Body Area Network [BAN]

Digital Human Body Communication was first unveiled to the public. It is also called as BAN (Body Area Network), as it handles communication between devices using the human body as a medium. Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) said that although only a small amount of data, such as information on a name card, can be transmitted at the moment because the data transmission speed is just to be 2.4Kbps, the speed will be improved to 1MB within the yearend.

ETRI explained that BAN can be utilized in numerous ways, such as touch based authentification service, electronic payment service, e-business card service, and touch based advertisement service. [via Telecoms Korea] [blogged by Emily on textually.org] [Related]

Pedestrian’s Dance

Time Translations–an interactive installation by Nell Breyer– transforms the World Financial Center’s southern pedestrian bridge from a temporary structure to an animated performance space through the projected movements of passers-by. Cameras capture the constant movements along the bridge in real time, which are then processed by computer, and projected into the space as beautiful, ephemeral drawings on the walls fo the bridge. The daily activity of walking to work is visualized as a kind of dance in which pedestrians become performers. [Schedule]

Nell Breyer is currently a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies. She was a fellow at the Artist Resource and Media Laboratory (ARM) at Dance Theater Workshop in 2003. From 2000-2002, Breyer conducted research on digital video technologies at The Media Laboratory for Arts & Sciences at MIT. She holds an M.Sc. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Oxford University and an M.S. in Media Arts & Sciences from MIT.

Cooperation, Politics and Activism

This idea is so brilliant it gives me chills.

Blogging is popular in China, enough so that the government is paying more attention now to what people say on them. Numerous blogs have been shut down, either from government pressure or just by Chinese host providers fearful of its users possibly breaking the law. In addition, an April 2005 law mandates that all non-profit website owners must register their sites with their real personal information. The recent revelation that Microsoft was censoring various terms in the blogging service they offer in China only added to the fear that free speech on the Chinese web would be harder and harder to find. Some Chinese bloggers managed to put their websites on offshore servers, but the language and cost issues are prohibitive for many.

Adopt A Chinese Blog is an end-run around official censorship. How? By making the hosting of Chinese blogs a distributed, collaborative process:
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Case histories (Mobile Bristol)

People have often asked me which of my case studies is the ‘best’ project - like they can be definitively ranked - to which I have always, and truthfully, answered, “I think all five are really interesting. That’s why I chose them.” **

“Cases are rarely chosen because they are thought to be representative, but generally because of their illustrative significance. Criticism of case studies should therefore be directed towards their logical consistency and not towards their statistical generality” (Mitchell as cited in Jackson 1984:107).

In other words, don’t evaluate a case according to how well or poorly it represents (all versions of) the subject, but rather evaluate it according to its own strengths and weaknesses, to whether or not its individual story is convincing. And actually, in my dissertation I refer to them as case histories rather than case studies. While a case study “uses evidence governed by the rule of exhaustiveness”, a case history, in the tradition of Freud and Foucault, involves “evidence governed by rules of ‘intelligibility’, denying the natural science project of producing final pronouncements.”
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Creating Utopia

spring_alpha is a networked game system based on Chad McCail’s drawing “Spring” and the series “Evolution is Not Over Yet”. This narrates the attempts of a small, urban community to create its own “utopian” society. The narrative is used as a metaphor for the real-world issues that the project explores and a focus around which speculative and critical ideas can develop. The software system serves as a “sketch pad” for testing out ideas for alternative forms of social practice at both the “narrative” level, in terms of the game story, and at a “code” level, in terms of working with the actual data and communication structures that support the game. It is an exploration of software and social governance in relation to Free Open Source Software practice. The project combines the development of an open software system along with workshop events that seek to broaden Free Open Source Software development principles into areas outside of programming. [via Rhizome]
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Totally Regressive Team Game

Join us for Capture the Flag (tonight), the totally regressive team game with bases, jails, sides and flags! Run beneath the bridges of Brooklyn’s waterfront, treading over cobblestones and trolley tracks. Outwit opponents, hiding around warehouse corners before you find their flag, outmaneuver their flag keepers and dash home for a point in the pulse-quickening game of urban capture. efend your territory with its view of the Manhattan skyline by tagging trespassers.

