Prize : AUS $5000

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The 2012 Screengrab New Media Arts Award and associated exhibition is looking for challenging creative works by media arts practitioners working in screen based media to submit works on the theme of CONTROL.

ENTRY APP : http://screengrab.info

WEB FLYER:

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2012 Award Theme

The contemporary media milieu would suggest an evolving devolution of the traditional notion of the “society of control”. The boundaries of enclosures and spaces are no longer the rigid and defined perimeters they once were. The browser, the mobile camera/screen are new enabling simulations the user canexploit to navigate alternative pathways, to experience new modes of expression and to participate in global cultural exchange.

This is reflected online and on the street. In our political discourse and our social interactions. And it is most visible when repatriated via the mainstream media and traditional news editorials coupled with wild proclamations of “new freedoms” accompanied by “real change”.

Yet what has really changed? What do these new counter measures look like on the ground? Where do the subversions play out? What new questions are we asking of our environment and of ourselves?

In the same evolving moment new far less visible forms of control are emerging that use these very same technological platforms: surveillance networks, social media, data mining algorithms, privacy interventions, sophisticated image gathering techniques and drone technologies. These aggregators of data and network traffic are rapidly translating our private, public and social lives into valuable sets of relational data – re-writing the notion of identity, weaving new paradigms of control.

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The Call Out

SCREENGRAB is now entering its fourth year with an international call out for the AUS$5000 New Media Arts Prize and the companion exhibition in August 2012 for short listed applicants. We invite digital practitioners working in screen based media to submit works on the theme of CONTROL.

All forms of screen based media are encouraged including multi-channel video, digital illustration, audio sculpture, photography, generative media, 2D & 3D animation.

Existing worx and those specifically designed for the award must address the theme of CONTROL to beeligible for the New Media Arts award.

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Prize Money: AUS $5000

Artefact deadline: July 2

Exhibition Opening & Award announcement : August 10

Application Form : http://screengrab.info

“Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug.”

- John Lithgow

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This project is sponsored by James Cook University’s School of Creative Arts and the eMergeMedia Space.

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*Okay, I guess that stuff’s pretty interesting but… wait a minute, what?

PRESS RELEASE

Source: Franco Nori, RIKEN, Japan.

For immediate release: 21 May 2012

Hall effect at the speed of light: How can you demonstrate relativistic effects with your mobile phone?

(Saitama, Japan, 21 May 2012). The relativistic Hall effect describing objects rotating at speeds comparable with the speed of light has now been reported.

The work by Konstantin Bliokh and Franco Nori at RIKEN in Japan, NAS in Ukraine, and the University of Michigan in the US sheds light on aspects of fundamental physics, and you can demonstrate some aspects of this with your mobile phone.

As any cameraman knows, recording a fast rotating object such as a fan using a “rolling shutter” camera, like those found on mobile phones, results in weird distortions. See for example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17PSgsRlO9Q, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVwmtwZLG88&feature=fvwrel.

Less widely understood — until now — is the link between these distortions and some of the landmark theories in physics, namely Einstein’s relativity and the Hall effect.

Hall effects describe the interplay of rotation and linear motion in objects. There are already a number of manifestations of the Hall effect, including classical, quantum, and ‘spin-based’.

Relativity describes effects that arise when an object approaches the speed of light. This study considered the Hall effect as arising naturally under special relativity conditions without any external fields. The researchers found that a relativistic treatment of rotating bodies and quantum wave systems with angular momentum results in deformations and a shift in the geometric centre. The distortions have parallels with those found when recording a rotating object with a rolling shutter camera.

“Our description makes relativistic and quantum aspects of angular momentum fully　consistent with each other,” conclude Bliokh and Nori. (((That’s great, guys. Where’s the demo? I’d love to see something crawling over a surface at the speed of light.)))

This relativistic approach may find applications over a wide range of length scales including elementary spinning particles, classical light and, even rotating black holes. (((Truck out the rotating black hole. Have at it. Can’t wait. Try not to break anything.)))

http://phys.org/news205407631.html

(((And no fair with some pesky “relativistic Hall effect” that’s the size of an electron! After those videos, I want to see it at least the size of a housecat.)))

