This is a poster and a text: an analog R-Echos

Would you be interested in investing in the tangible production of this work?

1. You can download the digital archive
and decide wether or not you’re interested in particpating in this project.
2. Each participant donate a minimum of £8
3. The publication is produced
4. We share the publications
which means each participant own a fair amount of publications and participants decide (collectively or individually) what to do with it.

minimum £8

I made the trek to a steamy hot NYC this weekend to attend one day of the three day Last HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference at the Hotel Pennsylvania. There was too much going to adequately cover it here (or even take it all in), but a few things stood out.

Steve Rambam’s eye opening talk on the death of privacy for example. For a solid three hours in front of a standing room only crowd he weaved back and forth between the Orwellian theme of how our privacy is being ripped from us by everyone from Google to Choicepoint and the theme that seemed even creepier to him, self contribution. Over and over he expressed disbelief at how willingly we post our personal details everywhere from Twitter to Facebook while thanking us all the while for making his job as a private investigator that much easier. What the marketers and government don’t actively take, we actively give. Naturally I twittered the whole thing.

Cell phone tracking; artificial-intelligence-assisted reality mining; 3000 cameras per square mile in Manhattan; facial, activity, and even gait identification software; government outsourced investigative databases shielded from FOIA requests; UAV-based license plate scanners; beating anonymity by correlating multiple datasets; unanticipated database repurposing; and on and on… Finally I could twitter no more and left the venue hurriedly fashioning a tinfoil hat from a burger wrapper while consigning myself to doubling the dosage on my meds.

I will say this though, there was something deliciously ironic about standing in a room chock full of hackers all listening at rapt attention to a three hour chillingly dystopic harangue on privacy loss while nearly every single one of them was wearing an RFID tag around their necks. Even better, the tag was tracking their every move around the venue and was linked to a comprehensive self-contributed profile.

Moving beyond the privacy nightmare stuff, there was hardware hacking to be found everywhere at Last HOPE. Tables were covered with broken open electronic toys and electronic components and were surrounded by hackers with smoking soldering irons.

Of the completed projects on display, one of my favorites was a something of a hybrid that projected a 3D image onto carefully placed strings.

Called Wiremap, the project was built by Albert Hwang who carefully moved it from his living room to the Hotel Pennsylvania where it took him a full day to set up and re-calibrate. It is a fascinating piece that creates a convincing (if low res) three dimensional image by carefully processing a volumetric image into slices (using Processing) and then projecting those slices onto reflective white strings stretched into a precise angular array.

The resolution of the system is limited by the fact that the strings have a physical width and that the projector is quite imperfect for the task. Relatively poor angular precision, rectilinear lens distortion, the lack of flat field optics, and the fact that the lens has a fairly narrow focal depth all conspire to limit the display resolution to 256 slices. However, despite the limitations you could move around the display and really get a sense for the object and it’s motion. The video I’m embedding below isn’t great but it should get the idea across.

Finally, I just wanted to mention a couple of things about the “Crippling Crypto - The Debian OpenSSL Debacle” talk given by Appelbaum, Zovi and Nohl. Plenty has been written about the issue itself, so there is no point in regurgitating it here, but if you haven’t seen the diff of the before and after code change it’s worth taking a look. It is amazing that such a benign looking edit (at first, and probably second, glance it looks like someone just added a comment) could turn out to be the “worst bug in the history of Debian,” and probably SSH as well since it also relies on OpenSSL.

As the presenters set out to recreate 524,288 weak keys for use in tracking them down and blacklisting them, they calculated it would take them five days on a single machine. So, instead, using Amazon’s S3, SQS, and 20 32 bit and 20 64 bit EC2 instances, they ran the entire job in four hours for a total cost of $24. Interestingly, they didn’t even have to supply their own image of Ubuntu with the un-patched code as it was still available from Amazon for use with EC2.

I expect video for some of the talks will pop up here and there. In the meantime, if you are interested, these guys videotaped every session and made DVD’s. If you don’t already suffer from paranoiac delusions I would highly recommend Steve Rambam’s session (or, you can find an earlier version of the talk here).

