Just Bru

Halfway between Art and SocioTechnical geekery you can find Speakers Corner, a unique project developed by The Media Centre: it takes a live feed from website or your mobile phone and feeds it directly to a 15 metre public display in the centre of Huddersfield, UK.
More info on SmartMobs.

For those who wonder, Wikipedia can help explain where Speakers Corner comes from :)

So today I arrived in the office today, fired up iTunes, but as I knew, Zio Radio was silent.
After a week on air (and on IRC, skype, whatever) the experiment is over.

Very compliments Antonio and all the people who contributed to it!!!

P.S.: now waiting for the podcasts...

His images, powered by the words of Neil Gaiman, populated my dreams and set afire my imagination for years.

Now his works are exposed in Milan (until feb. 12th).
I missed the vernissage yesterday (damn!) but today tomorrow I'm definitely going to see it!!!

So, If you happen to be in Milan and willing to either see the exposition or just have chat in real life, leave a comment or send me an email.

Also, on monday evening there'll be a projection of Dave McKean's clips and shorts at Spazio Oberdan.

Thanks e-dezani for the link!

The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network (PLAN) is holding a two day workshop at the ICA ( Institute of Contemporary Arts) on Tuesday 1st and Wednesday 2nd February 2005.

From the official announcement

The event launches a new international network (PLAN), bringing together artists, activists, hardware hackers, bloggers, game programmers, free network builders, semantic web philosophers, cartographers, economists, architects, and university and industry researchers.

Many many interesting speakers. Jo Walsh and Schuyler Erle among them :) I'll try to be there at least on wednesday. If you feel like having a beer together, sign on the wiki :)

From February 24th to March 1st in various location of Turin, there'll be the Piemonte Share Festival.
The program is definitely rich and sounds quite interesting... even if somebody found the presentation quite boring ;)

Sharing, con la Regione Piemonte, la Provincia e il Comune di Torino, organizzano la prima edizione di PIEMONTE_SHARE_FESTIVAL dedicato alla cultura digitale e ai new media.

PIEMONTE SHARE FESTIVAL rappresenta l’edizione italiana dei più importanti festival internazionali (Transmediale a Berlino, Ars Electronica a Linz, Sonàr a Barcellona) ed è aperto a collaborazioni con le realtà italiane più disposte a condividere creatività.

The next Digital Arts and Culture conference is going to be in Copenhagen, December 1-3, and the call for papers is just out! Full papers to be submitted by August 1.

Via Jill

For the month of March, two artists in a long-distance relationship are going to put all their electronic communication online. Phone conversations, emails, IMs, camera phone pics, the lot, it’ll all be online under a Creative Commons licence. IN Network, the performance is called.

Well, it's not really “hot news”, since it is already 4 days old but, following the flow of my latest post, I decided to publish also this:
there is goig to be an animation movie adaptation of Philip K.Dick's A Scanner Darkly novel. Here is the trailer (Quicktime), and here the IMDB link. More on Boing Boing.

The animation technique is really interesting, it uses real actors with what I suppose are many layers of animation sketches above them, the final effect is really eerie (take a look at the trailer, it's worth). Oh, and yes, it stars Keanu Reeves, but, much more interesting, it stars Winona Ryder :)

So finally I produced my first podcast.
It took a few steps to get me here:
1. listening to Joi speaking about CreativeCommons and getting interested into it once again
2. find the time and will to study how enclosures work with RSS2
3. create something worth to be published in audio format

I already blogged about the first point, and setting up CodeWitch for enclosures in the end was just a matter of downloading and installing the MTEnclosures plugin, plus a little template tweaking.
About step 3, I decided to take some CC licensed stuff and create a derivative work of it. So I chose a beautiful short story (in Italian) by kirjava, read it aloud, and mixed it with a song I found a while ago through the CC search engine. The quality of the recording is quite poor at the moment (I used the internal mic of my laptop), but it's more than enough for a proof of concept. The resulting work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, as required by its components, and available here for download.
If you are using a podcast enable newsreader (such as ipodder), you should also see the attachment to the feed.

Ever found yourself explaining things via onomathopeic sounds read on a comic? Ever witnessed teenager chat and speak about stuff in terms of manga or anime characters and lexycon?

Psionic Distortion explores how anime, manga and digital technology are continually shaping contemporary art and ideas. Sadly enough the exposition is going to be in NYC.
Thanks Veer for the link.