Reference

Konstantin Y. Bliokh and Franco Nori, Relativistic Hall Effect: Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 120403 (2012).

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.120403

http://www.digitalstyledigest.com/2012/05/first-nyc-now-sf-fashion-bloggers-on-the-runway/

“Fashion bloggers on the runway have become an increasingly common site of late. In February, Polyvore garnered much buzz for choosing fashion bloggers instead of models for its debut fashion show at Mercedes Benz New York Fashion Week. In April, Intel teamed up with blogger network IFB to send fashion and style bloggers down the runway with laptops in hand wearing apparel by Norma Kamali and Orla Kiely. This weekend, the trend arrives in San Francisco with the 3rd annual Beauty Expo, a competitive showcase of Bay Area styling and beauty talent capped off with what is being touted as the Bay Area’s first blogger fashion show.

“Produced by the San Francisco Fashion and Merchants Alliance and hosted by Charleston Pierce, the event still counts a style-off between competing teams made up of hair and makeup pros culled from Bay Area salons and beauty schools as its focal attraction. But unlike years’ past, the fashion show will feature bloggers as models, including Jules Vasic of The Green Stylist, Alison Messinger of Eclectic à la Mode and Lona Duncan of Lux Resale – each in apparel by designer Jennifer Ly.

“Other reasons to go: A chance to mingle with participating designers and folks from sponsor companies such as Styletag, Fizz Marketing, Punchtab, Shopience, Intern Sushi, Wella, AskASalon.com, The Brush Guard, Pigment Cosmetics, Rodan+Fields, Seacret SF, WorkPlayDate, Bachman’s Sparrow and Chloe+Isabel.”

*Something comforting in the idea that mankind can’t build anything smaller than this. It’s like diving into a deep pool and feeling your foot touch the bottom.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/ibm-pushes-atomic-force-microscopy-to-it-limits

Published on May 29, 2012 by sceablog

“Nico Nico is a social video networking service that allows you to view and overlay time stamped comments on live or uploaded videos. I’m excited to announce that a PS Vita dedicated Nico Nico application will be available on PlayStation Store starting today.”

*Then again maybe they’ve realized that all the kids are carrying iPhones to work, which is pretty much a really big ultra-trackable “SpyChip” with a really nice set of apps.

–Texas School District to Use RFID Chips in Student IDs
(May 25 & 26, 2012)
A school district in San Antonio, Texas, plans to put RFID chips in
student ID cards. A spokesperson for the Northside Independent School
District said, “We want to harness the power of technology to make
schools safer, know where our students are all the time in a school, and
increase revenues.” Two Houston school districts have already put
similar programs in place and have increased their revenues, as school
funding in Texas is based in part on attendance numbers. The RFID chips
will reportedly work only while the students are on school property.
Parents’ reactions to the proposed plan are varied; some are supportive,
citing safety concerns, while others are wary of the potential invasion
of privacy.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57441651-83/texas-school-district-to-track-kids-through-rfid-tags/

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/education/article/Students-will-be-tracked-via-chips-in-IDs-3584339.php#ixzz1vsssNfl7

Facebook for cavemen, mining for plastic, growing your own sneaker, and faking that all-natural flavor. Welcome to another issue of the Next Nature Newsletter, from the website http://www.nextnature.net, where we explore the nature caused by people.

Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/nextnature and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nextnature

==================================================
CONTENTS

-NANO Supermarket Call Extended
-New Theme Pages
-Blog Highlights
-Meet the Nano Supermarket Jury
-Next Nature Internships

==================================================
NANO SUPERMARKET CALL EXTENDED

This autumn, Next Nature will present the updated product line of the NANO Supermarket, a physical supermarket featuring debate–provoking visions on possible nanotech products expected to hit the shelves between now and 2020.

We call upon designers, technologists and artists to submit their speculative nanotech products for the supermarket. A selection of the projects will be presented in the NANO Supermarket and the accompanying publication. The best submission will receive a € 2500 prize.

