RHIZOME DIGEST: 8.02.02

discussion

Posted Aug. 1 2002 20:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 8.02.02

RHIZOME DIGEST: August 2, 2002 Content: +work+ 1. Mark Tribe: Are Friends Electric? 2. Pall Thayer: New Project Online 3. Christiane Paul: Keith+Mendi Obadike - The Interaction of Coloreds 4. Christina McPhee: WIRED RUINS +report+ 5. are flagan: Read_Me - H2K2 HOPE Conference, Part 2 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 07.27.02 From: Mark Tribe (mt@rhizome.org) Subject: Are Friends Electric? from <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.arefriendselectric.com">http://www.arefriendselectric.com</a> Hi. Starting today, Friday July 26, 2002, approximately four dozen artists, writers, and musicians are posting online personal ads, confronting the commercialization of personal relationships, exploring the idea of online identities, and maybe trying to pick someone up. We picked Nerve.com (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://personals.nerve.com">http://personals.nerve.com</a>) because of their overt focus on a hipper, artier clientelle (not coincidentally a much-covetted marketing demographic). You can find the ads by doing a search for ³afe_². Considering that we are not affiliated with Nerve.com, there is the possibility that the ads will be taken down, so we plan to archive them here in the next few days. You can try to sign in to Nerve using name: afe_guest Password: gastropod If you have any comments, please be sure to join the discussion in the message board. Your ?friends¹, Giovanni Garcia-Fenech and Jody Hughes + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 07.31.02 From: Pall Thayer (pall@fa.is) Subject: New Project Online The Intercontinental Spontaneous Jam Session is a new project by Pall Thayer. The project explores abstract imagery via a multi-user musical web interface. It was first presented (half finished) at the Atlantic Cultural Space conference in Canada in May. Thanks to the kind efforts of <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.this.is">http://www.this.is</a> and the Icelandic Academy of the Arts, it is now accessible online at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.this.is/pallit/isjs">http://www.this.is/pallit/isjs</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 08.01.02 From: Christiane Paul (Christiane_Paul@whitney.org) Subject: Keith+Mendi Obadike - The Interaction of Coloreds The Interaction of Coloreds Keith+Mendi Obadike artport gate page August 02 <a rel="nofollow" href="http://artport.whitney.org">http://artport.whitney.org</a> PROTECT YOUR PORTAL! Websafe colors aren't just for webmasters. Register with the IOC Color Check System® and protect your online community from unwanted visitors. IOC Color Check System® Hyper-Race® Based Solutions for the Discriminating e-Business What smart consumers and savvy e-businesses know but few can afford to admit is that there is still a link between skin color and money. It has become increasingly difficult for businesses to track color. The problems increase exponentially when we enter the shifty and sometimes dark world of e-commerce. In the good old days we had methods like the tried and true brown paper bag test. But in this fast-paced, ever-changing world of e-commerce and online communities, who can afford the time and embarrassment of taking or administering a brown paper bag test in public? The Interaction of Coloreds Color Check System® is your answer! APPLY NOW <a rel="nofollow" href="http://artport.whitney.org">http://artport.whitney.org</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ **MUTE MAGAZINE NO. 24 OUT NOW** 'Knocking Holes in Fortress Europe', Florian Schneider on no-border activism in the EU; Brian Holmes on resistance to networked individualism; Alvaro de los Angeles on e-Valencia.org and Andrew Goffey on the politics of immunology. More @ <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.metamute.com/">http://www.metamute.com/</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 08.02.02 From: Christina McPhee (christina112@earthlink.net) Subject: WIRED RUINS please forward apologies for cross posting……. Wired Ruins: Digital Terror and Ethnic Paranoia (Issue 3) URL: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu">http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu</a> Reacting to the complex horrors of terrorism while resisting the surveillance regimes of the disciplinary state, "Wired Ruins" invites its users to intermix critically with net.art projects in three interactive databases: "Digital Terror: Ghosting 9-11," "Ethnic Paranoia, before and beyond," and "Rewiring the Ruins." Resisting the repression of the new age of censorship, "Wired Ruins" presents digital and viral networks of ethnic identities that emit faint signals for recognition among the overlapping diffusions of cultural angst and digital terror. Exhibiting artists: YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, Horit Herman-Peled, Tracey Benson, Jay Murphy & Isabelle Sigal, xiix, Lewis LaCook, Davin Heckman, Robert Hunter & Guilermo Aritza, Dror Eyal & Stacy Hardy, David Golumbia, Jason Nelson, Dirk J. Platzek & Han Gene Paik, Tobias van Ween & Alex Bell, Andrew Hieronymi & Tirdad Zolghadr, Christina McPhee, and Jason Nelson. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) publishes monthly issues exploring the work of contemporary artists, scientists, developers of new media resources, and other practitioners working at the intersection of art,science and technology. Subscribe now at:<a rel="nofollow" href="http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/INFORMATION/subscribe.html">http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/INFORMATION/subscribe.html</a>. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 7.25.02 From: are flagan (areflagan@mac.com) Subject: Read_Me: H2K2 HOPE Conference, Part 2 Read_Me, Part 2 H2K2 HOPE Conference, July 12-14, Hotel Pennsylvania, NYC, New York One of the most vocal sessions came in the form of ³Crypto for the Masses,² a panel compiled of Matt Blaze, Greg Newby, Anatole Shaw and a fourth unknown party who declined the honors of putting HOPE on the resume. It sought to investigate methods whereby personal identity, anonymity and the right to privacy may be preserved in a network environment, and furthermore to discuss the hurdles faced by crypto and its adopters. After covering the tried and tested, but somewhat hard to implement for the less computer literate, PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) schemes that are in the process of disappearing, the encryption built into Web browsers became a topic. Primarily developed to satisfy a consumer demand for secure credit card processing, it was deemed laughable from a security point of view. More