A few days ago, google announced his new beta program. This time, the bit of life it's asking (or giving the opportunity, it depends just on how you want to think at it) us to share is videos.
At first I didn't give it much notice, maybe just because I don't own a videocam.
Today, after reading a couple of Italian articles on the matter, I decided to at least have a look at how it should work (if only I had that camera).

First thing I noticed is that to apply to the beta program G needs "a little more information about me". This made me smile and remember this post from Lilia, made at the time of google desktop.

Second thing is that the uploader is a windows only binary. Crap. This put an end to my test.

Anyway, the program sounds quite interesting: no cost for uploading, no limit to the size of videos. As Luca Lizzeri says in one of the article mentioned above: This. Changes. Everything. [...] I love the smell of burning business models in the morning

Indeed, with distribution costs drawn to 0 like that, support for extensive metadata (as we geek call related information) and transcripts, this can become a remarkable tool in a pro-am toolbelt.

Can we say the age of (popular) videoblogging officially begun?

Once satellite etc. is standard equipment in new cars, that's the last straw.

People will pay to control their media. They'll also pay for the long tail. They'll also pay to avoid commercials. 3 strikes...

“Can television one day be something completely different from the content the entertainment industry is currently serving us? Can TV be an ”art terminal“ that brings a slow, inspiring flow of funky images into people’s homes, [...]”

The idea is that the “silly box” could be used as an ever evolving painting which displays silent slow moving images instead of shows and TV series which do not really interest us.

This is a project developed at Carnegie Mellon for Masters in Human Computer Interaction.
It involves a new “road broadcasting” concept, in order to allow anyone to have their own radio station, broadcasted among cars in an ad-hoc network within a 30-mile radius. It plays the songs that people want to hear and transforms car radio into an interactive medium.

They kindly made source code available, to encourage the development of the service. (source: we-make-money-not-art)

The site is currently under slashdot-effect, so I still have to read the full specification, but it made me go back in memory to Medialab's tunA project, which involved mobile phones.
Proximity radios, local broadcasting... how a place or situation or mob can “drive” the sound around? This is going to be an hot-topic. Mark my words.

Yesterday Vanz asked for the development of a greasemonkey script to create a playlist from all the mp3 linked on a web page and start streaming them.
In less than one day Enrico Battocchi developed the script starting from the XSPF player.

So, what are you waiting for? Let's turn FireFox into a Web JukeBox!!!

Here are the instructions, translated into english:
1. Install GreasMonkey on FireFox (actually, step 0 would be getfirefox, if you don't have it yet), then restart FireFox in order to make the extension available

2. Install the needed script: Pageplaylist (click on the script link, then go to menu Tools / Install Script )

3. Finally, go to a page with linked mp3s... for example, let's go to Dj Earworm. You will see a sticky small grey player in the upper-left corner of the page, and it will start playing the linked files.
It also has all the essential commands you would expect from a music player, so in the end this solution is also quite usable.

The only annoying thing is that, as of this version I still have to find a way to hide the player. Well, the simple solution is to disable greasemonkey and reload the page, ok...

Pac-Man seems to be the favourite target for experimentations in new gaming concepts: after the live action PacManhattan (a large-scale urban game set in New York City and created by Dennis Crowley), and a few other variants, now Terranova reports this Human Pacman project, where

Players equipped with a wearable computer, headset and goggles can physically enter a real world game space by choosing to play the role of Pacman or one of the Ghosts.

The Terranova article ends with a couple of interesting guesses that made me smile:

Toru Iwatani turned his pizza thoughts into Pac-Man in the 1980... so that slates the trial run of augmented reality WoW for 2030 or so?  Any thoughts on how pervasive gaming relates to the MMORPG genre?  Is pervasive gaming techno-LARPing?

Well I think it could be much closer than that, and probably RFID+cellphones will make it even easier and less cumbersome than having to deal with cybergoggles.

Regine blogs about Hibrid Identities being talked about at Ars Electronica.
It depicts three realities that are changing metaphysics (and thus art) nowadays: biologixcal reality, technological reality, hybrid reality.

Somehow, this makes me think at Terra Nova's Four Worlds Theory that I bookmarked a few days ago.

I received the invitation to a personal exposition of digital artist Owen Ransen, that will be held in Pregnana Milanese (near Milan) from September 17th to 24th.
I don't know personally the artist, but it's been introduced to me as one of the rare examples of programmer-artists. Here are past works that has been exposed at the Biennale di Venezia and in Milan.
I'm definitely curious to see it. I'll tell you more :)

March 2006 will be such an event full month one should definitely learn how to become ubiquitous.
But if you still do no miracles, definitely London can be a good place to hang out.

