Hasta La Creative!

At left is the decidedly safe top corner of “Flesh For Fantasy (Girl #5)”, an art print with an anatomical surprise smack-dab in the middle. See the whole thing here (N!S!F!W!). It’s part of an exhibit called Talk Dirty…

At the end of next week, i’m going to be at the University of Architecture in Alicante for a workshop headed by Jose Perez de Lama and Pablo de Soto from hackitectura. I’m particularly glad to be working with them as i’ve been admiring their work for a few years now (cf. one of their previous works, Situation Room.)

The title of the workshop is Gaza (Palestina). Architecture, urbanism and technologies in the conflict Palestina/Israel. The objective of this (complex and how so delicate) event is to study the conflict and the role architecture and urbanism have in its development, but also to explore how a kind of laboratory of contemporary urbanism has emerged from the situation: gated communities, social controls, isolated islands, connections and disconnections, exclusion, alienations, etc.

Pablo has spent the past few weeks in Egypt where he is creating an alternative cartography of the frontier between Egypt and Gaza, more precisely in Rafah. We are collecting videos, information, links, online essays, artistic experiences, etc. Anything that could help us get a better picture of the issue and trigger ideas in the brain of the smart little students who would have to come up with proposals that foster and allow dialog, resistance, peace, human rights, communication, freedom, mutual understanding, international help, etc. That’s where i’m asking you if you have any suggestion of information we could use. You could either add them to my del.icio.us links by tagging the links with for:regine, add comments on this post or write me to the usual address (see second column on the homepage).

I’m going to document all our findings as well as the development of the workshop on a separate blog. Will update this post with a link to it next week.

For the Glastonbury Festival over the weekend, GotWind.org partnered with mobile firm Orange to launch the REcharge Pod, a mobile phone recharging station powered entirely by wind.

For KahloRivera100, Ken Carbone of Carbone Smolan Agency/NY created a playful print that riffs off the King and Queen of Hearts.

Last night at the Commonwealth Hotel in Boston, wine guru Gary Vaynerchuck hosted his WLTV Thunder Show in front of a live audience eager to drink in his wine expertise.

I’m back from Asturias which was as lovely as ever. We even had real vegetable to eat this time. The LAboral Art and Industrial Creation Centre in Gijón was opening Banquete_nodos y redes, Interactions Between Art, Science, Technology and Society in Spain’s Digital Culture, an exhibition initiated by Karin Ohlenschläger and Luis Rico.

View of the LABoral shop and of the inauguration party right above it

The press conference started with a string of surprising figures listed by LABoral’s Director Rosina Gómez-Baeza Tinturé. In its 14 months of activity, the centre -which has given itself the mission to foster the interaction between art, society and technology- has hosted the work of 261 creators (45 of them come from the region of Asturias), 54 workshops given by some 90 teachers to more than 3000 participants. Add to that many concerts, conferences, debates and other activities. Amazing, even for a space that covers more than 14.000 m². Which reminds me that it would be good to come back one day on the design and architecture of the centre. The public bathrooms only are worth the visit, i feel like stepping inside 2001: A Space Odyssey each time i enter there.

LABoral bathroom and a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Banquete_nodos y redes presents more than 30 digital and interactive works that critically and creatively explore the notion of Network as a shared matrix, not just from a technological perspective but also from a socio-cultural perspective. I’ll be back with a lengthier overview of the exhibition and a small interview with its curator, the art critic Karin Ohlenschläger, later on but right now i wanted to share with you one of the best projects i saw in Gijón last week.

You’ve probably read about Clara Boj and Diego Diaz before, either in some media art catalog or on this blog, i interviewed them a few months ago about their project AR Magic System, their Lalalab studio and their interest for the visualization of wifi networks.

For the LABoral exhibition, the Valencia-based duo developed a sightseeing telescope named Observatorio (Observatory).

Observatorio builds upon Boj and DIaz’ 2004 project Red Libre Red Visible (Free Network, Visible Network) which was born in an optimistic time when it seemed possible to achieve an utopia made of wireless, open communication networks managed by social groups offering services to the local community. At that (not so distant) time, several city governments offered free access to the WiFi network, sometimes in the entire city. The CMT (Telecommunications Market Commission) denounced those city governments for unfair competition with telecom companies, the free wifi municipal projects were canceled, and grassroot groups started installing, maintaining and extending open WiFi networks throughout Spain.

Today, some companies have adopted new tactics based on the deceptive slogan “Share your WiFi”. Companies like FON, and commercial projects such as Whisher and Wefi exploit the current infrastructure of access nodes to the Internet in urban space to provide coverage to the whole city if it were an open, shared structure.

Obervatorio reflects on this scenario by informing viewers about the current state of wireless networks located in the area where the device is installed. The sightseeing telescope, installed on the Laboral tower, tracks and shows where Gijon’s wifi networks are located in real time. You can visualize them on the screen of the telescope, swing it around and see which areas have a denser wifi coverage, and get additional data such as which ones among these networks are open or private. Because Observatorio is programmed to try and connect to any open network available in the area, it can send the information from the observation tower to the exhibition hall, where it is displayed on a big screen. If there is no open networks detected in the area, Observatorio remains separated from the main exhibition space, located in another building. A modification of these networks is also offered, showing an ideal configuration in which the local residents of large areas in the city could gain or share access to it.

Image courtesy LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial

After having installed Observatorio, the artists discovered many more open nodes than they expected. While testing the project at their studio in Valencia, they couldn’t find more than 5% of open networks. In Gijón the percentage is higher, around 30% in the LABoral area.

From the tower Observatorio can reach theoretically almost the whole city of Gijón. The device comprises a high power uni-directional WiFi antenna with a 30º aperture, able to detect wireless networks within 1 to 4 kilometers depending on the number of obstacles encountered; a video surveillance camera with a telephoto lens with the same aperture as the WiFi antenna; and a viewer which, like a periscope, offers a real time image taken by the camera, with the WiFi networks detected by the antenna placed geographically on it.

Banquete_nodos y redes runs at LAboral Art and Industrial Creation Centre in Gijón, Spain, until November, 03, 2008. The exhibition will then travel to the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Kartlruhe, March-July 2009.

More sightseeing telescope: The timetravel telescope, the Jurascope and the Elastic time and space telescope.

Also related: Wifi Camera Obscura.

Hungry Man TV is throwing an RSVP-only party for Internet Week, NY.

Cannes season is back, and along for the ride come self-promotional horrors like the Wrath of Cannes.

First of all a little present. I’ve got one free pass for a reader interested in attending Mediabistro Circus which takes place in New York on May 20 and 21. The two-day conference focuses on the digital platforms and trends that are changing media today. Just send me an email (reg at this domain’s address) explaining why you’d like to go and i’ll forward the details of the most charming/desperate/convincing reader to the organizers of the event.

An overview of the programme: May 20: the publishing industry’s transition to new media, successful business models, blog power and finally video and social media. May 21: mobile media, the editor of digital news for the New York Times discussing the passage to online publication and user experience design (believe it or not i’m taking part to that panel!)

Scenes from the 2007 edition of Conflux

Next! One of my favourite events on this planet is Conflux, the festival of psychogeography which gathers artists, technologists, psychogeographers, urban explorers and experience designers from around the world in New York every year.

The organizers have recently opened their call for project. Deadline for submission is May 31.