Latest ImprovEverywhere

Three pranksters of ImprovEverywhere brought their PCs to starbucks and proceeded to down koffie and browse the web.

Fez - 2D platformer in a 3D environment

from boingboing gadgets, via kokoromi
SQUEAKOFJOY! i wanna to play it!

Game Criticism, Why We Need It, and Why Reviews Aren't It

today on the excellent playthisthing costik has written a call for serious discussion of games as art. link.

the joys of blogging...

i'm sitting at this moment in the de balie main hall in the back row's "blogger section" and i look to my left and see, on the screen of my neighbor, my blog :D i don't know how she got there, but she was. brought a smile to my face. ahh, the intertubes...

Ken Jacobs, "The Image, Finger Raised to Lips, Beckons"

Such intense feelings are evoked by his films. "Let There Be Whistleblowers" was an 18 minute wandering through b&w found footage of a railyard and the people in the the trains and in the yard that ends in a starkly contrasted tunnel that flashes and pulses while the whole movie is scored to minimalistic drum beats by Steve Reich. It becomes so surreal and aggressive that I started thinking of it in terms of life and death.

I can't give summaries of his films, you just have to see them. all I can say is that each and everyone of them as left my stomach clenched and twisted, my eyes sore, my mind numbed, but I've felt pushed through all this to come into some inarticulate synthesis of feeling and thought.

some excerpts from the essay he handed out at the beginning:

"We don't need all sense to be called on to enjoy any of them, and there's nothing strange in not wishing to divide attention between them. the 3-ring circus was a terrible idea, a scattering of attention and a perfect example of more is less."

"...many people can close their eyes and visulaize music, see abstractions or changing landscapes...the music video is something else, not a synesthetic elaboration but a mini-movie blotting out such felt connection; a manhandling forcing correspondance with musician's faces and bodies and antics, telling a story to the beat and contour of the music. Celebrity worship, promos for the bands."

"...as someone involved in painting I should have come to the silent image sooner...these days I wouldn't ask the imagery of ORCHARD STREET to move over and make way for sound."

"I watch films without sound to better pick up on what there is to see, foregoing story-justification for the things that happen. I like that they happen just because they do, as in real life, whenever the rationalizing mind is thwarted in its need to justify the strangeness of...real life. It's a child's vision, I suppose, when one miracle after the other passes in revue."

He ended with Brakhage's "Window Water Baby Moving" and I felt just like the baby.

blogging practices while at sonic acts

this is just a quick note to let you, my faithful readers (i really have no idea how many, if any, regular readers i have, if you're one, leave a comment, let your voice be heard!), know that anything with the prefix "sonic acts" is a direct copy of my post on the sonic acts xii website. you can follow the conference in all it's artistic glory via live webfeed and chat, as well.

Sonic Acts XII: Jeffery Shaw on Interactivity and Immersion

Jeffery Shaw, a pioneer in his use of interactivity and immersion in his installations, gave a talk about his work in the De Balie main hall this afternoon. Shaw’s work is the next logical step in the conference series after Erkki Huhtamo’s presentation on The Diorama: Revisited. He started off with the quote, (in part)”…it is the type of image produced that determines the narrative, not the reverse…” from Raul Ruiz, “Poetics of Cinema”, Editions Dis Voir, Paris, 1995.

I think this adequately summarizes both Shaw’s work and his method. Shaw’s work seems to setup situations in which the narrative building tendencies of the human mind are completely stimulated. But his work is still rendered from only one specific location, the center, which has the interesting side-effect, he noted, of being extremely disconcerting for those not standing directly in the center. they are watching a scene move and shift from someone else’s perspective. I think this is one of most powerful effects of his works.

see here and here for more of his work.

