_Infiltration and Tactical Aesthetics_
As an organization, the IAA is an exercise in tactical aesthetics - we use
the visual and rhetorical devices of sanctioned research organizations in
an elaborate performance aimed at infiltrating engineering culture. By
demonstrating technical competence, we earn the right to speak to
engineers not as activists or theorists, but rather as an "Institute" of
fellow travelers, indistinguishable in many respects from the research
organizations where our audience toils every day. Our projects are
presented as "research findings" at university lectures and technical
conferences, and are reported on in engineering journals and trade
publications. Our critique of engineering practice thus comes from within
engineering culture, and is given material weight by the production of
working artifacts.
While there is a long history of artists and social theorists questioning
relationships between technology and society, there is an equally long
history of engineers ignoring art and social theory. By acting as
engineers who address contentious political issues, we undermine the
normalized ambivalence that characterizes engineering practice. The works
thus act as Trojan horses, carrying our critique through the gates of
detachment that guard engineers against taking responsibility for the
products of their labor. In lieu of ambivalence, we offer the engineering
community the image of an "engaged engineering" that works diligently in
the service of freedom and human dignity, and takes responsibility for the
world it helps create.
9.30.2005
Bergen Collab
From: alejo.duque@europeangraduateschool.net
Subject: Re: [pikselproject05] osc messages
Date: September 29, 2005 11:59:52 PM GMT+02:00
To: pikselproject05@drone.ws
On Sep 29, 2005, at 7:56 PM, JS wrote:
About the offline/online issue. I'm thinking that if the data is gathered offline, the best way to go would be to build a database with which we could interface. Especially, one of the things we'll have to do in any case is associate GPS positions with pre-filmed movie scenes shot at these locations, so we'll need a database anyway.
theres a need to build a RDMS, good point. it will make things easier to control even from the "magic carpet" if we decide to use it. but the less we do things offline the better IMHO in special in this relation between video keyframes to gps waypoints mentioned earlier.
If we are to do everything offline, better start thinking about a way to represent this database and to interface with it in Drone. OSC would then just be used to convert the data from k2o to this database. What should we use? MySQL? XMLRPC?
What do you guyz think?
anyway SQL is already present via gpsdrive; kismet works with gpsdrive as you guys very well know...k2o filters data in realtime...speed, altitude, direction..whatever we like to be melted with video, openGL, sound instruments, etc., but say also that clicking rec or any other camera button will create a waypoint we could ourselves tag -kapitalist, yuppies, punks, dog-run, etc-..this experimental interface has been built with pd+pidip but it only went till the point of overlaying gpsdata over video signal in realtime...no waypoints could be created interactively as far as i know, and it will be interesting to see at least an approach to realtime sensible data mapping...going off-line with this will be like imovie or final cut effects...nice simulations.
looking at the OSC bridges from kismet (or gpsdrive if there are) i tend to think its possible to be done in pd or, if drone if it gets firewire input and OSC is already inplemented(?) maybe we can do this in drone in a lively way. surely some things will be done offline, but the more we can do in realtime the better.
mis dos centavos,
/a
Subject: Re: [pikselproject05] osc messages
Date: September 29, 2005 11:59:52 PM GMT+02:00
To: pikselproject05@drone.ws
On Sep 29, 2005, at 7:56 PM, JS wrote:
About the offline/online issue. I'm thinking that if the data is gathered offline, the best way to go would be to build a database with which we could interface. Especially, one of the things we'll have to do in any case is associate GPS positions with pre-filmed movie scenes shot at these locations, so we'll need a database anyway.
theres a need to build a RDMS, good point. it will make things easier to control even from the "magic carpet" if we decide to use it. but the less we do things offline the better IMHO in special in this relation between video keyframes to gps waypoints mentioned earlier.
If we are to do everything offline, better start thinking about a way to represent this database and to interface with it in Drone. OSC would then just be used to convert the data from k2o to this database. What should we use? MySQL? XMLRPC?
What do you guyz think?
anyway SQL is already present via gpsdrive; kismet works with gpsdrive as you guys very well know...k2o filters data in realtime...speed, altitude, direction..whatever we like to be melted with video, openGL, sound instruments, etc., but say also that clicking rec or any other camera button will create a waypoint we could ourselves tag -kapitalist, yuppies, punks, dog-run, etc-..this experimental interface has been built with pd+pidip but it only went till the point of overlaying gpsdata over video signal in realtime...no waypoints could be created interactively as far as i know, and it will be interesting to see at least an approach to realtime sensible data mapping...going off-line with this will be like imovie or final cut effects...nice simulations.
looking at the OSC bridges from kismet (or gpsdrive if there are) i tend to think its possible to be done in pd or, if drone if it gets firewire input and OSC is already inplemented(?) maybe we can do this in drone in a lively way. surely some things will be done offline, but the more we can do in realtime the better.
mis dos centavos,
/a
9.29.2005
utopia
This requires an enormous amount of voluntaristic
action and goodwill, resulting in productive processes which are in all likelyhood less competitive, unlike peer production.
action and goodwill, resulting in productive processes which are in all likelyhood less competitive, unlike peer production.
