Last minute: Julian Bleecker will do a public lecture in the Mediamatic exhibiton space (now the “Night Garden”: www.mediamatic.net/artefact-12874-en.html), friday 17th november 18.00.

Julian Bleecker is visiting Mediamatic for the RFID-workshop (see below). “He is a Research Fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Communication and an Assistant Professor in the Interactive Media Division, part of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television. His work focuses on emerging technology design, research and development, implementation, concept innovation, particularly in the areas of pervasive media, mobile media, social networks and entertainment, and he is one of the main theoreticists on The Internet of Things.”

And then at the RFID workshop: short runthrough of different technologies and available stuff to work with, amongst which Mediamatic’s own Symbolic Table: www.mediamatic.net/article-11344-en.html.

Btw: yesterday an awesome concert of Olaf Rupp, playing solo acoustic (classical) guitar at the DNK series (OT301, see www.dnk-amsterdam.com/?dept=AGENDA&article=8): playing very precisely with all the ‘noises’ that playing a nylonstring guitar involves (nails on strings, ‘bijgeluiden’ et cetera), almost as if overlaying different types of sound in a way that can be compared to what goes on in electronic / laptop music… Also Gjerstad & Olsen played, but Rupp, well ‘blew my mind’…

Works at www.chrisoshea.org/ & blog at www.pixelsumo.com/. Where Rob was looking at all the political & privacy issues, he looks at RFID for artistic & playful use. References Peter Anders (2001) idea of ‘cybrids’. And then shows a lot of his work, with interactive works for musea and sound, works that incorporate RFID & games that uses RFID-playing cards…

Is starting with RFID in China… where they are working on their own frequencies and softwares. His background in literary theory (Rob used to be big into Walter Benjamin for instance), pops up too: a nice quote of McLuhan :-)

Again: stressing that RFID is a very simple technology… 2 Years ago he handed over his RFID report to all Dutch political parties & the only party that voiced interest and asked questions in parliament was the SGP (etremely conservative, orthodox protestant party).

“No more public. No more memory loss. No more people, just data clouds.” We have become fragmented in dataspace. There is no (political) general public with whom to discuss problems around RFID. With total tagging & tracing there will be no memory loss. Ambient intelligence & smart things instead of a laptop plus mouse.

Explains the set-up of an Internet of Things:
RFID - reader - EPC network - PML (physical mark-up-language) - ONS (object name server — built on top of DNS). Hmm: to google a bottle of beer in the Mediamatic fridge from a room in Tokyo.

Problem: convergence to just one company (Verisign) who’s in charge..

But: users have the possibilities to use the system for their own use, if you have a reader…

New word (for me): “glue code”. Code to tie everything together.

More Rieback: “RFID software is pretty complex and will turn in to bloatware as everything else”. “Security is designed inside the system. It is not something like a band-aid that you strap on later.”

Now listening at www.mediamatic.net/artefact-11944-en.html, to the talk of Melanie Rieback — a technologist connected to www.rfidguardian.org/ –. I came in late, but here are some of what I heard her saying:

“the RFID-technology is in a young enough state for artist & designers still to have an impact on the development of it.”

“performance art can be as effective as technology demonstrations….”

She gives a lot of examples of lo-tech, well, let’s say activist art-stuff, of ‘hacking’ RFID… which are possible because some (a lot) of RFID-tags are pretty unprotected, or, even because of the simple fact that RFID-tags can’t be read when inside foil.

Haven’t been blogging so much lately — at least not here. So I sort of feel that I have to update you (invisible readers) on my activities. Thing is that I’m feeling the pressure of the nearing end of my stay at the Jan van Eyck Academy. I’d like to leave here with 2 nice finished articles and, well, a some sort of ‘grouping’ of all the other stuff I’ve done/published here. (Like, for instance the bits & pieces on this blog, the many quotes I’ve gathered et cetera).

