ecopolis

Song: Viva la Vida
Band: Coldplay
Clips from: kh-vids

David Byrne: Playing the Building (BBTV)

Playing the building is a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.

10 South Street, New York, NY (Map)
31 May – 10 August 2008
Open Friday, Saturday, Sunday: Noon – 6PM (Free)

Hundreds of Cubans lined up today at state-owned telephone offices as the new government under President Raul Castro began selling cellular phone service to the general public for the first time.

Cubans are now allowed to buy DVD players, computers and other electronic goods, and stay at tourist hotels previously reserved only for foreigners.

Cuba has the lowest rate of cellular telephone use in Latin America and the service was restricted until now to foreigners or government officials and employees.

A list of phone rates released by state telecoms company Etecsa Wednesday indicated that Cuba’s new cell phone holders will be able to place calls to the U.S. for $2.91 per minute – the first direct phone connection from the island to the northern neighbor.

Customers will pay for their calls with prepaid cards bought in hard currency, and can receive and make international calls.
Calls to Mexico and Canada can be placed for $2.64 per minute. The rates will be $4.80 for calls to Latin America, while dialing anywhere else in the world will cost $6.31.

Cuban telecommunications monopoly ETECSA, a joint venture with Telecom Italia, announced last month it would begin selling the service.

Antonio Santi Giuseppe Meucci was born in San Frediano, low-class area of the city of Florence, on April 13, 1808, while the city is under Napoleon rule. His family is poor and, even if he is admitted to the Art School [Accademia di Belle Arti], he cannot end his studies as he needs to start working very young. He changes many jobs, from custom employee propman for the “Pergola” theater in Florence. Here he builds an acoustic telephone: that is a telephone in which sound is conducted inside tubes. In the “Pergola” he meets Ester Mochi, a costumer, which he will marry.

Antonio Meucci gets interested in animal and physiological electricity while he was young. He is active in politics too, and he gets into the revolutionary movements aimed at the Unification of Italy which took place in 1831. Being him a liberal and a repubblican he is be arrested and remains three months in jail, sharing the cell with Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi. He is then pushed to leave the Great Duchy of Tuscany and will finally sail to Cuba. He settles in Havana as propman for the Tacòn Theatre. While in Cuba, while he was trying to cure rheumatisms of a patient via elettotherapy he manages to hear more clearly than he expected the cry of his patient, from the neighbouring room, as the current arrives to him. Meucci’s words were “I thought I heard this sound more distinctly than natural. I then put this copper of my instrument to my ear, and heard the sound of his voice through the wire. This was my first impression, and the origin of my idea of the transmission of the human voice by electricity”. He continues his experiment untill, in 1850, he settles inj the United States, and in the city of New York.

In New Yorh Meucci establishes a candle factory. Here he mets Giuseppe Garibaldi, which will work with Meucci; the two shares a long lasting important friendship. The collaboration between these two famous italians is proved in the New York museum “Garibaldi – Meucci”.

In 1854, Meucci’s wife Ester gets a crippling rheumatical arthritis which will oblige her to bed for the rest of her life, which will occur in 1884. Meucci realizes then the first true telephone link connecting his lab, nearby his cottage, with his wife’s bedroom. In a note dated 1857 Meucci describes his telephone: “it consists in a vibrating diaphragm and in a magnet electrified by a wire wounded around it. When the diaphragm vibrates the magnet modifies the wire curren. These modifications, once they reach the other end of the wire, impresses similar vibrations to the receiving diaphragm, which reproduces the words.”

Meucci ideas are clear, but he lacks the economic means to sustain his research. The candle factory goes bankrupt and Meucci seeks funding with rich italians but without luck. Soon he lacks also mony for his own living and he will survive thanks to his friends’ help.

