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second loop | 1 Jun 02:27
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Second Loop, the feedback between us and our avatars

Second Loop, the feedback between us and our avatars
http://secondloop.wordpress.com/

"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us."
- Marshall McLuhan

"[T]he mirror stage is a phenomenon to which I assign a twofold value.
In the first place, it has historical value as it marks a decisive
turning-point in the mental development of the child. In the second
place, it typifies an essential libidinal relationship with the
body-image"
- Jacques Lacan

Hi. I'm Azdel Slade. I wanted to call this blog dreams of life, but it
was taken. In a way, Second Life is a lot like a dream, an expression
of desires and fears, of the unconscious. It is also in a lot of ways
like a nightmare. And, the way we see ourselves in our dreams, in both
senses of sleeptime dreams and hopes and dreams, effects how we shape
ourselves. I'll be writing here about my explorations in Second Life.
There will be writing on lots of different topics such as identity,
avatars, economics, politics, gender, sex. Why here? When I started
thinking about blogging about SL, I quickly realized that I don't
necessarily want my avatar tied to my RL identity, at least not yet. I
still want to be able to play "in world" and write about it here
without everyone knowing all about my RL. You might have figured out
who I am, but maybe you can keep it to yourself for a bit while I use
this space for writing and experimenting.

What happens after Macluhan's quote, where our tools shape us? What
happens in the feedback loop where we shape our tools and our tools
(Continue reading)

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mez breeze | 1 Jun 02:56
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Unpacking the _Synthaptic_: Version 1.


Unpacking the _Synthaptic_: Version
1.<http://arsvirtuafoundation.org/research/2008/05/30/unpacking-the-_synthaptic_-version-1/>
Posted May 30th, 2008 by mez

Biological science defines _synapses_ as neural units that primarily
operate as a juncture between neurons. Synapses are viewed as
conductors that are essential in determining functions in the central
nervous system. Synaptic connections provide for transmission and
production of information crucial to the survival of the relevant
organism. Each synaptic connection operates via surges in a system
dependent on constant electrochemical streaming. In Synthetic
environments, a similar fluid process of content absorption and
production, social data surging and information engagement is termed
_Synthapticism_.

Synaptic performance is specific to a biological organism; in
contrast, synthaptic functioning is specific to synthetic spaces and
the entities that inhabit them. Synthetics engage synthaptically
through a networked equivalent of geospatial orientation, biochemical
triggering and geophysical body language. These equivalences are
dependent on the platform[s] involved and levels of operational
focus generated. This focus is represented by a concentrated
mass of aggregational attention. An illustration of how this
focused/concentrated attention manifests is the phenomena of
_Crowdsourcing_. Crowdsourcers produce clusters of user-mediated
data through surges of concentrated attention. MMOGs also utilize
aggregational-generated information through the construction of guilds
or collectives.
(Continue reading)

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Patrice Riemens | 2 Jun 11:13
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Suicide States/ Extermination Politics # 46 (Dubai)


ExecSum: Come from Amsterdam; Fly to Dubai; Go to Jail!

Zero tolerance + hi-tech detection devices ferreting out even the most
minute amount of prohibited substance (chose yours) sends you to where
you belong anyway: jail. When Singapore will (not if, when) jump into
this game, it'll be where you belong even more: hanging short and
high.

no cheers again, patrizio and Diiiinooos!

(NB I was attended to this news thru the french mag 'Marianne', in
a short, ironical article. The subject line is of course pure Paul
Virilio - thank you J.A. ! ;-)

>From The Times
March 24, 2008

Endemol exec sent to Dubai jail after customs find 'speck of dirt'
Warning to travellers over Dubai drug laws as it is claimed officials
'are paid bounty for each arrest'

A speck of dirt invisible to the human eye was all it took to land Cat
Le Huy in a Dubai jail.

Officials at Dubai airport claimed they had found 0.03 grams of
hashish in the Endemol television executive’s bag after he had
travelled to the United Arab Emirates to visit a friend last month.
They accused him of possession — which would have led to a mandatory
four-year prison sentence had he been convicted. After he spent six
(Continue reading)

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Michael Dieter | 5 Jun 03:09
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Paper and Pixels in Love: An Email Interview with Alessandro Ludovico

Thought the list might be interested in this short interview with
Alessandro Ludovico, a co-founder of nettime. This piece was recently
published in volume 18 of antiTHESIS, a postgraduate journal based in the
School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne.

