Or as they call it: prss-release, carefully collected RSS-feeds presented as PDF: http://www.prss-release.org. Might seem a superfluous thing to do at first thought, but it exactly gives those volatile blog-posts an extra ’substance’. I’d love to have a piece of software that would collect and design my rss-feeds into, well, what one can compare to a magazine… I dearly miss good typography and lay-out in my rss-feeds.
(And yes, I am one of those readers that does tinker with the fonts in the OSX-mailprogram to achieve better readability).
Catching a tiny bit of the ATACD-seminars at V2_: http://www.atacd.net/. ANT, mapping and representations of data. For an idea of what this is about: http://www.demoscience.org/.
Next week, thursday March 13th I will be doing a presentation in Groningen, at Sign (Winschoterkade 10, 20.00 - 22.30h), as part of Aymeric Mansoux’ and Marloes de Valk’s project Hello Process, in rand() we trust. Also speaking: Florian Cramer, Adger Stokvisch and Dave Griffiths. See: http://no.systmz.goto10.org/.
It’s the book from which I learned to play chess: Bobby Fischer, Schaaklessen, geprogrammeerde cursus voor beginners en gevorderden (1974). It was a present for my 9th or 10th birthday. I still remember so much of it that I suspect it had a big influence on my strategic/logical thinking. (In so far as I am able to think logically/strategically…) Bobby Fischer – who became worldchampion in 1972, never lost the title according to himself – died this week. The most controversial chess champion.
The book, I now see, is originally from 1966, entitled Bobby Fischer teaches chess, the co-authors are Stuart Margulies, of Basic Systems Inc. (? Basic the computer language?) and Donn Mosenfelder, a leading figure in ‘programmed instruction’. It was published by Xerox. It’s still available at Amazon.ca: http://www.amazon.ca/Bobby-Fischer-Teaches-Chess/.
In some senses everything that happened in professional cycling this year – and in other sports too – is just a preparation for our future. Now Katharina Klüft, who won the women’s pentathlon gold in Athens 2004, is quoted as saying:
“”I have suggested earlier that you could operate a data chip under the skin on athletes on a certain level. Or maybe use a chain ring with a GPS transmitter on the training bag. Then everyone would know where to find us for tests. I wouldn’t complain. I think we are obligated to accept most things to stop doping. You are so supervised anyway so it wouldn’t make much of a difference.”
from: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2007/dec07/dec29news.
Have I not been reading the informed blogs? This is already old: there is apparently a working version of Xanadu – Windows only. Huh? Ted Nelson (yes, the one-and-only Ted Nelson) presents it in a video here, in a Google-talk: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8329031368429444452. Via http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/10/ted_nelsons_still_on_the_job.html.
Yesterday we had a presentation of JODI in Groningen – as part of the lecture series Future’s Past: Re-Imaging Art and Media, organised by Eric de Bruyn. (We had Alex Galloway two weeks ago, Joost Raessens coming up next week).
Or better, we had a DI-(Dirk Paesmans)-presentation, as Joan Heemskerk couldn’t make it. Dirk and me had ’stamppot’ and beers beforehand, talking about how the game-art and digital art is doing very well (booming?) now in the NY-art-market, talking about the works of Cory Archangel, and about living in ‘isolated’ Dordrecht.
Here’s some of JODI’s current stuff. Jet Set Willy Variations 1984: http://jetsetwilly.jodi.org/, and they’re part of the Composite Club: http://compositeclub.cc/.
A new work from the German (new media) artist Ralf Baeker: Rechnender Raum. He describes it as follows: “”Rechnender Raum” (calculating space) is a contemplative machine. Strings, weights, leavers and motors are connected to circular neural network. Touching one leaver will release an impulse that runs through the whole system; it will compute its possible states to infinity.” The term ‘Rechnender Raum’ comes from Konrad Zuse, one of the ‘fathers’ of the computer.
Take a look here (also video documentation): http://www.no-surprises.de/rechnender_raum/
Tomorrow = thursday night Alex Galloway will lecture at Mediamatic on Debord’s Game of War and a modern-day translation of it in java. I suppose he’ll also talk about his 2006 book Gaming — Essays on Algorithmic Culture, and his 2007 book The Exploit, a Theory of Networks. I’ll be introducing him and moderating the night.
Mediamatic: http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-23815-en.html
Alex Galloway: http://cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/
Btw, I registered at the Mediamatic-website. “To hell with privacy, Google will find out anyway”. (But I want to access my data too, to do ‘things’ with it!)
http://ffffound.com/. Still in private beta, apparently.
Pretty interesting symposium in Paris on programmed art: http://creca.univ-paris1.fr/?p=35#more-35.
Yesterday the audio-input and/or output of the logic board of my Powerbook G4 was destroyed. It happened while playing a composition of Thomas Köner. Whenever I turn on the volume on the laptop there’s a very loud high pitched noise. And I mean very loud – much louder than you’d image would be possible. Think: ear-piercing. Everything else still works. Well, the option is to have a new logic board installed (400 - 700 euro’s), or just keep working on this machine and not use sound. And eventually when other parts start breaking down buy a new one. Hmmm.
So I started testing my old white ibook, the one that had screen problems. Maybe I could use that for playing music?
I’ve been searching for this quote forever. Browsing through old syllabi I find it, somewhere in the text ‘Art as language’ by Yury Lotman – very heavily underlined annotated by myself, but not this sentence:
Art is the most economical, compact method for storing and transmitting information. But art also has other properties wholly worthy of the attention of cyberneticians and perhaps, in time, of design engineers.
[I guess, with design engineers Lotman refers to what we now know as 'programmers'].
My annotation – dating from around 1988 – “ONZIN” (=nonsense).
Yury Lotman, The Structure of the Artistic Text, Ann Arbor, 1977, (1970), p. 23
An good analysis of why there are so little women in the Open Source community: http://www.ddj.com/dept/architect/184415216. (Via Artem Baguinski).
META is a bunch of artists, techies and other suspects in Amsterdam: http://www.makingelectronicthingiesinamsterdam.nl. They organize workshops in which they (and you), well, the name of the group says it all: make electronic thingies.
http://improvisingguitar.blogspot.com/ brings to my attention that he cannot leave comments here. I’ve tried it myself, not even I can leave comments… Apparently there’s something wrong. Must’ve happened since the blog was moved to another server. We’ll look into it.
Next year: experience design starts at the HKU, Utrecht: http://experiencedesign.hku.nl/index.php, looking at a world in which all things & everything will be connected.
Anne Helmond has a nice bit about the Ubiscribe-event at DEAF, and beautiful photo’s: http://www.annehelmond.nl/2007/04/16/deaf07-ubiscribe-collocollaboracontentquery/.
And I promise, from now on I will not use Powerpoint anymore for presentations. (Why did I ever choose to use Powerpoint for my Ubiscribe-sheets? A decision once made, on a morning, with little time, then one is stuck with it builds on those sheets? Something like that…)
Back in 1983 / 1984 the poet bp Nichols wrote a dozen programmed kinetic poems for the Apple II. They are revived, by Jim Andrews and others, in different formats: http://vispo.com/bp.
It’s also a good example of the problematics concerning the conservation of digital art…