One of the main reasons will be the NODE.London exhibition.
As they write on the homepage:

NODE.London [Networked, Open, Distributed, Events. London] is committed to building the infrastructure and raising the visibility of media arts practice in London. Working on an open, collaborative basis, NODE.London will culminate, in its first year, in a month long season of media arts projects across London in March 2006.

The calendar is here.

At first glance, among the many projects (there are really MANY of them, take a look by yourself), those that I'll try not to loose (either out of pure curiousity or real interest) are:

Regine is going to curate the Digital Art a la Carte section for Sonar, the upcoming festival of advanced music and multimedia art that's coming in Barcelona on June 15-17.
She asked for suggestion and/or proposal. If you have any idea, go ahead and comment on her blog!

I have a couple of ideas so far but i'm sure many of you have much more knowledge on the subject than me. So if you can think of any creative, surprising and fun to spend time with project that use Google Earth or Google Earth as a tool, please comment on this post or drop me a line at reg at we-make-money-not-art "place the dot here" com.
we make money not art

This night (06/05 7pm) at the ICA:

A unique opportunity for immersion in the depth and breadth of work produced by cult artist and director McKean over his illustrious and multi-faceted career.

In conjunction with onedotzero’s special screening of Mirrormask, his first feature film, McKean will present a visual history of his lifelong interdisciplinary approach to creativity, discussing his early illustrations, comics, and music videos, and the relationship of this work to the process of creating a feature. A truly hybrid artist, McKean incarnates the diversity that onedotzero has always promoted.
90 minutes approx.

I've been following McKean's career for a few years now, and I must say that seeing his works, as he progresses in his exploration of the various forms of visual art and as I progress in my own journey through life, always results in a good source of inspiration. Great expectation for just a tuesday night out, you say? Let's go and see :)

Dave McKean's talk was nearly as good as expected.
To be honest, in the few early minutes I was not relly impressed: the whole thing started with Dave sitting in a corner of the stage, behind his powerbook, clicking through the slides of his personal portfolio (that, after two days spent watching funambolic speeches made by people who seemed to be able to have an empathic link with their slideshow, feels so past generation) and reading a comic story. What? No wait, I didn't come here to listen to you reading a graphic novel sir... but then, well mate, the man can read!
And knows how to tell a story, because that's what he is: a storyteller. And that, I discovered, is the reason why I like his work.
Indeed, the magic of the evening has been peeking at the artist behind the mask, and finding out some of his patterns, motivations, attitude, which eventually lead to a couple of innuendos about my own way to see creativity, art, and ultimately life itself.

Quickly, those can be summarized as:
* The importance of music as a language (both of us chose between music and something else)
* The importance of stories (and stories withing stories, everything is about telling a tale)
* A practical, "here and now" approach to storytelling: Dave higlighted this attitude in contrast with Neil Gaiman mythical/archetypical approach. I think archetypes are great too, but useless if are not aimed at giving clues about the very present moment.

Last but not least, at my question about how the relationship with music changed now that he's dealing with moving images and where does the "Week before" soundtrack come from, Dave replied:
"Well, I chose that music because listening to it you cannot help but smile"
And, I say, that's all what there is.

I'll fly to Italy tomorrow night, just for a couple of days. Too little to meet all the people I'm missing day by day, but enough to share a chat with anybody who'll be at the Flickr meeting in Milano on Sunday.

In the meanwhile, here in London there are a few worthwhile events for those who'll wander by the Thames:
as the Architecture Biennale goes on, this night at the Tate Modern you'll have a chance to attend to the Regeneration debate:

elving into the complex issues surrounding the regeneration of our ageing capital, leading figures from the world of architecture and urban planning ask what it takes to create a sustainable city and how to spend London’s regeneration funds effectively. The discussion focuses in particular on regeneration projects within Southwark, especially around Bankside, Borough and Elephant and Castle.

Eight quids. Quite something.

On friday, Trafalgar square will see the coming of Theo Jensen's Strandbeesten. If you miss this, they will be on display at the ICA from the 3rd of July. Jensen will also give a speech on 5th of July.