Paper and Pixels in Love:
An Email Interview with Alessandro Ludovico
By Michael Dieter and Nicole Heber

Alessandro Ludovico has engaged in communication and media aesthetics as a
practitioner, theorist and curator. Since 1993, he has been the
editor-in-chief of Neural, an influential new media culture magazine
published in both English and Italian [http://www.neural.it/]. He is also
one of the founding members of the nettime list and of the Mag.Net
(Magazine Network of Electronic Cultural Publishers) organisation.

In the following brief interview, conducted via email between January and
May 2008, Ludovico discusses topics ranging from Italian traditions of
hacktivism, the apparent institutional marginalisation of media art and
possibilities for conceptual aesthetic approaches to the digital culture.

1. Could you explain something of how you originally developed an interest
in media art? We understand you had an early involvement with 'mail art'
and fanzines, to what extent have these practices informed your thought
around exploratory and aesthetic approaches to distributed communication
networks?

Fanzines were an effective, cheap and archival medium for sharing ideas in
freedom of expression soaked subcultures. Mail Art in my opinion was 'the
net before the net'. Its spontaneous network of artist supporting
(Continue reading)

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Felix Stalder | 5 Jun 10:29
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NEWBORN -- Undeliverable?

NEWBORN -- Undeliverable?
-> http://newborn.krcf.org

A truck is circulating through Zurich. Seven extra-large letters stand on 
its open holding area. They form the word NEWBORN. At different locations, 
the trucks pulls up. A rapper, EKI NOX, performs. But the truck has to 
leave again after a very short time. Will its cargo remain undeliverable?

This intervention examines how multiple, translocal networks constitute 
themselves in the common local space of Zurich and how they develop 
specific forms of visibility and invisibility within the public space. The 
truck with the NEWBORN sign serves as focal point triggering responses 
which will render these presences visible to all.

The original meaning of the NEWBORN sign will be evident primarily to 
migrants from the Balkans. Many of them were either present in person, or 
via the media, when an almost identical sculpture was unveiled at the 
Mother Theresa Square in Pristina when the independence of the Kosovo was 
declared (02.17.2008). For the Kosovo-Albanians, that sculpture symbolizes 
a new phase of their self-constitution. Not just in the Kosovo, but also 
in Zurich. Since the establishment of the state, the Kosovo-Albanian 
community in Switzerland is beginning to (re)present itself in the public 
sphere  on their own terms. Kosovo-Albanians will also understand the 
rapper whose lyrics are partly in Albanian and how he interprets the 
NEWBORN sign from his individual perspective.

The issue of a 'new beginning' is also present in the Swiss political 
public, not the least through recurring debates over and votes on the 
conditions under which foreigners can become Swiss citizens. At the same 
time,  a discourse on 'shifting identities' seems to offer -- if not a new
(Continue reading)

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lotu5 | 6 Jun 03:19
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Thriller at the Canada/US Border in Second Life


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiEpS_H4aMs

More info and photos here:

http://sharingissexy.org/wiki/PublicPerformances

This performance engages with the following questions:

- What are the borders of online public space? how do they relate to the 
borders of our "first life"?

- What are the relationships between borders and prisons? How are these 
separate but related modern features a part of the infrastructure that 
separates the global north from the global south?

- How do borders produce gender and how are those dynamics affected by 
the seeming gender freedom online public space inhabited by avatars? How 
is gender nonconformity perceived and discussed in online spaces, in 
prisons, in borders?

- Is synchronized dancing as fun in second life as it is in first life?

--

-- 

gpg:  0x5B77079C // encrypted email preferred
gaim/skype: djlotu5 // off the record messaging preferred
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Katherine Sweetman | 6 Jun 22:19
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Getty's "Video Revolutionaries" website "overthrown" by digital

Getty's "Video Revolutionaries" website "overthrown" by digital artists.

As part of the California Video exhibition, The Getty launched a website
called "Video Revolutionaries". This website invited the public to upload
their own video art inspired by the works of the artists in California
Video collection. In spite of this request for work influenced by many of
the outrageous and transgressive artists in the show, the website also
lists criteria that the public's videos must abide by. A list of rules and
regulations imposes traditional censorship upon the applicants. The site
then also gives the public rules on how they can interact with the videos
on the website.