Just what is a nanotech product? Think of self–cleaning windows, contact lenses with a built-in display, smart medicines, cyborg insects, nano-particle tagging spray to identify stolen possessions, breathing textiles, tooth phones, organic jewelry, implantable microprocessors – and thousands of other potential applications.

Submission deadline: 17 June 2012.

Visit http://www.nanosupermarket.com to learn more about the contest.

==================================================
NEW THEME PAGES

Next Nature has a selection of media-rich theme pages to showcase the best of our past work, and to explain just exactly what we mean by terms like “hypernature” and “anthropomorphobia”. Explore our newest additions:

Microbial Factories
Read about bacteria that emit light, microbes that eat plastic, and algae that will solve all our problems. Bigger isn’t always better!

http://www.nextnature.net/themes/microbial-factories/

Suburban Utopia
Learn how we manage, mismanage, and do battle with nature (and human nature) in the seemingly perfect world of the suburbs.

http://www.nextnature.net/themes/suburban-utopia/

==================================================
BLOG HIGHLIGHTS

Cavemen Used “Facebook” Already
Between 4,000 BC and 600 BC, nomadic peoples in Sweden and Russia used rock art as primitive form of messaging and an expression of togetherness.

http://www.nextnature.net/2012/05/cavemen-used-facebook-already/

How to Grow Your Own Sneaker
Watch as bioengineer Raymond Ong explains how to create sneakers from transgenic stingrays at the last Next Nature Power Show.

http://www.nextnature.net/2012/05/how-to-grow-your-own-sneaker/

In the Future, We Will Mine for Plastic
Peak oil also means peak plastic. When the cost of producing plastic from oil becomes prohibitively expensive, we will turn to landfills as valuable mines for petrochemicals.

http://www.nextnature.net/2012/05/in-the-future-we-will-mine-for-plastic/

Complexity and Evolving Synthetic Soil
Guest contributor Rachel Armstrong discusses how we may eventually cultivate synthetic systems that perform the same functions as natural soil.

http://www.nextnature.net/2012/05/complexity-and-evolving-synthetic-soil/

Real Vanilla is Natural, but Natural Vanilla is Fake
Delve into the confusing world of vanilla, where “natural” flavor comes from rice bran and cloves, and “artificial” flavor is made of coal tar and dung.

http://www.nextnature.net/2012/04/real-vanilla-is-natural-but-natural-vanilla-is-fake/

Humans Caused Mass Extinctions Before There Were Even Humans
Scientists have implicated Australopithecus afarensis in the disappearance of 23 species of small carnivores in Africa around 2 million years ago.

http://www.nextnature.net/2012/04/humans-caused-mass-extinctions-before-there-were-even-humans/

==================================================
MEET THE NANO SUPERMARKET JURY

The jury of NANO Supermarket is a exquisite collage of distinguished scientists, designers, artists, journalist and thinkers. We are proud to bring together such excellent people from a broad spectrum of disciplines, who will capably to judge the submissions on their merits.

Dave Blank – Director MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology
Rob van Hattum – Creative Director NEMO Science Center, Director Science programs VPRO
Tracy Metz – Design Journalist & Writer
Mieke Gerritzen – Designer, Director MOTI, Museum of the Image
Ronald van Tienhoven – Artist & Design Educator
Lucas Asselbergs (Chair) – Director Studium Generale, Eindhoven University of Technology

==================================================
NEXT NATURE INTERNSHIPS

Are you a student looking for an internship? Next Nature has positions available in our Amsterdam office for designers, editors, programmers and producers. Interested? Send us your CV and a letter of motivation.

http://www.nextnature.net/internships/

==================================================
The good people of NextNature.net are grateful to the TU/e, Mondriaan Foundation and Stichting Doen for their kind support.

==================================================
Feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends and friends of friends. If you’ve received this newsletter in error, or don’t want to receive our emails anymore, click here or simply send an email to newsletter@nextnature.net with the subject ‘unsubscribe’.

*In the long run,it’s not going to be about a particular gizmo or service like Google Glass or Microsoft Photosynth; this New Aesthetic issue of “seeing like machines” really will boil down to basic issues of aesthetics, perception, interpretation, visualization and “reality.”

