<br />RHIZOME DIGEST: April 1, 2005<br /><br />Content:<br /><br />+announcement+<br />1. [art-messenger]: Prison of love at MNCARS, Madrid<br />2. juha huuskonen: PixelACHE 2005 : The Dot Org Boom!<br />3. Joy Garnett: Cultural Politics 1.1 &gt; available free online<br />4. Francis Hwang: Rhizome Commissions: Finalists chosen, 2nd voting phase<br />begins<br /><br />+opportunity+<br />5. geoffrey thomas: New Media Instructor Position<br /><br />+work+<br />6. jimpunk: SCREENFULL (radio)sounds<br />7. jimpunk: SCREENFULL_THE_BOOK<br /><br />+interview+<br />8. Curt Cloninger: pop sound bytes on outsider net art<br /><br />+thread+<br />9. Plasma Studii, Ivan Pope, Pall Thayer, Robert Spahr, Rob Myers, Geert<br />Dekkers, ryan griffis, jeremy, Ethan Ham, Jim Andrews: web evolution<br /><br />+commissioned for Rhizome.org+<br />10. Katherine Moriwaki: From Silk to Microcontrollers<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />Rhizome.org 2005 Net Art Commissions<br /><br />The Rhizome Commissioning Program makes financial support available to<br />artists for the creation of innovative new media art work via panel-awarded<br />commissions.<br /><br />For the 2005 Rhizome Commissions, seven artists were selected to create<br />artworks relating to the theme of Games:<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/commissions/2005.rhiz">http://rhizome.org/commissions/2005.rhiz</a><br /><br />The Rhizome Commissioning Program is made possible by generous support from<br />the Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation<br />for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />1.<br /><br />Date: 3.29.05<br />From: &quot;[art-messenger]&quot; &lt;virtu@kulturserver-nrw.de&gt;<br />Subject: Prison of love at MNCARS, Madrid<br /><br />&quot;Prison of Love&quot; - <br />Cultural stories on Gender Violence<br />(C&#xE1;rcel de amor. Relatos culturales sobre la violencia de g&#xE9;nero)<br />.<br />A presentation curated by Berta Sichel, Virginia Villaplana and Remedios<br />Zafra, and Rosa M&#xAA; Peris, director of the Women Institute.<br />.<br />31 March until 8 May 2005<br />at<br />National Museum Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid/Spain<br />&lt;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.carceldeamor.net/">http://www.carceldeamor.net/</a>&gt;<br />.<br />The show &quot;Prison of Love&quot;, presenting multiple perspectives and views on<br />violence in couple and family-<br />their limits and energy expressing the changing and heterogenous relations<br />between the cultural analysis, the political critics and the artistic<br />production, - is structured in 5 parts interrelating with each other e.g<br />a cycle of films and videos, an Internet based online part, conferences and<br />meetings and the edition and an action by Ang&#xE9;lica Liddell.<br /><br />The online part of the show is entitled &quot;Violence without Bodies&quot;<br />(&quot;Violencia Sin Cuerpos&quot;)<br />&lt;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.carceldeamor.net/vsc">http://www.carceldeamor.net/vsc</a>&gt;<br />and consists of a selection of netart works about gender violence<br />including following aspects and related artworks/artists–&gt;<br /><br />1. &quot;SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE IN MYTHS&quot;:<br />(Evas and Princesses contra Cyborgs)<br />Brutal Myths. An herbal healing of misogynius (1996), Sonya Rapoport y<br />Marie-Jose Sat; <br />Mythic Hybrid (2002), Prema Murthy<br />Make me a man (1997), Sonya Rapoport;<br />Eden.Garden 1.1 (2001), Auriea Harvey y Michael Samyn;<br /> (2001), Intima (Igor<br />Stromajer). <br />.<br />2. Narrated violence (when body does not exist ):<br />Compressed Affair (2001), Agricola de Cologne;<br />Parthenia &quot;A Global Monument Violence Domestic Victims? (1995) Margot<br />Lovejoy; <br />The Intruder (1999), Natalie Bookchin;<br />Dollspace (1997, 2001), Francesca da Rimini<br />.<br />3. Does body matter? (cybersex and videogame)<br />Tomb Raider (1999), Robert Nideffer.<br />Tunnel (1996), Melinda Rackham.<br />BindiGirl (1999); Prema Murthy;<br />Cunnilingus in North Korea (2003); Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries<br />(Young-hae Chang y Marc Voge); Mutation.Fem (2000), Anne-Marie Schleiner.<br />.<br />4. New Visibility of the Prevailed-<br />(feministe online practices contra the hegemony of being able to<br />camouflage)-: <br />Smart Mom (1998-1999), Faith Wilding y Hyla Willis;<br />voyeur_web (2001), Tina La Porta;<br />El lugar de las mujeres en el Metro de la Ciudad de M&#xE9;xico (2001), Cindy<br />Gabriela Flores; <br />Guerrilla Girls (Website), Guerrilla Girls;<br />No-pasatiempo (2004), Cristina Buend&#xED;a.<br />.<br />The comprehensive project site &lt;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.carceldeamor.net/vsc">http://www.carceldeamor.net/vsc</a>&gt; includes a<br />number of texts <br />( in Spanish only) and the access to the selected art works.<br />.<br />After the presentation of &quot;Prison of Love&quot;<br />at National Museum Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid/Spain - 31 March until<br />8 May 2005 - <br />the travelling show will be presented in other Spanish museums until the end<br />of 2005 including<br />–&gt;Hospital de San Juan de Dios. Centro de Arte Contempor&#xE1;neo, Almagro/Spain<br />12 May - 19 June<br />–&gt;Centro P&#xE1;rraga, Murcia /Spain - 12 - 28 July<br />–&gt;Centro de Arte Caja Burgos, CAB/Spain - 8-30 September<br />–&gt;Artium, Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contempor&#xE1;neo, &#xC1;lava/Spain -<br />30 September -16 October<br />–&gt;Centre d?Art la Panera, Lleida/Spain - 3 - 29 November<br />–&gt;Filmoteca Canaria del Gobierno de Canarias. Tenerife y Las Palmas de Gran<br />Canaria.<br />28 November - 4 December<br />.<br />Links–&gt;<br />&quot;C&#xE1;rcel de amor&quot; (Prison of Love)<br />&lt;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.carceldeamor.net/">http://www.carceldeamor.net/</a>&gt;<br />&quot;Violencia Sin Cuerpos&quot; (Violence without Bodies)<br />&lt;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.carceldeamor.net/vsc">http://www.carceldeamor.net/vsc</a>&gt;<br />Press release on W3art.es (Spanish)<br />&lt;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://w3art.es/weblog_archivos/000244.php">http://w3art.es/weblog_archivos/000244.php</a>&gt;<br />Press release as PDF (Spanish)<br />&lt;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://w3art.es/mncars/archivo/folleto%20Carcel%20de%20amor.pdf">http://w3art.es/mncars/archivo/folleto%20Carcel%20de%20amor.pdf</a>&gt;<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />Rhizome is now offering organizational subscriptions, memberships<br />purchased at the institutional level. These subscriptions allow<br />participants of an institution to access Rhizome's services without<br />having to purchase individual memberships. (Rhizome is also offering<br />subsidized memberships to qualifying institutions in poor or excluded<br />communities.) Please visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/org.php">http://rhizome.org/info/org.php</a> for more<br />information or contact Kevin McGarry at Kevin@Rhizome.org or Rachel Greene<br />at Rachel@Rhizome.org.<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />2.<br /><br />Date: 3.30.05<br />From: juha huuskonen &lt;juhuu@juhuu.nu&gt;<br />Subject: PixelACHE 2005 : The Dot Org Boom!<br /><br />PixelACHE 2005 : The Dot Org Boom<br />Festival of electronic art and subcultures<br /><br />14-17 April 2005, Helsinki<br />Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art<br />www.pixelache.ac<br /><br />- - -<br /><br />The main theme for PixelACHE 2005 is the Dot Org Boom.<br />Dot Org Boom is the non-profit version of the Dot Com Boom (RIP).<br />The essential ingredients of this rapidly growing phenomenon<br />are open source community, open content initiatives, media<br />activist networks and myriads of NGOs around the world.<br />PixelACHE Festival will bring together a diverse group of<br />artists, engineers, activists, architects and designers to discuss<br />and develop the future of Dot Org Boom.<br /><br />In addition, PixelACHE 2005 features the following program sections:<br /><br />* VJ Culture and Audiovisual Performances<br />* Experimental Interaction and Electronics<br />* Interactive &amp; Participatory Cinema<br />* particle/wave hybrid radio workshop<br /><br />- - -<br /><br />&quot;…the Net is not Yet a monolithic broadcast medium. I remain wildly<br />optimistic about it's potential. The recent ascent of peer-to-peer<br />networks, weblogs and free software could be a sign of a coming<br />Internet renaissance&quot;<br />- Geert Lovink, My First Recession (2003)<br /><br />&quot;In United States and Canada, for example, almost everyone<br />knows about the explosion of the dot-coms - a much smaller<br />phenomenon - but millions have not heard the big story:<br />the worldwide explosion of dot-orgs. It is a story with<br />far-reaching implications: By sharpening the role of<br />government, shifting practises and attitudes in business<br />and opening up waves of opportunity for people to apply<br />their talents in new, positive ways, the emerging citizen<br />sector is reorganising the way the work of society gets done.&quot;<br />- David Bornstein, How to Change the World (2004)<br /><br />&quot;a browser is also an editor<br /> a desktop is also a server<br /> a user is also a producer&quot;<br />- Sarai media lab, free media lounge (2005)<br /><br />- - -<br /><br />### The Dot Org Boom program ###<br /><br />Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia which can be read and edited<br />by anyone. Wikipedia currently has independant editions in 190 languages,<br />sponsored by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia contains<br />approximately 1.3 million articles, 500,000 of which are in its English<br />language edition, over 200,000 in the German language and 100,000 in<br />the Japanese language. Wikipedia is one of the most popular reference<br />sites on the Web, receiving around 50 million hits per day. It has spawned<br />numerous conceptually related sister projects such as Wiktionary,<br />Wikibooks and Wikinews. Florence Devouard (France) will be the<br />official Wikipedia ambassador at PixelACHE 2005.<br />www.wikipedia.org<br /><br />Streamtime (Netherlands/Iraq/international) is an international crew of<br />journalists, poets, artists and software developers, dedicated to assist<br />local media to get connected. Openness, free publishing (copy left),<br />easy access, low-to-no literacy and multi-linguality are guidelines.<br />Streamtime uses old and new media for the production of content and<br />networks in the fields of media, arts, culture and activism in crisis areas,<br />like Iraq, where the project is setting up independent communication<br />links between Iraq and rest of the world. Streamtime is collaborating<br />with dyne:bolic linux cd installation project, which can be used as an<br />instant toolkit for media production and transmission.