Now I am very very bad at organizing my own research, organizing my ‘findings’, thoughts, everything that comes before actually writing an article. If the preferred outcome is a text of say 1500 words, there’s no problem (I can do that relying on what’s in my head). If the outcome is a presentation, I have no problem at all: I’m not afraid to speaking in public and when speaking the words will roll out of my mouth. I have a scenario in my head, a rough form & direction and I can freely improvise around that. I love to do that.

(I’m afraid this is actually one of my weaknesses, since it enables me to do presentations without ever actually writing down my thoughts and theories beforehand, or for that matter, afterwards. Which means I’m left with, well, nothing definite & if I’m asked to come up with a paper afterwards I have a lot of work to do.) (Whoever cares for exact references in a talk?)

Well, so I have some very nice deadlines coming up:

Coming wednesday I’ll do a presentation at the Mediamatic RFID Workshop. I’m quite excited since Julian Bleecker will be speaking after me: www.mediamatic.net/artefact-11944-en.html. (I hope my bio is updated, since it came out scrambled after a translation process — ah, yes, it’s updated). Also I’m looking forward to being in a more media/technology minded environment for a few days.

On wednesday 29th of November I will do a public lecture at the Frank Mohr Institute in Groningen – that one will basically be an outline/summary of the research of the past year. It’s part of the series “Future’s Past: Re-Imagining Art & Media”: 15.00-17.00 Singelzaal, Radesingel 6, Groningen.

Well, and then there are the texts I’d like to write.

So, I decided to get organized. I gathered everything that I had saved in some form or another since january (webpages, quotes and remarks and sketches in rtf- and voodoopad-files, images, pdfs, print-outs, photocopies, and: the Ubiscribe POD plus this blog), sifted and put everything that I will use in one folder, all the text in one Voodoopad document. Partly this was procrastination, or it felt like it because it took much longer than I had expected. This time I made a point of registering the references; so I’m sort of halfway with a nice bibliography (still have to include some books). It is nice work. It feels like ‘working’. It’s clear what has to be done. (Unlike writing a text [as in: putting sentences in the right order]).

I also gathered all the screenshots (of using various blogging softwares for instance), organized them and made some that I was missing. Again: material to use.

I decided that I wanted to have handy the statistics – how many blogs there are (Sifry’s Technorati-statistics), what softwares are most used, et cetera. There are some good academic papers on that. I have, if I remember well now without looking at my Voodoopadfile, 4 different statistics of blogsoftware-use, and they vary so much that they render each other (almost) meaningless when compared. (And 3 of these researches are conducted in the proper scientific way, and in the same year). The researches do not say much about ‘blogging in general’,. They say something about blogging in the chosen sample, but what they state is quite general… Funny enough that makes my own simple not too proper scientific research (counting 204 blogs from my own environment) more significant. (?)

After looking at statistics for a while I again discovered that I am simply not so interested in those numbers. Although, yes, it is nice to note that many mp3-blogs use Blogger, and amongst philosphy and theory-blogs there is a rather large amount that use Typepad. And yes, it is interesting to look at things like average lenght of posts and frequency of linkage. But well, and then?

How much do the softwares actually differ — and are they used differently? (They do differ, but they also allow for identical use). I’m trying to come up with a bit a good writing there (using screenshots…), but I’m not sure it will lead somewhere….

So now I am preparing my presentation for wednesday – making use of all the organized material (well, sort of organized in any case). To my own surprise I began having fun with Powerpoint, the software I probably hate most. Using Powerpoint to organize my argument. Ough. (Usually I make HTML-sheets, but in this case I thought it would become too cumbersome. I have used Preview for presentations twice, and both times encountered computer problems during the talk (they had nothing to do with Preview, but still, I’m a bit superstitious in that respect). I do not have Keynote; I have Appleworks — but well, were’s the difference?) I know I should use OpenOffice. I probably will regret having a .ppt-file that is not easily reusable in another context, but well, I’m too far now… Actually, I have far too many sheets already and I am not finished with the argument yet…

Middagrondje, ditmaal vanuit de Jan van Eyck (’s ochtends per racefiets uit Kanne gekomen). 15.15 - 17.00. Rustig herfstweer, zo’n witgele zon achter een beetje nevel na een zonnige dag. 8 graden (voelde kouder). Ik heb t vermoeden dat de route bijna identiek is aan de ANWB Plateauroute… Maastricht - Bemelen - Klein Welsden - Margraten - Scheulder - Gulpen - Reyemerstok - Terlinden - Bruisterbosch - Honthem - Cadier en Keer - Maastricht

Henry Jenkins’ whitepaper Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture, pdf at www.digitallearning.macfound.org/etc… seems to be (I haven’t read it yet…) a very good outline of what new media literacy is.