Sonic Acts XII: Erkki Huhtamo, The Diorama Revisited

22feb08, 10:08-11:36

erkki huhtamo just finished a lecture on the history of the diorama and it's many mutations and iterations. i'm not going to give a summary of the lecture as sitting around me there were 5 other people furiously typing away. erkki covered mostly the "dioramic" (my term, not his) technologies of the mid to late 19th century, such as panoramas, dioramas, and then they way the have evolved and manifest themselves today.

during the q&a though, a question arose, (and i'm summarizing) about whether he saw a continuity between pre-renaissance practices of visually immersive environments and the dioramas of his talk. erkki responded that yes he sees the connections, but doesn't find it interesting. i found this... not satisfying, but understandable.

i think there is definitely a connection between the various media we make to look at, but that perhaps it is too broad, to primitive a concept, to be of much use to a media archaeologist (hence i understand why he doesn't find it that interesting). the question seems to be, at it's root, the basic question of why people create. the cultural continuity between cave-paintings and video games would then seem to be culture itself. the basic fact that we made it, because we want to create.

a more detailed summary of his talk here, pictures here, and here.

Sonic Acts Opening Exhibition at Netherlands Media Art Insitute

21feb 20:22

my cohorts and i just returned from the opening of the sonic acts 12 exhibition at the netherlands media art institute. the exhibition gathers work from four international artists, boris debackere(be), kurt hentschlager(at), ulf langheinrich(d) and julien maire(f).

just an initial impression, but, i was most impressed with julian maire's exploding camera (2007). essentially he dis-assembled a vhs camcorder onto a table and built a system of arms/alligator clips, leds, theatre lights and other bulbs to shine onto the exposed ccd. attached to a transparent disc, rotating just above the ccd he placed select transparent slides and film stills of detainee's, military and other pseudo-political images. the feed from the ccd is displayed on a television about 2 meters away from camera guts strewn across the table. as this low tech video creates itself, a soundtrack of sound bytes, gun shots and explosions fills the space.

as i watched other people watch this piece, i noticed that they were most interested in the dissected camera on the table. hardly anyone was watching the video. i kept thinking that perhaps it would have been better to fill the environment of the exploded camera with projects of the video it was creating. in essence turning the camera completely inside out, placing the viewer inside of the apparatus.

the rest of the pieces were quite nice as well, though i found ulf langheinrich's OSC (2006) piece too hard on my eyes to spend more than a few minutes with. kurt hentschlager's scape (2007) was also interesting in it's visual and techinical minimalism. i sat there for 20 minutes just enjoying the experience of the ever shifting scene before me.

check out pictures here and here.

SMS the Oracle Machine at De Balie

you can send an sms to the oracle machine at de balie in amsterdam by texting +31 06 5555 0131. this is also something you can do through skypeout if you have it.

Nebraska Library starts to include CC-licensed editions of books

via boingboing's cory doctorow,

The Nebraska Library Commission has begun to include Creative Commons licensed editions of books in its catalog -- so you can check out my novels in the Tor editions, or just nab a copy from the library's site.

link to nlc
link to boingboing

Sonic Acts 12: The Cinematic Experience

i'm off to amsterdam tonight with my fellow gradschoolers, (sounds a bit like pre-schoolers, which is better than pee-schoolers, imho), to attend and live-blog sonic acts 12: the cinematic experience festival. stay tuned for constant updates over the next few days.

Insane Domino Setup in Art Museum

the perrucci brothers set up this massive dominoes chain at the brattleboro museum and art center

super mario vs the many-worlds-interpretation of quantum physics

via boingboing via mechanically separated meat

mind mapping

i've started using this opensource mindmapping software called "freemind" to help organize my thoughts. and i love it. it is a really flexible tool for plotting and showing the interconnections between my many ostensibly disparate thoughts. i have so many ideas all the time that i often lose track of the ones that are worth while. this results in dropping many projects that have real promise and not being able to fully develop my ideas and feelings. this is a png of my mind map as it sits at this moment (8:02pm CEST, sunday, feb17, 2008). eventually i hope to have an interactive applet of my mind map up on this site so you can see how my ideas take root and branch off. (turn the image 90 deg counterclockwise).

Ghent'd

not much of a travelogue of the ghent trip to see paul mccarthy at SMAK, sorry. i did enjoy the exhibition more than i thought i was going to. i've seen a few of his videos before (via the intertubes) and they've always struck me as needless sh(ti)ock art. but after seeing an entire museum transformed for his labyrinth of depravity and ketchup, i must say i'm dulled. and impressed. my overall impression is of becoming numb after twenty minutes or so of walking through spaces bombarding my visual and aural senses. and then frantically seeking beer and fresh air. i'm glad i went, i just never will again. but this opinion may temper as the visceral memory of the experience fades and i've had more time to try to pull something meaningful out it. :S

so the reason why i'm not writing more about the trip at the moment is that i've been getting ready for a presentation i'm giving on wednesday (ala the magic of freemind) and also for going to amsterdam wednesday night for five fun-filled days of sonic acts 12. at which i'll be one of many "live" bloggers. look for posts here and at the sonic acts blog. cheers.