(Via : O’Reilly Radar)

One frequent request from users of my little Flash map is a way to map traffic to their website. So here it is. The map above displays a week of traffic to the map home page.

I adapted the geocounter PHP script to query the hostip.info API and convert IP address to latitude and longitude and store the location in a database.

There are a few tools that map traffic by adding dots to a PNG or markers to an embedded Google map, but I find these cluttered and cumbersome. My map does a few things differently:

• With a single click, zoom into a cluster of points to see a finer, more detailed view. No more bouncing to Google or fiddling with a lot of navigation buttons. You can also click-and-drag to zoom into a specific selection, or click on the edge of the frame to move around.
• Additional traffic increases the total area of the dots proportional to the number of hits you get, not just doubling diameter with each subsequent hit.
• Points fade over time as the traffic record ages.
• Traffic from the same location over multiple days is represented by concentric circles, older visits shown in outer rings that fade over time.
• You can customize colors of the points, background, countries and borders. For instance, see darker, analog-style version on the map home page.
• You can configure the how long you want to store traffic data, and the minimum size of the points.

The geocounter script is GPL’ed and the map is free for personal or non-profit use, but requires a license for commercial use. For more information visit http://backspace.com/mapapp/.

Download the PHP scripts and world map at http://backspace.com/mapapp/geocounter.zip.

It’s been thrilling watching traffic show up from far-flung places. Sort of takes me back to the old web odometer days. Enjoy!

”

(via Social Design Notes.)

Second Ave. Sagas | A New York City Subway Blog » Blog Archive » A subway system easier to navigate

via Social Design Notes 

This Helvetica has been designed for the forthcoming issue of R-Echos - the first (official) one printed on paper.

fontnest

This is a Light Sculpture by AntiVJ, a visual label. These projections on 3D objects are really neat! It was on display during Transmediale 2007, a festival for art and digital culture in Berlin. The sculpture itself, ‘Halbzeug’, was made by visomat inc. You probably want to check Pablo Valbuena’s work too if you like this.

AntiVJ - Light Sculpture from crustea on Vimeo.

”

(via today and tomorrow.)

»Turing Train Terminal«, 2004 by Severin Hofmann and David Moises.

”

(via VVORK.)

Images via: via http://www.camac.org/ & http://www.atariarchives.org/artist/sec11.php

Found here via Amandine

”

(via NONE.)

The Brains Behind the Image Fulgurator | Gadget Lab from Wired.com

via Kosmar on Friendfeed 

Shantell Martin sure likes to use her Wacom tablet when she does live performances and events, so much so that Wacom ended up doing a case study on her. I’ve embeded a video that’s part of the piece, but read the whole interview here.

”

(via Jean Snow.)

News from the graduate summer show at the Royal College of Art in London.

Yuri Suzuki and the Prepared Turntable

Quite a few projects made my day over there. The ones of Yuri Suzuki for example. That guy is so talented it should be illegal. He’s an artist, musician and now a fresh graduate from the Design Products department. His project is concerned with revamping and giving new forms and meanings to the almost obsolete turntable, a device which very few of us still have in their house. We don’t buy disks of CDs anymore either. Nowadays music is more abstract and immaterial than ever. Sound has been reduced to data.

Sound Chaser

Sound Chaser

Sound Chaser looks like a little toy train that rides on record rails. You can align and connect each chipped pieces of second-hand records one to another and compose a new track that the train will play.

Tip Tap

The TipTap, developed in collaboration with Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad, is a little hammer that reveals the dormant sounds around us.

A small metal tapper housed in the object taps out a rhythm on any object or surface that you hold it near to. The rhythm is set either by the user or can be defined by the controller. Alternatively, a beat can be taken from your favourite record, allowing you to play along while keeping perfectly in time. The TipTap can also synchronise with other users to make a social tapping experience.

Prepared Truntable

The Prepared Turntable is an analogue answer to the digitalized DJ. The turntable has 5 tone arms, each of which can have its volume controlled by its own fader. Users can make or play music with special loop groove records.

