:: Saturday, April 02, 2005 ::

Under Fire.2 : The Organization and Representation of Violence
Edited by Jordan Crandall

Rotterdam : Witte de With center for contemporary art, 2005
ISBN 90-73362-65-2

Under Fire explores the organization and representation of contemporary armed conflict.  This book, part of the project’s second phase, involves discussions between artists, theorists, scientists, critics, activists, and journalists on a wide array of issues around warfare and representation.  The topics covered in this volume include the militarization of urban space; architectures and ontologies of targeting; cultures of suspicion; the epistemology of global infrastructures; the exhibition of atrocity; panopticism and disappearance; simulated and imagined constructions of territory; and the corporate use of force.

Contributors include Ryan Bishop, Benjamin Bratton, David Campbell, Gregory Clancey, James Der Derian, Madelaine Drohan, Paul N. Edwards, Joy Garnett, Salwa Ghaly, Irving Goh, Stephen Graham, Chris Hables Gray, Anahid Kassabian, Thomas Keenan, Mary Keller, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, Saba Mahmood, Antonio Monegal, Amir Parsa, John William Phillips, Amit Rai, Harel Shapira, Radhika Subramaniam, Ananya Vajpeyi, Ana Valdes, and Nabeel Ziad.

Under Fire is a project by Jordan Crandall organized by Witte de With, center for contemporary art, in collaboration with V2_Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam.

http://www.wdw.nl
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Selected News

A passport chip encounters opposition from various camps, including the commercial sector: The 64-KB chips will include the information from the photo page of the passport, including name, date of birth and a digitized form of the passport picture. The chips include enough space so that fingerprints or iris prints can be added later.

On the video game front, text based games appear to be more popular: Whether solving mysteries in text-based adventure games or slaying dragons by phone in multi-user role-playing games, many players still name the written word as their weapon of choice.

First Yahoo gives gigs away, now Google join the race by providing two Gigs for all gmail users (is this turning out to be a giga race?): Google plans to give users its Gmail service 2 gigabytes of storage for messages, digital photos and other attachments. The company plans to continue expanding the limit as fast as technology allows, a Google executive said Thursday.

Find a flaw in Mozilla's browser and get a $500.00 check: The Mozilla Foundation has paid out $2,500 in bounties under its cash for bugs program, which rewards researchers with $500 for every flaw they find in the group's software.

Internet study is finished after seven years: The National Research Council has just finished a report on Internet traffic -- a report it was supposed to finish in 1998.

A virus for Macs? How about a contest... A possibility that was called off, a smart choices some analysts say to ward off temptation: Après avoir lancé un étrange concours pour créer le premier virus sous Mac OS X (AAPL) avec en prime une coquette somme de 25 000 dollars pour le premier qui réussirait cet « exploit », le PDG de DVForge l'a annulé.

Google Desktop is now available in Castellano: Google ha anunciado que ya está disponible en castellano  su aplicación de búsqueda en el disco duro del ordenador, denominada 'Google Desktop Search', que pretende ser en los ordenadores personales igual de rápido que el buscador en Internet, informó la compañía de Internet en un comunicado.

In Chile, 53% of students own a cell phone 43% of their homes have a PC and 20% have Internet access: El 53% de los escolares chilenos cuenta con su propio celular, según determinó una investigación dada a conocer por el Ministro de Educación, Sergio Bitar, y el director de la red Enlaces, Hugo Martínez. Además de este resultado, el estudio -diseñado para indagar el uso de las tecnologías por parte de profesores y alumnos- determinó que el 43% de los hogares de estudiantes ya cuenta con PC y el 20% con acceso a internet.
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For those of you working in the fields of urban design/architecture/ environmental design:

The 2005-2006 Dinkeloo Fellowship Competition - Van Alen Institute

AWARD
A two-month residency at the American Academy in Rome plus an additional $4,000 granted for travel.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE
June 13, 2005 5:00 pm

THEME:
Spatial and social implications of leisure in contemporary society.
Specifically: "How does urban public space contribute to the experience of recreation and fun?"