9.28.2005
Como definir la filosofia occidental desde la perspectiva de la tecnologia?
Indian birch-bark canoes, to take another example, were faster and more maneuverable than any small European boat. In 1605 three laughing Indians in a canoe literally paddled circles around the lumbering dory paddled by traveler George Weymouth and seven other men. Despite official disapproval, the stunned British eagerly exchanged knives and guns for Indian canoes. Bigger European ships with sails were obviously better for long-distance travel along the shore. Indians got hold of them through trade and shipwreck, and trained themselves to be excellent sailors. By the time of the Pilgrims, a rising proportion of the shipping traffic along the New England coast was of indigenous origin and the English were fearful, Harvard historian Joyce E. Chaplin has argued, ''that Indians might get the upper hand."
Most important, the foreigners, coming from lands plagued by recurrent famine, were awed by Indian agriculture. Based on maize, which yields more grain per acre than any other cereal, it used sophisticated techniques that kept the land fertile in ways that Europeans had not seen. A 2003 commentary in the journal Science described the creation of maize as ''arguably man's first, and perhaps his greatest, feat of genetic engineering."
Even the Europeans' purported superiority in military technology was evanescent. The ''peeces" that Winslow thought the Wampanoag wanted, for example, were less than they seemed. To be sure, Indians were disconcerted by their first experiences with European guns: the explosion and smoke, the lack of a visible projectile. But the natives quickly learned that 16th-century matchlocks were fired by shoving a flaming fuse into an open pan of gunpowder, a process that took two or three minutes for every shot. In any case, most of the colonists were such dreadful shots, from lack of practice, that their muskets were little more than noisemakers.
By contrast, Indian longbows were fearsomely fast and precise--''far better than the average musket of the Plymouth colonists in rapidity and accuracy of fire," according to the noted arms scholar Harold L. Peterson. Wielded by people who had practiced archery since childhood, they could shoot 10 arrows a minute and were accurate up to 200 yards. To the dismay of colonists at Jamestown in 1607, a Powhatan Indian sank an arrow a foot deep into a target the Europeans thought impervious to an arrow shot--''which was strange," Jamestown council president George Percy observed, ''being that a Pistoll could not pierce it."
Similar stories played out across the hemisphere. Schoolchildren still learn that superior European technology let Francisco Pizarro and a force of 168 Spaniards conquer the Inca in 1532. Pizarro, textbooks say, had two advantages: steel (swords and armor, rifles and cannons) and horses. (Geographer Jared Diamond, in his 1994 bestseller ''Guns, Germs, and Steel," echoes this point.) The Indians had no steel weapons and no animals to ride (llamas are too small). They also lacked the wheel and the arch. With such inferior technology, the Inca had no chance. ''What could [the Inca] offer against this armory?" asked John Hemming, author of a fine history of the conquest. ''They were still fighting in the bronze age."
Most important, the foreigners, coming from lands plagued by recurrent famine, were awed by Indian agriculture. Based on maize, which yields more grain per acre than any other cereal, it used sophisticated techniques that kept the land fertile in ways that Europeans had not seen. A 2003 commentary in the journal Science described the creation of maize as ''arguably man's first, and perhaps his greatest, feat of genetic engineering."
Even the Europeans' purported superiority in military technology was evanescent. The ''peeces" that Winslow thought the Wampanoag wanted, for example, were less than they seemed. To be sure, Indians were disconcerted by their first experiences with European guns: the explosion and smoke, the lack of a visible projectile. But the natives quickly learned that 16th-century matchlocks were fired by shoving a flaming fuse into an open pan of gunpowder, a process that took two or three minutes for every shot. In any case, most of the colonists were such dreadful shots, from lack of practice, that their muskets were little more than noisemakers.
By contrast, Indian longbows were fearsomely fast and precise--''far better than the average musket of the Plymouth colonists in rapidity and accuracy of fire," according to the noted arms scholar Harold L. Peterson. Wielded by people who had practiced archery since childhood, they could shoot 10 arrows a minute and were accurate up to 200 yards. To the dismay of colonists at Jamestown in 1607, a Powhatan Indian sank an arrow a foot deep into a target the Europeans thought impervious to an arrow shot--''which was strange," Jamestown council president George Percy observed, ''being that a Pistoll could not pierce it."
