:: Friday, August 06, 2004 ::

From Friendster to flash mobs to MoveOn, the future belongs to crowds.

This week's LA Weekly, Los Angeles' free weekly newspaper, features a cover story entitled "Spontaneos Connection," on internet connectivity and crowd formation:

BRENDAN BERNHARD profiles MoveOn founders Wes Boyd and Joan Blades.

ALEC HANLEY BEMIS finds the anonymous founder of flash mobs.

SCOTT LAMB takes on Friendster’s abandonment issues.

NIKKI FINKE on the movie fanatic who helped put Hollywood under one big tent — IMDB.

JUDITH LEWIS traces a brief history of spontaneous gatherings.

:: [+] ::
...

BEAT UP THE SIGNALS
RESTART THE SYSTEM
RICH FRESH AIR FOR ALL
SHARE AND CONSUME

The renegade rollergirls from RICHAIR2030 are patrolling cities around Europe in search of Free Networks and surfing the radio zones of the electromagnetic spectrum.

RICHAIR2030 poses the questions, "WHO NEEDS THE MOVEMENT? The TELECOMS are taking over the city hotspots, can the FREENETWORK movement can sustain itself and fulfill its vision?

If your answer is, "Me!" and "Yes!" you should follow the cause of RICHAIR2030. Set in the year 2030, this continuing series of fictional wireless performances/projects centers around the idea of a freenetwork movement, developed worldwide in early 21st century, and proposes shared public consumption of wireless bandwidth in an " "After the Net -- After the Crash" scenario:

"It is year 2030. The great wireless hope that promises mobility and connectivity has bubbled. The GPS satellite signals have lost track of its urbanites when cutting through the Ozone layers. The ocean-apart digital divide has eventually sabotaged the Net we surf in. What remains of the feeble bandwidth is held out and safeguarded by the wireless freenetworkers, whose self-organized and decentralized network maintains its data cloud in the local communal mesh-settings. The mobile generation is grounded. The tribal gathering around freenetwork nodes is the only game in town, bringing together the signal-seeking Desparati. The self-appointed renegade roller girls, acting as the Transmitenti of free bandwidth, travel city limits in auto-powered modules. Equipped with homemade lunchbox chiputers, the roller girls pump the remaining wireless signal strength in RGB codes and sonic extravaganza for everyone's enjoyment. RICHAIR2030 mobilizes roaming nodes and calls for trans-national virtual mesh network."

Grab your garlic and you wifi card. RICHAIR2030 performs their interactions next at the Bow Arts Festival, London, Roman Road Market on Sunday 15 August 2004, mobilizing renegade roller girls from London Eastend's Bow community to take control of the public airwaves for an urgent communal broadcast.

RICHAIR2030 performance and exhibition information.

:: [+] ::
...

Sometimes the most complex abstract ideas need simple forms to be best understood. Soo Yeun Ahn's In-between is a good example of this. The project consists of simple flash animations which expose how politics and aesthetics are intertwined and inseparable.

In-between takes on a linear presentation making the piece a narrative that becomes circular, more like a loop, thus pointing to the most basic function of algorthims as part of computer technology.

It opens with two Flags; one for peppermint and the other for spearmint, followed by a set of country flags mixed in with fictional flags; then two identical color bars, the one to left upon mousing-over discloses a whole, and the one to the right offers what closely resembles a tongue. As the user progresses through the links the juxtapositions become more abstract and open-ended. One that calls my attention repeatedly presents two baby hands hovering over rainbow lines to the left, and a solid color line to the right. This piece includes sound (in fact most of them do) that is a bit annoying. Also it is one of the few segments that does not require that the user do anything other than watch, but I constantly found myself mousing-over the hands, repeatedly. Binaries are still at play here, but are not so straight forward as one would think. Perhaps the most important thing that is exposed in these simple interactive animations is that opposition is necessary in life. It is the cultural element through which change can happen. In-between effectively entertains this philosophical conundrum while also indulging in a rich visual vocabulary that is sure to make anyone secretly craving for the sublime more open about her desires.

For the sake of discovery, I recommend to log on and mouseover, then mouseover again.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
...

Selected News

IBM has a new open source strategy. Take two.

The pod is still dealing with the real.

Intel is chipping for the big time (well bigger).

Ready to vote online?

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Recent online features

Artport currently features Jin-Yo Mok's and Gicheol Lee's MusicBox, get your grove on.

La Duna Digital, as always, is worth checking out.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
...

Another proposal open to all artists who work with sound, from RadioArteMobile and Nomads & Residents:

A collection and a travelling archive of audio-artworks, a database on the Internet, and a center for different ways of listening.

Radioartemobile (RAM) and Nomads & Residents (N&R) kick off an audio-artwork database. All artists who have worked or are working with sound are invited to send an artwork on audio CD, DVD, or on a vinyl record. The RAM headquarters in Rome will function as a gathering and a listening point and as an archive for all materials received. It will be open to public. Artworks will be gradually posted in the section "database" of the Radio website. RAM is also the first location of a travelling archive initiated by Nomads & Residents. The second public presentation will be in San Francisco, at Southern Exposure, in the Spring of 2005.

In turn - to the discretion of the curators - some artworks will be displayed in the RAM headquarters in Rome with the aim of offering the public also the possibility to explore different ways of listening to audio-works. The database will gradually increase the number of contributions and will be presented to the public at regular appointments. The first public presentation is scheduled for mid October 2004. Deadline for first submission is September 1, 2004. Next appointment: Southern Exposure, San Francisco, Spring 2005

Address to send the materials: RAM- RadioArteMobile, Via Conte Verde 15 (sc. A – int. 4), 00185 Rome – Italy

For more info and guidelines: zerynthia@zerynthia.it

:: Daniele Balit ::


:: Daniele Balit [+] ::
...

Selected News

Microsoft takes on Google. Take two. Take Three.

Sick of Pop-ups? a change may be on the way. Slash it.

New chips from IBM.

Got your gameboy? Keep moving: next mobile game-craze on its way.

Check the virus attack rate in 2004.

Hackers and Gaming.

Hackers love googling.
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
...

Socio-political game by Ruth Catlow and Furtherfield crew
Rethinking Wargames
Play and add your own ideas.
:: molly hankwitz [+] ::
...