To be eligible, you must be a U.S. citizen, and a recent or prospective graduate of U.S. architecture, environmental design, landscape architecture, and urban design programs. Check the Van Alen Institute web site (below) for eligible graduation dates.

For more information, visit www.vanalen.org
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++LOS ANGELES AREA++

18th Street Arts Center presents in “Darko Fritz Propaganda,” a FREE artist talk and public discussion by Croatian artist Darko Fritz on the intersection between media and public art in his work on Thursday, April 14, 7:30pm at 1639 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA. For more information, please contact 310-453-3711 or office@18thstreet.org.

Originally from Croatia but living in Amsterdam, Darko Fritz’s pioneering practice spans media. He uses architecture, organic materials, public transportation systems, communications systems [TV, radio, newspapers, the internet, fax; as well as traditional art forms, such as printing, photography and video, to investigate mobility and, life in the digital age. He often works collaboratively, taking on the role of publisher, designer, and curator as part of his efforts to investigate the use of technology (and what he calls ‘reproductive media’) within culture.

For this event, he will present and discuss his several projects: End of the Message, Internet Error Messages, Migrant Navigator and time=money=time=.
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recommendations

Check out the ongoing lecture series at insite05.

Turbulence Spotlight: Invigilate by Roch Forowicz

In Los Angeles, The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest are having a series of events. Check out their calendar.

Gita Hashemi (Iran/Canada) curates RealPlay

Keith Hart's new writing: The Hitman's Dilemma

Second Annual Symposium in Cordoba, Argentina: Segundo Simposio de Prácticas de comunicación emergentes en la cultura digital :: 2005::
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CALL FOR ENTRIES: Turbulence Juried International Net Art Competition

New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. is pleased to announce that with the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, 5 net art projects will be commissioned for the Turbulence web site in a juried international (open to everyone) competition. Each commission will be $5,000 (US).

DEADLINE: March 31, 2005

GUIDELINES: http://turbulence.org/
comp_05/guidelines.htm

JURORS: Wayne Ashley (US), Arcangel Constantini (Mexico), Sara Diamond (Canada), Melinda Rackham (Australia), and Helen Thorington (US).
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Selected News

Blogs become power political tools and are now up for possible regulation according to rules set in place long before the Internet arrived: FEC commissioners voted 5-1 on Thursday to approve a procedure that is expected to end with a final set of Internet rules--governing everything from whether bloggers are journalists to bulk political e-mail--in place by the end of the year.

gone out phising, and Yahoo! gets caught: The Yahoo messenger is the target of a phishing attack in which the victims receive messages that appear to come from people on their buddy lists. When they click on a link in a message then they are transported to what they believe is a Yahoo Web site, where perpetrators take down their login information.

Kazaa looks back in time during court trial: Kazaa compared their product to another relatively ancient technology -- a cassette recorder -- arguing the device has legitimate uses and that piracy ought be blamed on people and not their tools.

The world's fastest supercomputer beat its own record, a trillion computations per second, 135.5 teraflops to be exact: La sofisticada máquina alcanzó, en términos informáticos, una velocidad de procesamiento de los 135,5 teraflops, es decir, el doble de la que desarrollaba hasta ahora.

yahoo! is not allowed to sell Nazi paraphernelia in France, yet it want to assure it can do so in the United States: La página de Yahoo en Estados Unidos subasta estos artículos y sellos y monedas de la Alemania Nazi; también alberga foros de discusión antisemitas. Desde hace cinco años, la empresa no quiere que el fallo francés le anule la posibilidad de vender material nazi en Estados Unidos.

As China becomes acquainted with the Internet, it also falls victim to phishing. New netsurfers are falling victims to fake websites that pretend to be legitimate businesses: Los ciber-delincuentes generalmente envían e-mails a sus víctimas, y los dirigen hacia sitios idénticos a los de instituciones conocidas, donde los hacen utilizar sus tarjetas de crédito; este delito es conocido como phishing.

5.5 Millions of long distances sales in Euros for 2004: Les ventes par internet ont représente 5,5 milliards d'euros (hors services financiers), soit près de la moitié des ventes à distance, avec encore un bond de 53% en 2004, selon l'indice de la FEVAD.
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