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.
– It Didn’t Air – another awards show that aspires to tickle the creative babies that were too ugly or simply too flawed to make it into waking life. IDA’s strictly for radio ads — and only $75 to enter!!
Ric Kallaher, the photographer who took all those awesome shots at One Show in May, ditched the Cannes International Ad Festival for the Coney Island freak show, otherwise known as the Second Annual Wrath of Cannes.
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
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.
The Influencers is a Barcelona-based event which explores controversial forms of art and communication guerrilla, presenting independent projects that play with global popular culture, infiltrate the mass media, and transform fashions, consumption and technological fetishism.
It was one of the very few conferences i shouldn’t have missed this year. Well… i did. But life has its little consolations and the videos of The Influencers have just found their way online. Most of them at least, the missing ones will be there in the next few days. In the meantime, hurray! There is Trevor Paglen (video) and Brody Condon (video). There’s also wondrous Santiago Cirugeda (video), he speaks in spanish and one day, maybe one day, i will translate his talk and publish the text here.
There are a lot of things left unanswered as far as our future is concerned and a lot of it has to do with where we will find ourselves in the course of time. One thing we have to note is that global warming and eco-friendly issues will be beside us all the way and with that in mind, we cannot help but think what companies such as Sony will have for us by that time.
Sony can help us get a glimpse of things to come and they are showing this to us with this video that gives us highlights of the future. Take a look at this video so that you will have an idea on whether to look forward to the future or simply keep on wondering what we have in a couple of years ahead of us.
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.
First off I’d like to apologize for the size of the image, but I think in this case it’s worth it.
A little over two years ago, a small group of chilean design students decided to generate an online space that allowed design students from all its branches and schools to share their projects and create contact and collaboration networks that led to improve and enhance the national design scene. That website was Diseño Emergente (Emerging Design).
Now, with an insanely powerful base of monthly visitors and projects, Diseño Emergente is, without a doubt, the space where chilean (and slowly more latinamerican) design students converge and share, debate and display their ideas.
By chance of life, I had the pleasure of being one of the first few members of this community and for a while I was part of their staff, with whom to this day I keep a very close relationship.
This is why seeing progress like the one I’ll refer to is trully a reason for pride and satisfaction, knowing that in Chile there are people who dare to take the plunge, to go against the odds, and do it right, with love for what they do and the seriousness and responsability it deserves.
The reason for this slightly long post is to tell you about the release of Diseño Emergente 2.0,. A total review of the website’s interface and functions was made directly from the input of its own users and not just what the staff thought was right.
Even if you’re not a spanish-speaking person, I encourgae you to take a look at the portfolios section, I’m sure you’ll find a few things that’ll blow your mind.
For someone like me, who’s passionate about design, programming and interaction, this website really is a luxury. A whole bunch of new features that speed up your reading time, enhance relationships between users and also enhance the participation of 3rd party users from chilean student design.
So I’m just leaving the invitation open for you to check out the all new Diseño Emergente, ’cause even with its many haters, it’s impossible to deny its real cultural and design weight in chilean society.
My biggest congratulations, and deepest respect to the staff that daily tries to take chilean design to the next level. People like these are the ones that count.
If there is one thing that will really help you get our political aspirations towards better heights, television advertising is a best bet to get the job done. Not all people can afford television advertising due to the cost of having one. Secondly, it is not merely a matter of producing the ad itself. It also includes being able to get the desired time slot that will surely be hitting the proper voters who will know that you are running for public office.
Such is an issue that many call as dirty but advantageous. But if you have the funds to support your ad campaign and likewise avoiding any potential discrepancies on election requirements, then by all means use advertising to boost your political campaign!
Federal rules requiring candidates to have access to similar television audiences forced stations to bump some advertising from their traditional clients. In some cases, it was purchased months in advance and in a highly sought-after spot.
This week has hosted the 2008 One Show, hosted by the One Club. Although the official last day is tomorrow, last night was the One Show Awards. These awards and winners are known to shape advertising for the next year to come. Here are just a couple of my favorites:Gold – Newspaper or Magazine Single Ad – WWF Thailand “Tree”, Ogilvy & Mather Bangkok Gold – Single TV Commercial – Halo 3 “Diorama”, McCann Worldgroup San Francisco For a full list of winners, Gold through Bronze as well as as Merit, click here then select the link for Download One Show Winners List.
As promised two days ago, here’s more details about Homo Ludens Ludens, a new exhibition which reflects on the various roles fulfilled by play in our digital era. Homo Ludens Ludens opened on April 18 at LABoral the Center for Art and Industrial Creation which means that i was back in Gijon, Asturias, land of monster squids, rosy cheeks, deep-fried and vegetable-free diet, gorgeous landscapes and sidra thrown all over your favorite sneakers.
Homo Ludens Ludens is the last episode of a trilogy that LABoral is dedicating to the world of game. Following Gameworld and Playware, HLL explores play as a key element of today’ s world, highlighting its necessity for our contemporary societies. There are more than 30 works on show, so you can expect several installments about Homo Ludens Ludens.
