Arrests men between yesterday
Terrorist understood himself
Death reported radical
Buried manager Tim
Guilty feet
November chloroform sold
Date-rape speeches worked
Money denied speculation
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Jailed influenced judge
Monday, April 23, 2007
Digital Works
Whitney Airport: About.
The about page of Whitney Airport doesn't really say what kind of artwork it supports; instead it describes the different services it provides for artists and the various ways they can exhibit their artwork on the website.
Rhizome.org: General Information.
Rhizome seems to have a much more advanced support system, with an online newspaper, exhibitions, web hosting and many other offered services. It seems to mainly focus on contemporary art, such as photography, websites, Flash animations.
Wikipedia - Digital Art, Internet Art, New Media Art
The definition of digital art seems to be art that has been created or altered by the computer, it doesn't necessarily have to be entirely computer-generated, it can also be a scanned photograph or something similar. Internet art focuses on art that mainly uses the Internet as its source of destribution, and New Media Art by definition is art that can be created by any new technologies and software, such as graphics, animation, the Internet, robotics or even bio-technologies (the last I found pretty interesting and would like to know more about).
I Love Bees.. Or Do I?
I would hardly call this a game, it seems to be more of a non-linear narrative story experience. It's dependant on interaction and unpredictability, as well as some amount of chaos and confusion. Game is one of those words that seems very obsolete when put into such a contemporary context as this story. Seems to be a pretty good example of Internet art since the manner of distribution, its medium, seems very important to this work.
Implementation
I remember that we looked at this work during our Digital Poetry class. If we have to peg it down into a box, I would like to call it New Media Art, since it uses a different, post-modern and non-linear way to tell a story on a grand scale from seemingly scattered bits and pieces of paper. I'm quite fond of this idea and think that I would enjoy stumbling upon these snippets of information here and there wherever I walked. The important thing in such a work is to make sure that every piece of information tells something about the most important goal of the project, to ensure that even if one would only come across a small slice of this story, they would understand what it's trying to do. There has to be a red thread throughout the narrative that ties it all together, if not then the story falls apart and disintegrates. But I think Implementation has succeeded with keeping this read thread in all the installments. As far as I could see, they tried to include some information about Iraq, soldiers or war in every snippet.
- Eve.
The about page of Whitney Airport doesn't really say what kind of artwork it supports; instead it describes the different services it provides for artists and the various ways they can exhibit their artwork on the website.
Rhizome.org: General Information.
Rhizome seems to have a much more advanced support system, with an online newspaper, exhibitions, web hosting and many other offered services. It seems to mainly focus on contemporary art, such as photography, websites, Flash animations.
Wikipedia - Digital Art, Internet Art, New Media Art
The definition of digital art seems to be art that has been created or altered by the computer, it doesn't necessarily have to be entirely computer-generated, it can also be a scanned photograph or something similar. Internet art focuses on art that mainly uses the Internet as its source of destribution, and New Media Art by definition is art that can be created by any new technologies and software, such as graphics, animation, the Internet, robotics or even bio-technologies (the last I found pretty interesting and would like to know more about).
I Love Bees.. Or Do I?
I would hardly call this a game, it seems to be more of a non-linear narrative story experience. It's dependant on interaction and unpredictability, as well as some amount of chaos and confusion. Game is one of those words that seems very obsolete when put into such a contemporary context as this story. Seems to be a pretty good example of Internet art since the manner of distribution, its medium, seems very important to this work.
Implementation
I remember that we looked at this work during our Digital Poetry class. If we have to peg it down into a box, I would like to call it New Media Art, since it uses a different, post-modern and non-linear way to tell a story on a grand scale from seemingly scattered bits and pieces of paper. I'm quite fond of this idea and think that I would enjoy stumbling upon these snippets of information here and there wherever I walked. The important thing in such a work is to make sure that every piece of information tells something about the most important goal of the project, to ensure that even if one would only come across a small slice of this story, they would understand what it's trying to do. There has to be a red thread throughout the narrative that ties it all together, if not then the story falls apart and disintegrates. But I think Implementation has succeeded with keeping this read thread in all the installments. As far as I could see, they tried to include some information about Iraq, soldiers or war in every snippet.
- Eve.
Essay
My current idea about my essay is the symbiosis of science fiction and reality, and how both influence each other. Basically, I want to contemplate on how much science fiction films and books draw from reality and how reality is respectively affected by this genre of films and literature. I might however change my mind or make additions to this essay idea on Wednesday, when we'll be going through digital art and literature.