<br />www.streamtime.org - www.dynebolic.org<br /><br />Naeem Mohaiemen (US) will give a presentation about independent Muslim<br />media networks and their role in shaping up the &quot;Globalized Islam&quot;. Naeem<br />Mohaiemen is a digital-media activist and filmmaker specializing<br />in Political Islam. He is editor of shobak.org (&quot;Outsider Muslims&quot;), and<br />Associate Editor of altmuslim.com. He is also director of VISIBLE, a<br />collective of Muslim and Other Artist-Activists. VISIBLE premiered<br />DISAPPEARED IN AMERICA, a film trilogy and multimedia installation<br />about detention of American Muslims after 9/11.<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.shobak.org">http://www.shobak.org</a> - <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.disappearedinamerica.org">http://www.disappearedinamerica.org</a> -<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.altmuslim.com">http://www.altmuslim.com</a><br /><br />Dodo.org a Finnish environmental organisation. Dodo.org will present a<br />project about ideas of how the world could be saved. The ideas have been<br />collected from the visitors of the Dodo.org website (the page about the<br />project is unfortunately available only in Finnish). Dodo will also present<br />their NGOphotos.org project, an image bank for NGOs where all images<br />are made available under Creative Commons licence.<br />www.dodo.org - www.ngophotos.org - www.creativecommons.org<br /><br />Vanessa Gocksch and Walter Hernandez have initiated the Intermundos.org<br />grassroot organisation in Bogot&#xE1;, Colombia. The goal of Intermundos is to<br />inspire local cultural activities and connect them to global movements<br />through various media projects. Website keywords: Intermundos, hip hop,<br />indigenous, Colombia, Columbia, afro, community.<br />www.intermundos.org<br /><br />Used in India presents media devices and narratives of their use throughout<br />the 20th century in India. From the cyclostyle machines of the sixties to<br />the telephone meters of STD/PCO booths, this hyper-textual inventory<br />refers to applications, technologies, and services that constitute the<br />heterogeneous world of Indian media culture and design. Used in India has<br />been created by Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS) and is shown for the<br />first time at the Doors of Perception Conference 8 in New Delhi, India.<br />www.ict4d.info - doors8delhi.doorsofperception.com<br /><br />PixelACHE 2005 will also host the launch of a new project,<br />digitalopenandfree.org. It is a project for exploring the digital open and<br />free which is more than just open source and content - open networks,<br />open access, open search, etc…<br />www.digitalopenandfree.org<br /><br />Dot Org Boom theme also features a WebCamTalk with Trebor<br />Sholtz (www.newmediaeducation.org) and a presentation by<br />Franco 'Bifo' Berardi (www.rekombinant.org). The theme is<br />explored in other PixelACHE program categories as well : open<br />source audiovisual performance tools, Kino film-maker community,<br />etc…<br /><br />### VJ Culture and Audiovisual Performances ###<br /><br />SF&amp;L and Drifter TV are the winners of Visual Sensations, the first national<br />VJ competition in Netherlands and Belgium. PixelACHE features a performance<br />by SF&amp;L, which combines live video mixing with mixing of liquids, light and<br />transparent plastic sheets… the result is a mix of two narratives, one<br />based on the video footage and one on real-time typographical experiments<br />with texts.<br />www.visualsensations.nl - www.studiofrank-lisa.nl<br /><br />Machinista 2004 festival in Glasgow explored and questioned the ideas<br />of 'artificial intelligence in the arts' and 'wo/man-machine interaction'.<br />PixelACHE 2005 presents a screening of the Machinista 2004 dvd<br />and PERM 36 ROBOVISION performance by Pointless Creations,<br />a Glasgow based collaborative video art project.<br />www.machinista.org.uk - www.pointlesscreations.co.uk<br /><br />PixelACHE 2005 features a screening of the soon-to-be-released RELINE2 dvd.<br />&quot;RELINE2 artists investigate modern mythology, examine environments, explode<br />form, and play with similes between machine and body. From buildings ripping<br />apart by unseen forces to characters on strange journeys in wild imagined<br />spaces, these videos explore the integration of technology into every strata<br />of our lives.&quot;<br />www.reline.net<br /><br />PixelACHE 2005 premieres re:spam inbox, a performance by Timothy<br />Jaeger (US) and Alex Dragulescu (US/Romania). Re:spam explores<br />'unwanted, abject data in the form of solicitous messages' aka spam.<br />The re:spam performance straddles the line between a traditional<br />VJ performance and newer generative coding practices.<br />www.respam.com<br /><br />VJ Pillow &amp; VJ Mademoiselle and Christelle Franca (Dj Chrys de Nice) &amp;<br />Patrick Watson from Montreal have been invited for a two-week long artist<br />residency to work on A Day on Earth performance. The first version of the<br />performance will be premiered and PixelACHE 2005. The Montreal crew<br />also includes Ben Bogart, who will present his Volume Curvature performance<br />and the pixelTANGO software which he is developing at SAT (Society for<br />Art and Technology, Montreal).<br />www.ekran.org/ben - www.sat.qc.ca<br /><br />Piksel (www.piksel.no) is an annual workshop dedicated for the developers<br />of open source audiovisual software tools, organised by BEK in Bergen,<br />Norway. PixelACHE will present some of the current Piksel software<br />projects and results of the Piksel04 workshop from November 2004.<br />www.piksel.no<br /><br />Also in the VJ Culture program: TEMPEST performance by Erich Berger<br />(www.randomseed.org, Norway), a performance with sound, video and odours<br />by RYBN (www.rybn.org, France), a collaboration between Selfish Shellfish<br />(Finland)+ video performance collective Amfibio (www.amfibio.org, Finland),<br />Malfunctionalism dance performance prototype by Mikko Kallinen &amp; Llare<br />(Finland), PIKU audiovisual performance by Visual Systeemi and Tuomas<br />Toivonen (www.visualsysteemi.com/piku, Finland), VJing show by Intermundos<br />(www.intermundos.org, Colombia), Midi control workshop by Dag Engstr&#xF6;m<br />(Sweden) + several discussions and workshops (seminar on using VJ<br />performance in theatre, workshops on VJ tools and software, etc.)…<br /><br />### Experimental Interaction and Electronics ###<br /><br />MusicBox by Jin-Yo Mok (US/Korea) is an exceptionally well designed<br />interactive instrument. It is an electronic version of a traditional music<br />box, where the composition is presented as dots of light on a wooden<br />cylinder. MusicBox also contains an online component which can be used<br />for trying out compositions and sharing them with others.<br />www.playmusicbox.com<br /><br />PixelACHE 2005 is proud to present home-made electronic instruments and<br />a performance by one of the Finnish pioneers of the field, Mika Rintala /<br />Verde.<br />www.aural-innovations.com/issues/issue14/verdegal.html<br /><br />Also in the Experimental Interaction and Electronics program: Four Ophones<br />by Erik Sandelin &amp; Magnus Torstensson (www.unsworn.org, Sweden), Skisser<br />och rutiner performance by Daniel Skoglund (Sweden), Elf - Electronic Life<br />Forms by Pascal Glissmann &amp; Martina H&#xF6;fflin (www.electronic-life-forms.de,<br />Germany), Chamber Music for One performance by Teemu Kivikangas (Finland),<br />Kick Ass Kung-Fu by Animaatiokone Industries (www.animaatiokone.net,<br />Finland), workshops by J&#xFC;rgen Scheible and Tuomo Tammenp&#xE4;&#xE4; + more…<br /><br />### Interactive and Participatory Cinema ###<br /><br />Do well with nothing, do better with little, and do it right now! This is<br />the motto of Kino 00, a non-profit organization composed based in Montreal,<br />Canada. Kino concept has been designed to drive film-makers to create quick<br />and rough sketches of ideas. These experiments are viewed by enthusiastic<br />audiences every month, in Montreal and other Kino collectives around the<br />world. PixelACHE 2005 arranges a Kino Kabaret session (an intensive<br />workshop for creating films) and also aims to revitalize the Kino<br />Helsinki chapter…<br />www.kino00.com<br /><br />Also in the Interactive and Participatory Cinema program: One Day Video<br />concept by Anttu Harlin &amp; Osmo Puuper&#xE4; (Finland) which will meet and/or<br />challenge the Kino Kabaret, interactive cinema projects by Mariina Bakic &amp;<br />Jean-Michel G&#xE9;ridan (www.webdrama.net, France), interactive cinema projects<br />by Robert Brecevic (www.banananose.se, Sweden), experimental film project by<br />Markus Renvall (Finland), discussion about community tv and radio hosted by<br />Robert Stachel (Austria) and more…<br /><br />### particle/wave workshop ###<br /><br />particle/wave hybrid radio workshop explores the interface between the<br />creative traditions of terrestrial radio broadcasting and emerging practices<br />of internet radiomaking. particle/wave rethinks community radio practices<br />through distributed and participatory networks of sonic exchange, open<br />content models and new radiomaking tools. particle/wave examines the dual<br />nature of radio as wave and packet… network and sound… transmission and<br />reception…<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://aura.siba.fi/particlewave">http://aura.siba.fi/particlewave</a><br /><br />### PixelACHE 2005 artist residency ###<br /><br />Image: Light Brix &amp; Nuage Vert, hehe.org<br /><br />Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen are artists and interaction designers based<br />in Paris, France. They have been selected for the PixelACHE 2005 artist<br />residency which is organised in collaboration with NIFCA - Nordic Institute<br />for Contemporary Art. During their two-month long stay in Helsinki, Helen<br />and Heiko will develop a new prototype of their Nuage Vert (Green Cloud)<br />project. Nuage Vert proposes using gas emissions of industrial plants as<br />surfaces for interactive projections.<br />www.hehe.org<br /><br />### PixelACHE clubs and concerts ###<br /><br />The first PixelACHE night features a particle/wave concert at Sibelius<br />Academy concert hall and a live radiomaking session at m-bar. The PixelACHE<br />club night on Saturday 16th of April at Umo Jazz House features Peerspex<br />(France), Memnon (Finland) and more… On Sunday 17th of April there will be<br />a concert of Hecker (MEGO) and Blutleuchte (Finland). More information about<br />clubs and concerts coming soon!<br /><br />### PixelACHE international ###<br /><br />PixelACHE is organising several small events together with international<br />partners and we are also involved in several more informal collaboration<br />projects….<br /><br />Dot Org Boom media seminar in Stockholm on Tuesday 12th of April will<br />explore the relationship between grassroot media and mainstream commercial<br />media. What are the possibilities of the currently emerging new models for<br />media production and distribution? There are currently millions of amateurs<br />producing content which is freely available for all, how should the main<br />stream media and policy makers react to this? The presenters in Stockholm<br />include Naeem Mohaiemen (US, topic: independent Muslim media), Florence<br />Devouard (France, topic: Wikipedia), Robert Stachel (Austria, topic:<br />community tv and radio), Kai Kuikkaniemi (Finland, topic:<br />digitalopenandfree.org), Juha Huuskonen (Finland, topic: electronic<br />subcultures). The seminar is organised in collaboration with Finnish Embassy<br />in Stockholm.