dyne.org news

Struggle as a Second Language

2010-03-17T17:26:18+00:00

ByB&R

While last summer's strike at Tower Hamlets College is often portrayed as a victory by unions, two of its organisers, B&R, remain critical, and place ESOL at the butt end of the government's chauvinist austerity

links for 2010-03-17

2010-03-17T13:30:25+00:00

Category » Conference « @ kilpiscope

ART AND TECHNOSCIENCE, Practices in transformation

(tags: art conference science)

Grim Down South: Managing (in) London South Bank University

2010-03-17T13:17:49+00:00

ByRaoul Paled

While education budgets are cut and university leaders have 'visions' for keeping competitive, Raoul Paled reports from Britain's 'worst performing' university, London South Bank, on staff's muted response to savage budgetary pruning

edited by Wolfgang Sützl & Geoff Cox - Creating Insecurity: art and culture in the age of security, DATA browser 04

2010-03-16T15:56:41+00:00

Autonomedia, ISBN 978-1570272059, UK, 2009, English
The 4th anthology of texts realized by the DATA Browser series editorial group, is focused on "security", an ambiguous yet extremely popular concept, exploited by governments in order to claim its necessity, programmability and the consequent need to build a security infrastructure. The artificiality of this approach and the dangerous consequences of the current unilateral concern for security inspired the

Respect for the cleaning workers

2010-03-16T12:13:51+00:00

The cleaners demonstrating at Utrecht Central Station

Thousands of cleaners working at Schiphol Airport, railway stations, hospitals and offices are on strike for better wages and respectable working conditions. The majority of cleaners are migrants. Cleaners are receiving minimal wages and are object of intimidation by the bosses. Companies like CSU, ASITO and HAGO are competing for contract with the railroads the airport and banks by exploiting their workforce.

The picket against striking breakers at Amsterdam Central Station

That is why the cleaners are not only striking but also targetting the contracting companies: they should be more to the cleaning companies, to stop the degrading wages and working conditions.

One tactic is to target undocumented workers. Some have been forces to work and were arrested by the Labour Inspection. Cleaning Company CSU has demanded all cleaners to present their papers.This is an act of intimidation and an attempt to create division among the cleaners. In response a goup of anarchist activists blocked the CSU office in Amsterdam urging workers to boycot the demand to show their papers.

more news in Dutch

iPad petition hits 10,000 signatures, "Apple-as-1984" meme spreading

2010-03-15T19:01:52+00:00

Last week we topped 10,000 signatures on Defective by Design's iPad petition, and mailed the second batch of 5,000 signatures to Steve Jobs on our own giant tablet.

The best part is, our "Apple makes totalitarian computers" meme is spreading. This weekend, NPR's "All Things Considered" ran a piece entitled "Is Apple Entering an Age of Empire?" that takes as its premise the idea that Apple is building the dystopic computing future featured in its famous "1984" Superbowl advertisement.

Slate Magazine's Farhad Manjoo (the commentator interviewed for the piece) goes far too easy on Apple, and focuses only on the danger to "the industry"-- not to society itself. But the fact that major news outlets are asking these kinds of questions is a huge victory for our campaign. You should be proud.

We're still sending a new tablet for every 5,000 signatures we receive. And we'll be mobilizing petition signers for anti-iPad actions on April 3rd when the iPad launches. So keep sharing the petition with your network!

links for 2010-03-15

2010-03-15T13:30:36+00:00

Change The Code, Keep The Text

Change The Code, Keep The Text, literature and code

(tags: literature net art)
Mechanical Memory Key by ~back2root on deviantART

Mechanical Memory Key, steampunk USB Flash drive

(tags: design hacking)

links for 2010-03-14

2010-03-14T13:30:28+00:00

FACT | 2010 | MyWar

MyWar, A radically personal look at conflict in the digital age

(tags: art exhibition hacktivism)

Deadline Extension For Les Contorsions Technologiques

2010-03-13T18:54:48+00:00

The deadline for les Contorsions Technologiques has been pushed back by two weeks. The new schedule is the following:

April 3, 23h59 GMT : end of submissions
April 8 : acceptation notifications
April 15 : final program publication

The Call for Proposals is available here, send your submissions at cfp@contorsions-technologiques.org.
See you at the end of April !

links for 2010-03-12

2010-03-12T13:36:56+00:00

UbuWeb - 365 Days Project (2003)

"Music From Mathematics" was an album of early electronic music, programmed by the boffins (very likely in authentic period white coats and glasses) at Bell Laboratories way back in the early 1960s

(tags: music art preservation sound)

Island2, a squatted computer memory zone

2010-03-12T10:28:26+00:00

Conceptually, a computer's memory is not only the place where code and data are temporary hosted, but it is also the short term reference for everything that is rendered on the screen. In a way, it represents something like the computer's "awareness" at a given moment, more than its "short term"

links for 2010-03-11

2010-03-11T13:30:29+00:00

stuffinablank::listen to the world: online soundscapes

Listen to the World. This exhibition shows some online projects of soundscapes.

(tags: sound net)

I C U and Baglady 2.0 in LOOKOUT show. Tasmanian Museum and ART gallery March 12 - July 2010

2010-03-11T02:59:26+00:00

Baglady 2.0 at Tasmanian Museum and ART gallery March 12 - July 2010
Tasmanian Museum and ART gallery March 12 - July 2010

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and Contemporary Art Services Tasmania

new improved
installation shots coming soon :) for much of baglady's adventures over last year and more but i dont update this page with all my projects these days...

EDRi-gram - Number 8.5, 10 March 2010

2010-03-10T18:28:02+00:00

The Future Isn’t What it Used to Be

2010-03-10T13:18:20+00:00

ByM. Beatrice Fazi

Tackling the conundrum of the future's relationship to the present through the prism of digital culture, this year's Transmediale festival strayed into some chaotic philosophical territory. In her review, M. Beatrice Fazi dismisses conceptions of the future as linear effect of the present, instead embracing models of ‘atemporality' and untimeliness

Floating Structure: A Platform for Artistic Measurements and Research

2010-03-10T12:26:02+00:00

This text is the preliminary outcome of a research project going back to 2003/2004 and developed jointly by Franz Xaver and Armin Medosch. It has a theoretical and artistic dimension as well as an activist one. At the point of its inception stood questions relating to the crisis of art in informational capitalism. The project sets out to bring some clarifications by word and deed about the relationships between art and technology, art and science and the role of the artist at the beginning of the 21st Century.

Background

A first step was the conception of the Waves exhibition and its realisation in Riga 2006 and Dortmund 2008. Parallel to that a long term research project was started into paradigm changes in media art and the relationship between art, technology and social change. Practical and experimental work was done by fitting out the MS Franz Feigl as a research vessel and by working with wireless technologies and energy systems.

The first prototype, MS Franz Feigl

This culminated into the two months research residency Liquid Territories at Laboral, Gijon. This text is a shortened version of a research report written after the end of the residency in German. The project gained new urgency through the adaptation of the vessel Eleonore as a research platform. The Eleonore is currently lying in the winter harbour at the river Danube in Linz and through its ongoing adaptation the project has come a good deal closer to realisation.

The autonomous artistic measurement ship Eleonore in the harbour in Linz. Some more images and documentation (in German) by Franz Xaver Eleonore@stroem.ungat

Concept

Floating structure is conceived as a swimming platform for conducting artistic, theoretic and curatorial work, blurring the boundaries between those areas and opening up new areas for artistic explorations. The project proceeds along a close link between practical and theoretical work thereby developing new experimental methodologies.

In a first step a set of parameters, restraints and requirements was developed, defining the basic range of possibilities for the project. These are:

The floating structure should be an autonomous system, that is, in particular it should be independent of energy which it does not produce itself. It should use renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and wave energy and it must not use more energy than it can produce itself.

The floating structure should allow people to live on it. It should serve as a basic habitat which allows people to live and work there, if only for limited periods.

The floating structure should be capable of producing food and water. While aiming at full autarky, it is also okay if it does that only to a certain degree in an initial test phase.

The floating structure should be able to communicate with its environment. It should be able to produce and process data about its immedeate environment and communicate with the outside world. (This was originally conceived as a sort of status report, a daily transmission of data about its 'being' in the world; this has been extended considerably, see section on measurements below.)

The floating structure should meet all the requirements of safety on water and it should peacefully coexist with its environment causing no damage or pollution in the short and long term.