Update: I'm thinking about using Snow Crash and Blade Runner as reference and for comparisons, and perhaps also to incorporate the book I'm currently reading, The Lathe of Heaven.
- Eve.
Update: I'm thinking about using Snow Crash and Blade Runner as reference and for comparisons, and perhaps also to incorporate the book I'm currently reading, The Lathe of Heaven.
- Eve.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Crashing into the Matrix
What can I say about The Matrix? So much has already been said and analyzed when it comes to the film, even by me. When it was released, it took everyone by surprise. No one could imagine this bizarre combination of action, fighting and philosophy, all in this cyberpunkish-enviroment. It was a new and different way of presenting ideas and thoughts, it was literally explosive and blew everyone's mind. Few could understand it, yet everyone loved it. They made a safe bet creating this film I think, because they knew that even though the masses might not understand the philosophy behind the film, they would love the film itself for all its innovative action sequences. So it's a win-win in either case, and a very profitable situation indeed. But it has been discussed plentifully from every possible angle, so I think I will draw comparisons between The Matix and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash instead.
I didn't really think about The Matrix while I was reading Snow Crash, but it seems to me what both Metaverses have in common is a sense of predictability. By using the code provided by the Construct and specific googles and software, the characters in both enviroments can use these elements to adpot a heightened awareness of their surroundings and get the ability to dodge bullets, know where to go to be safe, how to move to avoid getting killed. The obvious difference, however, is that in The Matrix this can only help you in the simulated reality, whereas in Snow Crash these tools are used in the real world. It seems to me that the world in Snow Crash is a bit closer to what Jean Baudrillard calls hyperreality and third-order simulacra. There's a very tight relationship between The Metaverse and The Reality in Neal Stephenson's book, they complete each other and heighten the users experience of both. Whereas in The Matrix, The Metaverse and The Reality are each other's enemies, where the first is used to control people's minds and the latter is a plateau for a broken fight for freedom.
What also struck me as interesting in both the film and the book, is the broken sense of time. Snow Crash seems to be a straightforward story of chained events where all the characters are busy doing something all the time. Right? Wrong. At some point, towards the end of the book, Hiro suddenly thinks about the many times he and Y.T. have eaten junk food together. But the book leaves no account of such a thing happening, so when exactly did it happen? We can never know, but this just shows that we're not left a complete account of the supposed events. And in The Matrix, Morpheus just tells Neo that he thinks it's the year 2199. He can't be sure, he might be completely wrong. There's more about time in the following Matrix films, but I won't go there now. But these things also tie into Baudrillard's idea of an era where time no longer exists.
The Metaverse of Snow Crash visualizes that which Second Life is a step towards - an enviroment used for business as much as entertainment, and where people can interact with each other when they cannot do so in the real world. Need a quick business meeting to discuss urgent matters? You don't have to fly half across the world to meet your partners, you can just plug into The Metaverse and voilá, they're all there. Need a tight security system to protect your property? Get a Thing, a semi robot-dog killing machine that knows everything that's going on around your land and will act faster than you can say "Woof". Are you immobilized after a horrible accident that has robbed you of any chance to move around properly? Create a realistic enviroment in The Metaverse where you can spend your days peacefully observing your real world self and countless events and other people. The possibilities are endless.
It's a fascinating vision, and as it would seem, we are definitely headed in that direction. One can only hope that we will learn how to use this technology for good and not become arrogant idiots which will eventually lead us to our doom. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the vision of The Matrix is far off either. We do have a tendency to really screw things up and think that we're gods or something. Take Babel, for example. Or Atlantis. Or even, heh, USA.
- Eve.
I didn't really think about The Matrix while I was reading Snow Crash, but it seems to me what both Metaverses have in common is a sense of predictability. By using the code provided by the Construct and specific googles and software, the characters in both enviroments can use these elements to adpot a heightened awareness of their surroundings and get the ability to dodge bullets, know where to go to be safe, how to move to avoid getting killed. The obvious difference, however, is that in The Matrix this can only help you in the simulated reality, whereas in Snow Crash these tools are used in the real world. It seems to me that the world in Snow Crash is a bit closer to what Jean Baudrillard calls hyperreality and third-order simulacra. There's a very tight relationship between The Metaverse and The Reality in Neal Stephenson's book, they complete each other and heighten the users experience of both. Whereas in The Matrix, The Metaverse and The Reality are each other's enemies, where the first is used to control people's minds and the latter is a plateau for a broken fight for freedom.