Finger Player

The Finger Player is a wearable record player. Insert your fingers into one of the little rings, play the record just by holding your hand over the disk and feel the physicality of making sound.

Sound Jewellery

Sound Jewellery conceives sound as something precious that you can offer to a friend or wear as a memory of a shared laugher, a romantic conversation, any sound moment from your daily life. The record is made up of components which of course you can play but they can also be worn as bracelet, brooch or other pieces of jewellery.

Related: Turntable Orchestra, Computer/Turntable hybrid, The Turnatable Microwave, video turntable, etc.

All images courtesy of Yuri Suzuki.
The works are on view at RCA until July 5, 2008.

”

(via we make money not art.)

Fanette Mellier

”

(via manystuff.org.)

The Helga de Alvear gallery in Madrid is currently running a (very timely) exhibition on the controversial topic of Extraordinary Rendition. The expression was coined by the Bush administration to define new legal measures designed to sidestep the existing Human Rights system and deprive some individuals from its protection in the name of the fight against terrorism.

Detainees at Camp X-Ray, at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

The Patriot Act, for example, expands the authority of US law enforcement agencies for “terrorism investigation.” It limits -when it does not completely abolish it- citizens’ right to privacy or freedom of expression, allows for kidnapping and confinement of persons without charges, without trial or a detention period as has been happening in Guantanamo since 2002.

The gallery invited four renowned artists to reflect on the issue.

Elmgreen and Dragset, Phone Home, 2008

Phone Home (2003), by Elmgreen & Dragset, is the only work on exhibit that has not been created specifically for the show. The installation looks at the loss of the right to privacy in communications. Five telephone cabins are lined up in the gallery. A note informs visitors that they can call anyone they want in the world for free. Of course there’s a trick: the conversation you are planning to have will be broadcast in the gallery, recorded and a table with audio players and headphones will enable future visitors to listen to what you said.

Under the new rules of extraordinary rendition, physical and psychological torture is justified. Spanish Inquisition-like methods of torture get toned down but that’s because some of them are given new names, like waterboarding, in an attempt to disguise their true meaning.

Santiago Sierra, Público iluminado con generador de gasolina, 2008

True to his wam bam approach, Santiago Sierra chose to address torture and one of its most commonly applied methods: the sleep deprivation of detainees for days and months. A huge spotlight operated by a generator are the only elements in Público iluminado con generador de gasolina [Public illuminated by oil generator]. Unfortunately the gallery had run out of oil (another very timely issue) when i went there and the installation was turned off.

Alicia Framis, Welcome to Guantanamo, 2008. Image courtesy of Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid

Alicia Framis is presenting the first part of a wider project called Welcome to Guantánamo Museum. The installation documents the key elements that would form this hypothetical museum on the US detention centre in Cuba. Scale models, drawings, prototypes, floor plans and structures are exhibited together with an audio piece created with Enrique Vila Matas and Blixa Bargeld. The project echoes our society’s need to museify everything, think of Auschwitz and Alcatraz. Should we recoil at the idea of turning horror into a tourist attraction or should we decide that such museums are not a necessary evil, a way of ensuring that atrocities are not forgotten?

Alicia Framis, Welcome to Guantanamo, 2008. Image courtesy of Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid

The proposal for a Guantanamo Museum will include a selection of exhibition objects and merchandising that reflect the museum’s theme and motto — Things to forget. There will be a Le Corbusier chaise longue turned into an electric chair, a non-existent mailbox, shoes which contain inside their heels a system to allow prisoners to commit suicide, a series of orange clothing and objects designed by Framis together with students during workshops, furniture for the museum will be designed and built using the material of inmates’ cells, etc. At the same time a sound room will recall the names of all the caged prisoners in Guantanamo.

James Casebere, Flooded cell #2, 2008

James Casebere made photos of what he calls Flooded Cells. These images conjure up allusions to prisons, claustrophobic and oppressive spaces somehow reminiscent of Piranesi’s fictitious and distressing prisons (carceri) yet also referencing the method of torture by simulated drowning.