The floating structure should serve as a base for artists who both collaborate in the building of the floating structure and its usage as a medium of artistic research.

The floating structure should be built at minimum cost using pre-existing parts and recycling technologies where possible.

Prototype 1, MS Franz Feigl, radar reflector and solar panel, 2007

Research buoy

As it became clear that the floating structure is a long term project which implies mobilising considerable resources, a complimentary project was conceived. In a first phase a research buoy could be built. This buoy should fulfil a minimal set of requirements. It should also be energy autonomous, conduct some measurements and communicate with the enviornment. The buoy could be equipped with WLAN (5.2 - 5.6 GHz), a sonar, GPS, webcam, a power saving linux board and a set of sensors for water salinity, wind and air humidity; it also needs a radar reflector and should provide optical warning signs for swimmers and water vehicles. The research buoy should be built first as a proof of concept. As it turns out, a research buoy is currently being built at Stadtwerkstatt, Linz, in parallel to the adaptation of the Eleonore which both can be expected to be operational by summer 2010.

Research topics

Proof of concept: the project needs to be realised at whichever level to provide proof of concept; it needs to be shown that it makes sense that artists engage with the uncertainty of water and waves to enrich the vocabulary of arts. Theoretic speculation and book knowledge is not enough.

Water and Information: Water is not only the basis of life, it was also created at or shortly after the moment of the Big Bang. Nowadays, in the information society, "information" is considered the most important "raw material". In the current economy, characterised as informational capitalism, information has taken on a very dangerous dimension. Information technologies are at the heart of the surveillance society and financial markets. Information technologies are developing a powerful grip on markets, natural resources and human subjectivities. Is there a possibility of relating the concept of information - based on information theory (Shannon and Weaver 1948) - with water? Water is said to be capable of storing information, but only for nanoseconds. This property is based on the structure of the water molecule which serves as an electrical dipole. Could this capacity be expanded or further explored? This property of water is also linked with myths about water in different cultures where, for example, water is seen as a two-sided mirror, through which another reality can be reached (there are of course many other myths about water; those myths can be more systematically collected as one axis of research).

The floating structure serves as an artificial coastline, a borderline between land and water, nature and culture. By creating the floating structure an aquatic civilisation is postulated. Water covers 9/10s of earth's surface.Not the outer universe, the oceans are the final frontier. We need to engage with this 'borderline' where water and information meet. Thus, the borderline is not conceived as a strict separation but rather as a crossing, a meeting point, a zone of transitions - a line whose full meaning we have not yet understood. In information theory information is created by difference, out of redundancy. Art is also redundant, insofar as it does not create any use value. Can artistic engagement with water break the hegemony of informational capitalism? Can we gain new insights by studying the borderline as a zone of various transitions? Is the floating structure as an object a sort of a semi-conductor?

The floating structure will be equipped with underwater loudspeakers to transmit sounds responding to the rise and fall of stock markets.

Art, Money, Information: the artwork has no financial value before it enters the market. Certain strands of contemporary art in the 1960s can be understood as a move to avoid market capitalisation. Some artists came close to complete de-realisation. Was this an early warning about the onslought of information? Is it possible to create redundancy, to 'undo' information?

A map of Asia or just some stones at the beach in Asturias, North West Spain?

Some further ideas:
Would it be possible to build the floating structure without digital technologies? Could we find systems of information and energy storage without using computers? Which other possibilities exist, hydraulic, cybernetic, analog? Would it be feasible to make wave energy machines, kinetic art, artificial icebergs (Wesley machines)

Would it be feasible to revert the paradigm of interactive art and completely exclude the public from the floating structure? Could the floating structure claim souvereignty as a state?

Measurements and Experiments

Taking measurements as an artistic process as well as energy, water and food production are key areas to be researched. One wide area are the little researched anomalies of water and their potentials for quasi-natural aesthetic effects. Some possible activities are:

the viscosity of water and the influence of light
the surface tension of water
propagation of electromagnetic fields under water
reception of spherical waves (also called natural radio) under water
electric conductivity of water and very high voltage, artificial water bridges, some examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QufKjiWKdJk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhBn1ozht-E

measurment of the intensity of light and its effect on clorophyl and the formation of algae in tanks
prospects of water filtering and making potable water
usage of very high frequencies to separate hydrogen and oxygen using the methods of Stanley Meyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xam5-_ZU0h4
production of plasm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVV6_u3p65g

experiments on water density under the influence of sound and light
aesthetic, speculative applications, reflections and water as mirror and medium

works using energy: wind, waves, solar
biological projects working with animals and plants
sociological projects researching the crew and habitat
the floating structure can be built at various sites in the world and a network of floating structures could come into being

The floating structure will peacefully coexist with its environment

Theoretical Background: Theses on Media Art

Artists should aim at autonomy

Artistic autonomy is not to be mistaken as "the autonomy of art". The autonomy of art was a social category which emerged together with the rise of capitalism and bourgeois democracy. The autonomy of art describes the position of art within a capitalist social system whereby the artist is granted some exceptional status. We reject this concept and postulate instead artistic autonomy. The latter is more closely related to autarky and describes an ethical attitude towards instruments and the work process. Artists should only use means of production which they understand and control as deeply and completely as possible. Therefore it is self-evident that only free and open source software can be used. Artists should avoid using digital tools which by their very structure define the frame of artistic production. The tools and materials of artistic production in the digital age should be as immedeately accessible as stone or wood.

The work of the artist

The main achievement of an artist is not her or his work understood as a final product which then enters the market; it is also not some dubious and vague reference to a 'process', but instead the real meaning and content of the work of the artist is the living labour of the artist. Artists therefore by necessity should avoid the capitalist division of labour. No invisible 'helpers', 'technicians', 'programmers' or else should be used for the creation of work. If one artist does not possess all the necessary skills to produce a specific artwork, the artist can engage in collaboration with other artists to realise those goals. The terms of those collaborations should be egalitarian and self-defined, no artist should become another artist's "foreman"; relationships between more experienced and skilled artists and 'students' are possible but should be free from coercive aspects of 'mastery'; everybody involved should be named as a co-author of the work at all instances when the work is shown or mentioned.

The division of manual and mental labour

The focus on the work of the artist instead of the work of art is designed also to overcome the division between manual and mental labour which is crucial for the maintainance of the capitalist class society and its power structure including its academic and artistic production units and their ideological output. The separation of manual and mental labur is not only foundational for the political economy and the class structure, it has also a significant impact on the definition of what constitutes "knowledge". Currently, academia and the arts are almost completely dominated by the mystifications of bourgeois ideology. By combining manual and mental labour artists have the chance to show possible ways out of the dead end street of informational capitalism and its superstructural reifications.

Artistic Research versus Science

Artistic research is fundamentally different from Science, even if artists use techniques and instruments very similar to those used by Scientists. If artists have just as much as an inch of self-respect and take themselves seriously, they need to distance themselves from the conduct of normal Science. Science with a capital S is deeply compromised by its past as well as by its present subservience to capitalism. Western Science came into being through acts of genocide against other peoples and against women in the so called witch hunts (Federici). It created the Scientist as a specific version of subjectivity: male, white and Cartesian. The specific psychology of the male Scientific subjectivity wants to create life without women (Artificial Life) and intelligence without flesh (Artificial Intelligence), but it only creates death - weapons of mass destruction, genetically modified superweeds and other deadly technologies. Currently, Science's conduct is almost completely dictated by the needs of capitalism and the competitive military nation state. The objectivist tendencies of Science with its eternal and universal Laws of Nature are totalitarian and to be rejected as they carry over the problematic legacy of oppressive religious believes into the present and future.

Artists and Nature

When artists engage with nature they understand that they themselves are nature. Unlike Scientists, artists do not construct nature as a lifeless object, a territory to be conquered. Therefore artistic measurements have a quality very different from Scientific measurements. Artists are investigating the world as it is in a reflective process which includes themselves as well as the other 'objects' of investigation. Artists, as all humans, are both part of nature and distinct from it through the achievements of human culture, such as language, numbers, mathematics and algorithms.

