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September 27, 2006
Personal Kyoto...
Personal Kyoto, the latest project from Ben via the Eyebeam OpenLab is now ready for use.
"Track your residential or commercial electric usage automatically and achieve your own Personal Kyoto. Personal Kyoto provides New Yorkers the means to measure, track and share their progress towards meaningful electric use reduction."
If you live in NYC just enter your ConEd info and you are off and running. Peep my downward slope!
Posted by fi5e at 11:39 AM
HB 2 GB...
Big birthday ups to G to the B.
Posted by fi5e at 11:32 AM
September 18, 2006
OBEY over BANKSY?!?!
I don't know about the legitimacy of this photograph, but I also don't think anyone gives a shit about graffiti enough to doctor up images in photoshop to this extent. I'm not sure if this makes me love Shepard Fairy or hate him, but I'll take a BANKSY piece over an OBEY advertisement every time.
via my friends at cbc-net.com.
Posted by fi5e at 10:49 AM
September 17, 2006
recursive bloging...
Note to self:
I still think this idea is funny... I should do something about it.
Posted by fi5e at 11:13 PM
G.R.L. updates from Austria...
Click to view video of Graffiti Research Lab ativities in Linz, Austria. Photos updated at flickr.
Posted by fi5e at 10:59 PM
large, unsightly, confusing and utterly inappropriate
The Notorious I.N.G. sent me this article from the New York Times. Article mirrored below:
"In San Francisco, a Plague of Stickers Opens a New Front in the Graffiti War
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 16 — One of the most wanted men in San Francisco — if he is a man — has no known name, no known mug shot and one very efficient sticker machine.
Officer Christopher Putz of the San Francisco Police Department’s graffiti unit inspected a wall that had been painted clean two weeks earlier.
For several months, the police say, someone has been plastering the city’s walls, public phones and newspaper boxes with postcard-size stickers reading “BNE” in big black letters. Sometimes the stickers also have Japanese script that translates to “visit” or “come to.”
All of which makes for an amusing curiosity for pedestrians, but it has left city officials quite unhappy. In mid-July, Mayor Gavin Newsom offered a $2,500 reward for the capture of “BNE,” calling the stickers “large, unsightly, confusing and utterly inappropriate.” It is the first time the city has offered a cash reward in a graffiti case, a move that Mr. Newsom said was necessary to stop the “repetitive malicious mischief.”
The city attorney, Dennis J. Herrera, said San Francisco was suffering from a “growing epidemic of graffiti tagging” and other vandalism that dirties city streets.
“The fact of the matter is that it exacts a toll from neighborhoods in a variety of ways,” Mr. Herrera said. “It’s not just in monetary values, for cleanup, but it also degrades the quality of life for people that live there.”
Just days after Mr. Newsom established the reward, Mr. Herrera announced a $20,000 civil judgment against Carlos Romero, 20, who had been “tagging” with abandon in the western part of the city using a variety of aliases, including “Lafer,” “Coma,” “Queso” and “Cream.”
As part of the judgment, Mr. Romero was ordered to stay away from spray paint and indelible markers and received a curfew of 11 p.m.. He was also instructed to record a public service announcement for radio.
“This is a message that if you’re going out to tag, if we catch you, there’s going to be a stiff price to pay,” Mr. Herrera said.
But while Mr. Romero prepares to head to the studio, “BNE” remains at large, a fact that no doubt wears on Officer Christopher Putz, who oversees the San Francisco Police Department’s two-person graffiti abatement unit. Officer Putz, who has been on the graffiti beat since 2001, takes his work seriously; he will not allow his face to be photographed and he gives his age merely as “in my 30’s,” for fear of tipping his hand. “It’s a chess game,” he said.
The battle between graffiti supporters (who call it art) and detractors (who call it vandalism) dates back decades and spans the globe. The authorities in New York — where artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat worked the same streets as those painting walls with sobriquets like Taki, Revs/Cost and MQ — have long struggled with graffiti, and continue to. A 2005 antigraffiti law is being held up in court while a federal judge considers a ban on the sale of paint and indelible markers to anyone under 21.
Officer Putz says San Francisco has also always had a place in the graffiti underworld, in part because landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge tempt graffiti glory-seekers. “Who wants to tag some Podunk town no one has ever heard of?” he said.
Experts say the city’s enforcement efforts and economic success have dimmed graffiti’s appeal in recent years.