Similar stories played out across the hemisphere. Schoolchildren still learn that superior European technology let Francisco Pizarro and a force of 168 Spaniards conquer the Inca in 1532. Pizarro, textbooks say, had two advantages: steel (swords and armor, rifles and cannons) and horses. (Geographer Jared Diamond, in his 1994 bestseller ''Guns, Germs, and Steel," echoes this point.) The Indians had no steel weapons and no animals to ride (llamas are too small). They also lacked the wheel and the arch. With such inferior technology, the Inca had no chance. ''What could [the Inca] offer against this armory?" asked John Hemming, author of a fine history of the conquest. ''They were still fighting in the bronze age."
9.27.2005
acerca de la instalacion en Bergen
Whether they frustrate or resist the structure that is imposed is not important here. It is the possibility that meaning can be produced at a tactical level, even when a strategic position is denied, that is key. In the case of an imposed structure of spaces – a mathematical description of all possible spaces – it appears that locative media operates at this level of resistance. It starts to take shape as a tactical media: the [murmur] project, for example, has annotated sites in several Canadian cities often overlooked in officially sanctioned histories. Adopting the convention of the ‘commemorative plaque’, spoken word recordings are delivered to mobile phones to provide a commentary on specific locations which are described and located within an established representation of physical space – these are known locations within the scope of street maps....
http://murmurvancouver.ca/
from utangete:
...the most interesting and probably the most urgent thing is to conduct singular and transversal investigations on the margins of these majority formations, to see how people are reacting, innovating, resisting and fleeing.
The goal, then, is to map out the majority models of self and group within each of the emerging continental systems, to see how they function within the megamachines of production and conquest – and at the same time, to cross the normative borders they put into effect, in order to trace microcartographies of difference, dissent, deviance and refusal. For that, it's necessary to travel and to collaborate, to invent concepts and also set-ups, ways of working. One tactic is to juxtapose sociological arguments with activist inventions and artistic experiments. Another is to crisscross the languages, and even better, the families of languages, and to reside in the gaps between their truth claims and sensoriums. But still another is just to drift and see what happens. The ideas of Felix Guattari, particularly in Chaosmosis and the untranslated study, Cartographies schizoanalytiques, can provide a kind of crazy compass for these attempts to articulate something subjectively and collectively, outside the existing frames.
9.26.2005
network
The contemporary basemap references the city as a collection of static landmarks defined by their official boundaries and Cartesian coordinates. However, the city is an enormously dynamic mechanism, which incorporates variable patterns of movement, occupation, and density. The fluctuating nature of wireless networks reinforces these dynamics, while simultaneously calling into question the traditional boundaries of the physical infrastructure. As we develop strategies for creating collaborative maps, using locative media, we must also develop a cartographic language that is well suited to plotting the temporal qualities of this evolving landscape. By visualizing the city through this broader notion of mapping, we have the opportunity to see the landscape in new ways, ultimately becoming aware of the changing practices that inform our notion of place.
___
"Space is a practiced place" [1] - Michel de Certeau
Digital networks and wireless technologies are radically reforming the contemporary notions of urban place. As network technologies move away from their hardwired roots, they are activating an urban dynamic that is no longer based on referencing static landmarks, but on a notion of the city in which spatial references become events. These developments imply a changing pattern of urban reference in which invisible boundaries of connectivity alternately thicken or marginalize the urban territories they overlay.
___
Lately, these unsettled debates over how to think about networks have affected major writings about where societies as a whole may be headed. Consider, for example, this treatment in Francis Fukuyama's The Great Disruption (1999), which does not view networks as a distinctive form of organization that is newly on the rise:
"If we understand a network not as a type of formal organization, but as social capital, we will have much better insight into what a network's economic function really is. By this view, a network is a moral relationship of trust: A network is a group of individual agents who share informal norms or values beyond those necessary for ordinary market transactions. The norms and values encompassed under this definition can extend from the simple norm of reciprocity shared between two friends to the complex value systems created by organized religions" (Fukuyama, 1999, p. 199, italics in original).
This is different from the view espoused by Manuel Castells in The Rise of the Network Society (1996). He recognizes, in a manner not unlike Fukuyama, the importance that values and norms play in the performance of networks and other forms of organization. Yet, his deeper point is that networks are spreading and gaining strength as a distinct form of organization:
"Our exploration of emergent social structures across domains of human activity and experience leads to an overarching conclusion: as a historical trend, dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasingly organized around networks. Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies ... While the networking form of social organization has existed in other times and spaces, the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis for its pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure" (Castells, 1996, p. 469).