*James Bridle’s “moodboard for unknown products” is behind us now, but the unknown products are showing up in heaps, while a genuine new aesthetic is still a good distance ahead of us.

*I’d be guessing that Helen’s approaches here will come to mainstream fruition in the 2020s rather than the 2010s. All the more reason to get to work.

http://augmentedstories.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/glass/

“We are at a moment in AR’s emergence as a new medium when we can look both to the future and to the past: still seeing the previous forms that are shaping AR while paving new paths, contributing to novel styles and conventions. It is imperative for artists, designers and storytellers to work collaboratively with computer engineers in industry and academia to steer AR forward and contribute to a new aesthetics and language of AR.

(…)

“Is there something extraordinary, then, about the photographs captured with Project Glass? Yes, I believe there is, and we’re only beginning to see what might be possible. So what’s so special about these images then; how do they differ from “ordinary photographs”?

“It’s interesting to think of the Project Glass photos as being captured by a “Cyclops”, to refer to Hockney, because, well, that’s basically what they are: a single lens attached to your head that sees and captures the world from a first-person perspective. Yet, to continue with Hockney’s conceptualization, I believe these images get closer to conveying “a true experience of living in the world”, one where your experience in that moment is documented as is without having to stop and grab your camera.

“Braun comments on “how effortless and natural it is to do so”, with Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin adding, “I think this can bring on a new style of photography that allows you to be more intimate with the world you are capturing, and doesn’t take you away from it.” Project Glass captures what you are in fact seeing in that moment, and very close to how you are seeing it. The experience is still very much alive, not dead, as Hockney argued of ordinary photographs, and ‘living’ also in the sense that these experiences can immediately be shared with others over a network.

“Hockney’s collages were an inspiration to some of my early creative experiments in AR, in a series I refer to as the AR Joiners, 2008-2009. The AR Joiners extended Hockney’s concepts to use 2D video clips in AR in a tactile composite form, of individual paper markers overlapping to create one larger AR collaged scene. Each of the short video clips that compose the AR Joiners was recorded over a series of separate moments, as opposed to one take that was cut into multiple fragments running on the same timeline. This was a conscious design choice: the AR Joiners were about the body moving in time (in both capturing the video footage and to later have the viewer reassemble it as an AR experience, piecing together the separate video clips across time with paper markers, akin to Hockney’s photocollage process), in distinct moments and views, which accumulate to combine a total memory of the space or experience across time. (The AR Joiners are discussed in the ISMAR 2009 paper “Augmented Reality (AR) Joiners, A Novel Expanded Cinematic Form ” published by IEEE).

“When I was working on the AR Joiners from 2008-2009, Microsoft’s Photosynth had also recently launched. Photosynth, for me, recalled the aesthetic of Hockney’s Joiners. At the time, Photosynth was a web-based photo visualization tool (now available as a panorama app on smart phones) that could generate a three-dimensional (3D) representation from a collection of two-dimensional (2D) photos of a place or object. Software analyzed the photos for similarities and then constructed a 3D layered display of the photos through which viewers could navigate and delve further into the scene. “Synths”, as they were referred to, created a totality of the cumulative experience of seeing “across time”, comparable to Hockney’s Joiners (1970-1986)….”

http://www.melconway.com/research/committees.html

*Here’s a very bright systems analyst from 1968 — you’ll notice that the word “interface” has just become popular among the hornrimmed geeks of the period — who is using his analytical skills to describe why bureaucracies malfunction. Along with some cool period ideas like Parkinson’s Law and the mythical man-month, he’s discovered a phenomenon he calls “homeomorphism.”

*And what’s that? Well, “homeomorphism” arises spontaneously when a hierarchical bureaucracy divides up the labor-load and delegates its responsibilities. Since nobody in the bureaucracy can possibly know what the other units are doing, the components of the system will be designed inside bureaucratic turf-areas, then bolted together and pushed out the door for the public. And, those components will be mechanically connected in the very same way that the departments are politically connected.