The title of the show, Homo Ludens Ludens , alludes to the taxonomy of human evolution. The human being used to be regarded as a Homo faber (man the smith or man the maker in latin) for the control they could exert on the environment through tools.
The exhibition speculates on the emergence of a Homo Ludens Ludens – the contemporary player of games.
Among the many installations and documentaries i was really looking forward to see at LABoral was Bagatelle Concrete which Martin Pichlmair had mentioned a while ago in an interview i had with him.
Martin teamed up with Viennese artist and researcher Fares Kayali to turn a pinball machine from the ’70s into a musical instrument and, as he explained me at the time, The piece is a pinball machine that constructs music. It samples itself and manipulates those samples according to how you play pinball on it. We removed all competitive and all decorative elements of the pinball game and put digital electronics into this analogue electro-mechanical machine. While the gameplay is technically unaltered – all the bumpers and traps are still in place – the effect of playing is a composition instead of a highscore.
Image credit: LABoral/Enrique G. Cárdenas
The more successfully the player interacts with the machine, the more intense the accompanying soundtrack gets. The piece maintains the roughness of the electromechanical original game, mixing physical sounds happening on the playing field with manipulations of their recordings.
A post written by Nicolas Nova a few days ago brought to my mind what Martin told me in Gijon when i was complaining that that damn pinball was way too difficult to play for me. Apparently the artists had to dumb down the machine. They bought it on eBay, not knowing that the ’70s model was manufactured at a time when pinballs were extremely popular and the models issued had thus to be quite high level to keep players interested.
Image credit: LABoral/Enrique G. Cárdenas
Concrète references musique concrète and bagatelle alludes to the history of pinball games. Bagatelle was an ancestor of modern pinball. Created in France for King louis XVI, it looked like a narrowed billiard table. The aim of the game was to get 9 balls past pins (which act as obstacles) into holes.
Julian Oliver is participating to the show with an improved version of levelHead, the 3D memory game became an instant youtube and blog hit the moment it hit the online turf. The installation which uses physical cubes as its only interface is totally engrossing and nerve-challenging. On screen it appears that each of the cube’s faces contains a little room and each of them is logically connected with the others by doors. In one of these rooms there is a character and by tilting the cube the player directs this character from room to room in an effort to find the way out. Some doors lead nowhere and will send the character back to the room they started in. levelHead challenges the player’s spatial memory. Each player has 120 seconds to find the exit of each cube and move the character to the next. There are three cubes (levels) in total and, the mnemonic traps become increasingly difficult to avoid as the player progresses.
Video:
The game refers to one of the earliest memory systems which consisted in constructing imaginary architectures (memory loci) designed specifically for the purpose of storing information such that it could be retrieved by ‘walking through’ the building in the mind.
Today, domestic printers, digital tagging systems, address books and journals (on and offline) do the storage and indexing of information in exterior locations like remote databases or local file systems. Similarly, navigating in the real world increasingly tends toward dependence on external media and locative technologies.
With levelHead, moving from one site to another produces an imaginary architecture and positions this memory architecture as the primary means of navigation. Only one side of the cube will reveal a room at any given time and so a memory of the last room – of the positions of entrances and exits, stairs and other features – is necessary to proceed logically to the next movement.
Image credit: LABoral/Enrique G. Cárdenas
The tangible interface aspect is integral to the function of recall. As the cube is turned by the hands in search of correctly adjoining rooms muscle-memory is engaged and, as such, aids the memory as a felt memory of patterns of turns: “that room is two turns to the left when this room is upside down”.
With their Massage me jackets, Hannah Perner-Wilson & Mika Satomi allow massage to enter the video game realm. The jacket is the joystick. By massaging more or less vigourously the back of a volunteer you get to control a fighting avatar. I had fun playing both roles. Being the passive massaged one is extremely relaxing as the designers had spread and repeated the commands all over the back of the jacket, focusing on the areas most likely to beg for a good rub. Now remembering where to massage in order to have your avatar jump or kick requires some practice but playing randomly will not necessarily prevent you from winning the battle.
Massage Me session featuring Alessandro Ludovico, founder and editor of Neural magazine
I’m afraid the best piece of the exhibition for me was William Wegman‘s Two Dogs and Ball (Dogs Duet). Wegman has always been a favorite of mine (has someone else seen the Deodorant video? It shows him spraying his armpit with an aerosol deodorant until the can is empty, while giving a deadpan testimonial: “It feels real nice going on, and smells good, and keeps me dry all day.”)
In Two Dogs and a Ball, Wegman’s Weimaraner Man Ray and his companion are mesmerized by a tennis ball which moves off screen. Wegman explained that all he had to do to obtain the comic effect was to move a tennis ball around, off-camera, thus capturing the dogs’ attention.
During the press conference, Laura Baigorri –one of the curators– explained that Wegman’s video has been selected as an example of how the avant-gardes of the 20th century had introduced an element of play in the artistic practice.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Gold – Single TV Commercial – Halo 3 “Diorama”, McCann Worldgroup San Francisco For a full list of winners, Gold through Bronze as well as as Merit, click 
