The Digit is a giant chrome double-finger that looms over unwitting passers-by in Union Square, NYC. More precisely, it is a double-sided finger, with a second appendage extending out of where the rest of the hand would be. The two fingertips methodically double-tap and swipe, while reflecting the surrounding architecture on their bulbous surface.
The Digit is a virtual (augmented-reality) sculpture that can be viewed with an iPhone application available for free at the App Store. Simply launch the app when you are on the southern tip of Union Square and look up through the iPhone’s camera.
The sculpture is a response to two public art works located in Union Square – the statue of George Washington (one of the first public sculptures in New York) and Metronome – a recent installation about time that occupies 3 building facades just south of the square. Incidentally, Metronome includes an enlarged replica of GW statue’s hand (located just above the smoking hole). The Digit follows this trajectory by isolating the index digit of George Washington and appropriating it as an emblem of the digital condition.
The Digitalso exist as an interactive web experience and in the form of physical souvenirs. WebGL compatible Browser Required (Firefox 4 or Chrome 9 and up) or you may need to update your graphics card driver.
“In the last five years, police forces have shut down approximately 7,000 illegal radios throughout the Brazilian territory, almost double the number of radio frequency concessions given by the national government in the same period. In 2008 alone, out of approximately 19,000 claims for concessions, only 2,800 were licensed and around 1,200 illegal broadcastings were cut off air. The track-and-shut “Operation Free Frequency” lead by the Federal Police in early 2009 has identified 200 clandestine transmissions in Rio de Janeiro. The National Telecommunication Agency estimates that this number can reach 1,000 illegal radio stations scattered around the city, mostly broadcasting from favelas like Cidade de Deus, a thirty-eight thousand inhabitant neighbourhood, where five clandestine stations were found only in the first day of operations. In eighteen-million-people Sao Paulo, the electromagnetic spectrum is similarly noisy. The number of radios closed down recorded 750 in 2007. According to daily newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, the disputes for occupying radio frequencies are so intense in the city that, statistically, the police actions only help to keep steady the rate between off and on air. For each one of the radios shut down, another one starts broadcasting.”
”Give off / Give out” documents an intervention in Jakarta January 5th 2011, dealing with the problems of fine dust after the demolition of buildings. Indonesia is the second biggest importer of asbestos which is extremely dangerous when inhaled. In the video you see a small team trying to prevent the fine dust, which carries asbestos in it, of spreading through the air by watering the site. This intervention gets repeated in different parts of the city.
Give off / Give out, video, 3’30″. Video & Text by Philippe Van Wolputte, 2011
IN a crowded place like Manhattan, there are moments when a certain question flits across people’s minds.
It could happen on a weeknight at the Union Square Trader Joe’s, when the aisles are so packed that shopping for frozen edamame morphs into a full-contact sport. Or perhaps it’s on a Saturday in SoHo when Broadway is transformed into an obstacle course of tourists and jewelry peddlers. Maybe it’s on the No. 2 subway line at rush hour, where personal space — if any — can be measured with a micrometer.
And then you pass by a new high-rise under construction, and it’s only rational to wonder: Just how many people can Manhattan actually hold?
Excerpt of an article written by AMY O’LEARY at the NYT. Continue HERE Via Explore
Social segregation, cultural appropriation: the six-hundred-year history of the European Roma, as recorded in literature and art, represents the underside of the European subject’s self-invention as agent of civilizing progress in the world, writes Klaus-Michael Bogdal.
Is Europe anything more than the remnants of a grand political delusion? Is there a cultural bond that unites the nations and peoples of this fragmented continent? From Max Weber to Norbert Elias, the greats of European intellectual history have described and re-described Europe as the birthplace of modernity; not, like the other continents, as the “heart of darkness”, but as the energetic center of civilizing progress. Their attention has focused on the “grand narratives”: industrialization and economic productivity, state and nation building, science and art. Yet might not an examination from the other side – through an investigation of the marginal – provide essential insights into Europe’s development over the longue dureé? Might not the history of the Roma, a group marginalized like none other, reveal a less auspicious aspect of Europe’s grand narrative of modernity?