By the way, the Architecture Biennale is a good excuse to explore central London, and there are a few interesting installations here and there. In Clerkenwell Green for example you can find a huge weird thing halfway between an alien christmas tree and Matrix's harvesters that is supposed to grant inspiration and a lift to your spirits in the midst of the urban grind. I've been there twice, and aside from a guy mangling with his vaio connected to the big thing and a lot of coloured leds nothing happened there.
But probably you're expected to go there before dusk.

Will be back to London on or about next monday.

I'm at the Hummous Bros of Wardour street, where I finally uploaded Headshift video contribution to Frontiers06. Boys, this has been long. Now I know that making a video is something ;)

And, by the way, this hummous is just awesome!

P.S.: while I'm writing this youtube is still crunching the movie... let's cross our fingers...

This is something that can get me back to the cinema, fool London ticket prices notwithstanding: Dark Materials film gets green light.

So yesterday on saturday I went and saw Generation, the Summer Show of Royal College of Art.
Ok, if you want the prototype of events that I find absolutely mind blowing, this is the case: from interaction design to design products, architecture, printmaking, and many other fields all mixed in a nice venue and with the opportunity to talk to the (sometime a little tired, other times really fresh and excited) authors.
Just three projects among all:

Availabot
a.k.a. put a doll of your IM contacts on your (physical) desktop.

Design for the Computer Obsessive

Provocative, simple idea but oh so smart.

Make/Shift

It's just amazing: self-sustaining shelves, no need for screws, thought for those who move often... and I want one of those in my house!

If you're getting excited and want more, have a look at WMMA's coverage :)

Olga is presenting artstream, her art project on how to improve museum experience through the cunning use of mobile technologies and web2.0.

Basically the idea is that you can comment and “fav” pieces of the exhibtion, see extra elements like video interview with the artist and social functions like audio comments from other people.

Then you can switch to offline mode, where you can re-organize the experience, managing contacts, comments and so on.

Personally I think this would be quite cool an application, bringing actual social power to museum consumption, which is something that usually ends with the end of the visit itself, and is bound to be synchronous. Actually some work in this direction can already be seen at the V&A for example (with podcasts and community events)... yet another potential evidence that this is a good path.

Oh, and it makes use of shared google calendars :D

Things that can make you smile out of the blue: it happens when you browse through engadget and find a link to a interesting project about london, underground, music... "cool" you think, and then go to the desisgner's page and find... the face of Arianna, supersmartgirl from Italy currently spending her time between brixton, lse and california.

Ciao and good luck :)

...talk about urban art :)

[via information aestetics]

Today was one of those in which I love London weather: crispy but not too chilly, generally clear and sunny but with huge black clouds passing by. I had the chance to do a short walk around lunchtime and at some point I simply had to indulge and stop dashing, relax, slow down and stare around a little bit.

The evening also came with a wonderful halloween treat. After work I went straight to the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm where Imogen Heap was going to play tonight. I didn't know her at all (before tonight), but trusting Francesca's tastes and the fact that the line to get in was insanely long, I happily added myself to the insane mob and waited for the theatre to swallow us all.
In the meanwhile, I enjoyed a conversation with two really cute female yeti (that is, the costume was all white and snowflakelike) from San Francisco, California. Being caught between them on one side and my Canadian friend on the other immediately short circuited my oldworld-trained english translating neuron (yeah, it's just one and goes by the name of Jeeves), so for the most part of our queue time I just nodded politely. Oh by the way I featured a nice "tamed werewolf" costume that nobody understood. Go figure.

When finally we got to the inside of the round shaped building, I had a double revelation: 1. the roundhouse is a really cool place. It's got a wooden dome and black, old fashioned metallic columns dividing the balconies from the pit/stage area. The impression I had by looking at it ceiling to floor and following the wooden structure lines meeting the iron and wires and stage lights was that of a well organized complexity.
The artist herself was the second (2) revelation. Nothing astonishingly new, but done with style. The way she live records herself and the other instruments to build a multi-track performance that gets more and more complex as the theme unveils is quite something. And in more than one occasion I just found myself pleasantly "tricked" as she chose some unexpected passage or combination of chords and rhythm.
Finally, before Imogen played this guy, armed just with a trumpet and a powerbook; couldn't pick up his name, but definitely have to find out who he is (and his records).

Like all best fairy tales, the evening ended quite early but, as I wrote, with the nice warm fuzzy feeling of fresh discoveries.

From Dave's twitter:

someone graffiti-bombed the hell out of Camden Town tube station over the holiday and it looks beautiful[...]

And he dutifully posted all pictures on flickr. Awesome!