Extraordinary is part of the Off programme of PhotoEspana. You can see the show until July 19 at the Helga de Alvear gallery in Madrid. My images.

Related stories: Trevor Paglen’s talk at Transmediale, Interview with the Institute for Applied Autonomy, They make art not bioterrorism, Tracking the Torture Taxis.

”

(via we make money not art.)

Jonathan Puckey is a Dutch graphic designer who can script. He often uses Scriptographer, a scripting plugin for Adobe Illustrator, so that’s probably why he calls his work ‘conditional design’. ‘Delaunay Raster’ is his latest project, it’s image vectorization based on Delaunay triangulation. So on the left you can recognize Kate Moss and on the right Notorious BIG. But if you want to understand why this is so amazing, you’ll have to go to his website and watch the short demo video.

found at FFFFOUND!

”

(via today and tomorrow.)

Woohoo! Viral videos finally have better quality, are more thought out, and have great music. Ok, so i’ve been waiting for this day for a while, and i’m glad we’ve entered into that era lately… Moving along… Let’s kick off this monday with the viral set of Levi’s genius… First - they gave us “Guys backflipping into jeans” (SO good). Second - came “Super chill monkey does Hollywood” (I can see how it works for some people…)…

And today i’m excited to show you the third - “Guys fill their jeans with helium“! Yes, jeans, duct tape, and helium… add a dash of some awesome music (the song “YADNUS” by Chk Chk Chk)… some playful guys… toss them in downtown LA… finish off with the creatives at UnbuttonedFilms… and *poof* the perfect viral for Monday, which i suppose is in a way a backwards sunday! SO, without further ado, click to the next page to see all three vids!

p.s.
well produced ridiculousness is far too fun to get me going this morning!

–> to more images

(Want more visual goodness? See NOTCOT.com + NOTCOT.org)

”

(via NOTCOT..)

The net’s regulator, Icann, voted unanimously to relax the strict rules on so-called “top-level” domain names, such as .com or .uk.

The decision means that companies could turn brands into web addresses, while individuals could use their names.

A second proposal, to introduce domain names written in Asian, Arabic or other scripts, was also approved.

“We are opening up a new world and I think this cannot be underestimated,” said Roberto Gaetano, a member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).

Others believe it could begin to bridge the digital divide.

People have been sketching user interfaces since the birth of the web (possibly even before) but the sketches usually stay locked away in old notebooks and discarded bar napkins in Austin, Texas. Many of the websites we use started out as scrawlings, and with people like Jakob Nielsen and Bill Buxton spreading the gospel of faster, cheaper paper prototypes, “next year’s Twitter” may already exist on paper.

We don’t usually get to see this handmade stage of the web, but some folks have been thoughtful/narcissistic enough to upload photos of their UI sketches, and I find them fascinating.

(Via : Deeplinking.net)

Loris Gréaud was the first French arstist under 30 to take over the Palais de Tokyo, a museum in Paris. His exhibition ‘Cellar Door‘ ran earlier this year and from what I can gather from the internet it looked really good. So here are some of his artworks.

All photos by Jungle Jim!

”

(via today and tomorrow.)

If anyone sees a copy of Amusement, a new French gaming magazine, in Tokyo at a reasonable price, please-please let me know. I really want to pick this up — comes off as Monocle doing games — but buying the issue from their site is close to $40 (to Japan).

”

(via Jean Snow.)

Firefox 3 supports color profiles, but you have to turn this setting on manually.

There are some great blog posts that describe this in detail, which you should read for more information, but this “feature” greatly improves the accuracy of the colors.

Color profiles provide a kind of map for your computer about what colors in an image should look like. Your camera, monitor and printer all have color profiles. The color profile of a image will allow your printer and monitor to accurately render the colors of an image by mapping the image colors to the profile of your printer or monitor.