Artistic Measurements

Artistic measurments are processes of reflexive self-creation rather than supposedly neutral fact finding missions about an objective reality "out there". Artists create a framework of references and interpretations distinct from the terror of objectivism, i.e. Science. They can only do so because of the collective nature of human culture which both sets the from for and yet also enables the creative act of the radical social imaginary (Marx read through Castoriadis). Within the narrow limits of the current techno-economic paradigm, artists have the duty to develop new perspectives for self-creation and self-realisation both individually and collectively.

Martin Howse conducting artistic measuerment, seconded by Erich Berger, Gijon 2008. Some of the ideas in this text about artistic measurements are also inspired by conversations had with Marting during the Laboral residency.

Day Against DRM: Sign-up Now to Help the Effort!

2010-03-09T23:22:49+00:00

Tuesday May 4, 2010 will be the international Day Against DRM.

The FSF will be working with other anti-DRM groups and anti-DRM activists from all over the world to raise awareness and mobilize the public. So spread the word by sharing this announcement, and putting the buttons below on your site.

Get ready for the action by signing up here.

These banners link to our article Decade in DRM, that tells the story of the fight against digital restrictions:

When Ubisoft takes a break, your games break

2010-03-08T16:18:40+00:00

Many of you have written to us about Ubisoft's outrageous form of DRM, where players have to be constantly connected to the Internet in order to play the company's games -- not because the games are multiplayer, but for the sole purpose of the company being able to authenticate and keep an eye on you. Well, everyone who purchased the games using this system became painfully aware of this deliberate defect yesterday. Ubisoft's DRM authentication servers went down, and were reportedly down for at least ten hours.

Since the games are also proprietary software, there's no legal way for users to work around this problem, since they aren't allowed to modify the code themselves. When Ubisoft takes a break, the game breaks. What happens when Ubisoft goes out of business (as is likely to happen if they keep this up), or just decides to take these DRM servers down for good? That's just the way DRM proponents think things are supposed to work. As a lawyer for the RIAA and MPAA said last year, don't expect to still be able to use your DRMed media for long.

If you have an Amazon account, sounds like it's time to tag new Ubisoft games like Assassin's Creed II with "defectivebydesign" and "drm," to make sure everyone finds out about this.

links for 2010-03-08

2010-03-08T13:30:28+00:00

Free white noise player so you can sleep or relax - WhiteNoisePlayer.com

No matter where you are, our free white noise player is always available. You only need an Internet connection

(tags: music sound net)
Congreso Internacional Mujer, Arte y Tecnología

CIMUAT, el Congreso Internacional Mujer, Arte y Tecnología en la Nueva Esfera Pública se celebrará en la Universidad Politécnica de Valencia durante los días 3 y 4 de noviembre de 2010.

(tags: gender hacktivism art conference)
ENIGMATICA on Vimeo

Enigmatica acts as an experimental platform for exploring new concepts in combining light, sound and space to create multi-dimensional synesthetic digital sculptures.

(tags: visual design art sound)

Mary Flanagan - Critical Play, Radical Game Design

2010-03-08T12:13:35+00:00

The MIT Press, ISBN-13: 978-0262062688, USA, 2009, English
After a few years of serious and prolific videogame studies, fed by the industry boom, the research is starting to focus on reconnecting with the history of games through strong links that would help to understand and expand videogame paradigms. In this articulate book Flanagan starts with a major

links for 2010-03-07

2010-03-07T13:30:27+00:00

xkcd: Devotion to Duty

Devotion to Duty, geek comic on sysadmin

(tags: humor hacking hacktivism)

Repositorios de BLAG 9K en FSF

2010-03-07T06:09:24+00:00

BLAG, la reconocida distribución reconstruida desde Fedora, tiene nuevo repositorio de software para su versión estable 90001. Los paquetes rpm están hospedados en los servidores de la Free Software Foundation que por estos días también difunde una versión actualizada del kernel linux-2.6.33-libre. Modifica tu archivo /etc/yum.repos.d/blag.repo con lo siguiente: [blag] name=BLAG baseurl=ftp://blag.fsf.org/90000/en/os/i386/BLAG/ enabled=1 gpgcheck=0 Y luego ejecuta: $ yum clean all $ yum makecache

Talleres de Software Libre en el Hacklab Z.A.M. marzo y abril de 2010

2010-03-06T23:36:00+00:00

Talleres de Software Libre en el Hacklab Z.A.M.
marzo y abril de 2010

Edición de audio con Audacity
viernes 12 de marzo de 5pm a 7pm; jueves 18 y 25 de marzo de 5pm a 7pm
Revisaran técnicas para capturar, editar y exportar archivos de audio para la web.

Composición de textos con LaTeX?
viernes 26 de marzo de 5pm a 7pm; sabado 27 de marzo de 2:30pm a 4:30pm
Composición tipográfica de alta calidad para libros, documentos científicos y artículos académicos.

Video documental con software libre
los sabados del 27 de marzo al 24 de abril de 12pm a 2pm
Uso básico del videocamera y edición de video con Cinelerra, Avidemux y Virtual Dub.

Programación de audio con Supercollider
los lunes y jueves del 12 de abril al 29 de abril de 5:30pm a 7:30pm
Síntesis de audio, composición musical y live-coding con el lenguaje de programación Supercollider.

Música libre y licencias libres
los viernes del 16 de abril al 30 de abril de 5pm a 7pm
Explicación de las licencias libres y un recorrido por los sitios de distribución de música libre.

Todos los talleres son de entrada libre.
No hay registración ni prerrequisitos pero para participar en un taller es necesario asistir a todas las sesiones.
Solicitamos a los participantes quienes cuentan con computadora portátil, que hagan uso de ella durante los talleres.

http://espora.org/zam

We Don’t Need No Education? The Case of the London Met

2010-03-04T15:01:26+00:00

ByMute

In the wake of a cash crisis and resulting round of savage job cuts, London Metropolitan University has been left reeling, but still standing.

Colectivo Glauber Rocha: filmar en la selva colombiana en plena guerra

2010-03-03T16:36:59+00:00

via Marcela Quesada en Rebelión:

(…) Aunque Hollywood nos presenta la fauna de Bond o de Misión imposible como “superhombres” invencibles… no lo son (risas). ¡En serio! No te rías. No lo son. A pesar de todas las operaciones de inteligencia de la CIA y de todo el control del estado fascista colombiano, el documental sobre la insurgencia se pudo rodar y se pudo exhibir.
(…)
Ulrike Meinhof: ¿Conclusiones? Bueno, por mi parte yo quisiera destacar que trabajar con el tema de la lucha popular y la insurgencia educa. Subrayo: educa. Ayuda a combatir ese enemigo infiltrado en nuestras filas que se llama EGO. Lo más fácil era poner los nombres reales de todos los integrantes del Grupo de Cine Glauber Rocha para lograr reconocimiento por un trabajo difícil de años. Lo complejo es eludir esa tentación tramposa y envenenada. La clandestinidad educa. El aporte a un proyecto colectivo es más importante que el EGO personal. No importa quien hizo la película, lo importante es poner todos los conocimientos y estudios al servicio de algo muchísimo mayor, infinitamente mayor, la lucha por un mundo mejor.

Referencias

Archivado bajo:Afuera, Colombia, Mesoamerica Sur, TV Tagged: cine, Colombia, FARC, guerra, Hollywood, Rebelión

Wireless Battle Mesh v3 (WBMv3) next 02-06 June 2010 in Bracciano Roma (IT)

2010-03-02T23:19:42+00:00

The next ‘Wireless Battle Mesh’ will take place from Wed 2nd till Sun 6th of June in Bracciano (near Rome), Italy. The event aims to bring together people from across Europe to test the performance of different routing protocols for ad-hoc networks, like Babel, B.A.T.M.A.N., and OLSR. This third WBM will be improving the testbed conditions for mesh protocols with standardized testing procedures that will be reported after the event for the wireless communities.

On the development side, flashing tool will be presented to simplify the deployment of such wireless networks based on OpenWrt stable release and packages for each protocols.

If you are a mesh networking enthusiast, community networking activist, or have an interest in mesh networks you have to check this out!

Informations about the event are gathered at : http//battlemesh.org/

Registration

=======

Registrations will be available at different hackerspaces (fusolab, HSBXL, /tmp/lab, metalab, CCC, …) and on the official website for the event at http://battlemesh.org

Fees

===

Every participant needs to donate 50 EUR (this should cover the costs for the camping, and the infrastructure). To finance this event, we ask you to pay when subscribing (paypal, bank transfer or cash).