*In practice, “homeomorphism” means that the designed object or service will become a smaller, voodoo-doll version of the organization that made it. It’s morphed, yet it’s the same, like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.

*Every department or committee has some duty, some turf, and some need to have a look-in about the component they contributed. So if the hierarchy has, for instance, a Department of Wheels and a Bureau of Polka-Dots, and that organization is tasked to produce a boat, it’ll be a boat with wheels, and also polka-dots — and, if they’re especially agile and competent, some polka-dot wheels.

*There’s an atmosphere of comedy to this — after all, “Parkinson’s Law” was supposed to be satirically funny — but the joke’s on us, really. It’s been a long time since 1968, and our systems, interfaces and lateral connections have multiplied beyond all measure. We don’t have sturdy, stodgy hierarchies like this any more, but we do have a host of remarkably fluid networks running most everything.

*These networks are ALSO “homeomorphic” — like, relentlessly so. That’s why Facebook’s IPO looks like an out-of-control Facebook crash. It’s why banks look like embezzling computer crime-waves. It’s why Apple gear looks like stainless strokeable exteriors with secretive, don’t you dare black-boxes inside. It’s why open-source anything looks like work where people were really enthusiastic for a little while and then got bored and walked off and did whatever else they wanted.

*We’ve even got homeomorphism that soaks down to the level of language — where we once spoke phony, leaden bureaucratese, now we speak phony, airy netw0rk-jarg0n.

*The thing that makes this 1968 document hopeful, despite its cynicism, is that at least it’s the dawn of another approach — the approach that led us to this dire situation nowadays, to be specific. This suggests that, somewhere we haven’t noticed yet, there’s a homeomorphic version of this essay — not “how committees invent” but “how networks invent,” and what’s wrong with that, and why things could be very different. I wonder where that essay is.

TBC 038 05/25/2012 Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
_____________________________________________________________________

*************************

THEORY BEYOND THE CODES
Event-Scene

*************************
_____________________________________________________________________

Because Montreal, this city, my city, is burning with life, but not
burning at all
===================================================================

~Thierry Bardini~

Have you ever felt that the curiosity of the wanderer has often
thrown into a riot, the same joy I feel when I see a guardian of
public sleep–city or municipal sergeant, the true army–hitting
a republican with the butt of his rifle? And like me you told
yourself in your heart: “hit, hit a bit harder, hit again,
municipal of my heart; for in this supreme hitting I adore you
and judge you equal to Jupiter, the great avenger. The man whom
you are hitting is an enemy of roses and perfumes, a fanatic of
the utensils; an enemy of Watteau, an enemy of Raphael, an
arrogant enemy of luxury, of fine arts and letters, sworn
iconoclast, torturer of Venus and Apollo! He does not want to
work anymore, humble and anonymous worker, to the public roses
and perfumes; he wants to be free, this ignorant, and he is
unable to set up a flowers and new perfumes workshop. Hit
religiously the shoulder blades of the anarchist!”

— Charles Baudelaire, _Aesthetic Curiosities_, 1868.

Seven years ago you asked me to write about the protests that were
then going strong in my native country, France. I couldn’t, I
thought, do it from Montreal. So I wrote a few lines instead about
how it felt to experience politics in the (Parisian) streets at a
distance, through the lenses of the media apparatus. I wrote how it
made me feel like a migrant worker, watching pictures of Caracas on
CNN in 1989, back in Santa Monica, in 1992, as I was watching Paris
on CBC, unless it was Watts on France 2. At home in front of the TV,
in this global turmoil, estranged from this world and that world, in
between, witnessing the same patterns of violence and liberation, oh
so little liberation indeed.

Seven years have passed and here I am again, in Montreal, my home
city, metropolis of a province I will probably never think of as *my*
province, colonial and colonized city of a country that has become
the end of my journey. A city, a country, where I have settled, where
my son was born and is growing, where I teach and write, still
estranged, but where, strangely enough, I have found a renewed sense
of hope.

Because Montreal, this city, my city, is burning with life, but not
burning at all.

