Antonio De Rosa’s Instagram Socialmatic Project concept.

In the age of cell phones and other mobile devices with network and photographic capabilities, the art of taking photographs has become as daily a process as brushing one’s teeth or walking to work or school. In a sense, the art of photography has been lost in the phrase “everything that can be made, can be made social.” The ubiquity of the camera, assuming the form and shape of objects that we carry with us daily, has turned the act of taking a photo into an everyday duty rather than an artistic rendering. In addition, the advent of 80% of a global population carrying around a video and still image recording device with them daily has led to an overabundance of information and media gathering.

Responding to the challenge of transforming the traditional act of photography into something new that utilizes the strengths of the internet, artists are creating projects that not only question what it means to take a picture, but also to share and collaborate on the meaning of photography as it’s evolving in the world of Web 2.0. Within the context of crowdsourcing, two projects take advantage of the multitudes of human thought and expression circulating through the internet.

Text and Images via The Creators Projects

Electronic Instant Camera,” 2011.

In this talk, Dries Buytaert (original creator and project lead of Drupal) shares his experiences on how he grew the Drupal community from just one person to over 800,000 members over the past 10 years. Today, the Drupal community is one of the largest and most active Open Source projects in the world, powering 1 out of 50 websites in the world. The concept of major projects growing out of a volunteer, community-based model is not new to the world. Volunteer networks and communities exist in many shapes and sizes. Throughout history there are examples of pure volunteer organizations that were instrumental in the founding and formation of many projects. For example, the first trade routes were ancient trackways which citizens later developed on their own into roads suited for wheeled vehicles in order to improve commerce. Transportation was improved for all citizens, driven by the commercial interest of some. Today, we certainly appreciate that our governments maintain the roads. However, we still see road signs stating that a particular section of a highway is kept clean and trim by volunteers — at least in some countries. When new ground needs to be broken, it’s often volunteer communities that do it. But a full-time, paid infrastructure can be necessary for the preservation and protection of what communities begin. In this presentation, Dries wants to brainstorm about how large communities evolve and how to sustain them over time.

Some questions to think about ahead of the presentation:

Do you know examples of large organizations that have grown out of volunteer communities?
Why do some communities keep growing while other communities come to a halt?
Is the commercialization of a volunteer-driven community part of a community’s natural life-cycle?
Is it inevitable that over time the operation and/or leadership of volunteer communities are transferred to paid personnel?

Tuesday, May 29, 12:30 pm
Berkman Center, 23 Everett Street, second floor
RSVP required for those attending in person via the form below
This event will be webcast live at 12:30 pm ET and archived on our site shortly after.

Via Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Imagine charging your phone as you walk, thanks to a paper-thin generator embedded in the sole of your shoe. This futuristic scenario is now a little closer to reality. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a way to generate power using harmless viruses that convert mechanical energy into electricity.

It also points to a simpler way to make microelectronic devices. That’s because the viruses arrange themselves into an orderly film that enables the generator to work. Self-assembly is a much sought after goal in the finicky world of nanotechnology.

Excerpt of a press release written by Dan Krotz, Berkeley Lab. Continue HERE

The exhibits are strangely hypnotic. So here they are, although, small as they are, we don’t have room to list the whole collection of 26 leftovers.

Prince of Wales, heir to the throne – tiny piece of bread and butter pudding, no mould

Pete Doherty, musician – piece of cheese and pesto toastie, a little brittle, no mould

David Bailey, photographer – crust from cheese and tomato sandwich made from Cornish speckle bread, no mould

Hugh Dennis, comedian – fragment of egg shell from egg used in his egg sandwich, retrieved from bin, slightly battered, no mould

John Woodvine, actor – flake speck from a croissant; smallest exhibit in the museum, no mould

Jan Leeming, ex-newsreader – crystallised ginger from Cornish ginger ice-cream, no mould

Michael Winner, film director and restaurant critic – piece of lemon drizzle cake, no mould

Paul Heiney, TV presenter and journalist – Anchor butter wrapper, contents used on toast with scrambled egg, scrunched

Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, first sea lord from 2006 to 2009 – raisin from fruit cake, no mould

Steve Swindells and Jerry Richards, from UK rock group Hawkwind – coffee grounds and crumbs from shared chocolate brownie, no mould

William Tyler, musician from the US band Lambchop – baked bean from cooked breakfast, deteriorated, black and some mould

Stephanie Creek, former member of cafe staff who came fourth on The Weakest Link – chickpea from a mixed salad enjoyed during her lunch break, desiccated

Excerpt of an article written by Emma’s Eccentric Britain, BBC. Read it HERE

On May 14, Jeannette Ginslov gave a Medea Talk about the developmental stages of the AffeXity project, the interdependence of the collaborators, the relational and dynamic formation of technical and human intervention, the encounters of the carnal and the digital, the dialogic and temporal scaffolding of encounters of techne and the hands that attempt to capture affect.