<br /><br />PixelV&#xC4;RK in Stockholm on Saturday 23rd of April is a collaboration project<br />between The Nursery and Fylkingen. The Nursery is a Stockholm based<br />organisation promoting experimental culture which has produced close to<br />100 concerts, performances, lectures and club nights since the inception in<br />1996. Fylkingen is a society devoted to the production and promotion of new<br />music and intermedia art. Since its foundation in 1933 Fylkingen has been<br />committed to experimental, new and unestablished forms of contemporary arts.<br />PixelV&#xC4;RK will gather together audiovisual artists from Sweden, focusing on<br />the visual side of the experimental music scene. The festival will present a<br />broad spectrum of artists who all represent different aspects of this scene.<br />www.nursery.a.se - www.fylkingen.se<br /><br />Mal au Pixel in Paris in May 2005 will be a small one day mini-festival<br />which brings together some of the Finnish and French PixelACHE artists and<br />collaborators. The event is organised in collaboration with Mains d'Ouvres<br />and is a preparation event for a larger Mal au Pixel festival which is<br />planned for spring 2006.<br />www.mainsdoeuvres.org<br /><br />### Organisers and supporters ###<br /><br />PixelACHE is organised by non-profit organisation Piknik Frequency in<br />collaboration with Kiasma Theatre. PixelACHE 2005 program is designed<br />in collaboration with katastro.fi electronic art and subcultures network.<br />PixelACHE is supported by Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, AVEK,<br />Arts Council of Finland, NIFCA - Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art,<br />Goethe-Institut Helsinki, Centre Culturel Fran&#xE7;ais, British Council,<br />Mondriaan Foundation, UCSD Visual Arts Department, CRCA<br />(Center for Research in Computing and the Arts) and Experimental<br />Game Lab (UCSD).<br /><br />Particle/Wave is a co-production of Centre for Music &amp; Technology,<br />Sibelius Academy and Piknik Frequency. Particle/Wave is supported<br />by Arts Council of Finland and Australia Council for the Arts.<br /><br />Concert by Hecker is organised in collaboration with Charm of Sound<br />and the lecture of Franco 'Bifo' Berardi in collaboration with<br />Tutkijaliitto.<br /><br />### More information ###<br /><br />You can find the preliminary program schedule of PixelACHE 2005<br />at www.pixelache.ac. See you in Helsinki in April!<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />Rhizome Member-curated Exhibits<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/">http://rhizome.org/art/member-curated/</a><br /><br />View online exhibits Rhizome members have curated from works in the ArtBase,<br />or learn how to create your own exhibit.<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />3. <br /><br />Date: 3.30.05<br />From: Joy Garnett &lt;joy.garnett@gmail.com&gt;<br />Subject: Cultural Politics 1.1 &gt; available free online<br /><br />The first issue of Cultural Politics journal is now available for free<br />online (in pdf):<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berg/cpij/2005/00000001/00000001;jsess">http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berg/cpij/2005/00000001/00000001;jsess</a><br />ionid=64aroa3e639qe.victoria<br /><br />Cultural Politics Contents: Volume 1, Issue 1 (march 2005)<br /> <br />Introducing Cultural Politics/John Armitage, Ryan Bishop and Douglas Kellner<br /> *<br />Mao Zedong's Impact on Cultural Politics in the West/Andrew Ross<br /> *<br />Pornography of War/Jean Baudrillard<br /> *<br /> Cold Panic/Paul Virilio<br /> *<br />The Anthropologist as Witness in Contemporary Regimes of<br />Intervention/George E. Marcus<br /><br />Special Section on the Cultural Politics of Information &amp;<br />Communications Technologies<br /> *<br />Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of<br />Politics/Jodi Dean<br /> *<br />Oppositional Politics and the Internet: A Critical/Reconstructive<br />Approach/Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner<br /> *<br />Hardt and Negri's Information Empire: A Critical Response/Mark Poster<br /><br />Field Report<br /> *<br />Follow the Image/Joy Garnett<br /><br />Book Review<br /> *<br />The (Not so) Disparate Voices of E-Democracy/Joss Hands<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />4.<br /><br />Date: 4.04.05<br />From: Francis Hwang &lt;francis@rhizome.org&gt;<br />Subject: Rhizome Commissions: Finalists chosen, 2nd voting phase begins<br /><br />Hi everyone,<br /><br />The 27 finalists for the Rhizome Commissions have now been chosen.<br /><br />To see the full list of finalists, go to<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/commissions/all_finalists.rhiz">http://rhizome.org/commissions/all_finalists.rhiz</a> .<br />To submit your votes for the 2nd round, go to<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/commissions/voting/ranking/">http://rhizome.org/commissions/voting/ranking/</a> .<br /><br />In this second stage, the top voted proposal will be awarded one of the<br />commissions; the other awards will be decided by our invited jury. This<br />second stage of voting will last until Wednesday, April 20.<br /><br />For more information about the voting process, please see<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/commissions/voting/">http://rhizome.org/commissions/voting/</a> . Or you could just ask me,<br />either directly or via this list.<br /><br />Francis Hwang<br />Director of Technology<br />Rhizome.org<br />phone: 212-219-1288x202<br />AIM: francisrhizome<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />5. <br /><br />Date: 3.27.05<br />From: geoffrey thomas &lt;thomas@fau.edu&gt;<br />Subject: New Media Instructor Position<br /><br />FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY, Department of Communication, is seeking an<br />Instructor in New Media Production at its Davie campus, to teach courses in<br />the Department's BA in Multimedia Studies, which includes sequences in Film<br />&amp; Video Studies and Multimedia Journalism. The Department seeks a scholar<br />of digital art and new media practice with expertise in new media as art and<br />communication. Ideal candidates will cross media platforms and have<br />experience in creating and analyzing multimedia texts. Candidates must be<br />able to offer instruction in the integration of text, image and audio.<br />Applicants should possess practical skills in more than one of the following<br />media platforms: digital photography, computer-based imaging technologies,<br />web and graphic design, and multimedia authoring. Applicants must also be<br />proficient in Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Studio, and have some<br />experience in scripting. The position is a renewable nine-month, non-tenure<br />track appointment beginning August 2005. The teaching load is the equivalent<br />of four courses per semester, and includes teaching introductory and<br />advanced interactive multimedia courses, as well as managing the<br />Department's Proteus website and serving as a web design consultant for the<br />College of Arts and Letters. MFA, MA, or equivalent professional experience<br />required. All candidates must have an active production record. Application<br />deadline: June 3, 2005. Send letter of application, cv, letters of<br />recommendation, and samples of creative work to: Dr. Eric Freedman, Chair,<br />New Media Search Committee, Department of Communication, Florida Atlantic<br />University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33431-0991. E-mail (for<br />questions only): efreedma@fau.edu. For detailed information on FAU, visit<br />our web sites at: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.fau.edu">http://www.fau.edu</a> and <a rel="nofollow" href="http://proteus.fau.edu">http://proteus.fau.edu</a>. Florida<br />Atlantic University is an Equal Opportunity/Equal Access Institution.<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />6.<br /><br />Date: 3.26.05<br />From: jimpunk &lt;www@jimpunk.com&gt;<br />Subject: SCREENFULL (radio)sounds<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.screenfull.net/stadium/2005/03/screenfull-radiosounds.html">http://www.screenfull.net/stadium/2005/03/screenfull-radiosounds.html</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />7.<br /><br />Date: 3.26.05<br />From: jimpunk &lt;www@jimpunk.com&gt;<br />Subject: SCREENFULL_THE_BOOK<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.screenfull.net/THE_BOOK_2.pdf">http://www.screenfull.net/THE_BOOK_2.pdf</a><br /><br />(need acrobat reader 7 to view<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html">http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />8.<br /><br />Date: 3.28.05<br />From: Curt Cloninger &lt;curt@lab404.com&gt;<br />Subject: pop sound bytes on outsider net art<br /><br />high bandwidth:<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://2005.sxsw.com/video/movie_window.big.php?dir=2005_coverage&id=567&spe">http://2005.sxsw.com/video/movie_window.big.php?dir=2005_coverage&id=567&spe</a><br />ed=hi<br />low bandwidth:<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://server1.sxsw.com/sxsw2/2005_coverage/sx_cloninger.lo.mp4">http://server1.sxsw.com/sxsw2/2005_coverage/sx_cloninger.lo.mp4</a><br />curt's site:<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://lab404.com">http://lab404.com</a><br />ze's site:<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://zefrank.com">http://zefrank.com</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />Spring Hosting Special from BroadSpire<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.broadspire.com/order/rhizome/bundlepack.html">https://www.broadspire.com/order/rhizome/bundlepack.html</a><br /><br />Want to consolidate multiple domains? Rhizome members can sign up for a<br />Bundle hosting package that allows for up to five separate domains under one<br />Broadspire hosting contract – through May 9.<br /><br />Purchasing hosting from BroadSpire contributes directly to Rhizome's fiscal<br />well-being, so think about about the new Bundle pack, or any other plan,<br />today!<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />9.<br /><br />Date: 3.29.05-4.02.05<br />From: Plasma Studii &lt;office@plasmastudii.org&gt;, Ivan Pope<br />&lt;ivan2@ivanpope.com&gt;, Pall Thayer &lt;palli@pallit.lhi.is&gt;, Robert Spahr<br />&lt;rob@robertspahr.com&gt;, Rob Myers &lt;robmyers@mac.com&gt;, Geert Dekkers<br />&lt;geert@nznl.com&gt;, ryan griffis &lt;grifray@yahoo.com&gt;, jeremy<br />&lt;studio@silencematters.com&gt;, Ethan Ham &lt;ethan@ethanham.com&gt;, Jim Andrews<br />&lt;jim@vispo.com&gt;<br />Subject: web evolution<br /><br />Plasma Studii &lt;office@plasmastudii.org&gt; posted:<br /><br />what can we do to make the web more useful/differentiate it from the<br />same technology we've always had? the technology hasn't ACTUALLY<br />improved in 10+ years, only shifting attitudes and approaches.