Global Safari (by surveillance)
Open House is an installation by Jack Stenner and Patrick LeMieux that allows visitors to telematically squat in a Florida home undergoing foreclosure after the U.S. housing collapse. Virtual markets transformed this otherwise livable property into a ghost house. Prior to the collapse, the movements of global capital seemed like a distant reality to most homeowners, but in the end it was imaginary systems of value, not bricks and mortar, that fell apart. Open House temporarily resists eviction by mirroring the market and creating hybrid subjects who occupy both virtual and physical space. Cross the threshold, open the door, flicker the lights, and rattle the shutters.
Haunted graveyards, ubiquitous computing style. A company now sells RFID-implanted grave markers.
A horror story naturally follows:
a Nervous Nelly is making his or her way through a graveyard at night. Cue: full moon, owl, ground fog. A branch cracks. Nelly increases speed, heartbeat races, panting increases. A root clutches at Nelly’s shoe and he goes over, skidding to a stop in front of a tombstone. The dead rise and speak!
(via Book « Continental Drift)
Beginning this project, I was right there with the chorus of Twitter detractors. Assuming Twitter trafficked only in frivolous, tedious, and above all, meaningless little squirts of text, I had hoped that a minor tweak of delivery system would be both funny and damning.
Changing the medium from one of large fonts bounded by bubbly corners to a melancholy computerized voice was supposed to diminish the overblown power of this new “medium” — to put it in its place as a technological fad.
[T]he picture included our neighbor Bill, who passed away last winter. The automated face-blurring feature didn’t kick in for some reason, leaving this great picture of him eyeing what was presumably a slow-driving Google Street View car warily. The pic is a little like seeing a ghost, but it nicely captures him keeping watch over our neighborhood as he always did.
Life in life (by phlipping)
The implication is surely that Apple has mugged millions of people with its beauty, dragged them off to a very dark cellar in some barren land, turned them into slightly bonkers Barbarellas, and then recruited them as soldiers for the cause.
This is the sort of thing of which the Church of Scientology is normally accused. But for some strange reason, it’s a rather chilling but pleasant shower to read something that isn’t mere worship.
Unleashed Devices is an exhibition of DIY, hacking and open source projects by artists who explore technologies critically and creatively. By reconstructing, remixing and reinventing everyday electronic devices, these take on a new life as they shift our vision of the use of data and purpose of technology. Playing with frontiers, such projects not only challenge our conception of technology but also music, art and design. Here, they reveal the power of DIY modes as tools to stimulate social reflection and participation. New ways of engaging with the spectator is a core concern. Unleashed Devices includes playful installations, interactive electronic-sculptures, movement tracking works and performances, as well as coding and hardware based artworks, creating innovative media installations and new experiences
Death was not much in the minds of social networking pioneers when they started. Most sites were originally aimed at young college students.
The Geotaggers’ World Atlas #2: London (by Eric Fischer)