JEANNETTE GINSLOV is Medea’s artist-in-residence this spring. Her roots are as performer, choreographer and artistic director in South Africa, but for the last five years she has focused more on interdisciplinary platforms investigating the crossover between the media/dance/cinema/video and the internet.

Her work centers around affect, haptic and digital materiality on several platforms: stage, screens, online and new media applications. Ginslov is currently working with Prof Susan Kozel at Medea on the project AffeXity that draws together screendance, visual imagery and mobile networked devices.

Text Via MEDEA

Statement:

Cultural Morphing is an experiment in creating a multi-perspective image of reality from the simultaneous experience of a geographic line by the individual expression of a perceived personal reality. Twelve invited artists traveled by train from Vienna to Shanghai, and selected stops along the route served as their workspace where they would meticulously work out an project that outlined various aspects of cultural transition experienced on the journey. Stopovers at Ulan-Ude, Ulan Bator, Beijing and Shanghai were used to exhibit the works that were created en route.

The broadcast for Radius will feature a score developed through filming a dinner at a Chinese rotating table. The images captured through filming from above the table during the course of the dinner were sonified with data and acoustic recordings collected along the journey. The artists involved created individual sound files based on a video score that were later combined into one stereo track.

Via Radius

Einstein averred that “the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible”. He was right to be astonished. It seems sur­prising that our minds, which evolved to cope with life on the African savannah and haven’t changed much in 10,000 years, can make sense of phenomena far from our everyday intuitions: the microworld of atoms and the vastness of the cosmos. But our comprehension could one day “hit the buffers”. A monkey is unaware that atoms exist. Likewise, our brainpower may not stretch to the deepest aspects of reality. The bedrock nature of space and time, and the structure of our entire universe, may remain “open frontiers” beyond human grasp. Indeed, our everyday world presents intellectual challenges just as daunting as those of the cosmos and the quantum, and that is where 99 per cent of scientists focus their efforts. Even the smallest insect, with its intricate structure, is far more complex than either an atom or a star.

Everything, however complicated – breaking waves, migrating birds, or tropical forests – is made up of atoms and obeys the equations of quantum physics. That, at least, is what most scientists believe, and there is no reason to doubt it. Yet there are inherent limits to science’s predictive power. Some things, like the orbits of the planets, can be calculated far into the future. But that’s atypical. In most contexts, there is a limit. Even the most fine-grained compu­tation can only forecast British weather a few days ahead. There are limits to what can ever be learned about the future, however powerful computers become. And even if we could build a computer with hugely superhuman processing power, which could offer an accurate simulation, that doesn’t mean that we will have the insight to understand it. Some of the “aha” insights that scientists strive for may have to await the emergence of post-human intellects.

Article written by Martin Rees, Via Newstatesman

Baby time-lapses – which see parents take daily images of their child, and run them together – are becoming increasingly common. So are they now the ultimate way of documenting a child’s development?

Parents have always been fond of storing sentimental keepsakes – a first tooth or lock of hair – as their child grows up.

And pictures marking significant milestones – birthdays or their first day of school – are a mainstay of mantelpieces.

But there is now a much more ambitious trend in cataloging a child’s growth. And rather than being something typically kept within the privacy of the home, it prides itself on going public.

Excerpt of an article written by Vanessa Barford, BBC. Continue HERE

The fence that divides the city of Nogales is part of a natural experiment in organizing human societies. North of the fence lies the American city of Nogales, Arizona; south of it lies the Mexican city of Nogales, Sonora. On the American side, average income and life expectancy are higher, crime and corruption are lower, health and roads are better, and elections are more democratic. Yet the geographic environment is identical on both sides of the fence, and the ethnic makeup of the human population is similar. The reasons for those differences between the two Nogaleses are the differences between the current political and economic institutions of the US and Mexico.

This example, which introduces Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, illustrates on a small scale the book’s subject.* Power, prosperity, and poverty vary greatly around the world. Norway, the world’s richest country, is 496 times richer than Burundi, the world’s poorest country (average per capita incomes $84,290 and $170 respectively, according to the World Bank). Why? That’s a central question of economics.

Excerpt of an article written by Jared Diamond, NYBooks. Continue HERE

Imahe above: Women in Darfur returning from Kutum market to the Fata Borno camp for internally displaced persons under the protection of African Union soldiers, January 2007; photograph by Gary Knight from Questions Without Answers: The World in Pictures by the Photographers of VII. The book has just been published by Phaidon.