Fukuyama's view reflects mainly the social network approach to analysis, Castells's the organizational approach - and his view is more tied to the influence of the information revolution. Our own view is decidedly in the latter camp (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1996, 2000; Ronfeldt, 1992, 1996); but that is not the main point here. The point is that these debates are far from settled; they will persist for years. Meanwhile, where netwar is the object of concern - as in assessing the degree to which an adversary is or is not a netwar actor, and how well it is designed for particular strategies and tactics - the analyst should be steeped in the organizational as much as the social approach. Organizational design is the decisive factor (even when the actors are individuals).
Against this backdrop, good progress at network analysis is being made by anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists who are studying the growing roles of organizational networks in social movements. Their definitions of "network" have not always improved on prior ones. For example, a pathbreaking study of transnational advocacy movements (Keck and Sikkink, 1998) defines networks rather vaguely as "forms of organization characterized by voluntary, reciprocal, and horizontal patterns of communication and exchange" (p. 8). But their full discussion considers all the organizational, doctrinal, technological, and social dynamics that an effective social movement - and netwar actor - requires.
An early study that pointed in this direction, by sociologist Luther Gerlach and anthropologist Virginia Hine, held that U.S. social movements in the 1960s amounted to "segmented, polycentric, ideologically integrated networks" (SPINs). According to Gerlach (1987, p. 115, based on Gerlach and Hine, 1970),
"By segmentary I mean that it is cellular, composed of many different groups... . By polycentric I mean that it has many different leaders or centers of direction... . By networked I mean that the segments and the leaders are integrated into reticulated systems or networks through various structural, personal, and ideological ties. Networks are usually unbounded and expanding... . This acronym [SPIN] helps us picture this organization as a fluid, dynamic, expanding one, spinning out into mainstream society."
The SPIN concept is rarely noticed by scholars who work on social or organizational networks, but it remains highly relevant to understanding the theory and practice of netwar - in many respects, the archetypal netwar design corresponds to a SPIN. While Gerlach (e.g., 1999) has focused mainly on environmental and other social movements in the United States, the SPIN concept illuminates dynamics being developed in various terrorist, criminal, ethnonationalist, and fundamentalist networks around the world.
___
"Space is a practiced place" [1] - Michel de Certeau
Digital networks and wireless technologies are radically reforming the contemporary notions of urban place. As network technologies move away from their hardwired roots, they are activating an urban dynamic that is no longer based on referencing static landmarks, but on a notion of the city in which spatial references become events. These developments imply a changing pattern of urban reference in which invisible boundaries of connectivity alternately thicken or marginalize the urban territories they overlay.
___
Lately, these unsettled debates over how to think about networks have affected major writings about where societies as a whole may be headed. Consider, for example, this treatment in Francis Fukuyama's The Great Disruption (1999), which does not view networks as a distinctive form of organization that is newly on the rise:
"If we understand a network not as a type of formal organization, but as social capital, we will have much better insight into what a network's economic function really is. By this view, a network is a moral relationship of trust: A network is a group of individual agents who share informal norms or values beyond those necessary for ordinary market transactions. The norms and values encompassed under this definition can extend from the simple norm of reciprocity shared between two friends to the complex value systems created by organized religions" (Fukuyama, 1999, p. 199, italics in original).
This is different from the view espoused by Manuel Castells in The Rise of the Network Society (1996). He recognizes, in a manner not unlike Fukuyama, the importance that values and norms play in the performance of networks and other forms of organization. Yet, his deeper point is that networks are spreading and gaining strength as a distinct form of organization:
"Our exploration of emergent social structures across domains of human activity and experience leads to an overarching conclusion: as a historical trend, dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasingly organized around networks. Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies ... While the networking form of social organization has existed in other times and spaces, the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis for its pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure" (Castells, 1996, p. 469).
Fukuyama's view reflects mainly the social network approach to analysis, Castells's the organizational approach - and his view is more tied to the influence of the information revolution. Our own view is decidedly in the latter camp (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1996, 2000; Ronfeldt, 1992, 1996); but that is not the main point here. The point is that these debates are far from settled; they will persist for years. Meanwhile, where netwar is the object of concern - as in assessing the degree to which an adversary is or is not a netwar actor, and how well it is designed for particular strategies and tactics - the analyst should be steeped in the organizational as much as the social approach. Organizational design is the decisive factor (even when the actors are individuals).