Contact

=====

Web: http://battlemesh.org/BattleMeshV3

Email: contatti@ninux.org

IRC: irc.freenode.net #battlemesh

Collaborative Futures in NYC and some notes…

2010-03-02T17:12:22+00:00

Readers in New York may be interested in attending a presentation of “Collaborative Futures”, a text composed over a week in January by six writers, myself included, and published as book for the Transmediale festival in Berlin. Mushon Zer Aviv and Michael Mandiberg will present the book, and Stephen Kovats, who commissioned the work for Transmediale, will also be present. The event is hosted by Upgrade! New York and will take place at Eyebeam (540 W21st Street) this Thursday at 7.30 pm There’s even a live video stream!

Given the result has attracted a bit of attention, I’d like to add a couple of impressions about both the process of working together, and the future (if any) of the resulting book.

Booksprinting

Much has been made of the accelerated pace of the books production. When I arrived on the monday morning, the only participant known to me was the facilitator, Adam Hyde. Thus the first day was spent introducing ourselves and making notes – basically teasing out a shared language and framework within which to work. Although we had assembled a basic outline by late that night, in reality the structure was revised right to the end. The following morning we sat down to write but the patter of the keyboard was constantly punctuated by conversation, negotiation and clarification.

Negotiation in this context requires willingness and good faith, qualities which were happily in plentiful supply. I wondered also if the freshness of our acquaintance may have been a help: sometimes working with people we know well can elicit competitiveness and oversensitivity. Amidst all of this there is a physical aspect: long days spent together nourishes trust, while the shadow of an imminent deadline instills an urgency that encourages compromise for the sake of completing the task.

The irony of being asked to sign the book was not lost on Marta Peirano and I...

This obviously modified what we would have otherwise written individually, but also enabled each person to work on the others’ outputs sensitively. Most sections were initially drafted by one person, others would then edit, add and rephrase where necessary. Being able to discuss and tease points out together provided a means to grasp the acceptable extent to which one could revise other people’s contributions – to refine for clarity, whilst leaving the ‘thrust’ of their sense intact. Here we encounter an issue that arises repeatedly in collaboration: the need for a framework which functions at the level of the collective whilst enabling individual initiative within its own boundaries.

The result entailed an interesting modification to the relationship with the act of writing. The romantic theory of authorship places enormous weight on the concept of expression as inhering to the personality of the writer, insisting that from their inherent subjectivity comes forth a uniqueness which makes it uniquely their property. Whilst I never adhered to this school of thought, it was nonetheless interesting to live its practical contradiction. Writing together in this manner displaces the connection between the individual and the text, as some ‘pure product of the self’, but relocates it to an identification with the subject matter and the methodology employed to elaborate it – peculiarly appropriate for a book about collaboration. On this point it’s safe to say that none of those involved in writing the book would stand 100% behind its contents, whilst nonetheless insisting on the value of the endeavour.

Overall I think what we ended up with is useful overview with some good insights. Those expert in the areas won’t find much that is really fresh, but writing like this leaves no time for original research, but rather leveraging what we already know and trying to fit it into a coherent framework. Regarding its deficiencies: if you care enough to be bothered, please help to remedy them, sign up to booki.cc and get cracking!

Possible Futures…
Other books written under the auspices of FlossManuals focus on technical subject matter, making the question of their upkeep relatively straightforward: as the field progresses, or new functionalities are added to a software, the book can be updated to reflect that. Given the conceptual nature of our subject, a roadmap for revision and maintenance seems trickier, but the chance to solicit new contributions makes me think it worthwhile.

1. The opening section outlines some assumptions and sets out the limitations of the subject we address. Collaboration is an infinitely extendible concept, and we ended up focussing on mostly large online collaborations. How it pertains to art, political movements and a more traditionally conceived notion of economic activity were put aside. Training the gaze on these areas, examining their specificities and distinguishing them from one another might be one worthwhile approach.

The rest of this section is dedicated to the motivations of participants and how the decision-making process is structured. Given the wide variety of collaborations out there, this is just a fragment and much could be added and/or qualified. We were not fully satisfied with the placing of process here in terms of the overall structure, but couldn’t come up with a convincing alternative either…

2. Next we attempted to distinguish collaboration from apparently similar phenomena such as sharing or aggregation. We also propose a set of criteria to place interactions on a continuum corresponding to degrees of participation, and offer some examples.

3. Following this, there is a section titled ‘Edge Cases’. For my money, this is the part most amenable to expansion. First of all because it needs it: there are too few case studies! Secondly because anyone interested in this subject has their pet examples, and there isn’t just one way of dealing with knotty topics like ‘ownership’, ‘attribution’ and ‘decision-making’. Additional descriptions of communities together with a problem they faced, or successfully overcome, would fit very neatly here. ultimately I think this section could function as a form of scrapbook, where snapshots of positive and negative experiences can be memorized.

4. We closed with ‘Futures’, where we speculate on how these forms of production may transform realms so far less affected, and on the wider issue of what forms of individual and group identify may be prefigured in what we observe at the moment online. This would be the place to let oneself go with futurology, utopian projects and experimental proposals.

Piezoelectric Ribbons Printed onto Rubber for Flexible Energy Conversion

2010-02-28T23:50:51+00:00

The development of a method for integrating highly efficient energy conversion materials onto stretchable, biocompatible rubbers could yield breakthroughs in implantable or wearable energy harvesting systems. Being electromechanically coupled, piezoelectric crystals represent a particularly interesting subset of smart materials that function as sensors/actuators, bioMEMS devices, and energy converters. Yet, the crystallization of these materials requires high temperatures for maximally efficient performance, rendering them incompatible with temperature-sensitive plastics and rubbers. Here, we overcome these limitations by presenting a scalable and parallel process for transferring crystalline piezoelectric nanothick ribbons of lead zirconate titanate from host substrates onto flexible rubbers over macroscopic areas. Fundamental characterization of the ribbons by piezo-force microscopy indicates that their electromechanical energy conversion metrics are the highest on a flexible medium.

Support the cleaners

2010-02-28T22:24:30+00:00

The cleaners at Amsterdam Central Station are on strike for respect and good wages. Since the 23rd of February a nation-wide strike is gaining momentum: stations, public offices and Schiphol Airport are becoming dirty.

At Amsterdam CS the cleaning company CSU and NS are putting scabs to work. They have forced illegal migrants to work against their collegues. The union FNV responded by calling in the Labour Inspection. This insitute however is focussed on chasing undocumented migrants. Two cleaners from Ghana were caught and put in detention on the prison boat of Zaanstad.

The Cleaners Union explicitly caters for migrants, with and without papers. The undocumenetd cleaners had been warned, the orgniser told us. And he promised to support them after their arrest.

M2M calls for support of all cleaners, with or without papers.

You can do this by leaving your dirt on the train and the station as long as the strike holds.

Respect!

LiVES 1.2.1

2010-02-27T20:24:04+00:00

LiVES is a simple to use yet powerful video effects, editing, conversion, and playback system aimed at the digital video artist and VJ. It uses commonly available tools (Mplayer, ImageMagick, and GTK+), so it works on most Unix-like systems. It runs under Linux, BSD, Mac OS X/Darwin, IRIX, and openMosix. It is frame and sample accurate, can handle almost all types of video, and is fully extendable through plugins and the included plugin builder tool. It can also be controlled remotely using OSC.

Changes: This version fixes a bug in 1.2.0 which caused a crash when Ogg/Theora files were opened with "resize previews to fit interface" enabled.

Signatures presented to Amazon

2010-02-26T20:02:40+00:00

Defective by Design has presented its petition to Jeff Bezos and Amazon, demanding that Amazon remove Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) from all their products.

Since the petition launched, Amazon has taken two small steps away from total DRM-enforced control. First, their publishing platform changed to make it easier for publishers to submit DRM-free PDFs. Second, a proprietary firmware update allowed Amazon's "Swindles" to read DRM-free PDFs that were not downloaded from Amazon.

These changes should help publishers who want to do the right thing. And the changes make it easier to push other individual publishers to sell their books DRM-free through Amazon.

These changes don't, however, fix a key problem with the Kindle -- its software is still proprietary, so Amazon still has full remote control over the materials on readers' devices.

We're submitting the petition to Amazon to remind them that the thousands of writers, readers, academics, librarians, and public intellectuals who signed our petition asked for much more: a full removal of any DRM from the ebooks Amazon sells and the "Swindle" device itself.