<br />Perl's been around for at least that and it's the essential &quot;tool&quot; to<br />a self-organizing web. Not the only tool now, the last decade has<br />given us an explosion of redundancy and variations on themes. Many<br />(like Flash) are actually de-provements, rather than IMprovements.<br />but whatever. The tools are currently available to us, to revive<br />this system.<br /><br />with this illusion of growth/upgrading, people fall back on the on<br />the one function, they immediately latched onto, the worlds biggest<br />mail order catalogue. but rather than a single point when that<br />happens, a transition, it evolves continually down that path. if<br />that's where it ends up, just a big catalogue might be fine. but<br />then our own self-preservation is at stake. where does that leave<br />web art?<br /><br />actually, maybe ironically, the amazon site continually amazes me.<br />particularly their &quot;add a review&quot; and &quot;so you want to … &quot; sections.<br />a web of static information is not much of an improvement over a<br />unlimited paid programming on cable. but the whole idea that someone<br />can add to it, AND THEN folks can rate these additions (or even<br />&quot;curate&quot; (as is also on rhizome) amazon's contents, and then others<br />respond to the curation).<br /><br />if they were actually receiving 100s of reviews a day, then there<br />could be a simple system to only show the most helpful reviews.<br />eventually, the most helpful would float top the top, and new ones<br />that weren't would disappear pretty fast. if there was ONLY the<br />curated collections, this would be self-organization. then if<br />perhaps the final option is to search or add an item, while some<br />items simply would disappear from fluctuating interest, that would<br />make the self-organization into learning and possibly improving.<br />feedback, where the &quot;viewer&quot; actually effects the content in some way<br />that makes the content more useful, is a realm far beyond things like<br />catalogues. in the same way interactivity is so extremely and<br />fundamentally different than say linear video, a recording, much less<br />a still or static text. so much of what's labelled interactivity is<br />essentially hyper-link options to move between a few linear things.<br />this is a baby step, when we CAN run with it. some really do utilize<br />interactivity to actually alter/effect the contents (the difference<br />between a passive viewer and active participant). and some use<br />things like CGI scripts to get input, to file away somewhere else.<br />surely there are constructive ways to smoosh these two methods<br />together that would drastically change peoples perspectives. user<br />input that alters/updates what they get.<br /><br />blogs are one kind of example of this, but they are always clearly<br />blogs. laundry lists of amazingly short quips or posts/dictation<br />from a single author ranting to no one in particular but themselves.<br />similarly, I saw a weird report on evolution vs. religion. they just<br />aren't at all comparable. It's as if Darwin marvelled at gravity,<br />then noticed some key elements in how it works. not even saying<br />there can never be non-gravitational places, or that gravity is part<br />of everything (though it is), just how it works. he's not saying<br />&quot;who&quot; or even that there is a conscious force who came up with this<br />gravitational method, any more than we attribute every ricochet of<br />billiard balls to someone's conscious decision. it's just math.<br />[someone mentioned evolution/catholicism].<br /><br />Darwin's &quot;sea of wedges&quot; idea could be so darn useful for us on the<br />web. Ideally, capitalism works the same way, the stores that survive<br />are the ones that sell useful things at prices people like, etc. The<br />ones that don't disappear. why not the web?<br /><br />darwin noticed evolution works like a sea of wedges packed tightly.<br />all fit but one. press it down, and another random one pops up.<br />press that, and another … it isn't so much that any is &quot;selected&quot;<br />as much as everything is driven by the situation of the whole<br />environment. the one that pops up, isn't chosen or better, varying<br />factors may favor one wedge at one time and another later. but they<br />are purely random. as much as investment bankers say they can, the<br />system still remains just beyond predictability. a word that may<br />send up the red flags to the pope, but then many are tuning out the<br />rest of the sentence.<br /><br />no religion has a problem with the fact that if you drop 1000 marbles<br />off a balcony, you won't guess their paths. anyone with a problem<br />with evolution is really just mistaking it for something else. that<br />is not to say any miracles involving marbles are disproven, it says<br />when this happens (as is often the case) here's how.<br /><br />how could the web use a dose of this evolutionary &quot;selection&quot;<br />process? not just on a macro level but every page.<br />communication can be a lot more than just limited to linguistic<br />conversation. a blog can be a little like a rating system [which is<br />a little like what mez, et al. were talking about recently]. for<br />example, perhaps what would make their idea a perpetually-self<br />organizing system, would be if the archive links were ranked or<br />spatially adjusted in some way that corresponded to the number of<br />replies. more might look up those threads that were &quot;successful&quot;<br />(however, we rarely see replies to threads come in several months<br />later. even the more &quot;contagious&quot; threads die out far too fast.<br /><br />judsoN<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Ivan Pope &lt;ivan2@ivanpope.com&gt; replied:<br /><br />God, where have you been (or where were you ten years ago). Everything<br />changed, is changing:<br /><br />Broadband/always on in the home changes everything.<br /><br />RSS<br />Tags<br />Semantic Web<br />Locative<br />Folksonomies<br />Wikipedia<br />Blogging<br />Trackback<br />Longtail<br />Pro-am<br />Social media<br />Very large scale conversations<br />Discourse architecture<br /><br />Really, it's the mindsets that change and as tools become available and<br />accepted, mindets change and we all see things that we didn't see before.<br /><br />It's an exciting world at the moment, more exciting than it was between<br />1997 and 2004 to be sure.<br /><br />As for Rhizome, what of the above has it taken on board?<br /><br />Cheers,<br />Ivan<br />(A tide, taken at its flood …)<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Plasma Studii replied:<br /><br />ivan,<br /><br />these are great examples. but i'm talking about using some/any of<br />the methods available at a given time to result in DOING something<br />different, than we could have before. possibly, the technology could<br />have been been there, but the tools impractical and needed to be<br />developed. but as time has elapsed, that didn't end up being the<br />real obstacle. PHP is much newer and a lot easier to use than Perl,<br />but folks still use Perl and the functions we use now, we're<br />available a decade ago.<br /><br />object oriented programming is a semantic improvement, but not a<br />functional one. if C (written code) was ever supplanted by MAX<br />(designing flow chart), that would be a far greater change though<br />still C can do all the things MAX does (and much more). There's no<br />actual functional advantage to using MAX, only semantic.<br />Semantically, PHP is a breeze to use compared to Perl, but<br />functionally differs mostly by 2 related functions (getting a users<br />IP address and referring document) and Perl comes out slightly ahead.<br />Technology-enthusiasts generally do not acknowledge this sort of<br />distinction. (there literally IS change, we may even change what we<br />do. but it's not an apples-oranges shift, it's like<br />tangerines-oranges. bigger but not really more useful and the same<br />basic color. is there a big difference in flavor? debatable, but<br />mostly if you pretend there are no apples)<br /><br />the technology has always been there. what changes our actual lives<br />are self-regulatory systems. (like reinforced concrete changes<br />construction of skyscrapers, which changes cities, which changes how<br />we live. imagine if reinforced concrete had been invented in the<br />1700's but we still lived in huts. that's like web technology. the<br />concrete need not keep evolving, once it works, for the city to<br />continually evolve) our actions fundamentally are transformed by<br />systems that respond to user input and alter themselves, not just<br />automatically, but according to user input. to advance the web by<br />&quot;dialogue&quot; rather than dictation. we could make sites, scripts,<br />pages that manage themselves according to user input (not time<br />specific at all), rather than construct them from an authors<br />final(fixed point in time) input.<br /><br />what are ways the web can be more use-able than as a seemingly<br />infinite sprawling info dumping ground? google is one organizational<br />tool. a really clever one, in how it ranks so you won't bother to<br />see items you're less likely to be interested in, uses 100+ factors<br />to arrive at the rank, … but it's hardly perfect. ebay is far<br />more self-regulating, but far less cleverly designed and employs much<br />more monitoring/regulating manually by hired humans. there must be<br />more advanced ways to think about organizing than by literal key<br />words. (wikipedia (you mentioned) is a variant use of the amazon<br />scheme previously sited, where readers can rate blog-esque<br />submissions. a feature i'd love to see a common for business and<br />individuals alike, a given like different colors for links than text).<br /><br /> &gt;Really, it's the mindsets that change and as tools become available<br /> &gt;and accepted, mindets change and we all see things that we didn't<br /> &gt;see before.<br /><br />i agree that SHOULD happen. but rather than shift (as in x=34 to<br />x=62), the trend is to close off change (as in x=34 to x=null).<br />maybe the illusion of advancing technology (in a hopeful/wishful<br />self-fulfilling prophesy/mirage way) that we're going through another<br />turn of the century paradigm shift has folks changing their mindsets<br />to rallying for in-substantive hype, rather than the tangible or<br />practical actions. the &quot;available&quot; part has been there for years, so<br />why not &quot;accepted&quot;? (is ignorance a memory management technique?)<br /><br /> &gt;Broadband/always on in the home changes everything.<br /><br />you're right, &quot;always on&quot; changes our daily lives. but that was<br />always possible (used to leave dial-up on at home 24/7). it has<br />always been common to be on-line all day for web designers, which<br />essentially has the same result. and actually, BB's not quite an<br />improvement itself. (only effects about 1/3 of the transaction).