(Western Electric Model 1317)

Meucci holds on and, in 1871 establishes e company and files in for a paptent, he names his invention “telettrofono”. The “Telettrophone Company,” has, as main scope, as the contract states, that of “carrying on all the necessary experiments to realize the ‘Telettrofono,’ that is the transmission of words (human voice) along electrical wires, as invented by Antonio Meucci”. There is still a money problem: with his $20 Meucci cannot afford to pay the cost of a patent, which sums up to $250 for a complete patent. As an alternative he files in for a “temporary” patent, or caveat, which lasts one year and can be renewed, the cost for each year being $10 dollari. Meucci will be able to pay this sum only up to year 1873.

In this same period, carrying with him much documentation on his researches, Meucci resorts to the powerfull American District Telegraph Company in New York, asking permission to use their lines for his experiments. The Company does not foresee the implication of the project and dismisses Meucci, causing him yet another failure.

In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell files in for a patent for his telephone. The following years will be spent by Meucci in an endless trial to obtain recognition of the paternity of the invention. Meucci is sponsored by the Globe Company, which suits Bell Company.
The lawsuit ends on July 19, 1887 with a decision which, even if it recognizes som merits to Antonio Meucci, is positive for Bell. “Nothing shows – says the decision – that Meucci really obtained any practical results, besides that of conducting, mechanically, the word along a cable. He surely used a mechanical conductor and he supposed that, by electrifying the conductor, he could have obtained better results”. In a nutshell the sentence states that Meucci had invented the telephone, but not the electrical one.

Antonio Meucci dies, aged 81, on Octover 18, 1889, shortly before that the Globe Company appeals against the sentence. After long lawsuits the Supreme Court of the United States will archive the case.

For more than a century, except in Italy, Bell has been considered the inventor of the telephone. On June 11, 2002, the Congress of the United States finally recognized officially that Antonio Meucci is the original inventor of the electrical telephone.

http://meucci.ing.unifi.it/

STATEMENT OF SUPPORT FOR ARTISTS, CURATORS and INSTITUTIONS involved in the exhibition EXCEPTION: Contemporary art scene from Prishtina, scheduled to be open on the 7.02.2008 in Belgrade, Kontekst Gallery

The statement is a reaction to the fact that the exhibition EXCEPTION, Contemporary art scene from Prishtina (Kosova) that was scheduled to open on 7 February 2008 (and to be on display until 15 February 2008) at KONTEKST Gallery in Belgrade WAS FORCED TO CLOSE JUST BEFORE THE OPENING.

The Serbian police that had to intervene just before the opening as they estimated that they cannot guarantee safety to the curators and the public, after an organized group of Serbian nationalist forcesattacked the gallery space and even destroyed Dren Maliqi’s work Face to face.The artists taking part in the exhibition are Artan Balaj, Jakup Ferri, Driton Hajredini, Flaka Haliti, Fitore Isufi Koja, Dren Maliqi, Alban Muja, Vigan Nimani, Nurhan Qehaja, Alketa Xhafa and Lulzim Zeqiri.

On 8 February 2008, the curators of the project Vida Knezevic, Kristian Lukic, Ivana Marjanovic and Gordana Nikolic asked PUBLICLY the Ministry of culture of Serbia and the city of Belgrade to react firmly against such nationalist forces in order to protect the exhibition in the future. The curators insist on the right to present the project in Belgrade in the near future.

On 8 February, these violent nationalist forces attacked again, they threw stones in the windows of the KONTEKST gallery and broke them and as well they destroyed gallery’s sign on the door.

All of us signed under this statement are expressing our support TO ARTISTS, CURATORS and INSTITUTIONS involved in the exhibition EXCEPTION: Contemporary art scene from Prishtina.

http://www.kontekstgalerija.org/html/main_en.htm

Petition is directed to Ministry of Culture of Republic of Serbia, Secretariat for Culture of City of Belgrade, as a demand for express and direct support to the organizers for opening of this exhibition.

http://www.petitiononline.com/odstupi/petition.html

Bill Gates plays guitar with SLASH at the CES, Las vegas

Madam Butterfly – Malcolm Maclaren 1984

In nome della laicita’ della scienza e della cultura e nel rispetto di questo nostro ateneo aperto a docenti e studenti di ogni credo e di ogni ideologia, auspichiamo che l’incongruo evento possa ancora essere annullato.