Found it via Peter Morville www.findability.org/archives/000138.php, who sums it up as follows:

“Henry presents eleven new skills or literacies…

Play - the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem solving.

Performance - the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery.

Simulation - the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes.

Appropriation - the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content.

Multitasking - the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.

Distributed Cognition - the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities.

Collective Intelligence - the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal.

Judgment - the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources.

Transmedia Navigation - the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities.

Networking - the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information.

Negotiation - the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

…and three concerns:

The Participation Gap - the unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare youth for full participation in the world of tomorrow.

The Transparency Problem - the challenges young people face in learning to see clearly the ways that media shape perceptions of the world.

The Ethics Challenge - the breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and socialization that might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants.”

[end of quote]

Note: these are “new” literacies. I’d say they add to competencies as knowing how to write –as in: constructing sentences that makes sense and can be understood by others… :-)

Klein rondje in de middag — dus ook nog ‘ns van de Jan van Eyck naar Kanne en terug erbijtellen voor de afstand –. Erg fijn weer, 12 graden, zon, westenwind. En zowaar voorbij Waltwilder stukjes waar ik niet eerder had gereden. Kanne - kanaal - Vroenhoven - Vlijtingen - Rosmeer - Waltwilder - Hoelbeek - kanaal - Gelik - Veldwezelt - Vroenhoven - Muizenberg - Kanne

The Guardian writes, in its editorial intro to the Web 2.0 special: “Everybody sitting at a computer screen, increasingly, wants everything to be all about them. This is our first glimpse of what people who grow up with the net will want from the net. One of the cleverest things about MySpace is the name.”

This has me wondering… On the one hand, all the ‘new’ tools are about sharing, collectiveness, communication. On the other hand, it always puts ourselves in the center.

Everybody sitting behind a computer screen is as egoistic as a writer?

www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1937496,00.html.

Richard Lanham in 1974: “Prose written without joy can only be read in the same spirit. Given the average quality of American prose, speedreading it out of existence is probably the best thing. So we come to hate the word, and use it still more ineffectively.” From Style, an Anti-Textbook

Ochtendritje, prachtige herfstzon, maar zo tussen 9.40 en 11.00 nog erg koud. Daarna werken. Heerlijk om zomaar op een doordeweekse dag naar les Hauts de Froidmont te kunnen rijden. Kanne - Eben - Halembaye - Froidmont - Houtain St. Simeon - Bassenge - Wonck - Eben - Kanne

With lots of videos online: www.freewaves.org/?page=artists#. Nice. Apparently also with some art-videos that were censored by YouTube (Eva Drangsholt, Mike Faulkner).

It’s so nice sometimes to just make something, however simple it is, using old-skool html and some pictures.

This time I made screenshots of the different stages — or maybe different screens (rather than actions) — of writing & publishing a blog post. Respectively Blogger Beta, Wordpress, Twoday.net and blogging from Flock.

No Typepad since I immediately erased my account after activating it and checking it out.

Big html-page here (may need refresh to have all the pictures load…): www.xs4all.nl/~ariealt/jve/2006_to_blog_small/to_blog.html.

Well, it won’t earn the prize for best design, and probably I should’ve resized the screenshots differently, but still, I like these kind of mosaics.

Project of Ubiscribe co-researcher Tsila Hassine is a sort of image browser: “Tracer is a research tool that archives Google image searches for the purposes of tracking their url, appearance, disappearance and rank.”

www.geuzen.org/tracer

Prachtig rondje voor de zondag. Veel zon, nog altijd best warm — 14 graden. Fijn langs kanaal en Maas, voor het eerst de bocht bij Elslo gepasseerd, dan dwars door Maasmechelen het bos in en via Gelik en Veldwezelt terug.