What also struck me as interesting in both the film and the book, is the broken sense of time. Snow Crash seems to be a straightforward story of chained events where all the characters are busy doing something all the time. Right? Wrong. At some point, towards the end of the book, Hiro suddenly thinks about the many times he and Y.T. have eaten junk food together. But the book leaves no account of such a thing happening, so when exactly did it happen? We can never know, but this just shows that we're not left a complete account of the supposed events. And in The Matrix, Morpheus just tells Neo that he thinks it's the year 2199. He can't be sure, he might be completely wrong. There's more about time in the following Matrix films, but I won't go there now. But these things also tie into Baudrillard's idea of an era where time no longer exists.
The Metaverse of Snow Crash visualizes that which Second Life is a step towards - an enviroment used for business as much as entertainment, and where people can interact with each other when they cannot do so in the real world. Need a quick business meeting to discuss urgent matters? You don't have to fly half across the world to meet your partners, you can just plug into The Metaverse and voilá, they're all there. Need a tight security system to protect your property? Get a Thing, a semi robot-dog killing machine that knows everything that's going on around your land and will act faster than you can say "Woof". Are you immobilized after a horrible accident that has robbed you of any chance to move around properly? Create a realistic enviroment in The Metaverse where you can spend your days peacefully observing your real world self and countless events and other people. The possibilities are endless.
It's a fascinating vision, and as it would seem, we are definitely headed in that direction. One can only hope that we will learn how to use this technology for good and not become arrogant idiots which will eventually lead us to our doom. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the vision of The Matrix is far off either. We do have a tendency to really screw things up and think that we're gods or something. Take Babel, for example. Or Atlantis. Or even, heh, USA.
- Eve.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Virtual Worlds
I suppose I started speaking about this subject in one of my first entries where I talked about The Metaverse. But the interesting development about virtual worlds is that today, in our modern world, it is difficult, if not even completely impossible, to distance and build a wall between the real world and the virtual world. What is a simulated experience to you? Is sending an SMS on your phone not an alternative, simulated form of communication between two people? Or looking at the world through the lens of a camera, is that not a enhanced, different way of looking at things? Does the experience of a lens seem virtual to you, and what about those staged, simulated news events we see on the television every single day? Once you stop and think about it, it is very difficult to separate that which is simulated and that which is real, and one starts wondering where the one ends and the other begins, and whether the criteria that set the two apart are actually still valid.
Jean Baudrillard has an allegory where he speaks of a time where a map just covered a small part of the world and was obviously fake, it hardly had any resemblance to the real thing. It was just seen as bits and pieces of simulation, scattered over the plains of reality. Now, he says, we live in a world where the map covers the entire universe and has become so realistic that it has actually become a substitute for reality. And that it is now reality that is instead scattered over the plains of simulation, barely recognizable for what it is, paraphernalia of a time and a view of the world that no longer exists and has no reference to the present. The desert of the real. I remember reading his ideas for the first time, and just how far it all went over my head. But on a second take, things actually started making sense, as much as they possibly can. And when I look at our world and the way we live it, it becomes clear to me that the virtual actually is the real and this is the way we have been living for so long, we are so immersed in our experiences and illusions, that we have lost all points of reference to a time where simulation did not exist. It's like a ghost, a curtain pulled over our eyes, and it's all that we can see.
Real? The word has lots its meaning. But we do not live in illusions, no, it has become so much more than that. When illusion is accepted as reality, it is no longer a dream, no longer a simulation. It is simulacra, it is hyperreality, it is a new and different form of life and existence. It is a merging and transformation, evaluation and destruction of all the terms we hold dear and think we know so well. It's in everything we do, however we do it. It is new, it is old, it is here, it has always been here. It is change, it is permament. In a hyperreal world, the past and the future do not exist. It is simply an everchanging and immersive present.
- Eve.
Jean Baudrillard has an allegory where he speaks of a time where a map just covered a small part of the world and was obviously fake, it hardly had any resemblance to the real thing. It was just seen as bits and pieces of simulation, scattered over the plains of reality. Now, he says, we live in a world where the map covers the entire universe and has become so realistic that it has actually become a substitute for reality. And that it is now reality that is instead scattered over the plains of simulation, barely recognizable for what it is, paraphernalia of a time and a view of the world that no longer exists and has no reference to the present. The desert of the real. I remember reading his ideas for the first time, and just how far it all went over my head. But on a second take, things actually started making sense, as much as they possibly can. And when I look at our world and the way we live it, it becomes clear to me that the virtual actually is the real and this is the way we have been living for so long, we are so immersed in our experiences and illusions, that we have lost all points of reference to a time where simulation did not exist. It's like a ghost, a curtain pulled over our eyes, and it's all that we can see.