The tendency of existing research to treat the Roma as having first entered European political history with the Nazi genocide disregards a unique six-hundred-year history. It is indeed the case that the Roma, who over long periods of time lived nomadically and possessed no written culture of their own, have left almost no historical accounts of themselves. The heritage and documents therefore do not permit a history of the Roma comparable to that, for example, of the persecuted and expelled French Huguenots. What is available to us, however, is evidence – in the form of literature and art – of the way in which the settled, feudally organized European population experienced a way of life that it perceived as threatening. Despite consisting solely of stories and images that are defensive “distortions”, this evidence provides a far from unfavorable basis for an examination of the six-hundred-year history of the European Roma, insofar as it is a history of cultural appropriation characterized by segregation. We encounter the traces of the reality experienced by the Roma almost exclusively through depictions by outsiders, and must use these to imagine those parts considered impossible to represent. The extraneous cultural depictions of the Roma – variously referred to as gypsies, zigeuner, tatern, cigány, çingeneler, and so on – have created heterogeneous units of “erased” identity and cultural attributes. The “invention” of the Gypsy is the underside of the European cultural subject’s invention of itself as the agent of civilizing progress in the world.
Excerpt on an article written by Klaus-Michael Bogdal for Eurozine. Continue HERE
Sternberg Press: 2011. A kulturnaut, a squid, a Shakespeare, a dog, an artist abstract, a chrononaut, a washerwoman, Tom Ripley and his bones all pass through New Dystopia. Their sped-up speculations lead to new models of deterritorialized life. Visionary and hallucinatory models. Through them, Mark von Schlegell “displays” some of the facets of the invisible catastrophe breaking up our world, which artists in particular are responding to.
Put together in the wings of the “Dystopia” exhibition at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, acting as a resonance chamber, this illustrated novel raises the issue of possible futures in the form of a critical fiction, and involves the outposts of the novel to come. About New Dystopia, the city in which the novel’s protagonists live, the narrator states: “As an American … one only came to New Dystopia City to become an artist. That only there was it a way of life.” According to von Schlegell, we are living in that new metropolis. He states, “Dystopia is today.”
After Venusia (2005) and Mercury Station (2009), both published by Semiotext(e), New Dystopia is Mark von Schlegell’s third novel.
Artists: Wallace Berman, Cosima von Bonin, Brian Calvin, Tony Carter, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Peter Coffin, Simon Denny, Andreas Dobler, Roe Ethridge, Keith Farquhar, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Aurélien Froment, Cyprien Gaillard, Isa Genzken, Dan Graham, Robert Grosvenor, Sebastian Hammwöhner, Roger Hiorns, Ull Hohn, Des Hughes, Peter Hutchinson, Eugene Isabey, Sergej Jensen, On Kawara, Michael Krebber, Jesus Mari Lazkano, Rita McBride, John Miller, Pathetic Sympathy Seekers, Manfred Pernice, Stephen G. Rhodes, Glen Rubsamen, Sterling Ruby, Julia Scher, Frances Scholz, Michael Scott, Markus Selg, Reena Spaulings, Michael Stevenson, Tommy Støckel, Josef Strau, Blair Thurman, Mathieu Tonetti, Oscar Tuazon, Franz West, Jordan Wolfson
Wanting to draw attention to the commercialization of public space, Oliver Show made seating a little more comfortable and accessible to his fellow citizens in Hamburg, Germany. He says: “The interventionist and experimental approach to me is more important than the quest for a ‘perfect’ product.”
Katherine S. Newman states her thesis plainly: “Global competition is the most profound structural force affecting the residential location of young adults in the developed world (or the underdeveloped world, for that matter)” — but one is impressed by her refusal to turn thesis into dogma. She acknowledges that different cultures define adulthood in different ways, with Americans tending to see it as “a process of self-discovery” and Europeans as “a station defined by the way one relates to others.” She also appreciates the mutual benefits of multigenerational households, as suggested by a survey showing that 76 percent of American parents of 21-year-olds say they feel close to their child, as opposed to a mere quarter of their own parents saying the same.