show than tell, it is primarily there to lend an appearance of security, and the panelists unanimously agreed that it is, perhaps unbeknownst to most computer users, rather pointless to embed security into an otherwise insecure environment, such as, to quote the favorite hacker example, the Windows operating system. Metaphorically and simplistically speaking it amounts to installing a steel door in a paper building. Privacy, however, loves company and the question is if encryption is really needed or desired for the vast majority of byte transactions that take place over the Internet daily. It is a public space and most people want to be seen and heard while browsing and expressing themselves in its passages. While few disagree with this sentiment, it becomes problematic when encryption is by design denied some, like regular computer users, and made available to others, like government. Failed government schemes like Key Escrow, which was outlined by Matt Blaze in the session ³Educating Lawmakers: Is it Possible?,² speaks of an authoritarian paranoia that is afraid of encryption on the grounds that it will deny (it) access to information. Key Escrow involved the prototype production of a Clipper chip with a proprietary encoding algorithm embedded that moreover demanded all encryption keys to be passed on to the NSA through a backdoor. In the ³Crypto for the Masses² panel Blaze had already made a strong case for why widely available encryption might be a good thing all around. Recognizing that the Internet will always be the subject of surveillance, he suggested that encryption would only slightly diminish surveying powers by crucially demanding that agents take an extra step to access this type of information. On the flipside, and to the benefit of those collecting what in their view amounts to evidence, more sensitive information will arguably be passed along encrypted channels over the Internet, which will make it open to a subpoena. But if it is at all possible to educate lawmakers about such pros and cons was perhaps inadvertently answered by fellow panelist and journalist Declan McCullagh (www.politechbot.com) with his hilarious, and equally shocking, anecdotes about ignorance in D. C. How about the legislative body of Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, that let out a squeamish scream when the word mouse crept into the technology dialog and was mistaken for a stray rodent? And as Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas and the sponsor of the Cyber Security Enhancement Act passed by the House of Representatives on July 15 (the CSEA imposes the possibility of life sentences for ³reckless² hackers), commented earlier this year: "Until we secure our cyber infrastructure, a few keystrokes and an Internet connection is all one needs to disable the economy and endanger lives?A mouse can be just as dangerous as a bullet or a bomb." Somehow, and perhaps not so surprisingly, the instrumentality of knowledge and education has been replaced by a somewhat irrational fear of plastic pointing devices (that are easily confused with furry animals, or weapons of mass destruction). A heated-to-the-point-of-boiling discussion that crept across both security-related panels was the forthcoming introduction of the Microsoft Palladium standard. Essentially an updated version of the principles employed by the failed Key Escrow plan, it involves, through an already ongoing collaboration with the chip manufacturer Intel, the implementation of hardware controls under what has been billed as a ³trusted² computing platform. Problem is that you may as well pay a lot less and get a nice color TV that remains similar in scope and is less hostile to its owner. Microsoft and its cohorts will essentially decide what you may or may not do with your machine, and it is not even a qualified guess to suggest that built-in monitoring and digital rights management will fit the bills that support the unilateral trust being built here. While the science of the project was described as retarded by those in the know, it will of course adversely affect how the majority of users experiences computers in the not so distant future. Put succinctly, the Microsoft advertising slogan of ³Where do you want to go today?² becomes even more of a dumb rhetorical question. A contention was offered, however, that owners would hate their dictating machines with such vigor that widespread tinkering with the control mechanisms will turn the end-user population as a whole into ³hackers² and launch a new, open collectivity in computing. Similar concerns were expressed with regards to privacy. If there were a serious spill of some proportion, consumers would demand cryptography applications to protect their identities and communications, if and when desired. Both projections resound as feasible, but it would certainly be preferable to bypass potential bankruptcy or disaster and go straight to the decent and desirable products that respectfully take their owners and users into account. Hackers have always believed that computers and technology have a vast potential to make people¹s lives better. But rather than dwelling on cyberpunk utopias and futuristic projections of the lofty metaphysical kind, hackers have developed the skills to actually approach this fundamental premise from a very pragmatic angle. Hacking is not, at its philosophical and practical core, a destructive enterprise, but rather a directed quest for the improvement of existing systems. Given how central the cause is for the application of knowledge and skills, there were a number of talks that addressed, as already noted, the current network environment in analogous relation to society at large. END OF PART 2 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization. If you value this free publication, please consider making a contribution within your means. We accept online credit card contributions at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/support">http://rhizome.org/support</a>. Checks may be sent to Rhizome.org, 115 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012. Or call us at +1.212.625.3191. Contributors are gratefully acknowledged on our web site at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/10.php3">http://rhizome.org/info/10.php3</a>. Rhizome Digest is supported by grants from The Charles Engelhard Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome Digest is filtered by Rachel Greene (rachel@rhizome.org). ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 7, number 31. Article submissions to list@rhizome.org are encouraged. Submissions should relate to the theme of new media art and be less than 1500 words. For information on advertising in Rhizome Digest, please contact info@rhizome.org. 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