What Firefox (and IE before IE 7) used to do was to ignore the color profile in images and just tell the OS that the profile was a generic color profile (sRGB). Roughly speaking, this is fine since MOST image files are sRGB. However, for anyone tweaking their saturation or color balance in iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom, etc. it was EXTREMELY frustrating because this often caused images posted on the Internet to look different (washed out and desaturated) from what they looked like in the image editor. Although “save as sRGB” got around some of these issues, it still caused problems in many cases. (Some color geeks helped me understand in a discussion on one of my Flickr photos.)

Anyway, I think that the esoteric discussions about color are interesting, but for most people, the bottom line is, if you turn color profile support “on” on Firefox 3, many images will end up appearing much closer to the color of the original and less washed out. You do this by typing “about:config” in the address bar of Firefox 3. Click thru confirmation page and find: gfx.color_management.enabled. Double click that until it says “true”. Then restart Firefox 3.

There are a number of monitor color calibration gadgets and software packages like Eye One Match which will allow you to calibrate your monitor (and camera and printer). If everyone actually did this, we’d all be seeing the same colors. The problem is that many uncalibrated monitors show colors (even across the same brand of monitors) differently. That means that with uncalibrated monitors, the person creating the photo can end up with “warped” colors in the image which then get warped again when being displayed on another uncalibrated monitor. In the past the browser also added another level of “warpage” but with color profile support, you’re one step closer to accurate color. To go all the way, calibrate your monitor.

Why doesn’t Mozilla support color profiles by default like Safari does? (It is turned off by default on IE 7 too.) It appear to cause a 10-15% performance hit. I’ve had it turned out since I’ve been using it and it’s not noticeable to me however. Anyway, I hear they are working on optimizing it and turning it on as a default in the future. For now, you’ll have to void the warranty and hack Firefox.

”

(via Joi Ito’s Web.)

»My Things of Book Keeping of 06«, 2006 by Hong Hao.

”

(via VVORK.)

Thinking for a Living™ is an ever-growing platform dedicated to the concept of open source design education that was created by BBDK in 2007. Recently we partnered with Athletics to relaunch the site with a blog and the unique integration of content powered by the Del.icio.us web bookmarking service.

”

(via Typography. Typography News. Dedicated to Typography, Lettering, Fonts and Typefaces. TypeNeu..)

100% of the cover price goes to UNICEF’s Myanmar (Burma) Cyclone Children’s Appeal in the wake of Cyclone Nargis that hit Myanmar on 2nd May 2008.

This work in progress started as a research on different methods of information mapping.

Requested feedback led the work to evolve from being an experimental approach to information mapping to generating an on-going analyse of the systems of representation used.

Basically I would like to use the website as a mere support for an on-going discussion on information-design so your comments are really important for the project to work!

Click here to access The Thing-mapping Project

”

(via Cumulus.)

»Gold-Plated Skate Rail«, 2007, and

»Walnut Skate Ramp«, 2007, by Andrew Lewicki.

”

(via VVORK.)

Encountered this afternoon in Grenoble France, in a café where the WiFi was available for 2 euros (no time restriction) and electricity for 1 euro:

The price tag on the power plug is amazingly contextualized.

”

(via pasta and vinegar.)

RoboVault describes itself as a Maximum Security Robotic Storage facility.
Hurricane-resistant, fully insured, and protected by biometrics, RoboVault is proposed for “an extraordinary location at the crossroads of several major roadway arteries including Port Everglades and the Hollywood/Fort Lauderdale International airport.”

[Image: A glimpse inside RoboVault].

“No one enters the storage part of the facility,” we read; this has the effect of “minimizing the risk of theft or damage.” Indeed, “This revolutionary concept in storage uses robotic parking garage technology, allowing you to operate your rented storage unit automatically, so you can store and retrieve your possessions when you want.”
Which raises the question: How much longer must we wait before robotic parking garage technology crosses over into other architectural typologies? Single-family homes (you move your bedroom to the ground floor every morning), libraries (where’s that book? oh, that’s right… whoosh), football stadiums (your seats greet you at the entry gate).
In fact, for me, this whole complex sounds more like something out of a design studio at SCI-Arc, combining transport infrastructure, personal consumption, import/export laws, national sovereignty, exurban geography, climate control (the building offers “atmospheric consistency,” we’re told), new business models, biometrics, and the mechano-Derridean future of the archive – together with the narrative possibilities of architectural representation.
“What’s your building’s story?” the concerned professor asks.
You could even invent a new – presumably quite boring – party game. Take a proposed building or business model from anywhere in the world and then work backward: Try to imagine the design studio in which that project would first have been proposed. Try to imagine what they read. Try to imagine the keywords.