Still, Newman does not shy away from the larger effects of a child’s “failure to launch,” independently, into the world. Not the least of these is a generation’s failure to generate. At present there are four workers in Europe for every pensioner; by 2050 there will be only two workers for every retiree. Birthrates in the United States would also be falling if not for Mexican immigrants — yet another job they’ve taken on, along with those of lawn- and elder-care and favored scapegoat. But in Japan, the fastest-aging country in the world, where only 1 percent of the population is foreign-born, the future looks more bleak.
Newman also takes pains to show how accordion families shape up across class lines — the difference between an upper-middle-class family providing rent-free space to a child earning a law degree and a subsistence family hanging on to a child in order to make the rent. Part of this difference is that “working-class kids do not boomerang back into the family home” but “like their Spanish or Italian counterparts . . . do not leave home at all until much later in life.”
Excerpt of an article written by GARRET KEIZER, at the NYT
“Condoms are an essential tool in preventing unintended pregnancy and stopping the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV,” PPGNW New Media Coordinator, Nathan Engebretson, said in a press release. “We hope the site promotes discussions within relationships about condoms and helps to remove perceived stigmas that some people may have about condom use. “Where Did You Wear It” attempts to create some fun around making responsible decisions.”
Distributed around community colleges and universities, the condom’s bar code can be scanned by smart phones that connect users to the website and allows them to upload their location, along with general details and anonymous reviews of their sexual experience. Users can rate their rolls in the hay on a scale from “things can only improve from here” to “ah-maz-ing — rainbows exploded and mountains trembled.”
Excerpts from an article written by Nic Halverson, Discovery News.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an article regarding encryption, use of clouds, backups and other advice:
Our lives are on our laptops – family photos, medical documents, banking information, details about what websites we visit, and so much more. Thanks to protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the government generally can’t snoop through your laptop for no reason. But those privacy protections don’t safeguard travelers at the U.S. border, where the U.S. government can take an electronic device, search through all the files, and keep it for a while for further scrutiny – without any suspicion of wrongdoing whatsoever.
For doctors, lawyers, and many business professionals, these border searches can compromise the privacy of sensitive professional information, including trade secrets, attorney-client and doctor-patient communications, research and business strategies, some of which a traveler has legal and contractual obligations to protect. For the rest of us, searches that can reach our personal correspondence, health information, and financial records are reasonably viewed as an affront to privacy and dignity and inconsistent with the values of a free society.
Despite the lack of legal protections against the search itself, however, those concerned about the security and privacy of the information on their devices at the border can use technological measures in an effort to protect their data. They can also choose not to take private data across the border with them at all, and then use technical measures to retrieve it from abroad. As the explanations below demonstrate, some of these technical measures are simple to implement, while others are complex and require significant technical skill.
As much-admired photographs of decayed Detroit go on show in London, Brian Dillon charts the history of a literary and artistic obsession with ruins, from Marlowe to The Waste Land to Tacita Dean.
Brian Dillon: Early in May 1941, the novelist and essayist Rose Macaulay was staying at the Hampshire village of Liss, attending to family arrangements following the death of her sister Margaret. On the 13th she returned to London – since the start of the war she had lived in a flat at Luxborough House, Marylebone, and worked as a voluntary ambulance driver – and discovered that her home and all her possessions had been destroyed in the bombing a few nights before. In a letter to a friend and literary collaborator, Daniel George, she wrote: “I came up last night … to find Lux House no more – bombed and burned out of existence, and nothing saved. I am bookless, homeless, sans everything but my eyes to weep with … It would have been less trouble to have been bombed myself.”
The loss of her flat, and especially the destruction of her library, had a profound effect on Macaulay: it was a decade before she completed another novel. In 1949, she lamented: “I am still haunted and troubled by ghosts, and I can still smell those acrid drifts of smouldering ashes that once were live books.” But her memory of the blitz also nurtured a fascination with destruction, decay and the ambiguous emotions conjured by the sight of buildings and entire cities reduced to rubble. In 1953 Macaulay published Pleasure of Ruins, a lively and eccentric history of the “ruin lust” that gripped European art and literature in the 18th century, reached its height in the romantic period, and had apparently declined in the first half of the 20th century in the face of wreckage that could not be turned to aesthetic or nostalgic advantage.