The "Video Revolutionaries" website states that all video posts will be
reviewed by the Getty and deemed acceptable before being posted to the
Video Revolutionaries website. It further explicitly forbids sexually
explicit material, certain kinds of violence, and the use of any sort of
automated voting methods.

But this is the Internet. And the website's security features, not to
mention the overall structure, are extremely flawed. For instance, one
could change the number of views the video received by simply refreshing
the webpage. Continuing to click the refresh button could push up the
number of views and put a selected video onto the front page of the site.

One group of artists, The Infinity Lab, exploited the weaknesses of the
website to show The Getty that its experiment into this realm of new media
would not go unchallenged. The Infinity Lab soon came to DOMINATE the
Highest Viewed and the Highest Rated categories of the site. The Infinity
Lab's submission, appropriately titled, "Digital Highjack" is both the
Most Viewed and Highest Rated video on the site. "Digital Hijack" is also
(Continue reading)

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Rebecca Zorach | 7 Jun 17:24
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Re: Getty's "Video Revolutionaries" website "overthrown" by digital

How is this actually transgressive? Does it violate the Getty's censorship
guidelines? Is the video different from work I can see any day in a
contemporary art museum? Seems like fairly weak tea for the "larger,
stranger" internet...

On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 3:19 PM, Katherine Sweetman <ksweetma@...>
wrote:

> Getty's "Video Revolutionaries" website "overthrown" by digital artists.
 <...>
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Pisters, P.P.R.W. | 8 Jun 20:03
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Machines of the Invisible - Manifesto for a Schizo-analysis of Media Culture

See also the blog Masters of Media: http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl
<https://webmail.uva.nl/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=https://webmail.uva.nl/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl> 

Machines of the Invisible
Manifesto for a Schizo-analysis of Media Culture

By Patricia Pisters (Dept. Media Studies, University of Amsterdam)

1. Contemporary media are characterized by a stammering stream of an
ever growing schizophrenic 'logic of addition'.
2. 'Old' mass media like television and cinema are not dead but undead.
3. Schizophrenia points to clinical and critical symptoms of a/v
culture.
4. The delirium is socio-political and world historical.
5. The cinematographic regime is already schizo-analytic in conception;
this becomes more evident and widespread in contemporary a/v culture.
6. The schizo-analytic regime of the image acknowledges 'the reality of
illusions'.
7. Immanent powers of the image present them selves in heterogeneous
ways.
8. The virtual is a real power.
9. Images have the power to act.
10. Affect is an autonomous power.
11. Forgers, magicians, charlatans, tricksters, conmen and delusional
characters are symptoms and diagnosis makers of the powers of the
false.

Machines of the Invisible
It is argued with good reasons that digital technology has changed the
media landscape completely: old mass media like film, television and
(Continue reading)

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mez breeze | 9 Jun 13:01
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_Unpacking the _Synthaptic_: Version 1.1_

_Unpacking the _Synthaptic_: Version 1.1_
augmentology.com

Version 1 of _Unpacking the _Synthaptic_ outlined the concept of
Synthapticism and its formation in synthetic environments. Synthapticism
rests on an underlying set of semantic structures. These structures allow
for the development of credible synthetic relationships and vary according
to platform specifics. Common semantic elements include a combination of the
_lingual_ and _multivariate_.

In synthetic environments, social interaction occurs through multichannelled
communication. Relevant language evolution is reliant on communication
patterns generated through brevity and massed consistency. In Second Life,
avatars mimic the physical action of writing on a keyboard when their
geophysical selves type on screen. Second Life avies may use a combination
of local or global text chat or messaging. SL avies can also communicate via
voice. Many MMOGs use similar text-based communication with VOIP allowing
for layered engagement. Mobile technologies, social games and ARG items all
encourage text abbreviation resulting in dense stylistics. These lingual
variables help define the mechanics of synthaptic transmission.

Another component of semantic synthapticism is a multivariate method of data
absorption. Synthetics navigate and produce constant streams of data. This
data may be funnelled through specific software types [eg PMOG] or via
self-selected parameters [think: RRS feeds or Friendfeed]. This filtering
acts to flatten primary data in terms of acceptable methods of
verifiability. Synthetics assign priority to this data through shared
attentional chunking. This chunking is multivariate; filtered data
transforms and embeds into a socially-elastic comprehension system.
(Continue reading)

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Gmane