Until Amazon removes all DRM, Amazon is putting our basic freedoms at risk in order to lock publishers and readers into their platform, bringing us closer to the dystopia envisioned in 1984 or The Right to Read.

Workshop Hack Roulette 1 le Jeudi 4 Mars au /tmp/lab

2010-02-26T00:31:47+00:00

Jeudi prochain, un nouveau style de workshop dont le but est de prendre un package debian ou autre software, au hasard, et de le fuzzer, l’analyser, le tester pour réveler ses failles de sécurité: Hack Roulette 1

Quand? Jeudi 4 Mars de 20h a plus d’heure…
Ou? /tmp/lab
Quoi? Hack Roulette… on tire au hasard un logiciel… et on le défonce ;-) sortez vos fuzzer et vos debugger et hop.
Pourquoi? Ca c’est la question que tout le monde se pose, eh, ah, si on avait la réponse, eh…

Pour apprendre a trouver des vulnerabilités dans un logiciel, pour apprendre a fuzzer, pour s’amuser, pour montrer a quel point la loi DADSI avec son interdiction de publier des failles est DEBILE car c’est le SEUL moyen de savoir si son logiciel est vulnérable, enfin pour s’améliorer dans une pratique de base de la sécurité informatique.

The Decade in DRM (and announcing Day Against DRM, 2010)

2010-02-25T20:19:33+00:00

Since the late 1990s, a handful of media and technology companies has waged war against the public, imposing digital restrictions on the technology we use.. Here is Defective by Design's look at some of the most significant events in the past 10 years fighting against DRM. If there are important moments missing (which there may be), please send them to us! Despite a number of victories over DRM in specific areas, DRM is far from dead. Whether companies will control and restrict us through our technology remains to be decided, and the battle is now.

Which brings us to an important announcement: Tuesday May 4, 2010 will be the Day Against DRM. The FSF will be working with other anti-DRM groups and anti-DRM activists from all over the world to raise awareness and mobilize the public. So spread the word by sharing this announcement, and putting the buttons below on your site. If you want to follow the action or be involved, contact info@defectivebydesign.org or sign up here. And read on! Past victories could inspire your activism this year...

The Decade in DRM: 2000-2009

(Including four pre-2000 events that helped set the stage for the years to come.)

February 1997: Richard Stallman's short story "The Right to Read" published. It imagines a future in which book sharing is criminalized and prohibited through technological controls. That future would not be long in coming.
October 28, 1998: The DMCA. US President Bill Clinton signs the Digital Millennium Copyright Act into law. The DMCA criminalized DRM circumvention as well as the creation and spreading of anti-DRM tools. Many nations went on to pass similar so-called "anti-circumvention" laws.
March 31, 1999: Tivo ships a TV timeshifting device using free software under the hood, but the hardware imposes a restriction on running user modified versions of the software. The freedom of free software becomes an illusion, unless the restriction is broken--something that is now illegal thanks to the DMCA. "Tivoization" is born.
October 1999: DeCSS for DVDs. Just before the start of the decade, Jon Lech Johansen, aka DVD Jon, and two anonymous collaborators release

DeCSS, which defeats the DRM on DVDs. After a judge prohibits distribution of DeCSS code, advocates of technological freedom distribute DeCSS code in a plethora of formats, including songs and poetry.
March 2000: GNU Free Documentation License 1.1 is published. The license prohibits DRM and was later adopted by Wikipedia for all its articles.
July 16, 2001: Programmer jailed! FBI arrests visiting Russian programmer Dmitri Sklyarov for helping write a program that stripped DRM from Adobe ebooks. He is detained for almost a month, and not allowed to return home until December.
November 28, 2001: 2600, sued for merely linking to the DeCSS code, loses its appeal.
May 2002: CD DRM schemes defeated by drawing on the disc with a magic marker. Other CD DRM schemes crash the computer playing the disc, inspiring this rant.
December 2002: First Creative Commons copyright licenses released. Creative Commons's licenses encourage sharing of creative works, and prohibit licensees from imposing "technological measures on the Work that restrict the ability of a recipient of the Work from You to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the License," as a blocking maneuver against DRM. By decade's end, hundreds of millions of works would be so licensed, proving that authors, artists and musicians oppose DRM too.
January 2003: Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom becomes the first novel released under a Creative Commons license. Doctorow becomes one of the decade's most outspoken voices against DRM, both in his work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and on his blog Boing Boing; his 2004 Microsoft DRM talk was especially influential.
April 2003: Apple launches the iTunes Store, selling music with the oxymoronic "FairPlay DRM".
September 8, 2003: RIAA sues 261 file sharers, kicking off a massive lawsuit campaign that would reach more than 30,000 lawsuits by decade's end. See The War on Sharing.
September 13, 2003: John Walker publishes The Digital Imprimatur: How big brother and big media can put the Internet genie back in the bottle, identifying DRM as one of the technologies that will lead to restrictions of liberty on the Internet.
November 2003: FairPlay cracked. DVD Jon releases QTFairUse, the first program to circumvent Apple's FairPlay DRM.
January 22, 2004: All legal proceedings against DVD Jon related to DeCSS are dropped.
October 31, 2005: Sony Rootkit discovered. In one of the greatest DRM fiascos of all time, when certain Sony CDs were played on computers, Sony secretly installed a "rootkit" (software that compromises your computer) as part of a DRM system called SecuROM. Among other things, the rootkit let any web page execute code on the infected machine, like forcing the machine to reboot. Sony's DRM rootkit also contained GPL-covered code distributed in violation of the GPL. Sony was not prosecuted for either of these felonies.
December 1st, 2005: Rootkit lawsuits against Sony/BMG gain class action status.
December 26, 2005: Sony settles rootkit lawsuit.
2006: Peter Gutmann's "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection" memorably concludes "The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history." The article ignites public awareness of the new DRM malfeatures in Windows Vista.
May 23, 2006: First Defective by Design action launches. DRM Protestors Crash Vista Party: "As Microsoft developers gathered in Seattle to hear Bill Gates's keynote speech on the future of Microsoft and the coming release of its updated operating system Vista, protesters wearing bright yellow Hazmat suits swarmed the entrance of the city's convention center, delivering an unsettling message to the corporation: your product is defective and hazardous to users."

Defective by Design continues to identify DRM-crippled products, aiming to cast DRM as an anti-social technology, and to abolish DRM as a social practice.

October 3, 2006: First Day Against DRM. Thousands of emails were sent, one hundred and fifty thousand stickers were distributed, and more than two hundred organized meet-ups to get the message out. Some dressed up in Hazmat suits and educated shoppers and commuters, others blogged about anti-DRM activities, many submitted amazing photos. In Paris activists, handed themselves in to police for breaking French DRM laws.
Summer 2006: DRM-free eMusic becomes the second-largest digital music service.
2007 and 2008: Microsoft announces various plans to abandon PlaysForSure DRM. Though some of these plans are rolled back, music customers are outraged at the possibility of losing music collections. Microsoft helps make it clear that DRM sellers cannot be trusted.
February 6, 2007: In an open letter, Steve Jobs says that "DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work..." He encourages DRM opponents to ask major record labels to license music DRM-free to Apple and other music distributors. But by the end of the decade Steve Jobs had shown his real colors by leading the charge to impose maximal DRM on Apple users.
April 2007: AACS key for HD DVDs published, breaking the DRM on all released discs. The key, a short hexadecimal series, is widely posted and widely censored, thanks to site owners' fear of the DMCA. Digg users rebelled when Digg administrators tried to ban posting of the key, leading the site to eventually bow to the wishes of its users.
June 29, 2007: Version 3 of the GNU General Public License is released. Its author Richard Stallman says, "GPLv3 ensures you are free to remove the handcuffs. It doesn't forbid DRM, or any kind of feature. It places no limits on the substantive functionality you can add to a program, or remove from it. Rather, it makes sure that you are just as free to remove nasty features as the distributor of your copy was to add them. Tivoization is the way they deny you that freedom; to protect your freedom, GPLv3 forbids tivoization."
September 25, 2007: Amazon starts selling DRM-free MP3s.
July 11, 2008: Apple's App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch opens.