Tilt shift of the Carnaval party in Rio de Janeiro.
Made by Keith Loutit and Jarbas Agnelli.
Captured during Carnaval of 2011.
Music by Jarbas Agnelli.
Special thanks to Rede Globo, Liesa and Jodele Larcher.
Jon Rafman: One year ago, I started collecting screen captures of Google Street Views from a range of Street View blogs and through my own hunting. This essay illustrates how my Street View collections reflect the excitement of exploring this new, virtual world. The world captured by Google appears to be more truthful and more transparent because of the weight accorded to external reality, the perception of a neutral, unbiased recording, and even the vastness of the project. At the same time, I acknowledge that this way of photographing creates a cultural text like any other, a structured and structuring space whose codes and meaning the artist and the curator of the images can assist in constructing or deciphering.
Once Upon a Future is an imaginary fast-forward to a possible Bordeaux in 2030 – the target year by which the city today projects to reach the magic number of one million inhabitants. This work of social fiction, made in the format of a novel and exhibition, starts from the question – how would the future look if citizen’s collective capacity would grow and become Bordeaux’s main driving force? Curated by STEALTH.unlimited and Emil Jurcan, and made in collaboration with architecture center arc en reve, Once Upon a Future features contributions by writer and philosopher Bruce Bégout and a number of graphic and comic artists. It has been produced for the biannual Evento 2011 directed by artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, under the motto “art for an urban re-evolution”.
In cities around the world, individuals and groups are reclaiming and creating urban sites, temporary spaces and informal gathering places. These ‘insurgent public spaces’ challenge conventional views of how urban areas are defined and used, and how they can transform the city environment. No longer confined to traditional public areas like neighborhood parks and public plazas, these guerrilla spaces express the alternative social and spatial relationships in our changing cities.
With nearly twenty illustrated case studies, this volume shows how instances of insurgent public space occur across the world. Examples range from community gardening in Seattle and Los Angeles, street dancing in Beijing, to the transformation of parking spaces into temporary parks in San Francisco.
Drawing on the experiences and knowledge of individuals extensively engaged in the actual implementation of these spaces, Insurgent Public Space is a unique cross-disciplinary approach to the study of public space use, and how it is utilized in the contemporary, urban world. Appealing to professionals and students in both urban studies and more social courses, Hou has brought together valuable commentaries on an area of urbanism which has, up until now, been largely ignored.
In a 2008 paper on neuroeconomics, Stanford economist George Loewenstein said: “Whereas psychologists tend to view humans as fallible and sometime even self-destructive, economists tend to view people as efficient maximisers of self-interest who make mistakes only when imperfectly informed about the consequences of their actions.”
This view of humans as completely rational – and the market as eminently efficient – is relatively recent. In 1922, in the Journal of Political Economy, Rexford G. Tugwell, said (to paraphrase) that a mind evolved to function best in “the exhilarations and the fatigues of the hunt, the primitive warfare and in the precarious life of nomadism”, had been strangely and quickly transported into a different milieu, without much time to modify the equipment of the old life.
The field of economics has since rejected this more pragmatic (and I would argue, realistic) view of human behavior, in favor of the simpler and neater “rational choice” perspective, which viewed the power of reflection as the only force driving human behavior.
But to paraphrase sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, our currently held views of what is reasonable, sensible and good sense tend to take shape in response to the realities “out there” as seen through the prism of human practice – what humans currently do, know how to do, are trained, groomed and inclined to do.
We compare ourselves to people we know, and come into contact with – either through social groups, or lately, with the advent of mass and, even fragmented media, people we think are like us.
Excerpt of an article written by Paul Harrison, The Conversation. Continue HERE
Slought Foundation (‘Sl-aw-t’) is a non-profit organization based in Philadelphia that engages the public in dialogue about cultural and socio-political change. We collaborate with a range of partners including artists, communities, universities, and governments to encourage cultural inclusiveness and social activism. Culture means more than preservation or presentation to us; it means the exchange of ideas, the creation of concepts.