<br /><br />judsoN<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Pall Thayer &lt;palli@pallit.lhi.is&gt; replied:<br /><br />I think some of the most significant changes we see today have to do<br />with public familiarity with technology. A few years ago you had to hire<br />someone with a degree in computer sciences if you wanted a dynamic web<br />site. Today, your 13 year old cousin is likely to be running his/her own<br />database driven website, written from scratch. And why not? Most of<br />today's home computers come with included webservers with server-side<br />scripting abilities and the most widely used databases are available for<br />free download all over the place. As this previously priviledged<br />knowledge becomes more common, we'll see more innovation.<br /><br />Perl is a very powerful, versatile and extensible programming language<br />that far exceeds anything PHP is capable of. You really can't compare<br />the two because Perl, among many other things, just happens to be<br />usefull for web automation whereas PHP was designed specifically for web<br />automation and isn't very good for anything else. Perl should be<br />required learning for all first year digital arts students.<br /><br />Pall<br /><br />[…]<br /><br />I just want to point out that this wasn't just absent mindedly &quot;thrown<br />out there&quot;. I sincerely think that Perl should be required learning for<br />artists interested in working with computers. It's rather easy to learn,<br />it makes for quick prototyping of ideas if not a full solution and it's<br />capable of giving the artist near complete control over the computer and<br />it's capabilities. It's the quick-and-easy do all tool like the pencil<br />and paper sketch. You can use it for web-based projects, to read or<br />write to your peripherals, to interact with your microprocessor,<br />manipulate or create images, you name it. Also, it would give the<br />students a good general knowledge of programming concepts and techniques<br />making it easier for them to pick up other languages and just basically<br />understand how the computer deals with information and data. On top of<br />all this, it comes pre-installed with most major OS's, complete with<br />full documentation and is easily installable on Windows.<br /><br />Pall<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Robert Spahr &lt;rob@robertspahr.com&gt; added:<br /><br />I will jump in here and agree by saying that perl is quite useful for<br />learning basic programming skills, and combined with shell scripting it is<br />a great glue to connect many separate command line programs into a powerful<br />combination.<br /><br />Another nice thing about perl is you only have to learn a small subset of<br />the entire language, in order to write quite useful and powerful scripts.<br /><br />– Rob<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Rob Myers &lt;robmyers@mac.com&gt; replied:<br /><br />My first job a decade ago was Python scripting. I chose Python because<br />I wanted regexes but I didn't want the neural burn from Perl's sadistic<br />syntax.<br /><br />I'd recommend Ruby to newbies, it has a more regular syntax than<br />Python. I'm on to Lisp myself, which is a genuinely powerful and<br />advanced programming language, and very good for the web (see Paul<br />Graham et al).<br /><br />- Rob.<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Ivan Pope replied:<br /><br /> Pall Thayer wrote:<br /><br /> &gt; I think some of the most significant changes we see today have to do<br /> &gt; with public familiarity with technology. A few years ago you had to<br /> &gt; hire someone with a degree in computer sciences if you wanted a<br /> &gt; dynamic web site. Today, your 13 year old cousin is likely to be<br /> &gt; running his/her own database driven website, written from scratch. And<br /> &gt; why not? Most of today's home computers come with included webservers<br /> &gt; with server-side scripting abilities and the most widely used<br /> &gt; databases are available for free download all over the place. As this<br /> &gt; previously priviledged knowledge becomes more common, we'll see more<br /> &gt; innovation.<br /><br />Agree totally. During the first wave, I realised that we couldn't even<br />begin to really get our heads around this stuff and what it might become.<br />I think it's a lot more than just lots of people who are very familiar<br />with technology (though of course that helps, when I started my first<br />web company there were just zero people in the UK who were any immediate<br />use). I think it's that we are all familiar day in day out with the<br />concepts, i.e. you don't have to think about what online means or email<br />or forms or subscribing or whatever, it is just embedded.<br />Now there are kids who have never known anything else - but maybe we are<br />not quite there yet.<br /><br />I said back in the day that it would take a generation to grow up with<br />online, graduate through college and go into teaching and teach the next<br />generation before we would have some native apps - i.e. apps that were<br />thought up by people who never knew or heard any different.<br /><br />And I also predicted that it was more likely that some kid in the Mekong<br />delta or the Venezualean rainforest who would come up with that stuff.<br /><br />Having said all of that of course, I still think I'm pretty good at<br />inventing the future :-)<br /><br />So what is coming down the pipes?<br /><br />Cheers,<br />Ivan<br /><br />[…]<br /><br />I also believe that Jean Paul Sartre's Nausea should be required<br />reading for all artists interested in working with computers.<br /><br />Thanks,<br />Ivan<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Geert Dekkers &lt;geert@nznl.com&gt; replied:<br /><br />I'd like to contradict this – one of the signs of the fact we (=<br />humanity) haven't really started appreciating computer technology is<br />that we're not thinking and forming our lives in analogy to these<br />technologies. There may be a lot of readers of this list who know what<br />a database is but outside of our barn I assure you there are very many<br />who most certainly do not. We may have come a long way since '95 (or<br />so) but I'd guess it will take a while still before a programming<br />language gets put on a primary school curriculum.<br />Cheers<br />Geert<br />(<a rel="nofollow" href="http://nznl.com">http://nznl.com</a>)<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />ryan griffis &lt;grifray@yahoo.com&gt; replied:<br /><br />and it's important, IMHO, to ask how the &quot;evolution&quot; of the web is<br />impacting &quot;society&quot; any differently than all the other paradigm<br />shifting communication technologies. this is not to take away from the<br />innovations taking place, but i'm wary (still) of the broad,<br />humanity-shifting language used to discuss computing - in both its<br />utopian and dystopic forms.<br />some US stats<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/User_Demo_03.07.05.htm">http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/User_Demo_03.07.05.htm</a><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/InternetAdoption.jpg">http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/InternetAdoption.jpg</a><br />notice the plateau since 2002…<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />jeremy &lt;studio@silencematters.com&gt; replied:<br /><br /> ryan griffis wrote:<br /> &gt; it's important to ask how the &quot;evolution&quot; of the web is<br /> &gt; impacting &quot;society&quot; any differently than all the other paradigm<br /> &gt; shifting communication technologies.<br /><br />Once you start looking for the ways it impacts society you then start to<br />create the possible need develop software with an adgenda . these types<br />of questions bring up the debate as to whether the software gets<br />developed based the users needs, or the programmers needs. I think it is<br />important to ask questions, but maybe the question is how can we develop<br />software that facilitates creative growth and adaptability of the user?<br />or software that allows the user to create their own adgenda? How can we<br />create software that expands the dialogue between the user and the<br />developer, between the child and the adult?<br />-jeremy<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Plasma Studii - judsoN replied:<br /><br /> &gt;Once you start looking for the ways it impacts society you then<br /> &gt;start to create the possible need develop software with an adgenda .<br /> &gt;these types of questions bring up the debate as to whether the<br /> &gt;software gets developed based the users needs, or the programmers<br /> &gt;needs. I think it is important to ask questions, but maybe the<br /> &gt;question is how can we develop software that facilitates creative<br /> &gt;growth and adaptability of the user? or software that allows the<br /> &gt;user to create their own adgenda? How can we create software that<br /> &gt;expands the dialogue between the user and the developer, between the<br /> &gt;child and the adult?<br /><br />this is a really great way of looking at it!<br /><br />oddly the software that is most programmer-needs oriented, like Flash<br />or Windows, is by far the most popular. Though the user-needs<br />software continually isn't as popular. why's that? obviously, one<br />way of looking at it is to chalk it up to marketing, but wonder if<br />it's also a similar phenomenon as folks in the US voting for bush<br />(even though he's clearly not going to help that &quot;lower 98%&quot;, they're<br />geographically not actually at risk from terrorists, are or are close<br />to someone who'll get killed in impending wars). i'm picking on<br />these particular examples not because they need more picking on, but<br />because there seems to be something more at work here than just good<br />design = successful product. and marketing and/or price doesn't<br />always explain it.<br /><br />people regularly or belligerently ignore contrary facts (be it about<br />processing, price or presidents), in order to pick the option that<br />will cause them the most trouble. how's that? it would seem many<br />folks become too discouraged to advance, either technically,<br />economically, or just in how they live, only because they use these<br />ill-designed tools.<br /><br />maybe that's some protective defense mechanism? maybe many are<br />afraid of change (even if it's learning) because of inevitable little<br />disappointments along the way. avoid it by ignoring the long term.<br /><br />just an idea, anyone have any others?<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />jeremy replied:<br /><br />I think the key is to develop the product that teaches adaptability and<br />not the end result. In fact, develop is totally the wrong word here.<br />&quot;Grow&quot; might better used. If you grow a piece of software that frames<br />the process of it's own growth, rather than focusing the user on the<br />software as a means to and end result, then you will begin to teach to a<br />more adaptable, learning audience. It is the desire for a product, for<br />an end result that inherently teaches us how to deal with change. In<br />this view, change is a means to an end. Somehow, through the tools that<br />we create - we need to teach adaptability, teach a process of learning<br />and change, and maybe we can do that by adopting a &quot;growth&quot; oriented<br />process. If the tools we create are a made to fit the end product, then<br />it is the end product that will be worshiped.