Against this backdrop, good progress at network analysis is being made by anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists who are studying the growing roles of organizational networks in social movements. Their definitions of "network" have not always improved on prior ones. For example, a pathbreaking study of transnational advocacy movements (Keck and Sikkink, 1998) defines networks rather vaguely as "forms of organization characterized by voluntary, reciprocal, and horizontal patterns of communication and exchange" (p. 8). But their full discussion considers all the organizational, doctrinal, technological, and social dynamics that an effective social movement - and netwar actor - requires.
An early study that pointed in this direction, by sociologist Luther Gerlach and anthropologist Virginia Hine, held that U.S. social movements in the 1960s amounted to "segmented, polycentric, ideologically integrated networks" (SPINs). According to Gerlach (1987, p. 115, based on Gerlach and Hine, 1970),
"By segmentary I mean that it is cellular, composed of many different groups... . By polycentric I mean that it has many different leaders or centers of direction... . By networked I mean that the segments and the leaders are integrated into reticulated systems or networks through various structural, personal, and ideological ties. Networks are usually unbounded and expanding... . This acronym [SPIN] helps us picture this organization as a fluid, dynamic, expanding one, spinning out into mainstream society."
The SPIN concept is rarely noticed by scholars who work on social or organizational networks, but it remains highly relevant to understanding the theory and practice of netwar - in many respects, the archetypal netwar design corresponds to a SPIN. While Gerlach (e.g., 1999) has focused mainly on environmental and other social movements in the United States, the SPIN concept illuminates dynamics being developed in various terrorist, criminal, ethnonationalist, and fundamentalist networks around the world.
9.17.2005
alej00 on the 81km limit
We are worst than a tipical tourist, we are Media Tourists
this idea of da "Media Tourist" is based on Tapio's text, is introduce here to make us aware of the danger we (drone+soup) face. ending on being nothing more than boring consumist people using fancy technologies. i guess we will agree on moving away from that, so lets try to face towards material that can either, by extreme similarity or by obsecene opposition, breaks the codes of any "touristic" experience of Bergen. (withouth loosing reference to the capitalistic infection of the tourist).
as said on a previous post and in chat2 we have to be also aware of not making up "another" data representation installation...nowadays this is as boring as once so called "interactive" art..
in the blend of the words tourist + agent i dont see what js says: "A tourist IS an agent". If we stick to that wikipedia definition of agent that says that for an agent its ontological commitments are clear... this will then be far from the signs and adverts that moves the superficial wills and convictions of the "tourist". Of course we can call this vageness an ontological drive but it will never have an strong commitment as the agent definition declares making it differ and creating a contradiction in terms, since the tourist is just guided by a whim and the agent has a clear ontological agenda. So far so good as a Title for an exploration. Travel Agent deals also with the "guided tour" idea to which we sing as festival travellers. As "Media Tourists"
being a tourist is to pay to temporarily avoid our own ethics (those related to the territoire where we "belong"), a tourist evades his place and moves 81kmts* to the margins in an attemp to discover the "other" and to report back with videos, photos, emails and postcards as if s/he where out to conquer the world throught repetitively mediatized material.
*(i think it should be one kmt. more than the 80km limit range defined by the World Tourism Organization:)... a possible title/idea to follow. it makes one think about the things we could find at exactly 81kmts outside from the place where the installation should be presented....we could work on a site specific installation 81km away from the center where its should be located. then we can play/use all our gizmos to present it inside of the gallery.
we agree on the Tourist as a departing concept to explore but seems that our perspectives digress, theres no interest in using the "biometrics" of real tourists consuming Bergen. sincerely as i tried to explain in chat2, i think that even tought we should examine the psychology of the "tourist" we know now from our first hand experience that either you sign to make the guided tour or you allow yourself to get lost and follow your instinct.
if we follow the first one is very likely we will end up at queus in macdonals and museusm, follow the tourists in paris..or even bergen..
how to elaborate on the idea of all of us being nothing more than tourists in todays world..sold on t.v as a lastminute trip. when we think we belong to a place, more than anything or anyone we end up awaken by kids that do appropiatte the same city and corners in a much more sincere or to the core way...or even a tourist can come from far to tell us about how splendid is the view from a city tower we have never climb but gew up in gestalt with it.
another thing, how much do the people from Bergen like to have those tourists? phps as much as the switz enjoy the money that jews or indians bring to the economy, and they allow them to make all those stupid questions about yodeling and fondue just because at the end they have the sure conviction they will leave the country in few days. what does a tourist conquer? the answer is clear in godards carabiniers.
about the technical side: i dont want to fall into it to much til we get some conceptual ground where to stand. i hope that we get some input from the other people potentialy involved in this project. since we do need a 3rd perspective to move on.