All the software on the device and in the store is DRMed, even the software that doesn't cost any money or whose authors would actually prefer to share it. The DRM gives Apple control over what applications can and can't be installed on any device. The App Store's numerous and arbitrary App Store rejections become a running joke.
September 2008: The DRM-encrusted game Spore is overwhelmingly negatively reviewed on Amazon, with thousands giving it one star because if its use of DRM.
February 27, 2009: Amazon uses its remote control over the Kindle device to yank the text-to-speech feature from many Kindle books, letting publishers decide which books the device can read aloud. Advocates for the blind responded by protesting at the offices of the Author's Guild, which had pushed for the measure.
April 7, 2009: Apple announces DRM-free versions of all songs in iTunes Store. While music DRM appears nearly dead, Apple keeps DRM on movies, TV shows, audiobooks and applications.
July 11, 2009: Amazon deletes purchased copies of Orwell's 1984 from Kindle e-book readers, making clear who ultimately controls these devices, igniting a general uproar, and a DbD petition for the right to read.

Conclusion

It's interesting that the decade opened and closed with battles over ebooks. Years before Amazon deleted copies of George Orwell's 1984 from users' Kindles, a visiting conference presenter was actually jailed for understanding and publishing Adobe's ebook DRM, a hint at the draconian direction we were headed in. Richard Stallman identified the hypothetical threat to our books in "The Right to Read", but now some of the biggest tech companies in the world (including Amazon and Apple) are making this nightmare scenario a reality.

So, if we're going to create a world that is DRM-free through this final transition away from physical media (as CDs, DVDs, and maybe even printed books become obsolete), anti-DRM activists must be vigilant. We hope everyone reading this will participate in this year's International Day Against DRM on May 4th. If you want to follow the action or be involved, contact info@defectivebydesign.org or sign up here. Let's keep writing history!

An End Without End: Catastrophe Cinema in the Age of Crisis

2010-02-25T11:18:52+00:00

ByEvan Calder Williams

Dusting off the tedium and ash deposited by Hollywood's recent spate of catastrophe movies, Evan Calder Williams takes aim at their world-affirming pessimism and calls for some real apocalypse

EDRi-gram - Number 8.4, 24 February 2010

2010-02-24T19:25:28+00:00

FAQ on ACTA digital chapter

2010-02-22T14:04:40+00:00

EDRi has prepared an FAQ on the recently leaked ACTA digital chapter. It is available from: http://www.edri.org/files/acta_faq_100222.pdf.

The document covers moves to bring about self-regulatory measures by ISPs to introduce "three strikes" systems, the relationship of ACTA with the existing EU regulatory framework and the potential wider impact of ACTA on fundamental rights.

Eben Moglen on Free Software Licensing

2010-02-22T00:40:39+00:00

“Licenses are not the answers to social problems. I speak as a guy who cares a lot about softwre licenses. But I tell you again, licenses are the constitutions of software communities, and they solve problems inside the communities. They are not tools whose primary benefit is to be found in their external consequences.”

LiVES 1.2.0

2010-02-21T17:59:29+00:00

Changes: The multi-track interface has been completely updated. Switching to->from multi-track mode now maintains the layout in memory, and users can also start up and work entirely in multi-track mode. Progressive image loading has been implemented. The JACK transport can now set the play start position. A new startup wizard for first time users was added, as was Help/Troubleshoot. Frame generation for real-time generators should be faster. Various other fixes and updates were made.

Oaxaca y Veracruz a la vanguardia de agresiones a periodistas

2010-02-19T18:40:53+00:00

Según el informe de las organizaciones Article 19 y Cencos, en estos dos estados del sur de Mexico “el patrón que se reproduce es en agresiones hacia medios con cobertura local, con responsabilidad de funcionarios públicos municipales mayoritariamente“. No sobra recordar que tanto en Oaxaca como Veracruz (y en Tabasco y Puebla y etc) son muy comúnes las pleitesías al gobernador en turno por parte de la prensa.

El informe Entre la violencia y la indiferencia documenta por lo menos 244 agresiones a periodistas y medios de comunicación durante el año 2009, además de 11 asesinatos y un desaparecido.

En un 65.67% los supuestos responsables de las agresiones son funcionarios públicos (…) De los ataques que corresponden a funcionarios públicos casi en un 60% fueron presuntamente cometidos por fuerzas de seguridad, donde se incluye al Ejército mexicano (responsable de 26 agresiones) y a diversas corporaciones de policía.

Referencias

Archivado bajo:Chayote, Mordazas, Oaxaca, Poder y Costumbre Tagged: Chayote, militares, periodistas, prensa, Vercaruz, violencia

What music do you listen on heaven?

2010-02-19T00:18:12+00:00

via nintendoseth.soup.io

bless your music

and sings along the clouds…

Slayer in Wikipedia

Archivado bajo:Fe, Musik, Nada, Nadie, paisajes, Pintas, Todo Tagged: dios, god, slayer

Why people buy pirated movies on the street?

2010-02-18T21:23:56+00:00

via thekain.soup.io

movies freedom

Archivado bajo:Afuera, Conspiranoia, mundo, Nada, Todo, TV Tagged: DVD, movies, piratas, pirate, propiedad intelectual

Milkymist 0.3 release announcement

2010-02-18T13:19:22+00:00

It is with great excitement that I am announcing the release of Milkymist 0.3. This release marks a significant milestone for the project: since now, it’s no longer tens of thousands of lines of code for nerds only. It’s also an actual MilkDrop implementation, rendering good-looking visual effects that EVERYBODY can appreciate.

But, see for yourself. If you have a Xilinx ML401 board, grab your JTAG cable and fetch a binary kit from the usual location. See the wiki for setup instructions. Put on some music, turn on random preset selection, and enjoy!

If you don’t have a ML401, here is a video for you to chew on before the Milkymist One boards are available:

(download MP4 file)

On to the technical change log of this release:

Major TMU redesign (TMU2):
- Improved performance (2-3 times faster)
- Rectangular rendering primitive
- Bilinear texture filtering
- Texture wrapping
- Subpixel texture resolution
- New vertex format
PFPU modified to support the new TMU vertex format
Additional MilkDrop features in the demo firmware:
- More wave modes
- Borders
- Motion vectors (experimental)
- Texture wrapping
- Random preset chooser
- Fine-grained decay

If you want to discuss and keep instantly updated about the project, I encourage you to come and idle in the #milkymist channel on the FreeNode IRC network. See this page.

See you there!

Media workers in Guerrero: “It’s not logical to be a journalist here”

2010-02-18T05:54:47+00:00

Salomón Cruz Gallardo, the general secretary of the local unit of the national journalist union Sindicato Nacional de Redactores de la Prensa talk with Mike O’Connor of CPJ about the assassination of Jorge Ochoa Martínez on January 29 in the little town of Ayutla de los Libres in the southern state of Guerrero.

Conditions in Guerrero are deadly due to ongoing clashes between drug cartels. And a culture of impunity has created self-censorship, says CPJ.

Ochoa Martínez is the 3rd journalist assassinated in Mexico in 2010.

References

Archivado bajo:Guerrero, Mordazas, Poder y Costumbre Tagged: CJP, crimen, impunidad, journalists, media, medios, periodistas, prensa, self-censorship

Infix operators « Python recipes « ActiveState Code

2010-02-17T21:09:45+00:00

Hopenhagen against Hope

2010-02-17T14:29:26+00:00

ByIlya Lipkin

Amidst the general panic and its commodification, Ilya Lipkin travelled to the Copenhagen Summit to witness capitalism's first last chance at preserving a climate conducive to its growth

Situating COP15: Capitalist Logic and Subjectivity

Personal Computer Milestones

2010-02-15T01:27:07+00:00

Pop Quiz: What was the first personal computer?

Speech Accent Archive

2010-02-14T23:23:34+00:00

The speech accent archive uniformly presents a large set of speech samples from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English read the same paragraph and are carefully transcribed. The archive is used by people who wish to compare and analyze the accents of different English speakers.

BBC - Voices

2010-02-11T21:10:03+00:00

The Voices Recordings are the most significant popular survey of regional English ever undertaken around the UK: 300 recorded conversations involving a total of 1,201 people talking about accent and dialect, the words they use, and their attitudes to language. Of the conversations, 250 are in English, 31 are in Scots, 10 are in Welsh, six in Scots Gaelic, three in Irish, three in Ulster Scots, and one each in Manx and Guernsey French.