Kanne - kanaal - Smeermaas - Uikhoven - Kotem - Maasmechelen - As - Wiemesmeer - Zutendaal - Gelik - Veldwezelt - Zusserdel - Kanne

Om 10 uur vertrok ik. Ochtendrondje. Warm, al om 10 uur, de dubbele laag was niet nodig. Het was zelfs al warm om middernacht, bij een harde zuidenwind. Weersverwachting: harde zuidenwind en warm, 18 tot zelfs mogelijk 22 graden. Bij Fleron dacht ik: laat ik nog een keer naar Chaudfontaine rijden, om de bossen te zien. In het dal dacht ik, kom, nog een stukje tot Louveigne, want het is heerlijk warm. Toen was ik zo ver dat het zonde zou zijn om niet nog een laatste keer de klim naar Creppe te doen en dan de bossen bij Spa te bekijken. Uiteindelijk besloot ik tot het dal van de Roanne af te dalen om een laatste keer mijn favoriete klim te rijden. Zo reed ik 139 kilometer. Ik was goed kapot na afloop. In Spa zei een thermometer 23 graden — en dat klopte zeker. In Theux zei een thermometer 26 graden. Het was warm als in de zomer. Korte broeken- en eigenlijk ook korte mouwenweer. De bossen op hun mooist, met alle mogelijke schakeringen groen, geel en bruin en zelfs rood. Om 6 uur terug (pauzes om van het landschap en de warmte te genieten).

Kanne - Eben - Halembaye - kanaal - Hermalle ss Argenteau - Sarolay - Cheratte - Saive - Tignee - (plus een niet eerder gereden klim over een smalle lokale weg) - Retinne - Fleron - Romsee - Chaudfontaine - Prayon - Louveigne - Desnie - Winamplanche - Creppe - Geronstere - Rosier - Andrimont - Moulin du Ruy - Andrimont - Rosier - Geronstere - Spa - Theux - Pepinster - Drolenval - Soiron - Xhendelesse - Jose - Herve - Bolland - Blegny - Ttrembleur - Feneur - Richelle - Vise - kanaal - Kanne

It would be too long to publish as a ‘post’, so I made it into a ‘page’: www.ariealt.net/blog/a-very-simple-research/. I just counted, for 204 different blogs, what softwares they used…

Screenshots of all 204 blogs — resized to 10% of the original size — in one html-page: www.xs4all.nl/~ariealt/jve/204_blogs.html.

10.30 - 12.50 Ik rij toch liever ’s avonds na dan ’s ochtens voor het werk, maar eind oktober is er niet zoveel keus, als je wilt rijden. Zon na dagen met regen, de bomen kleuren. 12 graden. Rustig gereden (maar eigenlijk kwam ik niet vooruit). Kanne - kanaal - Vise - Lorette - Dalhem - Mortroux - Bois de Mauhin - Val Dieu - Neer Aubel - St. Pietersvoeren - St. Martensvoeren - Gravensvoeren - Moelingen - Lixhe - Lanaye - Kanne

Now listening to the works of post-minimalist composer Julius Eastman (1940 - 1990) - or well, to those works that have been tracked down. Eastman was evicted from his house in the 1980s, all his stuff, including his scores thrown out too. Eastman went on to live in Tompkins Square Park, until his death. The story is incredible: www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=4411, the music is like a slap in the face. I generally dislike minimalist music, but Eastman makes a maximum impact. Can anybody explain why we’re bothered with Philip Glass and John ‘Other’ Adams-operas when there was somebody like Eastman? (Yeah, difficult person, et cetera…. but the music!)

(Btw: there are two contemporary composers by the name of John Adams; the ‘famous’ one and then John Luther Adams — most known for the fact that he lives in northern Alaska. According to Samuel Vriezen John Luther Adams writes by far the more interesting music — hence he calls the famous John Adams, John ‘Other’ Adams.)