From Kwame Anthony Appiah to Helene Cixous, Werner Herzog to Kazuyo Sejima, our programs feature today’s visionaries in conversation about the role of the artist in society, and the potential transformation of social and political structures. In 2010, 450+ hours of recordings from these programs, available online, were downloaded over 125,000 times by visitors from 100 countries.
Cycling increases profits, reduces carbon, attracts employees and cuts down sick days. PleaseCycle provides organizations with everything needed to begin or boost a workplace cycle scheme.
We specialize in using digital innovation, employee-engagement and professional services to get more staff commuting by bike. Our Cycle Hub ® system is a turnkey solution for corporate cycling, while the BikeMiles™ programme rewards cyclists for each journey – like “Nectar Points” for bikes.
We’re a group of passionate entrepreneurs and keen cyclists who simply love cycling and want to help businesses tap into the tremendous value it offers to their brand, employees, and all other stakeholders.
Luzinterruptus: We like to use the streets and enjoy having fun out there. Of course, we are glad to see in summer people walking, speaking and having a drink or a snack without paying the expensive prices of an outdoor bar, just so that we can sit at a public place, which we understand is intended for everybody, but some people use for private purposes.
What also annoys us is seeing how during the day and at nightime people urinate anywhere in the streets without any embarassement. They just walk along, turn round, zip down and, even in crowded places, seen by passers-by, let go.
This is what makes the centre of Madrid look so rundown and dirty, with bad smells everywhere. It is also uncomfortable to have to walk carefully in order not to touch anything that will impregnate your shoes or clothes.
Through our installation, public toilets, we have tried to attract attention -in a comical manner- about the problem we encounter when walking in centric streets and squares. Its purpose is to remind people who have this custom and also institutions so that a solution is found –perhaps by using urban furniture where people can urinate without bothering others, in case of extreme urgency…
For this reason, on the early morning 28th July we wandered along San Ildefonso Square and side streets: a very crowded area at night time when the atmosphere is great. We carried 80 male urine containers, the ones used in hospitals. Inside we poured yellow water and, what else but our lights.
Once we had located the ‘wet’ spots- following the smell trail will do- and we set up our emergency urine containers for anybody in need to use. We are aware of some of them being used…others…will be taken home…who knows for which purpose.
“I actively used the environment designing the ‘Tree Bench’ for the municipality of Amersfoort and worked with the elements that the park had to offer: trees, city walls, paths, and grass. It is no challenge to just dig a hole and a install a bench. An ideal bench need the environment and the environment needs the bench too. To achieve that goal a bench contributes to the park as a walk, sit, rest, kiss, lie, meet, watch, dog walk, day-dream, stretch, run, think, decide, smoke and lunch spot.
During my visits to the park I was inspired by the plants overgrowth and mushrooms. In the design I used the characteristics of mushroom. mushroom is suddenly there and when the weather and temperature conditions change, they disappear. Using the Tree Bench I want surprise the park visitors in the same way. The Tree Benches can easily be attached to the trees using a suspension system. The Tree Bench will not hinder the tree itself. The visitor will understand immediately that the tree bench is made to sit on.”
Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries that the United States is in conflict with. The food is served out of a take-out style storefront, which rotates identities every 6 months to highlight another country. Each Conflict Kitchen iteration is augmented by events, performances, and discussion about the culture, politics, and issues at stake with each county we focus on. We are currently presenting the third iteration of Conflict Kitchen via La Cocina Arepas, an Venezuelan take-out restaurant that serves homemade arepas, grilled corncakes served to order with a variety of fresh fillings. Developed in collaboration with members of the Venezuelan community, our arepas come packaged in a custom-designed wrapper that includes interviews with Venezuelans both in Venezuelan and the United States on subjects ranging from Venezuelan food and culture to issues of geopolitics.
Capital Growth is a partnership initiative between London Food Link, the Mayor of London Boris Johnson, and the Big Lottery’s Local Food Fund. It is championed by the Chair of the London Food Board Rosie Boycott and aims to create 2012 new community food growing spaces across London by the end of 2012. Capital Growth offers practical help, grants, training and support to groups wanting to establish community food growing projects as well as advice to landowners.