Breizh Entropy Congress artistic schedule

2010-02-11T16:24:01+00:00

================================
BREIZH ENTROPY CONGRESS
April 15-17 2010, Rennes, France
Artistic Schedule
================================

French version at bottom / Version française en bas

Breizh Entropy Congress is an inter-disciplinary event focusing on free
(as in freedom) creations and culture.

Through a meeting fostering open-mindedness, exchange of ideas and
learning, we hope to show solutions to technical, social and political
problems, and celebrate free, reclaimed and creative art and
technology.

We are proud to announce the schedule of the artistic night:

- Tonevain (1h)
Tonevain are Teresa, Aileen and Taniya from Ireland. They all have
different musical backgrounds and this is reflected in their music.
There are strong influences of traditional Celtic music and old-time
blues with driving hip-hop beats. They improvise a lot, drawing
inspiration from each other. They also take traditional Irish airs and
arrange them in their own style, giving them a whole new life and
structure. Their music is copy-left.

- Planet of the Shapes by Robert Ratcliffe (11min)
Planet of the Shapes is a three-movement work for (stereo) fixed medium
exploring the hybridisation of breakbeat-driven electronic dance music
(EDM) (specifically drum ‘n’ bass and breakcore) with the instrumental
woodwind music of Berio and Ferneyhough.

- Smoke Fish (1h 45min)
Smoke Fish are Shay (Guitar /Voice, Keyboards), Jonathan (Guitar,
Keyboards), PY (Drums) and Jean Se (Bass). The quartet’s common
influences, such as David Bowie, The Pixies, Pavement, Pulp or even
Queen gave birth to a dynamic, genuine and high energy Pop-Rock.
Exploring a vast musical range, from acoustic ballads to more full-on
rock material with slight touches of oriental and electronic
vibrations, Smoke Fish toys with contrasts to put forth an intense,
dream-like and gripping music that opens the doors of the listener’s
imagination.
Their music is Creative Commons licensed.
Web: http://www.smokefish.fr

- Réshowffment climatique by Marijane Miracle (1h 45min)
After her online performance in 2000 (366 short films produced in one
year); after her unorthodox advice on sexuality (Miss Trash); and her
tentative to propose a modern messie for the third millenium (Cristal);
Marie-Anne tries to raise political awareness with a music project
(Marijane Miracle).
For the Breizh Entropy Congress, they propose a multimedia concert
(high end music and visuals) of politico-festive electro. It’s
possible. In short, the audience is invited to dance on original works
while listening to mindblowing lyrics, excerpted from their latest
album (la fin du monde), sung with humor and casualness.
Web: http://www.marijane.fr / http://www.insoumise.net

- Marathon humain vs/with ordinateur by L’autre Bout (46min)
The computer plays a very simple melodic loop, and all six musicians
must play the very same melody according to the possibilities of their
instruments. The idea is to build a music work where the computer and
the man apply respectively what they can do, and the result is thus
enriched. Here, the computer will repeat its loops indefinitely and in
an extremely precise manner, while men will fail, get tired, create
indetermination, play louder and louder, accelerate, etc. It is a
performance as sportive as musical. The work lasts 46 minutes, because
a marathon lasts 46km.

The artistic event will start at 18:00 on April 15th, 2010.
Venue:
Le Diapason
Université de Rennes
263 Avenue du Général Leclerc
35700 Rennes, France

Breizh Entropy Congress is more than the artistic event. The next two
days will be filled with lectures, workshops, and others. You are still
most welcome to send your submissions in these fields! Here are the
deadlines for this part of the congress:
Submission Deadline: March 10th 2010, 23:59
Notification of Acceptance: March 20th 2010
Publication of Schedule: March 25th 2010

We accept submissions in a _VERY BROAD_ area: free software, open
hardware, security tools, science, society, politics,…
For more information, check out the full call for proposals:
http://www.breizh-entropy.org/cfp.html

BEC website: http://www.breizh-entropy.org

================================
BREIZH ENTROPY CONGRESS
April 15-17 2010, Rennes, France
Programme Artistique
================================

Breizh Entropy Congress est un évènement inter-disciplinaire ayant pour
thème la création et la culture libres.

A travers un colloque favorisant l’ouverture d’esprit, l’échange
d’idées et l’éducation, nous espérons ébaucher des solutions à des
problèmes techniques, sociaux et culturels et célébrer l’art et la
technologie libres, réappropriés et créatifs.

Nous sommes fiers d’annoncer le programme de la soirée artistique:

- Tonevain (1h)
Les Tonevain sont Teresa, Aileen et Taniya et viennent d’Irlande. Leurs
origines musicales sont différentes et cela se réflète dans la musique
du groupe. Il y a des influences fortes de la musique celtique
traditionnelle, du blues ancien et de rythmes hip-hop entraînants.
L’improvisation est très présente. Le groupe prend également des
mélodies traditionnelles irlandaises et les arrangent dans leur propre
style, en leur donnant une nouvelle vie et une nouvelle structure. Leur
musique est copy-left.

- Planet of the Shapes de Robert Ratcliffe (11min)
Planet of the Shapes est une pièce fixe en trois mouvements, qui
explore l’hybridation de la musique dance électronique breakbeat
(surtout la drum’n'bass et le breakcore) avec la musique instrumentale
à vent de Berio et Ferneyhough.

- Smoke Fish (1h 45min)
Le premier album du groupe Smoke Fish ressemble beaucoup aux voyages
autour du monde de son chanteur, Shay: beaucoup d’expériences à faire
et beaucoup à découvrir. Non seulement le voyage est ici une
récompense, mais il vous emmène également à travers nombre de paysages
fantastiques et endroits merveilleux. “Life Ain’t Pink” commence par un
tourbillon rock et électro, et se finit avec le sentiment agréable que,
de temps en temps, il est possible pour un nouveau groupe de suivre sa
propre voie. D’une ballade folk à un song-writing plus rock en passant
par quelques sonorités orientales, Smoke Fish joue avec les contrastes
et libère une musique qui sait se faire intense, aérienne et prenante
ouvrant alors la porte aux divagations et autres rêvasseries… une
rencontre fortuite avec la progéniture de Lewis Carroll, les
hésitations sexuelles permanentes de Mary, un tango lascif avec une
multitude de prophètes en pleine Calabre ou une partie de poker au fin
fond d’un asile norvégien.
Leur musique est sous licence Creative Commons.
Web: http://www.smokefish.fr

- Réshowffment climatique de Marijane Miracle (1h 45min)
Après sa perf en ligne de 2000 (soit 366 minimétrages réalisés et mis
en ligne en un an); après ses conseils peu orthodoxes sur la sexualité
(Miss Trash); et sa tentative de proposer un messie moderne pour le
troisième millénaire (Cristal); Marie-Anne tente d’éveiller les
consciences politiques avec un projet musical (Marijane Miracle).
Pour le Breizh Entropy Congress, la formation propose un concert
multimédia (musique et visuels de haut vol) d’électro politico-festive.
C’est possible. En clair le public est invité à danser sur des musiques
originales en écoutant des textes qui arrachent, extraits de leur
nouvel album (la fin du monde), chantés avec humour et désinvolture.
Web: http://www.marijane.fr / http://www.insoumise.net

- Marathon humain vs/with ordinateur de L’autre Bout (46min)
L’ordinateur joue une boucle mélodique très simple, et tous les six
interprètes doivent faire la même mélodie selon les possibilités de
hauteur de leurs instruments. L’idée est de construire une pièce de
musique ou l’ordinateur et l’homme appliquent respectivement ce qu’il
savent faire, et le résultat en est enrichi. Ici, l’ordinateur va
répéter ses boucles indéfiniment de façon ultra précise et toujours de
la même façon, alors que les hommes vont rater, se fatiguer, créer de
l’indétermination, jouer de plus en plus fort, accélérer etc. Il s’agit
d’une performance autant sportive que musicale. La pièce dure 46
minutes, parce qu’un marathon dure 46km.

