The conversation thing

Actually, not just in the RISD team, but leading the Rhode Island School of Design. Even though I never was to MIT, all those years of constantly following his work with the Media Arts and Sciences Department leave me now with a feeling of nostalgia cute! what can digital information do to a very sane person

I hope, and I know, his work will continue to be inspirational and I sure hope one day I get to meet the idea generator man in person.

I’ve got mail! not e-mail, dearest beloved, but regular mail. From whom? Ars Electronica.

Last year, Ars Electronica was about privacy, and how it is slowly but completely dissapearing from our universe… This year the festival is about the new cultural economy and its new limits on intellectual property.

Internet and technology has made copyrighted information become inadequate. The costs of its production gets lower and lower… things that used to cost a few years ago, are now plain free, but other businesses emerge, so the final user is not the one charged, but by his actions, he actually makes money for the business that gives him the free goods.

The commerce is nowadays a threesome .. it used to be a couple before that - you gave me something, I gave you the money for it. Today, you give me something, I spend some time on your website, advertisers get their commercials seen by me, you get paid by them heheee …

Curator - Joichi Ito

CNN has decided to open an I-Report hub in Second Life, encouraging residents of Second Life to share their own “SL I-Reports” about events occurring within the virtual world.

This I-Report hub includes a news desk where CNN producers will hold weekly editorial discussions, and an amphitheater for larger in-world events, such as training sessions and appearances by CNN anchors and correspondents.

CNN’s first in-world training session will be held Tuesday, November 13, at 5 p.m. ET at the I-Report Hub , that is, if I’m guessing correcly, on the 14th around 1 o’clock in the afternoon.

The first European Machinima Festival took place this weekend in Leicester, UK.

Not very sure what you know about this form of animation films, I encountered the term machinima in 2005 at Linz Ars Electronica where there was a full seminar on this subject alone. Machinima, pronounced ma-shin-i-ma means making movies using videogames, the word being an amalgamation of machine and cinema and it is a fusion of film-making and gaming.

Although its history goes back on 1996, for me it was like discovering that someone invented the wheel. The idea behind these animated films is so simple, yet it brings such a shift in perception. Until finding out what machinima means, I thought animation and films can only be made by a script and by animating scene by scene all using the design of an illustrator/animator. Yet, it had never occured to me that entire scenes from videogames can be captured and rendered as a film of its own with a true script.

My favourite is still the “red vs blue” series, by roster teeth. The first episode is a true classic.

Developed by exalead.com team, baagz.com [currently in its beta form] aims to become a new form of social networking. Sharing multiple forms of content, not just a mere profile of oneself is the target for the baagz team.

Short dictionary - extract from the baagz brochure

baagz is the name of the service
a baag (plural baagz) is a shared interest
baagboyz and baaggirlz is what you expect, and they are all baagerz
to baag an information is to put the information into a baag
let’s bag it! is what a user say when finding a cool site

I am waiting to be accepted as an user (so far registration is only by means of invitation, so I have to wait for now) and dive into this new social networking ubercool site

Just seen on Euronews a documentary on Second Life and its leagal issues. Apparently, there are some lawsuits regarding the ownership of land and property in Second Life.

In May 2006, Marc Bragg has filed suit against Linden Lab for “a virtual land deal gone sour.” According to the press-release issued by Bragg, “The suit seeks financial damages in the thousands, in part for a breach of a virtual land auction contract and for violation of the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law. This suit is unique because the land doesn’t actually exist.” Technically, the land does exist–both as data, and as a user experience–but not as terra firma and he argues that when you mention the term “own” by no means can it be made to signify “licenced” or “rent”.

Property is an interesting concept if we relate it to virtuality. ownership is by no means related to physicality, that’s something we all agree (copyright on an idea is one very good example) and exchange is what gives value to the owned property.

I’ve tried Second Life just today and it seems addictive, but honestly, I would not spend a dollar on things that are a simulacrum of reality. I would most definitely spend money on new inventions, objects, be they as weird as they might be… It’s a brilliant idea for the Linden Lab, I cannot argue, but my take on this is a no.

And then again, in love and science, never say never

Take a look at this Swiss tool for keeping track of user comments on different collaborative tools such as blogs, flickr, digg etc. -> www.cocomment.com

“coComment keeps track of all the online conversations you’re following in one convenient place, and informs you whenever something is added to a conversation.

With the browser extension, comments are automatically collected, no need to remember where you commented, coComment does it for you. “

I’ve tried it out and really is an usefull tool. I’ll definitely use it for my comments .
For tracking back on blogs and social sites this tool works wonderfully. Investigating now on how to use it on other not so mainstream communities. I’ll come back with details if finding out more.

I’ve just read the iht.com article on Muriel Cooper and have discovered a great mind. Never knew where the MIT logo came from and that it was her idea.

She was one of the visionaries that forseen design as interactive and driven by simplicity. In the 60s when tehnology was only in its infancy, people tended to see it as a big monster capable of changing social realities but unflexible.

Cooper has reinforced the idea that on-screen design can be better than just linecodes …. Almost 40 years after we’ve come to Microsoft surface and Apple’s iPhone. Muriel Cooper sure was right!

Rhizome curates an online exhibition of projects that reffer to Google way of life :).

“The selection of projects in Google Art, or How to Hack Google illuminate and critique the influence of this expanding online institution. The projects include ad hacks that attempt to foil Google’s seemingly unstoppable business machinery, playful re-interpretations of search results and alterations of its geographical worldview. Together, they elevate and critique Google’s logic, while recognizing its own deepening relationship with our culture, behavior and lives.”

Curated by Ana Otero for Rhizome.

I liked the simplicity (Maeda, again) of the concept for the GoogleHouses project. It is a website that searches houses images on google by different keywords (you can build interior image collections - bedrooms, bathrooms etc) and exhibits them in a 3D model of walls and interiors.

Panorama festival in Karlsruhe starts on Saturday and is for the next 6 months. A lot of interesting experiments are to be seen there. You might be fooled that it is a simple display of photographic panoramas collections, but you would be soo wrong: The festival gathers interactive artists that make use of panoramas display in their work.

The Wooster Group come with an interesting experiment on an interactive 360 degrees war film. Now how about that? How about choosing your own point of view, and not the director’s?Other artists, such as Bernd Lintermann and Joachim Böttger with Globorama 2005 explore inedite visualization of the Earth.

Interactivity is the key.. I want to go there. Program here… take a look.

How would you feel about a movie that lets you control not the plot, but the place you observe the action… You could listen to the two main characters or just slip away on the corridor and see what is happening in the garden… Do you think this shift in visualizing the film is possible in the next 5 years?