[Image: The biometrics of RoboVault].

In any case:

Here’s how it works: If you rent a RoboVault Space, you simply place your prize possession on the elevator, use the retinal eye scan and keypad security features and your property is safely stored away in a matter of seconds. You use the same process to retrieve your possession. Since there are no floors or entries, you don’t have to worry about theft or vandalism. With RoboVault Spaces, you’re buying peace of mind!

It all seems to have been designed solely to be featured in an as-yet-unannounced Jerry Bruckheimer film.

[Image: RoboVault’s “extraordinary location at the crossroads of several major roadway arteries including Port Everglades and the Hollywood/Fort Lauderdale International airport”].

If you’ll excuse the long quotation, this reads like the opening scene of Bad Boys III or Mission Impossible IV – or even Blade: Miami Nights:

A vehicle arrives at the overhead door and notifies the office of their impending entry. The overhead door is raised and the vehicle drives into the building after which the overhead door is then closed. The client is the only person/vehicle in this secure area. The client removes the contents to be stored from the vehicle and accesses the interior door by use of a pin code and biometric scan. When this occurs, the office staff is notified and meets the individual to provide access into the safe deposit box room. Once inside the dual locking system can be accessed by the client and RoboVault staff. The client then has the option to enter into one of two small viewing rooms. Exiting of the safe deposit box room will occur much in the same manner. An important feature is that there is one entry and exit out of the safe deposit box room. Each member of RoboVault personnel is bonded and have gone through background checks to ensure complete reliability.

Et cetera.
I love the idea, though, that certain building types – certain works of architecture – can actually catalyze new business models, complete with ripple effects outward into the worlds of insurance, tax law, and even the private behaviors of everyday citizens.

[Image: RoboVault].

And then you’ll franchise this building type, and build one in London, and wild new filmic possibilities arise. Bank Job 2. National Treasure 3.
Architecture built only for the purpose of inspiring Hollywood sequels.

(Thanks to Adam S. for the link!)”

(via BLDGBLOG.)

vspace="1"
hspace="5"
height="72"
align="left"
src="http://www.etoy.com//files/agents/pol/angel_app_icon.png"
alt="angel-app"
/>

We’re pleased to announce the availability of version 0.4 中国 (zhong guo) of the >ANGEL APPLICATION.



Important improvements are:

• a new file-based meta data store which (i) removes storage constraints imposed by the previous xattr-based solution which apple ships with twisted, and (ii) in principle allows the angel-app to run on windows-based systems.
• GUI/web interface improvements.
• stability fixes
• dyndns support

More detailed information can be found in the >CHANGES file.



A download is available at >http://angelapp.missioneternity.org/index.py/Download.



To support the testing efforts and to celebrate this release, etoy.MANAGEMENT agreed to open up its archives and re-release selected copylefted content from the TOYWAR era into eternity. For a start, the infamous TOYWAR.lullabies have been committed to the ANGEL APPLICATION, and are available for public consumption at:



>http://missioneternity.org:6221/var/toywar/TOYWAR.lullabies/



iTunes users: no need to explicitly download the tracks. The ANGEL APPLICATION supports WebDAV. Simply hit Command-K in the finder, and connect to the above URL to say hello to the post-browser web (no software installation required):



> height="375"
alt="culture streaming from eternity"
src="http://www.etoy.com//files/agents/vincent/angel_app/culture_aapp.png"
/>



As of this release, the ANGEL APPLICATION is a fully functional personal publication platform. As a proof of concept, I am >hosting a complete >darcs repository on the angel-app (IPv6 required).



Plans for the next release 0.5 “Bozen” include one or more of:

• networking performance improvements (currently, to validate a fil