<br /><br />-jeremy<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Pall Thayer replied:<br /><br />But isn't this exactly what's done? I can't think of a single program<br />that's still the same as it was 10 years ago, or am I misunderstanding<br />you?<br /><br />Pall<br /><br />+ + + <br /><br />Ethan Ham &lt;ethan@ethanham.com&gt; added:<br /><br /> Jeremy Zilar wrote:<br /><br /> &gt; I think the key is to develop the product that teaches adaptability<br /> &gt; and not the end result. Infact, develop is totally the wrong word<br /> &gt; here. &quot;Grow&quot; might better used. If you grow a piece of software that<br /> &gt; frames the process of it's own growth, rather than focusing the user<br /> &gt; on the software as a means to and end result, then you will begin to<br /> &gt; teach to a more adaptable, learning audience.<br /><br />The discussion of user-focused vs. machine-focused software/UI brings<br />pen-computing to mind.<br /><br />For years developers tried to create handwriting recognition software that<br />could learn to a users' particular handwriting style (e.g., the Newton)…<br />but in the end, the first really successful pen-computer (the Pilot) gave up<br />on adapting the the software to the user's needs and instead trained the<br />user to adapt a short-hand that the computer could understand.<br /><br />People are more adaptable than machines.<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Plasma Studii replied:<br /><br /> &gt;But isn't this exactly what's done? I can't think of a single program<br /> &gt;that's still the same as it was 10 years ago, or am I misunderstanding<br /> &gt;you? <br /><br /> &gt;Pall<br /><br />photoshop (an example everyone's familiar with) is one of the most<br />useful programs ever. but after 1992 and the great innovation of<br />layers, the changes from version 2 to CS have all been ones you could<br />have done in 2, but have 3 or 4 new ways in CS. that's all fine. if<br />you have a computer that still runs an earlier version, no need to<br />pay for a new photoshop.<br /><br />but, for example, they no longer sell the printer ink cartridges for<br />the old printers that ran on those computers. so, you'll probably<br />end up wanting to buy a new computer and thus need a new photoshop …<br /><br />that's a change, but not an improvement.<br /><br />you might say &quot;but the computers have improved&quot;, but that's certainly<br />arguable. what macs did in 1993 (after color monitors became common,<br />though the machines supported them long before) is still far more<br />than we use/need aside from the time (it's the goldfish analogy<br />again).<br /><br />the way most people use their computers, for things like email and<br />word processing. faster processing speeds have been entirely<br />unnecessary. so the industry finds tasks for them that demand more.<br />we eventually get 3d animation, video and compression for DVD<br />burning. (though granted, they do help to gloss over many of the<br />memory management shortcomings)<br /><br />but linear video is actually a step backwards. it has nothing really<br />to do with, much less improve on, what's innovative about computers.<br />namely non-linear programming. yet there are folks who demand more<br />and better video capabilities from these machines. it's like<br />tweeking the taxi-ing features of an airplane. the public clammors<br />for cruising the runway, but shows real disdain for and wings<br />(originally an intrinsic part of planes).<br /><br />not that video or increasing processor speed is a bad thing at all.<br />but for these &quot;upgrades&quot; to be evolution not devolution, they can<br />only contribute as means, features available to programming, not as<br />ends to be output to a media on something other than or imitated by a<br />computer.<br /><br />hope that's a helpful clarification.<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Plasma Studii - judsoN replied:<br /><br />&gt;For years developers tried to create handwriting recognition<br />&gt;software that could learn to a users' particular handwriting style<br />&gt;(e.g., the Newton)… but in the end, the first really successful<br />&gt;pen-computer (the Pilot) gave up on adapting the the software to the<br />&gt;user's needs and instead trained the user to adapt a short-hand that<br />&gt;the computer could understand.<br />that's be nice if it was the whole story, but think of this goal<br />another way. this assumes &quot;handwriting recognition&quot; is a viable<br />thing outside of a human reader. handwriting is chaos to anything<br />but humans. firstly, it is just fundamentally impossible to teach<br />anything (a monkey or program) to differentiate between writing and<br />discoloration. the Newton experimenting revealed that. there is no<br />straightforward way to comprehend the seemingly infinite variables.<br /><br />neither people nor machines are more or less adaptable, people just<br />have finite perspectives and machines have infinite ones. so it's<br />hard for people to figure out precisely how they narrow it down, to<br />tell the machines. Palm ended up opting for the Graffiti method only<br />because that was at least a lot easier, in fact, the alternative<br />wasn't going to happen.<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />jeremy replied:<br /><br />I think Pall was right earlier when he said &quot;Today, your 13 year old<br />cousin is likely to be running his/her own database driven website,<br />written from scratch.&quot;<br />And if notthe average 13yr old,…. the it WILL be the average 13yr old<br />in 20yrs. You know some kid is going to be slumping his body down, in<br />some chair in his 10th grade &quot;Web Evolution Class&quot; because his teacher<br />just announced that the assignment is to make a 5 page website by the<br />end of the semester! At some point in the very near future, they will<br />be offering XHTML classes as a followup to keyboarding class in grade<br />school.<br /><br /> &gt; As this previously priviledged<br /> &gt; knowledge becomes more common, we'll see more innovation.<br /><br />I just want to make sure that that innovation is encouraged as much as<br />possible.<br /><br />-jeremy<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Jim Andrews &lt;jim@vispo.com&gt; replied:<br /> &gt; &gt;But isn't this exactly what's done? I can't think of a single program<br /> &gt; &gt;that's still the same as it was 10 years ago, or am I<br /> &gt; misunderstanding<br /> &gt; &gt;you?<br /><br /> &gt; &gt;Pall<br /><br />How about most email list technology? I realize that there are things like<br />Fusetalk and yahoo groups and so on, but haven't the administrative options<br />for lists themselves pretty much stayed the same?<br /><br />ja<br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://vispo.com">http://vispo.com</a><br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />jeremy replied:<br /><br />instead of looking at the software to change, shouldnt we be looking at<br />our need that the software accomplishes, and try to develop our needs,<br />our desires?<br /><br />All good forms of innovation come from finding a new way to live and<br />experience the world.<br /><br />I know i get lost these days .. i really dont havr the time to stop,<br />step back and look at the caucophony of things happening, because i am<br />too busy playing some part in it.<br /><br />-jeremy<br /><br />[…]<br /><br />that is really interesting…<br />It made me think of the tim Hawkinson piece at the Whitney at the moment.<br /><br />However, i wasnt talking about user-focused vs. machine-focused software<br />but rahter a debate over the intent behind the development of the software.<br />Do we start to develop software based on our economic needs - thus<br />teaching the user to work in a particular way, or do we give the user a<br />bunch of tools, and see where they take it - and develop the software<br />based off the directions they take.<br /><br />-jeremy<br /><br />I really enjoyed reading it again. I am glad that i found it again.<br /><br />[…]<br /><br />I found this essay by Manuel de Landa a couple of years back.<br />it is called - MESHWORKS, HIERARCHIES AND INTERFACES<br />I think it would go really good with this discussion.<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm">http://t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm</a><br /><br />-jeremy<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Plasma Studii - judsoN replied:<br /><br /> &gt;I think Pall was right earlier when he said &quot;Today, your 13 year old<br /> &gt;cousin is likely to be running his/her own database driven website,<br /> &gt;written from scratch.&quot;<br /> &gt;And if notthe average 13yr old,…. the it WILL be the average 13yr<br /> &gt;old in 20yrs<br /><br />definitely agree. but don't see that as an improvement at all. the<br />web already has the look/feel of being designed by a 13 year old kid.<br /><br />DIY is often mistaken for instant ability, by sidestepping the skill.<br />the function of learning isn't just to gain difficult-to-obtain<br />knowledge, but to devote time, in which you simultaneously gain<br />&quot;eloquence&quot;. It may seem like you pay for &quot;expertise&quot;, though<br />ideally we want some kind of eloquence, and may be willing to pay<br />people who put the time in to develop it.<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Pall Thayer replied:<br /><br />Well, wouldn't it then be fair to say that that 13 year old kid is<br />beginning his/her path to refinement and eloquence. Besides, I don't<br />really see that that has anything to do with the discussion at hand.<br />Common knowledge doesn't mean that everyone's an expert, just that<br />everyone has a relatively good idea about how to but things to use. Like<br />the phone. The actual process of directing a call from one place to<br />another is very complicated but anyone can make a phone call. It's a<br />combination of the tools being easier to use and people knowing<br />something about what's going on. So no, I wouldn't hire the 13 year old<br />to build a site for my Fortune 500 company even though he/she has a<br />homemade, database driven website because it's junk. But it does what<br />the 13 year old wants it to do. And the number of 13 year olds with such<br />sites is steadily growing which means that what they're doing is slowly<br />becoming common knowledge. Once upon a time, only a handfull of people<br />knew how to operate an automobile.<br /><br />The more people know about technology, the more they demand from it. If<br />this weren't the case we'd still be looking at the same old pink and<br />paisly websites from ca. '95 and be perfectly content.<br /><br />Pall<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Plasma Studii - judsoN replied:<br /><br /> &gt;Well, wouldn't it then be fair to say that that 13 year old kid is<br /> &gt;beginning his/her path to refinement and eloquence.