As we passed this week the hundredth day of what was at first a
student movement and appears now as a slow growing and maybe even
*tranquillest revolution*, as people are taking to the streets with
chants and noise, recycling every night the Acadian ~Tintamarre~, or
the French ~Charivari~, as we follow in social meshworks and other
digital means the lines of flight of a rhizomatic and definitely
molar *becoming other*, as the young adult spokespersons of an even
younger direct democracy brave the corruption suspected clowns posing
obnoxiously as leaders and exception-determining law makers, as I
experience all this in the streets with a growing uneasiness for the
media circus that claims to report it. “Now human pride, which always
takes the upper hand and is the natural cause of laughter in the case
of the comic, turns out to be the natural cause of laughter in the
case of the grotesque” (Baudelaire again, “On The Essence of
Laughter”, 1855). Yes, I, who so often felt like Gunther Anders,
calmly desperate, yes, I found hope again in a fit of laughter.

Of course I am tempted every day to revert to my usual doubts. Of
course I have this ongoing discussion with myself about the simulacra
of yet another announced revolution that will be facebookized. Of
course I cannot believe in the so nice formulas of the even nicer
Canadian/ Quebecker claims to implement a nationalist social
democracy open to all and guaranteed by a charter that makes of
tolerance the cardinal value of our society–yes you read correctly,
*nationalist* and *tolerance* are respectively the first and final
words of this counter-intuitive proposition, albeit it might also be
the opposite if you read our history backwards: tolerance first,
nationalism last. Of course I often think of my fellow
revolutionaries as this spontaneous line that *always* forms here
while waiting for the autobus of change, oh so nice, indeed, and so
proper. Of course, I resent that all this started because of money,
always money, fees, debts and taxes. Of course, of course, of course.

But then again, there is always this little voice in my head
murmuring “Why not?” Why not, after all… My students do not bother
themselves with my old world doubts anyway; they laugh at them and go
back to the streets and tweet and shout, every night for three months
and counting. They laugh at me as they laugh at the powers that be,
they laugh at the media reports as they laugh when a shower suddenly
falls on their demonstration, they laugh and chant, ~meme la pluie
nous appuie~. Even under a rain of insults and tear gas, even under a
rain of police brutality and arrests, even under a rain of disdain
and humiliation, yes even then, they keep on laughing, ~meme les
pluies nous appuient~.

Because Montreal, this city, my city, is burning with life, but not
burning at all: the rains of laughter extinguish the fires of
violence before they even start burning.

We are more than fifty, much more than fifty, and we disobey with
civility.

We are more than fifty, much more than fifty, but who cares for
numbers anyway?

We are more than fifty, and we do not count our clicks, our tweets,
our status updates.

Because Montreal, this city, my city, is burning with life, but not
burning at all: the paradoxical rain of the data shower extinguishes
the fire before it incinerates the real, whatever that means.

No, this is an old reflex, a symptom of a baudrillardian infection,
no need to add anymore, *whatever that means*. You know what it means
when you experience it. You know how it feels to feel alive when you
could be complaining, lamenting or even mourning. You might have to
pause and pinch yourself once in a while, thinking, what, no death?
Where are the corpses and the clashes? How come the cops do not kill,
as it always happens in such times, unfortunately? Why, you may ask,
is Montreal not burning?

We laugh in the streets because we know that the simulacrum went full
circle, and that there is now only one world to experience it, and
laugh. Yes it was very close: just after the law of exception was
passed, last weekend, we were scared. Very scared. Yes, there were,
and there still is, violence, physical and symbolic. Yes, a student
lost an eye, many were and still are kicked and shoved in police
trucks (an average of 150 a night). Yes, paranoia was in the air, you
could feel it. Some claimed that the clowns fed it with a Queen’s day
military parade on Monday–also the day of the Patriots, by the way:
in one more desperate attempt at symbolic intimidation, rumors had it
that they had altered the direction of troops from their usual yearly
promenade, rerouting them through the streets of downtown. Here we go
again, we feared. Back to October 1970, here it comes again– martial
law and its dance of terrorism and resistance, counterterrorism and
repression, this macabre dance. But in the meantime, Montreal, I
repeat, is not burning, the dance has not begun, so far.