about the database narrative of lev manovich's soft cinema: it's very exiting in terms of the conceptual uses of metadata to trace the indexes that they (the programmers) use for building his piece. but in terms of user/reader/viewer experience is not exciting at all (personal experience). it misses the point IMHO, to bridge concept and formalization in the piece.
this idea of da "Media Tourist" is based on Tapio's text, is introduce here to make us aware of the danger we (drone+soup) face. ending on being nothing more than boring consumist people using fancy technologies. i guess we will agree on moving away from that, so lets try to face towards material that can either, by extreme similarity or by obsecene opposition, breaks the codes of any "touristic" experience of Bergen. (withouth loosing reference to the capitalistic infection of the tourist).
as said on a previous post and in chat2 we have to be also aware of not making up "another" data representation installation...nowadays this is as boring as once so called "interactive" art..
in the blend of the words tourist + agent i dont see what js says: "A tourist IS an agent". If we stick to that wikipedia definition of agent that says that for an agent its ontological commitments are clear... this will then be far from the signs and adverts that moves the superficial wills and convictions of the "tourist". Of course we can call this vageness an ontological drive but it will never have an strong commitment as the agent definition declares making it differ and creating a contradiction in terms, since the tourist is just guided by a whim and the agent has a clear ontological agenda. So far so good as a Title for an exploration. Travel Agent deals also with the "guided tour" idea to which we sing as festival travellers. As "Media Tourists"
being a tourist is to pay to temporarily avoid our own ethics (those related to the territoire where we "belong"), a tourist evades his place and moves 81kmts* to the margins in an attemp to discover the "other" and to report back with videos, photos, emails and postcards as if s/he where out to conquer the world throught repetitively mediatized material.
*(i think it should be one kmt. more than the 80km limit range defined by the World Tourism Organization:)... a possible title/idea to follow. it makes one think about the things we could find at exactly 81kmts outside from the place where the installation should be presented....we could work on a site specific installation 81km away from the center where its should be located. then we can play/use all our gizmos to present it inside of the gallery.
we agree on the Tourist as a departing concept to explore but seems that our perspectives digress, theres no interest in using the "biometrics" of real tourists consuming Bergen. sincerely as i tried to explain in chat2, i think that even tought we should examine the psychology of the "tourist" we know now from our first hand experience that either you sign to make the guided tour or you allow yourself to get lost and follow your instinct.
if we follow the first one is very likely we will end up at queus in macdonals and museusm, follow the tourists in paris..or even bergen..
how to elaborate on the idea of all of us being nothing more than tourists in todays world..sold on t.v as a lastminute trip. when we think we belong to a place, more than anything or anyone we end up awaken by kids that do appropiatte the same city and corners in a much more sincere or to the core way...or even a tourist can come from far to tell us about how splendid is the view from a city tower we have never climb but gew up in gestalt with it.
another thing, how much do the people from Bergen like to have those tourists? phps as much as the switz enjoy the money that jews or indians bring to the economy, and they allow them to make all those stupid questions about yodeling and fondue just because at the end they have the sure conviction they will leave the country in few days. what does a tourist conquer? the answer is clear in godards carabiniers.
about the technical side: i dont want to fall into it to much til we get some conceptual ground where to stand. i hope that we get some input from the other people potentialy involved in this project. since we do need a 3rd perspective to move on.
about the database narrative of lev manovich's soft cinema: it's very exiting in terms of the conceptual uses of metadata to trace the indexes that they (the programmers) use for building his piece. but in terms of user/reader/viewer experience is not exciting at all (personal experience). it misses the point IMHO, to bridge concept and formalization in the piece.
9.02.2005
Neanderthal
"Yet the evidence is here that modern humans could cope with cold conditions better than the Neanderthals thanks to culture and technology, for instance with better clothing, better fire control and perhaps better shelters."