<br /><br />we may hope, but not at all necessarily the case. in practice, rare.<br />most 13 year olds just want the skill as fast as possible. ability<br />and eloquence are entirely independent, but treated as if they were<br />fused.<br /><br />we can still USE a car, without being mechanics or engineers. or we<br />buy one because we can't design them. 100 years later, DIY cars are<br />still not a priority. but manufacturers continually evolve/respond<br />to changing buyers desires. why computers or web design?<br /><br /> &gt; Like the phone.<br /><br />if we look at the phone example, it only became DIY pretty recently.<br />it gradually moved from a tool you needed an expert to use, to one<br />you could go through an intermediate level person (switch board<br />operators) to the present version. long long after the role it would<br />take, the way it fundamentally works, had all been ironed out.<br />there's been no significant change now that we dial ourselves. we<br />still essentially use phones for talking to someone far away.<br /><br />around 1903, there was a service you could call and listen to a<br />symphony, like a radio show, but before radios. this did not prove<br />practical and died out. do we actually need both cursors to change<br />and rolled over text to change when we are over a link? probably<br />not. but there are so many things that still need to be ironed out,<br />that the average joe shmoe with a gloating degree of proficiency<br />considers an advancement.<br /><br /> &gt; I wouldn't hire the 13 year old to build a site for my Fortune 500<br /> &gt; company even though he/she has a homemade, database driven website<br /> &gt; because it's junk. But it does what the 13 year old wants it to do.<br /><br />so why SHOULD everyone work with this particular aspect of<br />technology, any more than saying every individual SHOULD be a brain<br />surgeon or nuclear physicist or a plumber? (i admit a knee-jerk<br />reaction against DIY brain surgery.)<br /><br />[…]<br /><br />Plasma Studii - judsoN wrote:<br /><br /> &gt;&gt; Well, wouldn't it then be fair to say that that 13 year old kid is<br /> &gt;&gt; beginning his/her path to refinement and eloquence.<br /><br /> &gt; we may hope, but not at all necessarily the case. in practice, rare.<br /> &gt; most 13 year olds just want the skill as fast as possible. ability<br /> &gt; and eloquence are entirely independent, but treated as if they were<br /> &gt; fused.<br /> <br /> &gt; we can still USE a car, without being mechanics or engineers. or we<br /> &gt; buy one because we can't design them. 100 years later, DIY cars are<br /> &gt; still not a priority. but manufacturers continually evolve/respond to<br /> &gt; changing buyers desires. why computers or web design?<br /><br />That's a pretty far fetched comparison. It takes lots of extremely<br />expensive heavy machinery to build a car. If you already have a<br />computer, what does it take to build a website or software? Aside from<br />that, I'm not talking about everyone being able to write their own<br />software or database driven website, just to be aware of them and their<br />capabilities. That's enough for people to start asking, &quot;Can we do<br />this?&quot; or, &quot;Gee, wouldn't it be nifty if we could do this?&quot; That's often<br />all that's needed to get the ball rolling. If it's a good, sound idea<br />then someone with ability will pick it up along the way and do something<br />with it. If it all works out, we may have a bit of innovation.<br /><br /> &gt; so why SHOULD everyone work with this particular aspect of technology,<br /> &gt; any more than saying every individual SHOULD be a brain surgeon or<br /> &gt; nuclear physicist or a plumber? (i admit a knee-jerk reaction against<br /> &gt; DIY brain surgery.)<br /><br />I don't know about you, but I had to learn about the human brain in high<br />school. I also had to learn about chemistry but I wasn't required to<br />take any plumbing courses. But I've picked up a few things along the<br />way, it's all pretty much gravity anyway which I had to learn about in<br />high school as well. It's becoming increasingly difficult for the<br />average person to go a full day without interacting with a computer so<br />why shouldn't we have to learn how they work?<br /><br />+ + +<br /><br />Plasma Studii - judsoN replied:<br /><br />pall,<br /><br />we may just be talking about the same thing but from totally<br />different angles. it occurs to me, to add that this is not about<br />wrong/right, whether ordinary people SHOULD be allowed to use the<br />tools. rather, which choices would now end up more useful. you may<br />be right about everyone being allowed the freedom to design web<br />pages, but essentially, the cats out of the bag. there'd be no way to<br />de-publicize the world wide web at this point. whether it's the<br />right right or a wrong rite, we can all do it. (much to MS's<br />chagrin, who keeps trying to make it all proprietary)<br /><br />but what path we choose now (i propose) could get us somewhere new.<br />may even be called a &quot;wrong&quot; turn by many, but not stagnant and an<br />addition to the old, not a replacement. evolution only comes up with<br />improvements by constantly trying out innovations though. maybe an<br />important first step to getting that ball rolling, is for us to get<br />back to earth about what things are innovations, variants or hype.<br />(though perhaps we are already of a generation that says surface<br />alteration is fundamental.)<br /><br />judsoN<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />Rhizome ArtBase Exhibitions<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/">http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/</a><br /><br />Visit the third ArtBase Exhibition &quot;Raiders of the Lost ArtBase,&quot; curated by<br />Michael Connor of FACT and designed by scroll guru Dragan Espenschied.<br /><br /><a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/raiders/">http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/raiders/</a><br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />10.<br /><br />Date: 4.01.05<br />From: Katherine Moriwaki &lt;kaki@kakirine.com&gt;<br />Subject: From Silk to Microcontrollers<br /><br />&#xB3;FROM SILK TO MICROCONTROLLERS&#xB2;<br /><br />Katherine Moriwaki interviews Joey Berzowska on designing fashion,<br />technology, and memory-rich garments.<br /><br /> <br /><br />KM: Fashion and technology are experiencing quite a rise of interest<br />lately. How would you explain the recent hype? Do you think the applications<br />are ready for market, and are you interested in commercializing the projects<br />developed at XS Labs?<br />JB: I think the hype (not sure how recent it is, really) is explained very<br />simply by the fact that in our western, techno-loving culture, we all want<br />to be superheroes and have superpowers. We love gadgets, we love visual<br />culture, and we all want to self-help and self-improve. Therefore, the<br />promise of magical cloaks and enhanced garments resonates very strongly with<br />most of us.<br /><br />Being in Canada, I have the great luxury of being able to get lots of<br />research funding (I have received almost half a million so far) without any<br />military or corporate strings tied to the money. Deliverables from my grants<br />usually center on cultural dissemination and giving back to the community<br />through teaching, writing, showing work, giving interviews, participating in<br />conferences, and organizing workshops. I really love Canada for the great<br />support of art-based research that happens here.<br /><br />I am definitely interested in commercializing things like my expertise,<br />through consulting services, and also marketing a line of very simple<br />dresses, focusing on good design rather than fancy technology.<br /><br />At the same time, I think there are lots of applications of fashion<br />technology out there already, mostly the sports. The things that they do<br />with shoes alone are incredible!<br />KM: You have described your previous research titled &quot;Computational<br />Expressionism&quot; as &quot;a model for drawing that combines higher level<br />algorithmic design with real-time gestural input&quot; but later co-founded the<br />company International Fashion Machines with Maggie Orth. Can you share the<br />process by which your research interests moved from algorithmic drawing to<br />fashion and textiles? In other words, how did you get involved<br />in this area?<br />JB: There are two parts to this story: personal and professional. On the<br />personal front, I have always loved making things with fibers and textiles.<br />I have also always been very much a &quot;bricoleur&quot; with clothes and<br />accessories. I learned to knit and crochet when I was seven, but even then I<br />mostly made bizarre, experimental, unconventional things, which usually<br />looked terrible, but I just could never force myself to follow the patterns.<br />Later on, I got a tiny little weaving setup, I was also making experimental<br />clothes for the couple of dolls that I owned (really out of necessity, we<br />were living in Africa, did not have much money and so on). I destroyed many<br />of my own garments, trying to &quot;improve&quot; them. I finally learned how to make<br />my own textiles with stuff like Batik and I learned to sew. I produced many<br />wearable disasters such as pants with one red leg and one green leg, tunics<br />with lots of little men running all over the place, and ripped-up dresses. I<br />was always trying to push the limits of materials and designs, without much<br />fashion sense, to be perfectly honest.<br /><br />On the professional end of things, I got undergraduate degrees in<br />Mathematics and in Design in 1995. I always loved to make things, physical<br />things, but somehow fell into what was then called Multimedia. I had started<br />a little company in Montreal called Teckel Cruel (&quot;cruel dachshund&quot; in<br />French) that made interactive CD-ROMs. After graduation, I moved to<br />Australia and worked in interaction research at the University of Technology<br />in Sydney. When I went to the MIT Media Lab in 1996, I was mostly frustrated<br />with the limitations of existing tools for graphical expression, so I<br />decided to make my own. I programmed a whole bunch of drawing environments<br />that responded in very personal ways to gestural input. At the same time, I<br />created textile-based work such as a textile (soft) input device for color<br />selection, but most of my research involved programming for the &quot;small<br />screen&quot;. When Hiroshi Ishii (director of Tangible Media Group) saw my work,<br />he yelled at me for using conventional physical interfaces (the mouse) and<br />invited me to work with him after I finished my thesis to develop physical<br />interfaces and tangible media research. I worked with the group for a year,<br />on projects such as the Music Bottles. It was really a fantastic experience,<br />but I grew a little frustrated as well, because I felt that I wanted to<br />engage the full body in tangible interactions with the world, instead of<br />just using the hands. I really wanted to work with garments and the whole<br />body. I started talking to Maggie (whom I knew already form the lab) about<br />starting a company and we decide to merge our interests in &quot;smart textiles&quot;<br />and full-body interaction design into International Fashion Machines.