On this rainy Tuesday I took my riot kit, my bicycle helmet and my
scarf, my camera and my sound recorder, and I went down to the
streets, not knowing how it would turn out, not knowing how many
would turn out, and how many would stay at home, intimidated and
scared. Arriving at the ~Place des Arts~ where we were supposed to
meet, I was still wondering. There were not many people at first,
there was still tension in the air. But then I noticed more and more
music and drums, funny, yes funny slogans and posters. There were a
few signs that hope could still exist: the unions were there, the
virtualities of a general strike answered those of the troops. But
more importantly, there was music and fun. A colleague from another
university had retooled a baby stroller into a boogie kart. It
blasted protest songs such as “~Liberez nous des liberaux~”, people
danced around while we waited two hours for the march to begin. The
sun started to shine, we burnt a bit, the Maple Spring was here
again. Suddenly there were rumors of astonishing numbers circulating
within the crowd, some said there are half a million of us. I started
to relax. I noticed a poster that portrayed the emblem of the
movement, the red square, as Bolognese sauce over a plate of
spaghetti. Another claimed that “78″, the number of the emergency law
that turned the movement around [1], away from a student protest to a
civil protest, “was not his preferred position.”

Then we started to march. We soon heard that we were indeed
disobeying the law: one student organization intentionally deviated
from the itinerary other students organizations had, following
compulsory legal requirements , given to the police, in agreement
with Bill 78. They then deviated at the first turn, going left
instead of right, of course. There were cops and riot police squads,
cars and trucks. The march moved on one block, the cars moved on to
the next, and so on for five blocks, for half an hour of high
tension. Then the cops vacated the streets and the march went on.
Everybody followed the illegal itinerary, the cops kept retreating,
always a block away at least. We saw them a few blocks later: oh not
that many in fact… Only a dozen of them actually, guarding the
building hosting this most popular institution, ~Loto Quebec~. I
think that this was exactly where and when I finally understood.

I was not in Montreal the week before, when the law was passed. I was
in the Netherlands for the V2 Dutch Electronic Art Festival. I came
back on Sunday and left immediately to spend the day of the Patriots
with some of my friends in the Eastern Townships. I did not see the
troops parading, I did not roam the streets at night with the
students provoking and escaping the police until they were arrested
in large numbers. I did not. Instead I enjoyed myself in the after
hour parties of the Festival, or resting by a lake, watching our kids
play. I was not disconnected, though. I followed the events on
Facebook, checking the websites of the newspapers and television
channels to witness it all from an ocean away, while listening to
Chumbawamba, “Laughter in a time of war”.

Take my life and sing it back to me
My big mouth, it’s my own worst enemy
Funny how it all sounds better in harmony
Laughter in a time of War
Oh my soul
(Repeat)
The people at the top have further to fall

I was not laughing yet, though. I was mad, and my big mouth and
little brain were full of angry words and strong and not so strong
concepts. My Marxist education, my punk late teenage years, my
Deleuze and my Foucault was being remixed by the events in my head.
Not a pretty song, even if a minor voice said, wait and see, wait to
experience it in the streets, the Arab Spring did not start on
Facebook and Twitter, but with one guy who set himself on fire in
Tunisia. Nobody had set him or herself on fire here yet, there was
still hope of avoiding this, the minor voice in my head kept saying.
But there was still madness and paranoia, disinformation, propaganda
and lies: I was under the spell of the digital representation, where
truth and lies blur in a mist of zeroes and one. I felt estranged,
again, trapped in the false desert of the virtual, and it made me mad
enough.

This is exactly why, when back in Montreal on this cloudy Tuesday
morning, I decided to join the street–~A qui la rue? A nous la rue~.
This is exactly why I decided to go see and experience it for myself,
with my riot kit and my half-baked concepts. I had a hunch I might
experience the frontal clash of representative and direct democracy,
and wondered how frontal that might get. Well, the only frontal fact
I experienced that glorious day was that of the nudity of two young
women running wild in the ~cortege~, getting naked for their rights,
and laughing like chubby amazons, weaponless. Instead of a frontal
clash, I followed for a while the meanderers in the street of young
“radical elements” carrying signs.