readme de .tb
Hacktivismo's .tb .tb is a portable, Live(-CD) Linux Operating System. The goal consists of creating a secure-by-default, trusted Internet communication-and connectivity platform with anonymized connections, and secured storage, out of the box, on top of a portable OS, supporting a maximum of diverse hardware and media. It can be compiled entirely from sources (and hence, entirely customized, if you want) for reasons of peer-review and trust, hence the name Trusted Build -- .tb. Trusted Builds Trusted organizations like Hacktivismo, but also other independents, like EFF, human rights groups, and organizations who wish to prepare a build for their own target group can offer binary Trusted Builds, LiveCD ISOs, by running the INSTALL script and using the TBuild folder and gentoo sources downloaded from the net. If you build from sources, you basically copy and paste the contents from the "INSTALL" file to a Linux shell. The copy and paste is ONLY necessary because the script contains 'chroot' parts, which are not easy to automate, and because supervision of the build process is recommended (not necessary). Besides that, it is as easy as running a normal script. If you need a MAC version, you must build on a MAC Linux, if you want a PC version, on a x86 Linux. One may hand-edit the INSTALL file and TBase files to change things, e.g. the default CD-Encryption passphrase ("freedom") or the default login/password ("user"/"hacktivismo"). The building from source is the difficulty level of Admin, i.e. any Linux system administrator can handle this, and the trust of something you built from sources is maximum. Using a Trusted Build (binary LiveCD .ISO), created by an organization, requires no skill or prior notice, and the trust for end-users is how much they trust the party who made the binary build. To make this easy and secure, Hacktivismo .tb was based on the popular Gentoo Linux distribution, since it can entirely be created from source with simple instructions, and because Gentoo supports many different CPU architectures in builds from scratch. As an extra bonus, a Gentoo-based build takes away maintenance and update costs away from Hacktivismo .tb itself, since any new Hacktivismo .tb build uses the very latest stable Gentoo and other Open-Source packages, and Gentoo is maintained by hundreds of contributors and always up-to-date, including dedicated handling for security alerts and updates. Easily built from scratch So, .tb comes also as a readymade bootable CD/System-Image for end-users with practically no prior technical knowledge. But the complete way of creating Hacktivismo .tb is based on a 5-stage copy-paste INSTALL script, and this will be done exclusively from common sources available from Gentoo servers, and a small Configuration Package (TBuilder/TBase) from Hacktivismo that customizes them to become .tb. To create it from scratch according to the INSTALL script, you just need a Linux account of your choice (on the same CPU architecture you want to create it for), about 36 hours of compilation, 2GByte free space and about 500 MBytes of installation traffic, and perparation time, 98% of which requires no interaction, just CPU, HD, and network resources. Current Packages And Features The size goal of Hacktivismo .tb is to stay under 600Mbytes, yet always be fully customizable and compilable from source (today, no other Live-CD Linux distribution can be hand-compiled or customized from scratch!). It right away boots into X11 with the simplistic Fluxbox window manager, and comes with: Browser - Firefox and Lynx Mail - Sylpheed-Claws Filesharing - MLDonkey (supports all popular filesharing protocols, w/ GUI) Crypto - GPG for PGP crypto (and the full Linux crypto API) Terminal/Modem - Minicom (and PPPD, PPPOED) Secure Chat - SILC and Naim Editors - vim, xpdf and ted (office-like rich-text-format editor) Also, Hacktivismo .tb contains a kudzu-based hardware auto-configuration system, and supports, detects and activates most common devices automatically. This includes automatically activating the network, if DHCP is available. For further required network-, system-, and media-mounting configuration, a streamlined, extremely easy to use, configuration GUI is planned for Hacktivismo .tb. A related essential TODO is, for whenever a storage medium such as a USB stick is available, to save the modified user information from the home directory such as browser settings, mail settings and emails, private keys, and personal files, securely encrypted on that external (e.g. USB) medium in a user-friendly dialogue. Common media and encryption are already supported. Crypto by default Our goal of maximum privacy includes, that every communication made through the system, is by default encrypted and/or anonymized. To achieve this, we currently build on the Onion Routing project (tor). A tor-proxy is run by default and interacts with privoxy for anonymized HTTP sessions and dante for anonymized SOCKS5 sessions through which all generic TCP applications are tunneled, while all HTTP/SOCKS5 traffic passes through the TOR node. In the GUI menu of the X environment, all applications by default will tunnel through TOR via HTTP or SOCKS5 (socksify) for anonymization. Nobody can figure out who you're talking to, or what you're actually saying when doing this. We chose TOR as an encrypted anonymizing and traffic remixing service over e.g. Freenet or Six/Four because it 1) has already deployed a reliable (test-) infrastructure, similar to the MixMaster remailers, and 2) works very reliably as a transparent tunnel without configuration overhead, 3) and even with NAT. NOTE: TOR may be functional, but is still under development. There is no real guarantee of its full anonymity/privacy features yet. The important key concept is that we tunnel traffic by default over an Anonymizing Infrastructure, and that this stands. We may wait for TOR to mature, or find a generic solution based on Freenet, Java AnonProxy, Ciphire, or a Six/Four successor. Tailormade for extreme scenarios When created fully according to the instructions, Hacktivismo .tb comes as an encrypted CD ISO image with only a small boot loader section in plain text. Everyone who creates a Hacktivismo .tb from scratch can chose his own passphrase. Thereforce, in countries where the sole posession of Hacktivismo .tb may be dangerous, far less can be proven: if one does not know the start-up passphrase, the Live CD will remain 99% unreadable. Hacktivismo .tb recognizes the need to be very stealthy. Since it is a Live-CD, the filesystem is mirrored in RAM, and changes and new data are only written to memory, never to disk. And, for example, the default REBOOT menu button will restart the system within at least the next 5 seconds when pressed, removing all compromising information from memory. A future goal is to start off that Live System not just by booting it as a CD, but by launching directly into the downloaded image from Windows. This could already be done simply by VMware, but we want it working in really all situations. We may download the CD image and a launcher application in a format that the 'debug.com' from Windows translates back into binary, in case that executable download is not permitted. The launcher, probably similar to the old-fashioned 'LoadLin' might read the image in memory and soft-restart the machine into the Hacktivismo .tb operating system. Our work regarding user protection in extreme scenarios is and will always be an ongoing effort, and we are always up to feedback and individual requirements and experiences in this area. Team Hacktivismo
9.01.2005
fur piksel et al
We live in a world overly contaminated. Both material and inmaterial waste, remnants of human activities, toxic and poisonous imperialistic images flowing through mainstream media as: texts, sounds, videos electronically paired via metadata indexes; and every computer in the network feeding this manic vortex ad-infinitum.
