Reactive people are never self directing, just echoing.

Go Ask Alice

My blogging seems to be quite frequent at the moment. A creative time perhaps. Its has been actually at home this last month with lots of art, music and writing going on.
My project for the next two weeks is a paper for possible publication with Sodertorn University College in Stockholm. It is on modes of narrative, the Sims2 game and the thousands of Sims movies that are posted on many sites around the net. Due to this I have been reading about The Sims, playing The Sims and lurking on fan sites and movie hosting sites. It is an amazing community. The level of skill displayed in just the films has me really impressed (although not overall of course but many of them are astounding). This is one I found today, Go Ask Alice. I love it.

Bloggerthon has Begun

"On July 29th of 2000, Cat Connor of Frytopia posted an entry in her blog every fifteen minutes for twenty-four hours. At the end of her adventure she had posted a whopping 96 entries and had what was truly a unique experience in the blogging world. The following year when she decided to stage the 24-hour blogging event again, she decided that her event would do more than just gain attention - it would make a difference in the world. So Blogathon was born."

This morning the fifth annual Blogathon began. Charities which gain from Blogathon include RAINN, Save the Tiger and the Human Rights Campaign.

As of this entry there were 247 Participants · 1426 Sponsors · $42401.95 Total Pledged.

Hiroshima Day

Sixty years ago today an atomic weapon was used against the largely civilian population of Hiroshoma. Over 140 000 people died and the suffering continues for many even today. A ceremony was held in the Peace Park in Hiroshoma today attended by thousands. The United States chose the day to release documents from the time which supported the argument that dropping the bombs shortened the war.

Since then in regards to war and the use of such horrible weapons United Nations (UN) secretary-general Kofi Annan said "Sadly, the world has made little progress."

Images Online from Summer School

Prof. Kenneth Knoespel of Georgia Institute of Technology, talks to me about something very interesting at the 2005 ICT and the Humanities Summer School.

Many images from the summer school I attended in June are now online HERE. It was a great experience to share time and space with so many gifted and intelligent people. Recognize anyone?

HarperCollins Australia Launches Mobilereader

Harper Collins Publishers Australia has launched from August 17th 2005Mobile Reader, a mobile phone service whereby sample chapters of new book are downloadable on mobile phones for those registered with the website.
This looks like a test project for larger markets, such as the USA, if the project works. The service is to be to be free but the mobile service provider will charge for the downloads.
HarperCollins Publishers' marketing director, Jim Demetriou said "The next step, depending on the phone technology and quality of the screens, is actually getting authors to write books for mobile-phone use",
"They'd have to write in a truncated way, use a different style of writing. It would be aimed at a younger age group." he said.
Perhaps writing in a spatial or visual way would allow for an eventual connection with alternative reality gaming. An interesting possibility indeed.

Constant Nieuwenhuys is Dead

Constant, Collage View of New Babylon Sector (1971)

Over the summer break I have been reading several books on the Situationists International (as you may guess from my slide show below on Situationist comics).
A great book was The Situationist City by Simon Sadler examined in some detail concepts and methodologies such as psychogeography and the ludic city.
The master of the ludic space was Constant Nieuwenhuis who died today aged 85 years.

"Town planning is not industrial design, the city is not a functional object, aesthetically sound or otherwise; the city is an artificial landscape built by human beings in which the adventure of our life unfolds."
Constant Nieuwenhuys, 1960

"The liberation of man's ludic potential is directly linked to his liberation as a social being."

"The audiovisual media will be used in the same spirit. The fluctuating world of the sectors calls on facilities (a transmitting and receiving network) that are both decentralized and public. Given the participation of a large number of people in the transmission and reception of images and sounds, perfected telecommunications become an important factor in ludic social behavior."
Constant Nieuwenhuys, 1974

Resonance FM begins Podcasting

One of the best net radio stations Resonance 104.4 FM, broadcasting out of London and run by the London Musicians Collective, will begin offering podcasts today.....Should be choice!