Real? The word has lots its meaning. But we do not live in illusions, no, it has become so much more than that. When illusion is accepted as reality, it is no longer a dream, no longer a simulation. It is simulacra, it is hyperreality, it is a new and different form of life and existence. It is a merging and transformation, evaluation and destruction of all the terms we hold dear and think we know so well. It's in everything we do, however we do it. It is new, it is old, it is here, it has always been here. It is change, it is permament. In a hyperreal world, the past and the future do not exist. It is simply an everchanging and immersive present.
- Eve.
Monday, April 2, 2007
Folksonomies
I have to start by saying that I have never been particularly fond of these folksonomies, or so called social networks. Here I have in mind sites like MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, and the countless others that are out there. Because there certainly are many of them. And I find that interesting in a way, that people are so eager to create these ever-expanding social networks and to 'put themselves on the map', so to speak, in this conformist enviroment. This is one of the reasons I don't like these networks - I don't like following in the footsteps of others, or being found by all these strange and unknown people that all of a sudden want to become my friend just because they've seen a picture of me, decided that I'm not too bad looking, and seen that I live in Sweden. Secondly, most of the people that join these communities seem to be rather self-obsessed, they easily develop an addiction to these networks, and eventually come to believe that if they won't get a certain amount of new friends and comments every week, they'll be unwanted and uncool. It's different than blogs. With an online journal, I have a choice to lock it, keep it only to myself or to a close group of friends, I have the possibility to keep it completely private, I don't have to communicate with anyone. But these MySpace-ish sites are created specifically for the purpose of social exchanges, there is no sense of privacy. Thirdly, I have an underlying sense of paranoia that most of these sites are far more used as easy spyware access points into my computer than friendship networks. Programs that record information about everything I do in order to later send it over to a commercial third party so that they can make more money and create new spyware.
Take WAYN, for example. I was invited to this site by someone a long time ago, and feeling bored as I was, I decided to join. That was several years ago and since that time I have had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever. A little while ago, I changed my email adress, and it would follow that now I should not be receiving any annoying newsletters from them anymore. Correct? Wrong. With the help of spyware, WAYN has figured out that I have a new email adress, and so they have begun sending me emails to that one instead. Why don't I just leave then? Believe me, I have tried. But these sites only intend people to join them, not leave. So when you actually attempt to do the latter, finding the LEAVE option is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Virtually impossible. Instead, I decided to classify the emails as junk, but that has not helped either, because they apparently send these emails from new adresses everytime. I like to call this type of websites vermin, and I'm sure you can understand why. Therefore it's rather difficult for me to find anything good about them, but I guess they're alright for people who don't mind having their computer cluttered up with spyware and third-party software. If you don't mind, then these sites are excellent for keeping in touch with friends all over the world and meeting new people every day.
...
- Eve.
Take WAYN, for example. I was invited to this site by someone a long time ago, and feeling bored as I was, I decided to join. That was several years ago and since that time I have had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever. A little while ago, I changed my email adress, and it would follow that now I should not be receiving any annoying newsletters from them anymore. Correct? Wrong. With the help of spyware, WAYN has figured out that I have a new email adress, and so they have begun sending me emails to that one instead. Why don't I just leave then? Believe me, I have tried. But these sites only intend people to join them, not leave. So when you actually attempt to do the latter, finding the LEAVE option is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Virtually impossible. Instead, I decided to classify the emails as junk, but that has not helped either, because they apparently send these emails from new adresses everytime. I like to call this type of websites vermin, and I'm sure you can understand why. Therefore it's rather difficult for me to find anything good about them, but I guess they're alright for people who don't mind having their computer cluttered up with spyware and third-party software. If you don't mind, then these sites are excellent for keeping in touch with friends all over the world and meeting new people every day.
...
- Eve.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Virtual April
I woke up today and signed on to my Livejournal account to check my Friends page. There I was presented with these news. I was immediately tricked into it and was already thinking about the upcoming changes that would be happening to the service ("Fäke. Give us money.") when I checked the comments. Lol. I think it's a pretty good one, so check it out. Happy April Fools Day :)
- Eve.
- Eve.
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