“In the mid-1990’s, San Francisco was one of the best cities in the world,” said Shepard Fairey, who became known in the 1990’s for his “Obey, Giant” stickers, which depicted the face of the wrestler Andre the Giant. “They weren’t cleaning things very quickly, so things would stay up a long time. A lot of writers from New York and L.A. were doing things there. But then the dot-com thing came, and the rich people came, and it got really clean.”
But “BNE” and the reward have drawn attention back to San Francisco, said Hugo Martinez, an art dealer in New York who represents a stable of veteran and up-and-coming graffiti practitioners.
“Whenever the mayor starts to get involved in a swingfest, the masses are going to come out,” Mr. Martinez said. “And he couldn’t do anything better for the graffiti writer’s career than to do this.”
Officer Putz will not say whether he knows who “BNE” is or what the initials stand for, but the mystery is a source of avid speculation on the Internet, where some have speculated that it means “Be Nowhere Else,” “Breaking ’N’ Entering” or even “Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement.”
Officer Putz, who has been on the beat since 2001, keeps supplies for removing graffiti in his patrol vehicle. “It’s a chess game,” he said.
Variations on President Bush’s name are also popular: “Bush Not Elected,” for example. One blogger said “BNE” was the code for the airport in Brisbane, Australia, and posited that the stickers, along with the Japanese script, were a campaign announcing flights from there to Japan.
Most, however, doubt that “BNE” is an advertisement, and instead think it might be the work of a graffiti artist who goes by the name of Benet and whose graffiti spelling out his name in large block letters have been seen in San Francisco. Officer Putz would not confirm whether Benet — whose real name is not known — was a suspect, but did say, “There’s only a handful of people who have any real skill.”
In recent years, other California cities, including San Jose and Los Angeles, have increased efforts against graffiti, which some authorities say has ties to gang behavior and can be a gateway to more serious crime. “There is absolutely no doubt there’s a link between graffiti activity and more serious criminal activity,” Mr. Herrera said.
Mr. Fairey says politicians have long used the cleanup of graffiti as a way to score quality-of-life points with voters. “It’s cosmetic and superficial,” he said. “It’s a perfect metaphor for politics in general.”
But he agrees that enforcement efforts have gotten tougher. “I used to put posters up in L.A., and they’d stay up for six months,” said Mr. Fairey, 36, who runs a successful design firm in Los Angeles. “Now they stay up for three days.”
Mr. Martinez says he believes he knows who “BNE” is and thinks he is currently in Tokyo planning his next move. The “BNE” stickers have also been seen in New York and Tokyo.
“Word is,” Mr. Martinez wrote in an e-mail message, “this guy may be the first writer to go ‘all world’ vs. ‘all city.’ ”
For his part, Officer Putz, who says he actually enjoys looking at the graffiti, says he just wants “BNE” and other graffitists to stay away from San Francisco.
“We want the law-abiding tourists,” he said. “We don’t want the traveling vandals.” "
Posted by fi5e at 10:53 PM
ARS Electronica recap
I was working on compling some footage from ARS Electronica for a class I am teaching when I remembered that I had a blog... it's been a while but I'm back. This is a list of projects and/or people I happen to encounter and enjoy while in Linz.
Sonic Bed, by Kaffe Matthews
"Kaffe Matthews’ Sonic Bed_London installation consists of a bed equipped with built-in loudspeakers; when installation visitors lie down on the bed, an endlessly changing music moves and vibrates up and down and around their body. Due to these sounds’ frequency and intensity, they are perceived not only with the ears but with the entire body too."
SOBJECT, by Alberto Frigo
"1_During a life-event every object* the dominant-hand uses is photographed once and while used.
2_If an object of the same type is the next to be used, this object is not photographed unless the life-event changes.
3_A life-event changes as soon as the dominant-hand uses a different object in a different space."
The KHRONOS PROJECTOR, by Alvaro Cassinelli
"The Khronos Projector provides visitors with a totally new way to modify finished film footage. Touching and thus distorting the projection surface makes it possible to shift a portion of the image forward or backward in time."
Click here to view Processing demo applet.
Office Live, by Techart Group
"The modern office as self-organizing and self-generating system is the core of this interactive installation that functions on the basis of a chain reaction. With it, the Techart Group calls into question the organization of the modern office and its working environment.
The installation’s protagonist is a fish in an aquarium. Through its movements, the fish sequentially activates various devices and thereby triggers a cyclical working process that culminates in the fish being fed. RFID, computer networks and sound frequency sensors are some of the technologies that make possible this tongue-in-cheek treatment of everyday life in the modern office."