Areth: An Architectural Atlas is a projects by Adam Ryder. He is a artist working in photographic mediums in New York City. Much of his work is created in collaboration with Brian Rosa, who together with Ryder contribute to the creative studio Site Unseen.
About The Atlas
The writings and photographs contained in this volume are the product of an expedition to the world of Areth, undertaken by photographer Adam C. Ryder with generous support from the Areth Research Commission (ARC). Created in cooperation with the Sales and Publishing Department, this fourth edition in the series Areth Analyzed documents architectural forms across the three geographic regions of the planet’s super-continent — the Northern Mountains, the Central Basin and the Great Barrens. Analysis of the structures in the text that follows are based on detailed studies provided by the Xeno-Anthropological Research Authority (XARA) and the Architectural Study and Preservation Agency (ASPA) as well as several other departments within the ARC.
Introduction
The circumstances surrounding Areth’s discovery are by this time well-known. What remains unexplained are the circumstances that led to the abandonment of this distant world by its native inhabitants. The architectural relics left behind by a once-great civilization have compounded this mystery. Residential, industrial and scientific structures, even entire cities stand empty, yet intact across the giant Arethean landmass. The complete disappearance of this race has problematized conjecture about their seeming demise. Were the peoples of Areth the victims of an unforeseen tragedy or did they simply decide to leave their world entirely? This volume does not attempt to speculate on these questions but rather seeks to investigate that which is most telling about the Aretheans themselves; their architectural legacy. The images and written analyses that follow highlight those structures deemed to be among the most culturally relevant in understanding the values and customs of this lost civilization.
The Plastics Historical Society was formed in 1986 and was first to draw attention to the heritage of the plastics industry and to celebrate all things plastic.
It is an independent society affiliated to the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining, 1 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5DB, UK and run by a committee elected at the AGM each year.
Membership of PHS is open to anyone interested in plastics, rubbers and other polymers. The society’s international membership is drawn from collectors, industry, education, museum staff, libraries, and auction houses, and represents all age groups.
Aims
To encourage the study of all historical aspects of plastics and other polymers, including synthetic fibres, rubber and elastomers. Everything from Bakelite to Xylonite.
Activities
Members are offered a lively programme of events: In addition, there are two regional sections of the Society which are open to all members – a Western Section covering Wales and the West of England, and an East Midlands Section.
The Society has a library of many hundreds of books which are gradually being assembled at the IOM3.
Publications
Two full colour publications are mailed regularly to members – a Newsletter published six times a year, and a twice yearly journal plastiquarian. Articles and other content from the journal is available on this site. Some articles are reserved for members while some are open to all.
In-House Festival, Jerusalem Season of Culture, 2011. [Photo via Jerusalem Season of Culture]
Hospitality begins at home — but it also describes our relation to each other as peoples, territories and nations. In his 1795 essay “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” which is the basis for the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights, Kant argues that the stranger’s right to hospitality is a universal right, and that it is derived both from the right to self preservation, which emerges from the law of nature (gesellschaft), and from the right of association, which is part of the law of society (gemeinshaft). For Kant, society might not be natural, pleasant or desirable; but it is a real condition of a populated world. Humans by nature are strangers who travel from an original solitary or familial place and are confronted by association. The only alternative to hospitality or exchange is aggression or war.
This right of hospitality exists only between equals; for the stranger must be capable of returning to his own house, where he would then preside as host. How then does the rule of hospitality extend to those who cannot claim their reciprocal right, such as the refugee, who is not a guest because he is not also a host? Without the wherewithal to reciprocate as a citizen of a nation, the refugee must present himself as merely human, or rely on a third party, such as the United Nations, to demand the rights of hospitality for him. How does the rule of hospitality extend to a stranger who is not a guest because he harbors aggression in relation to his lacking the status of host? It is tempting to recast Jerusalem as a new, singular space of hospitality, where inhabitants are simultaneously strangers and hosts in a continual state of reciprocity. Giorgio Agamben similarly describes a variation on the two-state solution whereby Jerusalem is an extra-national and simultaneous capital of both Arab and Jew — a new topological space, like a Mobius strip singular and dual at once. And beyond the intractable divisions of Jerusalem, perhaps hospitality offers us language with which to describe our emerging geo-political spaces and the aspirations we have for them.