Going to Ghent

View Larger Map

tomorrow! fmi has organized an excursion to SMAK in ghent tomorrow to see the exhibition of paul mccarthy (link is to a web-article praising mccarthy; not exactly the stance i would take, but it has heaps of information). personally, i'm not a huge fan of his flavor of art, but i've been assured that ghent is a beautiful city and well worth the trip and it's only setting me back €17. look for an travelogue in the next few days.

From Me to You

just what you need on a monday.

Tragedy of the Commons Explained with Smurfs

from The Science Creative Quarterly, snip:

"So in order to prevent Gargamel from smashing all the Smurfs into gold, or Coal Plants from giving them neurological disorders by dumping mercury all over them, or farms from polluting their water with run off fertilizer we need to establish a market system that approximates the value of smurfs. We need Smurf Credits, which are like Carbon Credits, only cuter..."

Obama in Omaha

barack obama was in omaha last night. mon made it, i didn't, but she said it was breathtaking.

and i found this while looking for a clip of obama in omaha.

Guy In Polar Bear Suit Arrested During Greenpeace Protest

via boing boing

Finally an Update, part 2

here are some pictures of my new studio as it looks tonight. i'm not writing much at this moment because i'm tired and i want to go home and catch up on my reading. which is, currently: towards a philosophy of photography, by vilem flusser; kant and the platypus & the island of the day before, both by umberto eco; latro in the mist by gene wolfe and still plugging occasionally at the fabric of reality by david deutsch.

as a side note, i want to start using this blog to share my ideas as i work on them. i've read numerous accounts of the benefits of this kind of "open source" development and i think it can only make the work stronger. so please, help me by posting comments on the pictures and words your see here.

ta-ta.

Documentary about MMORPGers: Second Skin

from the website:
Second Skin takes an intimate look at computer gamers whose lives have been transformed by the emerging genre of Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs). World of Warcraft, Second Life, and Everquest allow millions of users to simultaneously interact in virtual spaces. Second Skin introduces us to couples who have fallen in love without meeting, disabled players who have found new purpose, addicts, Chinese gold-farming sweatshop workers, wealthy online entrepreneurs and legendary guild leaders - all living in a world that doesn't quite exist.

Finally an Update

pardon my lapse. i keep meaning to give you an update, but events conspire, the planets align, butterflies flap their wings and i never seem able to get it done. this will either be two mid-size posts or one really long one...we'll see how much writing i get done before i need to go to the store.

where to begin?

since my last post of any substance, i've visited the radio observatory/research center in dwingeloo, had my assessment, settled on two (or three) projects to work on, seen a houseboat sink, said goodbye to some old friends, and moved to a new, bigger, studio. when i write it down like that it doesn't seem like much, but somehow it has completely filled the last three weeks.

the visit to the radio observatory (lofar/astron) was very cool. astronomy is one of my pet hobbies, but sadly, one that i've seriously neglected in the past 10 years or so. lofar (low frequency array) is essentially a number of small, inexpensive, networked, omni-directional radio sensors that are digitized and combined to emulate a much larger, more expensive conventional antennae. my colleagues and i were taken on a tour of the facility/control center and shown the real-time feed from the small lofar network (6 stations so far, i think). another excellent aspect of lofar is that it is not used just for radio astronomy. because the network is spread all through-out europe they've been developing applications to use lofar as a more generic Wide Area Sensor Network. this project really underlines the implicit power of networks.

my assessment came and went. there's not much i want to say here on the matter. those that know me and have talked to me about know how i feel. i will say this: i have a much clearer idea of what i want out of myself while i'm here.

and with that i think i'll end for today... tune in next time for the exciting conclusion!

Immaculate Rules to Live By

yeah, normally i despise these "rules-to-live-by things" but these are too close to my own ideals that i couldn't pass it up. via boing boing