Queste le conclusioni dei 67 docenti firmatari , tra cui Marcello Cini, ordinario di Fisica Teorica, poi di Teorie Quantistiche e oggi Professore Emerito dell’Università “La Sapienza” di Roma, nel documento indirizzato al magnifico rettore dell’ateneo romano, Renato Guarini, a proposito dell’intervento di Benedetto XVI – previsto per giovedì 17 – al termine della cerimonia di inaugurazione dell’anno accademico.

Così l’anno accademico 2007 – 2008 del Primo Ateneo di Roma si inaugura sull’onda della polemica e della strumentalizzazione.

In nome della laicita’ della scienza, la posizione della facoltà di Fisica acquista una terza dimensione, “storica” – se si preferisce “evolutiva” – in aggiunta alle due tradizionali – empirica e logica. Mentre nel vecchio dipartimento si distribuisce “Porchetta e vino a volontà” per festeggiare, con un pranzo sociale, la svolta anticlericale, con proiezione finale del film “La vita di Galileo”.

In generale è tutto un assedio : visivo e sonoro. Quello dei media innanzitutto, giornali, radio e televisione, e quello della musica che verrò sparata a tutto volume dalle casse posizionate su un camion di otto metri parcheggiato in piazzale Aldo Moro, a Roma.

A questo fracasso si riduce la contestazione per la presenza di Papa Benedetto XVI, ospite non gradito. A cui si aggiunge una vera e propria processione. Quella per ” i diritti negati”. Il movimento della negazione è però duplice: gli studenti (e i professori) sentono negati il diritto alla laicità, e inneggiano al «sapere che non ha bisogno nè di padri nè di preti». Il Papa sente negata la tolleranza laica, mentre marcia per la pace. Nell’apparente contrasto delle parti negate, una terza Lectio magistralis intitolata Pena senza morte di Mario Caravale a cui seguiranno le parole del Sindaco di Roma, Walter Veltroni. E nuovi concordati.

Ma insomma di quale diritti si sta parlando?

Dei diritti di celebrazione. Quelli per l’inaugurazione dell’anno accademico 2007-2008. Il Magnifico rettore Renato Guarini si pronuncia da laico : “sono assolutamente consapevole che la nostra comunità universitaria è formata di credenti e di non credenti e lo affermero’ anche in occasione della giornata del 17 gennaio.

Benedetto XVI sara’ accolto come messaggero di pace e di giustizia e uomo di pensiero. Allo stesso modo la nostra universita’ ha piu’ volte accolto rappresentanti di altre confessioni religiose e li ha riconosciuti come interlocutori in un franco dialogo sulla convergenza di alcuni valori umani e civili.

Per il Rettore, la presenza di Benedetto XVI è l’offerta di una riflessione alla comunita’ universitaria. Se ci si pensa bene la presenza di Benedetto XVI è un’occasione di riflessione su Roma. E sul (ri) creazionismo. La città “eterna” da sempre dedicata a Giano Doppio, la divinità romana che presiede gli inizi e le soglie, materiali e immateriali, è veramente ridotta oramai alle sue mura di cinta – sempreverde impianto difensivo da attacchi “esterni ” – con occasionale sovrapposizione tra Stato italiano e Chiesa cattolica.

“Roma città aperta”.

“In ogni caso il Pontefice giungera’ dopo la conclusione della cerimonia di inaugurazione, che si svolgera’ invece secondo la tradizione, con una lectio magistralis del nostro collega Mario Caravale, con l’intervento di uno studente e di un rappresentante del personale tecnico-amministrativo e con un contributo del Sindaco Veltroni e del Ministro Mussi”.

Lo studente scelto per salutare il Papa si chiama Christian Bonafede. Una barzelletta? O uno scherzo da prete. Oppure un tiro della sorte? Forse un destino della “sapienza” che ritrova nell’umorismo, e nel gioco delle parti – quello sì ironico – tra umano e divino, occidentale e orientale, l’unica forma di incarnazione possibile. Sincretica. “Brevity is the soul of wit”. Sulla genesi al femminile: tutto tace. (This business is well ended)