3/9/2004
IT Conversations looks like a nice alternative to radio: download interviews with people talking about blogging and the web and listen to them on your iPod. Jorunn recommends Halley Suitt’s interview with David Weinberger, while noting how unfamiliar his voice was to her, despite having read his blog for years (and she’s even translated one of his books to Norwegian).
I couldn’t help noticing that Halley seems to be the only woman on the site. Oh, Mena Trott’s in a joint interview with her husband, which is good, but infuriating (women are palatable if they come with a man?) Apart from that, the only interviewees are men. Of course, it’s billed as a one-person labour of love, and obviously an individual is free to interview whoever he or she pleases, but I’m so tired of the invisibility of women…
2/9/2004
Learningtoloveyoumore.com has many tongue-in-cheek assignments, from sewing an adult replica of a baby’s jump suit to taking photos of strangers holding hands. Several are documented on the website, and you can of course choose to accept any assignment and send in documentation to prove that you’ve completed it. The assignment I’d be most likely to attempt is Assignment #10: Make fliers of your day, where you write a paragraph about soemthing you did today, make 100 copies and post them around your neighbourhood. It reminds me of Hanna’s sticker blogging idea. The idea of Learning to Love You More is to liberate” from creativity. Exact assigments make it easier to create. And we can all enjoy drifting through the results. Is the idea. I quite like it.
1/9/2004
Pentagon Strike is a great example of argument in images, aided by some text, music and fast transitions. It’s a Flash piece that lasts for about five minutes and that uses a lot of images to argue that whatever hit the Pentagon on September 11 couldn’t have been a passenger jet. It’s interesting how this is a kind of visual argument that certainly could have (and probably has) developed for television, but that’s rarely seen there. On the web it’s perfect. It doesn’t take long to watch, it cites eyewitnesses (are we trusting the mass media less and ordinary people more?) and shows us evidence so we can draw our own conclusions. Or at least so we can feel that we’re drawing our own conclusions - I don’t know enough about the subject or who made this piece to know if the images are authentic, and they move so fast I’m not even quite sure if I saw what I thought I saw. Compare this to the other kind of web-based argument: the same argument made in words and links. As Torill pointed out about blogreading, the links are crucial: they not only give a sense of accountability but also genuinely allow the reader to read more and judge for herself - to do her own research. I found this through Kathleen - it’d be interesting to follow the links and see how it spreads. If only I had the time…
31/8/2004
Just trying to fix my trackbacks. If this pings that, it worked!
Three people have complained that my comments RSS isn’t working. I don’t use RSS readers enough to even quite know what you do with a comments RSS, but obviously it’d be nice if I could make it work. However, I’ve done all I can think of (i.e. upload a fresh version of the Wordpress default template for it) and it still doesn’t work. Perhaps some of the people who want it would like to help fix it? (more…)
Look, PNEK made a website as well as a book: Elektronisk kunst i offentlige rom. In addition to my piece, which is an introductory essay called Kunst i bevegelse, there are descriptions and photos of sixteen electronic artworks in Norwegian public spaces. It’s a great catalogue of interesting work, and it’s going to be translated into English eventually, too.
Better late than never, numedia.edu is another blog that reported from ISEA. And one to start reading, from the look of it.
30/8/2004
Going to Oslo this afternoon, to spend an evening with old friends and then tomorrow give a talk about an essay I wrote as an introduction to a catalogue of electronic art in public spaces in Norway. Here’s more information if you’re interested in the book or the talk - and yes, I’ll post the article soon, just not right now, things are so busy! (more…)
27/8/2004
Sometimes reading only slightly old books is quite unsettling. In Dream Machines, a book I love on the whole, Nelson quotes what apparently used to be the motto of Electronic Arts, “a software company", now one of the major producers of video games.
Software should be simple, hot and deep. SIMPLE: the user can get into it easily. HOT: it should be excitingly interactive. DEEP: you’ll be able to use it for years; it will have “new folds” to discover, and thus a long shelf life.
What a ridiculously explicit description of a very objectifying male view of sex with a woman. Men seem to love thinking of machines as somehow equivalent to or replacements for women. Ships are “she", Turing (though not sexually attracted to women) conceived a test of a kind of AI where a computer would simulate a woman, guys try to create digital beauties and virtual girlfriends. But why? I don’t get it. I wouldn’t even call a dildo “he". My machines are its, my computer is sexless.
I can’t find this alleged motto of Electronic Arts on the web at all so presumably they came to their senses and eradicated it from history. It’s cited on page 25 of Dream Machines by Ted Nelson, in the 1987 edition. Electronic Arts was founded in 1982.