These games have been wonderful; come capture the flag for a night of summer joy. The streets are your playground, reclaim them! Rain or shine, play at your own risk! Jay St. & York St. // 8:00 PM, DUMBO, BROOKLYN (F to York). Future games: If you want to host future games, e-mail kevin[at]newmindspace.com.

Will New Media Produce New Narratives?

“…The book’s fifth and final section, “Digital Media,” is certainly the most pertinent, at least to cyberculture scholars. In order to answer her question, “Will New Media Produce New Narratives?” editor Marie-Laure Ryan explains that, from her perspective as narrative theorist, three issues must be covered. Firstly, Ryan must define narrative. For her, a definition of narrative must be “sufficiently abstract . . . but flexible enough to tolerate a wide range of variations” (337). Thus, “narrative is a mental representation of causally connected states and events that captures a segment in the history of a world and of its members” (337). Secondly, Ryan pinpoints several properties of digital media which “affect narrativity in either a positive of a negative way” (338). Some examples of the “fundamental” properties are: “reactive and interactive nature;” “multiple sensory and semiotic channels;” “networking capabilities;” “flui[d] and dynamic nature;” and, finally, the ability for digital works to “undergo various transformations” (338). The third issue involves a more precise definition of the term “interactivity.” According to Ryan, interactivity, i.e. “user participation” (339), is based on two dichotomies: “internal/external involvement” and “exploratory/ontological involvement” (339)…” From the review of Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling by Jessica M. Laccetti, Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies.
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De-Territorialized Bodies

Ctrl-C Ctrl- C, by Corpos Informaticos, is a telepresence performance that explores the possibility of poetic interaction in a telematic environment, the notion of the absent body which participates in an affective aesthetic experience, using the Internet as a space of realization and the public [on-line and live] as co-authors of the work.

Telepresence performance takes place on the World Wide Web. It involves de-territorialized bodies, reorganized [re-orphans] in monitors that are dispersed in the world. The Internet, a net of communication, is in fact a net of information. In telepresence performances, subjectivities are connected in real time, in direct communication; interlocution. The concept of Performance Art widens itself: an ephemeral and presence-oriented art, can it be virtual? How much [or how much longer] is the spectral body able to arouse emotion, affection? What is the concept of “group” for the one who extends oneself and becomes part of the Internet community? The collective work that requires such openness of its members is now open to numerous, infinite participants with different perceptions of interlocution. This communication, a truthful sharing, is it only an idea of encounter? For Performance Art in telepresence, is it an opening for the body to became spectral? Or is it just submission to the demands of the machine?

A Mapping Module for Civicspace and Drupal

Here is a first pass functional mapping module for civicspace and drupal as demonstrated here: http://civicmaps.org/?q=2005_06_20_Scappoose_Events

Essentially if you were to install drupal and civicspace you could have a location blogging site up and running quite easily now. Are there any other such services in the world at all right now? I don’t think so; so I do believe (at least from our limited perspective) that this is something that may be genuinely useful. Here is the site for the download: http://maps.civicactions.net#download

This is hot off the presses and undoubtably there are defects. However it is a milestone in our development work here and as is often said ‘publish early and publish often’. Having reached this milestone I wanted to briefly summarize what the deeper purpose of this was since it is not documented on the site:
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Mechanical Orchestra with you as Conductor

In Sale Away, passers-by can conduct an “orchestra” of household devices via their mobile phones on a display window. The mechanical orchestra consists of flute, organ and brass playing vacuum cleaners, rattling kitchen mixers, buzzing ventilators, radio playing toy trains, wobbling jigsaws, dancing tumble dryers, humming refrigerators and other misused household utilities.

The conductor is a big refrigerator. This fridge is also the explanatory interface. To start the orchestra and wake up the shopping windows you have to dial the number and follow the commands displayed on the window. This call opens the door of the fridge, giving free the image of its explanatory interface, the “mobile phone robot person”. The robot will explain and invite you to act. By pressing keys on the phone you can let all different instruments play along with the melody. You can set some single voices or the whole orchestra tutti.

Video. By Geert-Jan Hobijn (NL) and Carsten Stabenow (GER) Olaf Matthes (GER) from Staalplaat. Via the excellent Culture Base Open List. [blogged by Regine on near near future]