Click here for youtube video
Tartarus, by Alan Price
"A 3D simulation in real time involves the visitor in an exercise in futility. The viewer uses a touchscreen to guide a virtual figure carrying his burden in the form of a wooden chair through dilapidated staircases and dark rooms. Replications of the chair begin to accumulate, eventually building an impasse. At this critical point, the obstacles fade and the cycle repeats.
Real time 3D graphics and game engine technology put the viewer in control of this representation of the individual’s daily burden."
The Robotic Chair, by Raffaello D'Andrea, Max Dean, and Matt Donovan
"A completely normal chair, just like the ones typically found in school classes or waiting rooms, turns out to be a robot of all things! Before the eyes of the beholder, it repeatedly morphs back and forth between chair and robot. With the help of a built-in camera, the robot can assign its missing parts to their proper places. Thanks to special mechanical joints, the robot can reassemble the dispersed legs and back of the chair into a complete chair, only to morph back into a robot once again."
Click here to view video of the robotic chair.
The Road Movie, by exonemo
"This mobile installation originated on a bus trip that Japanese and German artists took through Japan. It combines the traditional Japanese art of origami with the road movie genre. While the group was traveling about through a wide variety of landscapes, a webcam mounted on the bus snapped photos of the surroundings at five minute intervals from many different perspectives. The image files have been uploaded to the Internet in the form of origami patterns that enable users to copy the original and make their own road movie."
John Maeda
Some favorites from his site:
dafur
Kinetic Tree
People Counter
Morphovision, by Toshio Iwai
"Morphovision is a new visual system, where a high-speed rotating solid object appears to soften or even disintegrate, when illuminated with special light. Here, a miniature house rotating at high-speed can be transformed by selecting one of several light patterns with a touch panel. One of these patterns creates a deformed object just like in animation. These effects are achieved by synchronizing the scanning light with the high-speed rotation and changing the shape of light in real time. Morphovision generates a new reality by transforming actual objects, instead of synthesizing computer graphic images. It prompts us to reconsider the nature of images and what it means to “see” the world."
Video at the bottom of this page.
The Cell Atlantic CellBooth, by Jenny Chowdhury
"The Cell Atlantic CellBooth is a mobile telephone booth that can be strapped on like a backpack and then quickly and easily set up when the user’s cell phone rings. This project illustrates in a humorous and provocative way how mobile telecommunications technology has influenced cell phone users’ communication with each other and with their surroundings."
(video at link above)
Sledgehammer Keyboard, by Taylor Hokanson
"The Sledgehammer Keyboard communicates with a computer just like a normal keyboard but offers the user an unusual option. Installation visitors are invited to work over the keyboard with a hammer in order to literally hammer their frustrating experiences with technology into it. Entries will be uploaded to the Internet in the form of a weblog."
Click here for video.
Aram Bartholl
Some favorites:
First Person Shooter
Speed
WoW
de_dust
COWSinTHEfield, by Hannah Perner-Wilson
"This piece was made as decoration for a party with an Austrian theme. Cows and electric fences are both typical Austrian things to me and using an electric shock for visual interaction is an interesting experiment. This installation presents nostalgic Austrian childhood memories to be experienced again."
Processing Applet
ShiftSpace, by Dan Phiffer, and Mushon Zer-Aviv
"Having wandered for years in an owner-centric Cyberspace, where do we turn for online public spaces? ShiftSpace (.org) seeks to provide a new town-square built above the existing privatized hyper-mall of information that is the World Wide Web. We are building an open-source meta-layer above the web and we would enjoy your company."
THE MANUAL INPUT SESSIONS, by Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman
"The Manual Input Sessions is a series of audiovisual vignettes which probe the expressive possibilities of hand gestures and finger movements. Our concert is performed on a combination of custom interactive software, analog overhead projectors and digital computer video projectors, resulting in an unusual quality of hybridized, dynamic light, and augmented-reality play."
(video at link listed above)
Smoke Tree, by John Gerrard
"An oak is the centerpiece of this virtual sculpture. Instead of giving off oxygen like a real tree, though, this one produces carbon. The upshot is a piece of sculpture enshrouded in virtual smoke-certainly an unsettling sight; nevertheless, a thoroughly plausible scenario. The work describes a single day, revolving around the central motif of following the path of the sun."
Click here to view video
Le Sacre du Printemps, by Klaus Obermaier, Julia Mach, Christine Sugrue, and the Futurelab.
"Le Sacre du Printemps . Igor Stravinsky . an interactive music, dance and 3D project"
Posted by fi5e at 10:30 PM