By exploiting the subjective, associative impact of smells, in combination with visual images, Peter De Cupere generates a kind of meta-sensory experience that goes beyond purely seeing or smelling. Plastic artist De Cupere paints with scents, produces olfactory objects, soap paintings and sculptures, creates video and live performances, makes three-dimensional drawings and builds poetic smell installations.

Everyone who has ever smelt Peter De Cupere‘s work cannot fail to recognise that his works prompt quite a reaction. You either love it or you feel attacked via your nasal senses. If the latter is true it is often because the spectator adopts a reserved attitude at first as a result of being wary of the unknown. That is exactly why smells in art have been and are still positively avoided. People like to compare and want a return or recognition. This is difficult with smells because they act directly on the limbic system and don‘t give you the necessary time and chance to translate things like you do with „sight“. Smells act on your memory subconsciously and so you associate your own subjective feelings with a specific smell. Your attitude to the object is determined by the smell memory of a certain moment. Add then the combination with the visual aspect of the artwork and you get a mix that does not appear to be completely predictable. Alongside the pleasance of some smells there are also smells that warn us of danger though we do not always need these indications because of habituation. If you cross the street there are many damaging smells present because of pollution: exhaust fumes, rotting processes from discarded foodstuffs, toxic fumes from asphalt and other building materials that are freed by heat from the sun, polluted rain, sewers, etc. But the normal city person has become used to all the exhaust fumes and other air-polluting substances.

Smoke Room, 750.000 used cigarette butts.

Olfactiano: A piano-like instrument that emits different smells when played called ‘Scent Concerts.’

Smell Me Project.

Text via Peter De Cupere

First image above VIA

Via Ryan Enn Hughes

Bruno Latour gives a lecture titled ‘Reenacting Science’ at Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Prof Bruno Latour visited Dublin City University on Friday, February 17th for a special seminar on interdisciplinarity, the arts and the sciences, entitled ‘From Critique to Composition’. Prof Latour is a leading figure in contemporary anthropology and science studies, but the reach of his influence is truly interdisciplinary.

Talk by Prof. Bruno Latour
Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series
March 23, 2012

About the Talk
Ecological crises in contemporary times have created problems for political representation. Existing political assemblies cannot handle these crises due to their scale, the esoteric character of the scientific knowledge necessary to apprehend them, and the intensity of conflicts of values that they generate. Digital resources suggest new possibilities for mapping the heterogeneous networks which link scientists, decision makers, media, citizens and other participants in public debates over ecological issues. They can create political assemblies where contending world views and modes of reasoning engage each other.

The equivalent of two Earths will be required to support the world’s population by 2030. That is the stark warning made by the WWF’s Living Planet Report 2012, which was put together in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Global Footprint Network. It warns that the size of the planet’s population and the resulting consumption of environmental resources, such as food and fuel, is unsustainable at current rates. “If we keep on taking more renewable resources than can be replenished, then eventually they will become depleted,” the report stated. “This has already happened locally in some places, for example the collapse of cod stocks in Newfoundland in the 1980s.

Excerpt of an article written by Nicholas Edmondson, IBT. Continue HERE

Download the Living Planet Report 2012 HERE

Communication with dolphins is getting better all the time — they’ve been using iPads, for one thing, and humans have been working on a type of Rosetta Stone-like two-way translation device. A new gadget could improve matters even further, by allowing humans to produce the full range of dolphin sounds. The acoustics researchers who developed it call it the Dolphin Speaker.

The next step is to play back a whole sequence of dolphin noises to dolphins and watch what happens. The paper is being presented at the Acoustical Society of America meeting this week.

Dolphin Speaker: The Dolphin Speaker is the first underwater setup that can project the full range of sounds made by dolphins, potentially opening a new avenue for communication with the animals. Mishima et al/Acoustical Society of America.

Text and Images via POPSCI

‘Dolphin Speaker’ to Enhance Study of Dolphin Vocalizations and Acoustics

Geologists at the University of Maryland have published research that could help prove or disprove Gaia theory — the notion that the Earth is one single self-regulating system.

If the Gaia hypothesis is correct, then a number of signals should be observable in the Earth’s natural cycles and systems. One of those is that a sulfur compound made by organisms in the ocean should be stable enough in water to allow its transfer into the air, so it can then be returned to land. A team of geologists, geochemists and marine biologists led by Harry Oduro has developed a method of tracking the movement of sulfur through ocean organisms, the atmosphere and the land, potentially yielding evidence as to how strong this cycle is.

Excerpt of an article written by Duncan Geere, Wired UK. Continue HERE