La soirée artistique débutera à 18:00 le 15 avril 2010.
Salle:
Le Diapason
Université de Rennes
263 Avenue du Général Leclerc
35700 Rennes, France

Breizh Entropy Congress ne se limite pas à cette soirée artistique. Les
deux jours suivants seront remplis de conférences, d’ateliers, et
autres. Vous êtes toujours invités à envoyer des propositions dans ces
domaines! Voici les échéances pour cette partie du congrès:
Date limite d’envoi: 10 mars, 23:59
Notification d’acceptation: 20 mars
Publication du programme: 25 mars

Nous acceptons des propositions dans un domaine _TRES LARGE_: logiciel
libre, matériel libre, outils de sécurité, science, société,
politique,…
Pour plus d’informations, lisez l’appel à propositions complet:
http://www.breizh-entropy.org/cfp.html

BEC website: http://www.breizh-entropy.org

A (Maker fair)|(Hacker fest) in Paris – Announcing Les Contorsions Technologiques

2010-02-11T00:34:36+00:00

La Suite Logique hackerspace invites hackers from all around the world to
participate to the first edition of Les Contorsions Technologiques that will
run from April 30 to May 2 at la Suite, alternative cultural space in the
middle of Paris, France.

What are Les Contorsions Technologiques ? It’s a mix of workshops, exhibitions,
demonstrations and performance, in a setting favorable to discovery,
experimentation and exchange. It’s an invitation to grab the tools and take the
initiative back, to shatter norms and reshape our universe. It’s the
celebration of all the creative, funny or spectacular uses of technology, and
knowledge sharing.

Help us to spread the word by diffusing this Call for Proposals!

–[ Call for Proposals ]—-

Les Contorsions Technologiques revolve around three big ideas:
- exhibiting tangible technology applications, as they are easier to feel;
- guiding people on their meeting with technology;
- inspire people into following our footsteps and play with technology.

We decided to not have lectures, and to ignore computer-only subjects. But do
not worry, there is still a wealth of topics. If you are unsure about this,
here is a list of possible topics:

* Electronics Basics
- all arduino things
- blinky boards
- squeaky circuits
- robotic runts
- radio transmissions

* Day to day
- TV-B-gone and friends
- RFID jewelry
- RFID killers
- makerbots and RepRap
- DIY domestic appliances
- DIY biotechs
- DIY clothing

* Art and games
- brainmachine
- demomaking
- 8-bit music
- puredata and supercollider
- object tracking
- physical peripherals
- circuit bending

* Urban hacking
- LED throwies
- laser tag
- building fronts as giants screen, one pixel per window

* Science
- Tesla coils
- quadrocopters
- autonomous drones

And, of course, everything we might have forgotten …

Finally, we have the pleasure to offer you a quite uncommun exhibition medium,
the front of a 7 story building. Be megalomaniac, we have the resources for!
(more information on this very soon)

–[ Submissions ]—-

Send your submissions at cfp@contorsions-technologiques.org before March 21,
23:59 GMT. Acceptance notifications will be sent around March 26 and the
schedule will be published around April 5.

Your submissions shall be a Plain Text, PDF, OpenDocument or RTF file, and
shall contain the following informations:
- type
- summary (1000 characters max)
- lang (fr/en)
- logistics need (tables, chairs, power, light, sound)
- contact information (at least an e-mail address)
- if applicable, a link to pictures or videos

Here are the submission types we accept:
- workshop: one or two people help to realize a small project (30 to 90 min of
work, no big hardware. Soldering iron is OK, drill press is not)
- exhibition: present your realizations and do interactive demonstrations
- demo/performance: be the star during 10 to 30 minutes. e.g.: tesla coil,
quadrocopter flight
- concert: between 30mn and 2h

Don’t forget: everything is possible, as long as you drop us some lines to talk
about it.

–[ Practical Informations ]—-

Les Contorsions Technologiques are organised without budget by volunteers on
their free time. Therefore, we cannot help with travels or accomodation
expenses, but we might be able to organise makeshift accomodation for
participants. Please contact us for more details.

Check out our web site for the last updates and other stuff:

http://www.contorsions-technologiques.org/

This call for proposals is available here :

http://www.contorsions-technologiques.org/cfp.html

Subscribe to the annonces mailing-list to be warned of the last updates:

http://www.contorsions-technologiques.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/annonces

Meet us on IRC :
irc://chat.freenode.net/#lasuitelogique

Send us an e-mail:
contact@contorsions-technologiques.org

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

La Suite Logique invite les bidouilleurs du monde entier à participer à la
première édition des Contorsions technologiques qui se déroulera du 30 avril au
2 mai à la Suite, lieu culturel alternatif situé au coeur de Paris, France.

Les Contorsions Technologiques, c’est un mélange d’ateliers, d’expositions, de
démonstrations et de performances, dans une atmosphère propice à la découverte,
l’expérimentation et l’échange. C’est une invitation à prendre les outils et
reprendre l’initiative, à briser les normes et remodeler notre univers. C’est
la célébration de toutes les utilisations créatives, amusantes et
spectaculaires de la technologie, et du partage de la connaissance.

Aidez-nous à répandre la nouvelle en faisant tourner cet Appel à Proposition !

–[ Appel à Propositions ]—-

Voici les trois axes qui gouvernent les Contorsions Technologiques :
- matérialiser la technologie pour mieux la faire ressentir ;
- guider le public dans sa rencontre avec la technologie ;
- donner au public l’envie de se lancer sur nos traces et de jouer avec la
technologie.

Nous avons volontairement décidé de ne pas faire de conférences, et d’ignorer
les sujets purement informatiques. Mais n’ayez crainte, il reste amplement de
quoi faire. Si vous en doutez, voici une liste de sujets possibles :

* Électronique basique
- arduino et compagnie
- loupiottes qui clignotent
- circuits qui couinent
- robots riquiqui
- transmissions radio

* Quotidien
- TV B gone et consors
- joaillerie RFID
- tueurs de RFID
- makerbots et ReprRp
- électroménager DIY
- biotechnologies DIY
- vêtements DIY

* Art et jeux
- brainmachine
- demomaking
- 8-bit music
- puredata et supercollider
- object tracking
- périphériques physiques
- circuit bending

* Espace urbain
- LED throwies
- laser tag
- écrans géants en facade, un pixel par fenêtre

* Science
- bobines de Tesla
- quadrocopters
- drones autonomes

et bien sûr, tout ce que nous aurions pu oublier…

Enfin, nous avons le plaisir de vous offrir un terrain d’exposition peu commun,
la facade d’un immeuble de sept étages. Voyez grand, nous en avons les moyens
(plus d’informations très prochainement).

–[ Modalités de soumission ]—-

Envoyez vos soumissions à cfp@contorsions-technologiques.org avant le 21 mars,
23h59 GMT. Les notifications d’acceptation seront envoyées vers le 26 mars et
le programme final sera publié autour du 5 avril.

Vos soumissions doivent être dans un des formats Plain Text, PDF, OpenDocument
ou RTF, et doivent contenir les informations suivantes :
- type
- résumé (1000 caracteres max)
- langue (fr/en)
- besoins logistiques (tables, chaises, électricité, lumière, son)
- informations de contact (au moins e-mail)
- éventuellement, un lien vers des photos/vidéos.

Voici les types de soumission acceptés :
- ateliers : un ou deux instructeurs aident le public à réaliser un petit
montage qui prend de 30 à 90 minutes, ne demandant pas de matériel lourd (fer
à souder : OK ; perceuse a colonne : KO)
- exposition/installation : présentez vos réalisations au public et faites de
petites démonstrations interactives
- démonstration/performance : soyez le centre de l’attention pendant 10 à 30
minutes. e.g.: tesla coil, quadrocopters
- concert : entre 30mn et 3h de concert

N’oubliez pas : tout est possible, il suffit de nous laisser un e-mail pour en parler.
–[ Infos pratiques ]—-

Les Contorsions Technologiques sont organisées sans budget par des bénévoles sur
leur temps libre. Par conséquent, nous ne pouvons aider à financer les déplacements
ou l’hébergement, mais nous pouvons tâcher d’organiser un hébergement de fortune
pour les exposants. Contactez-nous pour plus de détails.

Surveillez notre Site Web pour les mises à jour et autres nouveautés :

http://www.contorsions-technologiques.org/

Cet appel à proposition est disponible içi :

http://www.contorsions-technologiques.org/cfp.html

Inscrivez vous à la liste de diffusion annonces pour être averti des dernières
nouvelles :

http://www.contorsions-technologiques.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/annonces

Retrouvez nous sur IRC :
irc://chat.freenode.net/#lasuitelogique

Envoyez nous un e-mail :
contact@contorsions-technologiques.org