Cultural Chicago advertisement!

Icelandic Rift by new media artist Sabrina Raaf

Cultural Chicago is a community site for the arts based in Chicago. The online journal offers the possibility for readers to contribute with local cultural news. Among other things, it advertises Chicago artists, exhibitions, art events and allows readers to create a local community by sharing similar interests through a forum, regular posts and bookmarks. I wish such a journal existed in Boston. Combining the sharing of local art events with informative interviews to a social network is kind of unique.

Reading and subscribing to the journal, I discovered the spectacular work of Sabrina Raaf on creative machines capable of generating unique and unpredictable manifestations of art.



In her interview by Cultural Chicago, Sabrina Raaf explains:
"Technology (software and hardware) is not only a means or set of tools. It does also necessitate a type of logic-based thinking in order to use it and subvert it creatively. You really have to be a person who is innately fascinated by new technologies in order to be able to suffer through the learning curves and endless upgrades. But, ultimately, new technologies offer an endless string of more and more powerful and flexible tools to make art with. Even beyond that, they offer a new language to speak to viewers with; there are nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., that artists haven’t ever strung together before in the service of art. And, that’s something really exciting."

Grower is a piece that responds to the carbon dioxide levels in the air generated by human breath. It draws individual blades of grass along a wall in varying heights in accordance to the amount of carbon dioxide present. As such it functions as a real time display on people attendance to the art space!



Dry Translator, a sculptural installation piece, is built in response to new trends in ‘smart architecture.’ Smart technology is being created for enhanced human interaction and control of one’s work and home environments. Interestingly what excites many is not the necessarily the enhancement of control, but really more the idea of intelligent responsiveness and heightened personal connection with the rooms they inhabit, dixit Sabrina Raaf.

In the journal I also enjoyed reading the interview of Colleen Plumb, Nature in Urban Spaces. The artist "examines nature in the urban environment, seeking to examine the relationship humans have with animals, how we coexist with the natural world, and the disappearance of it within the urban space."


Lobby with trees by Colleen Plumb

Being a video game addict at the same time than loving being lost in the countryside, I am always puzzled by criticism on a virtual reality that drives us from our physical reality. Reading this interview was refreshing and the following image by Colleen Plumb talks for itself. The overgrown tree squeezed within walls to provide a relief to humans, an experience of nature, recreated and artificial for the sake of us feeling/being connected to nature.


Laundromat

"We live in a time of games and virtual experiences which I find funny, sad, and, I guess, a reality. What effect could this be having on people? I guess representations are created due to a lack of the actual. We certainly can't walk through a forest of bamboo trees in downtown Chicago. It seems that almost real will suffice most of the time. It must provide relief, these fabrications, otherwise they would not be so popular: The Rainforest Café. Well, the trees here are real—they are in a fake habitat, a lobby, and seem to be thriving. - Colleen Plumb"



By Architectradure

The Dumpster

The Dumpster is an interactive online visualization that attempts to depict a slice through the romantic lives of American teenagers. Using real postings extracted from millions of online blogs, visitors to the project can surf through tens of thousands of specific romantic relationships in which one person has "dumped" another. The project's graphical tools reveal the astonishing similarities, unique differences, and underlying patterns of these failed relationships, providing both peculiarly analytic and sympathetically intimate perspectives onto the diversity of global romantic pain.

Web site

Visualizing Audio Cues

Today at Interact 2007 I discovered the work of Tony Bergstrom who happens to be Karrie Karahalios's student. He presented today the Conversation Clock table.

On the Conversation Clock table, lapel microphones monitor conversation while the visualization of history is projected in the center. The Conversation Clock provides a visual history of interaction and communication. Each contribution displays bars colored to indicate the speakers’ identities. The lengths of these bars indicate the degree of participation, measured by volume. As a conversation progresses, a history is built with concentric rings reminiscent of the rings on a tree.

The Conversation Clock displays various conversational cues such as turn taking, interruption, conversational dominance, silence, agreement, aural back-channels, mimicry, time spans, rhythm and flow. If an individual has not been speaking, their lack of aural contribution is made clear in the rings. Of course, if individual is speaking at length and dominating the conversation, one can easily observe this as well. Aspects such as interruption, silences, and argument also make visual impressions on the table.

As a result, the Conversation Clock allows people to interpret their role in interaction. The visualization of audio allows people who speak the most to regulate their speech and speak less and the persons who speak the less to speak more.
"Live visualization of audio through social mirrors can provide influential cues for
individual participation in conversation. Participants alter themselves in order
to equalize the contribution of individuals."