So yes, I think I finally got it that Tuesday. The law of exception
is this ultimate simulacrum, these so-called political
representatives are its makers, these cops, too tired to think, too
lost to join in, its passive guardians, these journalists its
pushers. This version of democracy, law and order, has outlived its
time, it is becoming the mere zombie of former times, ~a peine~
lingering on… Laughter will dissolve it like acid rain. Laughter
will prevail, hopefully.

Last night, amidst the ~tintamarres~, in the embarrassingly proud
silence of those who still claim to govern while young people rule
the streets, while the population is slowly joining in the drumbeat
of kitchen pots and pans, we were still laughing. Without a hint of
cynicism, we just laugh.

We are more than fifty, and we laugh at the *grotesque* simulacrum
going full circle,

We are more than fifty, and we laugh at a time where there could be
war,

Oh my soul
We got oil for the pan
We got rock n roll
Laughter lines run deeper than skin
And the world’s just
Something that the cat brought in

Thanks to the SNS Gang, and especially Heraclitus, for his
Baudelarian plugs.

Montreal, May 25, 2012.

Notes
—————-

[1] “Bill 78″ is an emergency law, or “loi speciale,” titled “An Act
to enable students to receive instruction from the postsecondary
institutions they attend,” and passed on 18 May 2012 by the National
Assembly of Quebec. Bill 78 was drafted by members of the Quebec
Liberal Party, and introduced by Education Minister Michelle
Courchesne in response to ongoing student protests over proposed
tuition increases of 75% in the next five years. Bill 78 declares
illegal any picket or “form of gathering” by strike supporters within
50 meters of the “outer limits” of the “grounds” of any university or
~College d’Enseignement General et Professionnel~ (CEGEP) building.
The bill requires student associations, unions representing teachers,
and CEGEP or university employees to “employ appropriate means to
induce” their members to comply with its provisions, or face
prosecution. Article 9 of the bill states that the Minister of
Education, Recreation and Sports is granted the right to modify any
Act of law to provide for any dispositions deemed necessary to
enforce continuation of sessions throughout the duration covered by
the bill. The bill furthermore declares illegal all demonstrations of
over 50 people, organized for any purpose and at any location in
Quebec, unless the dates, times, starting point, and routes of those
locations and also the duration of the venue and the means of
transportation that will be used by participants, if applicable, have
been submitted to and approved by Quebec police. It is then possible,
at the police authority’s discretion, to modify the location and date
of the protest if it judges that the protest would pose a serious
threat to the order and security of the public. According to the
provisions of the bill, any infraction against its prohibitions
require offenders to pay fines, which are paid for each day of
infraction. Those fines amount to $1,000-$5,000 for individuals,
$7,000-$35,000 for student or union leaders, and $25,000-$125,000 per
day for student or labor organizations. Fines are doubled following a
“second offence.” Universities or institutions which do not comply
with the provisions of Bill 78 are subject to the daily fees paid by
student or labor organizations. The bill establishes a date after
which all education employees must return to work, and prohibits them
from striking should this, “by act or omission,” prevent students
from receiving instruction, or indirectly impede services. Bill 78
suspends winter semester classes at 11 universities and 14 CEGEPs
where over 150,000 students remain on strike; classes at those
locations will be completed in August and September, if not earlier.
The law expires on 1 July 2013 [adapted from ~Wikipedia~, entry Bill
78]

—————-

Agronomist (ENSA Montpellier, 1986) and sociologist (Ph.D. Paris X
Nanterre, 1991), Thierry Bardini is full professor in the department
of communication at the university of Montreal, where he has taught
since 1993. His research interests concern contemporary
cyberculture, from the production and uses of information and
communication technologies to molecular biology. He is the author of
_Bootstrapping : Douglas Englebart, Coevolution and the Genesis of
Personal Computing_ (Stanford University Press, 2000), _Junkware_
(University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and _Journey to the End of the
Species_ (in collaboration with Dominique Lestel, Editions Dis Voir,
Paris, 2011).

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