Jean Baudrillard called out for a halt, a "stop!" for the production of more images, more "content", in an attempt to eventually find a way to rethink ourselves again.
Along the same lines we will like to ask if sometimes we reach a similar level in the universe of open source programming, particulary the scale of LiveCD's has proved that the offer surpases by far the demand and even the needs of a certain group of users. Becoming hermetic tools used only by their developers.
We believe that the act of trimming down and making simplified tools to develop precise and specific tasks might be the way to find in this very structure the sense for insurgent programming. And the adoption of this tools ba a wider audience.
But, is there a reason for stopping programmers from developing "new" applications? we tend to think that to call their attention at least, to force a pause from witch they rethink their many times loose efforts could be somehow a sane act. At least to re aim the targets and save the bullets, specially when artisticly driven programmers are so few and amunitions run low so fast.
What about concetrating efforts on instead of the development of "new" things, programming could be building bridges between many of those great software dispositivs that pre-exist. So to make our weapons more precise and stronger? There is no question about the fact that every programmer checks first what is out there before beginning, an economical attitude that could save menthal energy and phisical efforts to the task. Is his/her desition to embark in beginning from scratch, a desition based on a complex judgement of quality, originality, usability or simply another everyday egotistical selfish human act.
We think that in this very economical attemp a programmer that works for an artistic goal should invest his efforts on imbricating his work within the pre-existing world of applications.
We tend to think that in the realm of artistic production there might not be a need for new applications but a need for a creative enterprise that situates many of those pieces of software already written/growing out there in the Open Sorce universe. A process in witch one can trace that what holds together the artistic practices we work for in the less of the institutionalized ways.
"Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program". (basic unix principle)
Jean Baudrillard called out for a halt, a "stop!" for the production of more images, more "content", in an attempt to eventually find a way to rethink ourselves again.
Along the same lines we will like to ask if sometimes we reach a similar level in the universe of open source programming, particulary the scale of LiveCD's has proved that the offer surpases by far the demand and even the needs of a certain group of users. Becoming hermetic tools used only by their developers.
We believe that the act of trimming down and making simplified tools to develop precise and specific tasks might be the way to find in this very structure the sense for insurgent programming. And the adoption of this tools ba a wider audience.
But, is there a reason for stopping programmers from developing "new" applications? we tend to think that to call their attention at least, to force a pause from witch they rethink their many times loose efforts could be somehow a sane act. At least to re aim the targets and save the bullets, specially when artisticly driven programmers are so few and amunitions run low so fast.
What about concetrating efforts on instead of the development of "new" things, programming could be building bridges between many of those great software dispositivs that pre-exist. So to make our weapons more precise and stronger? There is no question about the fact that every programmer checks first what is out there before beginning, an economical attitude that could save menthal energy and phisical efforts to the task. Is his/her desition to embark in beginning from scratch, a desition based on a complex judgement of quality, originality, usability or simply another everyday egotistical selfish human act.
We think that in this very economical attemp a programmer that works for an artistic goal should invest his efforts on imbricating his work within the pre-existing world of applications.
We tend to think that in the realm of artistic production there might not be a need for new applications but a need for a creative enterprise that situates many of those pieces of software already written/growing out there in the Open Sorce universe. A process in witch one can trace that what holds together the artistic practices we work for in the less of the institutionalized ways.
"Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program". (basic unix principle)
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