Paper to download

Invasion of new AIM buddies

I recently found 4 new AIM buddies: Prof Gilzot, sharthisdotcom, Spleak and WSJ. I started looking online for some info about these new buddies and I discovered that Prof Gilzot is an automatic tutor to help school students prepare for their S.A.T with practice questions. Type "Menu" or "More" will get you started!
sharthisdotcom is an aim version of share this
Spleak is a 21-year old virtual girl who can chat with you.
And your WSJ aim buddy is the Wall Street Journal!

Info online about these new AIM buddies and more info here.

Cool online social stuff

Bumplist

During Chi, I had a few gatherings with my old school friends from Media Lab Europe. This reminded me how fun it was to be beta tester for each other's project. Back in Dublin, I tried out Jonah and Mike's Bumplist.

BumpList only allows for a minimum amount of subscribers so that when a new person subscribes, the first person to subscribe is "bumped", or unsubscribed from the list.

Via Jonah again, I tested the super fun myfrienenemies social community. Basically, on this site, anyone can post anonymously about their enemies and connect to others through their enemies.

More bad guys

More guys are doing bad stuff on the web. This time amazon noir.

Amazon Noir was scripted as a internet-movie. The whole digital action (media hack) was carried out in the global massmedia, within the art world and on a highly sophisticated technical level in the clandestine matrix of our global networks.
The Bad Guys (The Amazon Noir Crew: Cirio, Lizvlx, Ludovico, Bernhard) stole copyrighted books from Amazon by using sophisticated robot-perversion technology coded by supervillain Paolo Cirio. A subliminal media fight and a covert legal dispute escalated into an online showdown with the heist of over 3000 books at the center of the story.

More on the The Big Book Crime by Regine Debatty on wmmna, also Burak Arikan shares his analysis of the holes in sociable web media systems and is looking for ways to use the holes for reverse exploitation. In his artwork he uses software-as-service strategy.

A while ago, I heard of the WhiteTunes, bad people who used to download high-res iTunes music videos from mac G4's. The WhiteTunes were not responsible for these illegal actions. It was definitely due to these huge temporary/(in)visible files that iTunes was infesting the computer with. Such a software bug is unforgivable!

What's next with the web?

It seems that Google is eating itself through some kind of cannibalism

We generate money by serving Google text advertisments on a network of hidden Websites. With this money we automatically buy Google shares. We buy Google via their own advertisment! Google eats itself - but in the end "we" own it!

Google will maybe soon advertise for a Saving Google competition, stay tuned!



It seems that consumers can finally have their revenge towards the banking system. Now it is a deal between consumers. Prosper is a US online marketplace that allows consumers to lend and borrow money from others. Rewarding for everyone, the one who needs money requests it, the one who can lend, lends it! As easy as that, based on eBay, I wander how this will work as a standard - for US residents, only.

Jean Baudrillard

One of my favorite thinker, Jean Baudrillard, passed away yesterday.

The last book of his I read is l'échange impossible. In the book, Baudrillard confronts our relationship with our contemporary world to its ongoing hyperreality.

My friend Oliver Vaubourg posted a summary of one of Baudrillard's master piece: l'Ecran total. The main point of the book is to consider the repercussions of substituting formerly symbolic oppositions for a generalized culture with a passive consensus.

I just found out that on Turbulence that Ars Virtua will be holding a public tribute to honor the late social and political theorist Jean Baudrillard. Jean Baudrillard's criticisms and view on Simulation are influential to our discussions of the MMO. This short program will be held on the WoW Kilrogg server, 4-5pm PDT, March 17, 2007 near Orgrimmar. Please send tell to Zuluu upon arrival in-world for the location. Too bad my level 62 character is on another server, I will have to go visit with a level 1 ...

Kendall Roses

Leonardo Bonanni and I were finalists in the Kendall interactive design competition with Kendall Roses. The competition Kendall Square Interactive Design competition was organized by Lyme Properties.

Based on my previous research Passing Glances (2002-2004), the Kendall Roses are designed to be an autonomous art installation that brings added value to the Kendall Square community. Bright, inexpensive daytime displays on two towers and the ground fulfill the role of the roses to provide compass directions to local attractions through graphics and text on billboards and the ground.
Data to the Roses is entirely wireless: SMS, internet and a local database are streamed to a wireless server inside each tower from local hotels, businesses, residents and the World Wide Web. In addition to useful information about local businesses, sports and attractions, the Kendall Roses offer opportunities for families and children to play on an interactive ground display that can project a variety of games. After an initial investment and potential partnership with local businesses and telcos for promoting SMS messaging, the towers will generate income primarily through advertisement for local businesses and as a tax credit for displaying public service announcements relevant to the community.

Some screenshots of the Kendall Roses interaction movie:








Details of the architecture



Plans of the Kendall Roses site



A movie of our entry


If it does not appear above, clic here

In personal work