<br />KM: Your current research into &quot;Memory Rich Clothing&quot; utilizes visually<br />animated textiles to illustrate &quot;poetic and personal&quot; interpretations of<br />history and memory. Can you tell us a little more about what you hope to<br />gain by illustrating things such as touch and intimacy on our physical<br />bodies? What do we have to gain from this?<br />JB: What interests me more than anything is the playful aspect of electronic<br />textiles and reactive garments. I love the unexpected and the bizarre. I<br />love the stuff that challenges social boundaries and makes us question how<br />we relate to one another (in our increasingly wireless culture). I think it<br />is great to have a skirt that shows when you've been groped (and how hard),<br />not because you necessarily want to broadcast this to the world, but because<br />it is one of these embodied experiences that are becoming less and less<br />associated with definitions of intimacy (in a culture of wireless<br />connectivity). It is, in a sense, your physical &quot;hit counter&quot;. It is funny<br />and it is playful.<br /><br />I do not think of my pieces as product designs. I think of them, first of<br />all, as nerdy technology prototypes (they all solve some kind of<br />connectivity or materials problems), but also social commentary artifacts.<br />KM: You have been quoted as saying: &quot;The killer app for wearable computing<br />is to convey personal identity information. This is called fashion and it is<br />mostly visual.&quot; Firstly, could you elaborate on what you see as the limits<br />to sharing personal information? Secondly, what are your thoughts on the<br />less visible aspects of fashion design which still influence our subjective<br />experience? Have you explored that area?<br />JB: We share personal information through fashion (and accessories) all the<br />time: our social status, sexual availability, profession, religion and so<br />on. This is well known. Digital technologies and electronic textiles should<br />not AUTOMATE this process, but could add another layer to the experience.<br />This is deeply subjective. The only things that change are the materials<br />(from silk to microcontrollers) and the potential complexity of the<br />programmed experience. The subjective components remain just as complex.<br />When I sweat, does it mean that I am sexually aroused, that I am nervous, or<br />that I just ran up a flight of stairs? This reminds me that I am also deeply<br />suspicious of using biometric data to &quot;express&quot; ourselves. I think that<br />reactive fashion stuff will be and should be approached in the same way that<br />fashion is approached right now. Some things can be controlled; some things<br />are beyond our control. Some things look much better on a model and make us<br />look ridiculous. A blinking skirt will not solve all our social problems.<br />KM: It seems that you are interested in not only in developing and inventing<br />new technologies, but also in developing applications for existing<br />technology. What caught my attention is your advocacy of the &quot;misuse (or<br />abuse)&quot; of existing technologies, which is a sentiment that seems fairly<br />popular within technology and art crowds. Could you describe how your works<br />manifest this subversive edge?<br />JB: I think a lot of this sentiment comes from the fact that so much new<br />technology research is really funded (and shaped by) large institutions with<br />specific agendas (such as the US military - which I had to deal with in my<br />IFM days). It's cool to &quot;misuse&quot;. It is evidence of an inventive and<br />innovative spirit.<br /><br />I like to use materials in unconventional ways, especially to create soft<br />circuits using fibers and textiles that originated from defense-based<br />research contracts etc… Conceptually, I also flirt with questions of<br />privacy and surveillance with projects such as the groping skirt.<br /><br />I also think that it's important to question what is now called the &quot;memory<br />industry&quot;. As I said in my paper, Memory Rich Clothing: Second Skins that<br />Communicate Physical Memory (to be given at Creativity &amp; Cognition 2005 in<br />London), the term &quot;memory industry&quot; is being used to describe western<br />society's growing interest in various gadgets that help commit to<br />computerized memory all of the things that we otherwise might forget, such<br />as appointments, commitments, and other important life details. One of the<br />proclaimed goals of pervasive computing research is to develop invisible<br />distributed sensor networks to record various aspects our activities.<br />Wearable computing research is similarly concerned with questions of memory.<br />Brad Rhodes' Remembrance Agent, for instance, is a wearable proactive memory<br />aid and data system that continually reminds the wearer of potentially<br />relevant information based on the wearer's current physical and virtual<br />context.<br /><br />We need to clarify the distinction between concepts of human memory versus<br />computer memory. Computer scientists started using the term memory to refer<br />to hard drives and RAM as analogous to the way that humans remember facts.<br />But computer memory is distinctly different from human memory insofar as it<br />acts more as a dumping group for data, as opposed to the rich, contextual<br />space that makes up human memory. Computers do not forget things in the same<br />way that humans forget. At the same time, a computer can store images with<br />great accuracy but cannot identify one image as being similar to another,<br />which humans can do quite easily.<br /><br />Once the term &quot;memory&quot; became established in computer science,<br />computer-based definition of memory infiltrated our discussions of human<br />memory. The &quot;memory industry&quot; thus defines the concept of memory in a very<br />objective and impersonal way. Photos and video register memory as events in<br />time instead of stored experiences. Memory-rich research, on the other hand,<br />deals with memory as it relates to the body and the interaction between<br />people through the use of their bodies.<br /><br />It is important to develop wearable technologies that challenge social<br />structures and assumptions in relation to embodied interaction (or concepts<br />of knowledge). These interactions have developed under specific cultural,<br />historical and social contexts.<br />KM: Working in fashion and technology requires numerous multi-disciplinary<br />skills. Additionally I have noticed you have a sizable list of researchers<br />and both graduate and undergraduate research assistants listed on your site,<br />as well as collaborative work with the CodeZebra project by Sara Diamond.<br />Describe the creative process at XS Labs. How are your ideas developed? How<br />do you see this relating to wearable design in general?<br />JB: I make sure that everybody on my team can both use a sewing machine and<br />an adjustable voltage regulator, despite their formal training. We have<br />electrical engineers, weavers, designers, and programmers. They each have<br />distinct roles, but the really great ideas come when the roles leak into<br />each other. That is my job, I create the leaks. I dig the trenches.<br />KM: Can you tell us what you are currently working on? Where do you see your<br />work moving in the next twelve months and beyond?<br />JB: We are currently finalizing four projects:<br />1. Several (highly personal) animated weavings that deal with issues of<br />displacement and cultural identity.<br /><br />2. Two Memory Suits that deploy various modalities for recording and<br />displaying physical memory on the body.<br />3. An Animated Quilt, a 10 by 10 pixel textile display.<br />4. Two shape change dresses, using the shape memory alloy Nitinol (we have<br />spent a whole year exploring the properties of various formulations and<br />various ways of incorporating into a textile, such as weaving, embroidery,<br />stitching etc.)<br /><br />I plan to spend this summer masterminding our next research direction. I am<br />very concerned with issues of power (in all its meanings) and environmental<br />issues associated with this work. I also want to seriously pursue further<br />research in textile-based display technologies. I basically plan to grow a<br />couple of research consortiums over the next two years:<br /><br />1. WEARABLE POWER LAB: Alternate power sources for wearable/portable<br />computing.<br /><br />We will explore power sources such as flexible solar panels, printable solar<br />cells (photovoltaic cells), dielectric elastomers etc… We will develop new<br />methods for integrating the above technologies into textiles, so as to<br />enable body-worn power generation.<br /><br />2. MEMORY LAB: Alternate Graphics Displays, Memory Representation and Time<br />Based Experience.<br /><br />We will study issues of representing memory and alternate substrates for<br />ubiquitous graphic display. We will develop new technologies for<br />textile-based and body-worn displays, user scenarios for ubiquitous media<br />deployment, and experiments in contextualizing the human body as an<br />augmented surface for memory representations.<br />Joey Berzowska is an Assistant Professor of Design and Computation Arts in<br />Montreal. She works primarily with &quot;soft computation&quot;: electronic textiles,<br />responsive clothing as wearable technology, reactive materials and squishy<br />interfaces. <br /><br />www.berzowska.com &lt;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.berzowska.com/">http://www.berzowska.com/</a>&gt;<br /><br />www.xslabs.net &lt;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.xslabs.net/">http://www.xslabs.net/</a>&gt;<br /><br /> <br />Katherine Moriwaki is an artist and researcher investigating clothing and<br />accessories as the active conduit through which people create network<br />relationships in public space. She is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in the<br />Networks and Telecommunications Research Group at the University of Dublin,<br />Trinity College. <br /><br />www.kakirine.com &lt;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.kakirine.com/">http://www.kakirine.com/</a>&gt;<br /><br />www.personaldebris.com &lt;<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.personaldebris.com/">http://www.personaldebris.com/</a>&gt;<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization and an affiliate of<br />the New Museum of Contemporary Art.<br /><br />Rhizome Digest is supported by grants from The Charles Engelhard<br />Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for<br />the Visual Arts, and with public funds from the New York State Council<br />on the Arts, a state agency.<br /><br />+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<br /><br />Rhizome Digest is filtered by Kevin McGarry (kevin@rhizome.org). 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