ecopolis

Failure as a Strategy – Observations from Nicolas Nova from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

Download the Glitch Studies Manifesto.

TrackMeNot is a lightweight browser extension that helps protect web searchers from surveillance and data-profiling by search engines. It does so not by means of concealment or encryption (i.e. covering one’s tracks), but instead, paradoxically, by the opposite strategy: noise and obfuscation. With TrackMeNot, actual web searches, lost in a cloud of false leads, are essentially hidden in plain view. User-installed TrackMeNot works with the Firefox Browser and popular search engines (AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN) and requires no 3rd-party servers or services.

TrackMeNot runs in Firefox as a low-priority background process that periodically issues randomized search-queries to popular search engines, e.g., AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN. It hides users’ actual search trails in a cloud of ‘ghost’ queries, significantly increasing the difficulty of aggregating such data into accurate or identifying user profiles. To better simulate user behavior TrackMeNot uses a dynamic query mechanism to ‘evolve’ each client (uniquely) over time, parsing the results of its searches for ‘logical’ future query terms with which to replace those already used.

LightMobile, a Wolkwagen Beetle covered with 1659 computerized lights

Radio Barkas, a live radio into half a car

the live revival of Verne’s imaginary by the Abacus Theatre

and more photos here

GOGBOT 2008 – Steampunk edition opened yesterday in Enschede.
First of all look at the photos and the videos to see how this media art festival encompass usual cultural events, deliberatevely mashing up every kind of genre, style, language, situating the whole main exhibition in Oude Markt, where the pieces presented create a world between Julius Verne and Alice in Wonderland, but framed in a quiet and central plaza of a classical town in Holland.
Among all this wizardry the ArcAttack Performance, which created the Singing Tesla Coils, a special technology that let them generate a electrifyng audio visual set.

In the same plaza there was the Kubic’s Cube installation of Pablo Ventura, presented also last July in ISEA 2008. This piece is constituted by a long aluminium robot that hangs from a ceiling and dance according to the music and the movement prepared by the artist. It’s interesting to note that due to sensors and randomic organization of the interations and of the movement the piece seems to live a independent life.

Inside the church in the middle of the plaza performed 02L, The Shaidon Effect, a musical wizard techno mash-up that brings motion tracking to the audience.

Taking advantage of the little dimension of the festival reign good time between all the people involved and also the locals seems to be interested by this strange kind of technological circus landed in town.
It’s a real steampunk festival, first of all because as Bruce Sterling wroted on the Steampunk Gogbot essay “steampunks are modern crafts people who are very into spreading the means and methods of  working in archaic technologies“, and now in Enschede it’s full of people the “know their job”.

A local Chinese newspaper, The Beijing Times, revealed some of the staggering fireworks at the opening of the Beijing Olympics were actually not fireworks, but computer graphics. According the the newspaper a 55-second sequence, which included a series of 28 giant footsteps made by fireworks, was created by a visual effects team.

One could argue this was a wise decision: unlike real fireworks visual effects don’t pollute the already smoggy Beijing atmosphere any further. However, confusingly the sequence of 28 footprints actually took place in the real ceremony. The organisers decided to fake the sequence because it would not ‘be accurately captured’ live.

To emulate the shot, the visual effects team even spoke to the Beijing meteorological office to ask them how to recreate the Beijing smog.

via http://www.nextnature.net/?p=2661

In compliance with IOC requirements and common practice at previous Olympic Games, BOCOG has issued a rule that spectators must observe during the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The rule is similar to that of the Sydney and Athens Olympic Games, placing caution on articles accompanying spectators and spectator behavior at the Olympic venues, said Zhang Zhenliang, vice-director of the Volunteer Department of BOCOG and chief of the Spectator Call Center for the Beijing Olympics, on Monday.

According to Zhang, the rule restricts articles and behavior that are not illegal but not in conformity with Olympic and Paralympic regulations and tend to interfere with order, venue environment and interests of athletes and other spectators; banned articles and behavior which are against current Chinese laws and regulations. Legal action may be taken against violators.

Restricted articles include hard-packed drink and food; fragile articles; musical instruments; carry-on bags, suitcases and handbags which are too big to carry to the seats; flags of countries and regions not participating either in the Beijing Olympic Games or Paralympic Games and other flags over two meters in length or over one meter in width; flag poles of over one meter in length; banners, leaflets, or posters; unauthorized professional videotaping equipments; knives, bats, long-handle umbrellas, long poles, sharp-ended stands for cameras and video cameras, and other objects that may cause harm and injury to people; animals (with the exception of guide dogs); vehicles (except for strollers and wheelchairs); unauthorized walky-talkies, loudspeakers, radios, laser devices or wireless devices that interfere with the electronic signals of the Olympic Games.

The rule deemed the following behavior as inappropriate: smoking at a non-smoking area; crossing over the guardrail; using umbrellas or standing up for a long period of time in the seating area, thus obstructing the field of vision of other spectators; and flash photography.

The rule banned weapons and equipment including guns, ammunition, crossbows, and daggers; fireworks, firecrackers and other flammable materials; corrosive chemicals and radioactive materials.

The International Guerrilla Video Festival (IGVFest) is a mobile festival integrating video art with the urban and social environment.
It’ll be all over Milan from 12 till 14 of july.
The festival removes the technologically complex medium of video out of the institutional situation re-positioning it as open and reflexive in the public domain. The artworks have site-specific thematic relations to the space where they are shown, engaging and reflecting upon the unique architectural, historical, and interpersonal context of each area the festival travels to.

One of the aims of the festival is to create a continuous dialogue from the videos into the community, focusing on lapses in the current framework such as an absence of communication or invisible components of the area. Open to local and international artists, the festival widens the panorama of the discourse to include the perspective of communities elsewhere that have parallel circumstances.

A self-contained, transportable GPU (Guerrilla Projector Unit) facilitates the incursions into the public realm. Transforming public space into a fertile ground for experimentation toward new possibilities in the relationship between art and society.