Our ears can’t blink. It is an observation that is frequently raised in areas of study such as biology, sociology and sound theory. This is used to demonstrate how valuable listening has been to our evolutionary development. It also points to why noise is so intrusive and imposing since we can’t easily block it out. The pervasive use of headphones in populated environments represents one way in which listeners maintain some level of control over their personal audio space.
The Noisolation Headphones are a critical investigation that transforms the relationship between a person and the noise in their environment. This electromechanical listening appendage is designed to exist directly between a listener and the noise that surrounds them. While worn, exposure to the noise is structured through a sequence designated by a composer which controls the behavior of the sound-prevention valves. The composer also determines what values are adjustable by the listener through the single knob built into the device. The headphones mechanically create a personal listening experience by composing noise from the listener’s environment, rendering it differently familiar.
An invention for mechanically transforming the relationship between a person and the noise that immediately surrounds them. This project is part of the graduate thesis “Listening Instruments” by Alex Braidwood. Additional experiments, collaborations, research and writings are available at listeninginstruments.com
The lack of Corporate and Governmental transparency has been a topic of much controversy in recent years, yet our only tool for encouraging greater openness is the slow, tedious process of policy reform.
Presented in the form of a Soviet F1 Hand Grenade, the Transparency Grenade is an iconic cure for these frustrations, making the process of leaking information from closed meetings as easy as pulling a pin.
Equipped with a tiny computer, microphone and powerful wireless antenna, the Transparency Grenade captures network traffic and audio at the site and securely and anonymously streams it to a dedicated server where it is mined for information. Email fragments, HTML pages, images and voice extracted from this data are then presented on an online, public map, shown at the location of the detonation.
Whether trusted employee, civil servant or concerned citizen, greater openness was never so close at hand..
The Transparency Grenade was created in January 2012 by Julian Oliver for the Studio Weise7 exhibition at Labor 8, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, curated by Transmediale 2012 Director, Kristoffer Gansing.
The body is made of Tusk2700T, a highly resilient translucent resin, printed from a stereo-lithography model made by CAD designer Ralph Witthuhn based on a replica Soviet F1 Hand Grenade. Metal parts were hand-crafted from 925/1000 sterling silver by Susanne Stauch, complete with operational trigger mechanism, screw-on locking caps and engraving.
Media Artist Nicholas Hanna built a tricycle that can also paint Chinese characters on the ground as it moves, just — because.
Water Calligraphy has a long history in China, normally characterized by older Chinese men painting characters on the ground of parks with long brushes and water.
As the last American soldiers left Iraq in December, so, too, did many of the journalists who had covered the war, leaving little in the way of media coverage of post-war Iraq. While there were some notable exceptions — including two fine articles by MIT’s John Tirman that asked how many Iraqis had been killed as a result of the US invasion — overall the American press published few articles on the effects of the occupation, especially the consequences for Iraqis.
As a college professor, I have a special interest in what happened to Iraqi universities under US occupation. The story is not pretty.
Until the 1990s, Iraq had perhaps the best university system in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein’s regime used oil revenues to underwrite free tuition for Iraqi university students — churning out doctors, scientists, and engineers who joined the country’s burgeoning middle class and anchored development. Although political dissent was strictly off-limits, Iraqi universities were professional, secular institutions that were open to the West, and spaces where male and female, Sunni and Shia mingled. Also the schools pushed hard to educate women, who constituted 30 percent of Iraqi university faculties by 1991. (This is, incidentally, better than Princeton was doing as late as 2009.) With a reputation for excellence, Iraqi universities attracted many students from surrounding countries — the same countries that are now sheltering the thousands of Iraqi professors who have fled US-occupied Iraq.
Written by Hugh Gusterson, The Bulletin of Atomic Sciences. Continue HERE
In-House Festival, Jerusalem Season of Culture, 2011. [Photo via Jerusalem Season of Culture]
Maya Zack: Living Room, 3D computer generated anaglyph. [Courtesy of the artist and Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv]
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