Netscape founder Marc Andreessen is backing a new browser dedicated to browsing Facebook, called RockMelt, according to rumors we’ve heard from reputable sources. A semi-independent desktop client for Facebook? Doesn’t seem far fetched at all.
The software isn’t publicly available or being discussed yet, but we’ve gotten our hands on an early build and had a look at the front door after download. Robert John Churchill, who was the principal engineer for Netscape Navigator, is the principle engineer for RockMelt as well.
I’m also enjoying the new DO design. They’re starting to look more like a design portal, proper.
—— Long before the global economy seized up, Kurt Andersen and Douglas Rushkoff were contemplating the links between society and capital—which makes their views on the recent recession timely, if notably different from one another’s. In June, Rushkoff, the media critic and documentary filmmaker, published Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back. In this book, he interprets the recession as the outcome of a centuries-old amoxil amoxicillin ethos prizing speculation over value and profit over human connection. Andersen, essayist, novelist, and host of public radio’s Studio 360 arts program, for his part, has just come out withReset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America. As the title suggests, it’s a study in optimism.
Change Observer’s Julie Lasky invited both men to discuss how we landed in this stew and what the future portends. The conversation took place via email July 6–10, 2009.
Note: Here is an interesting list of resources for remixing already produced material for personal blogs and websites.
Nothing makes a blog post more eye-catching than a great header image, but not all publishers have artistic talent. And even accomplished digital creatives often crave some found material to start from or work with in a project. Luckily for all of the above, sources abound for finding a compelling photo to grab your readers’ eyes and draw them in, or to locate fresh multimedia to remix.
Note: Here is the official launch of a collaborative project I have been part of for about two years and finally sees the light of day. Official release follows:
PLEASE HELP US SPREAD THE WORD
WE INVITE YOU TO PARTICIPATE . comment, revise, translate, submit a chapter http://networkedbook.org
Two years in the making, Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art) is now open for comments, revisions, and translations. You may also submit a chapter for consideration.
TAGS: active, aethetics, aggregators, authenticity, authorship, BEN FRY, BEN RUBIN, BURAK ARIKAN, collaborative, communication, data, data mining, digital traces, distributed, DIY, EDUARDO NAVAS, everyday life, flow, GOLAN LEVIN, identity, improvisation, Internet, JANET CARDIFF, JASON FREEMAN, JODI.ORG, JONATHAN HARRIS, latency, lifelogging, lifetracing, MANIK, mapping, MARK HANSEN, MARTIN WATTENBERG, MAX NEUHAUS, Mechanical Turk, mediation, memory, music, narrative, NastyNets, NATHANIEL STERN, net art, network, NICK KNOUF, nonlinear, OLIVER LARIC, participation, performative, persistance, PETER TRAUB, platform, postmodernism, presentational, privacy, prosumer, prosurfer, ranking, realism, reality, real-time, relational, remix, representation, research, RYBN, SCARLET ELECTRIC, SCOTT KILDALL, search engine, self, self-exposure, SHIFTSPACE.ORG, social networks, software, sousveillance, STEVE LAMBERT, storage, surveillance, tactical media, telepresence, THE HUB, THEY RULE, TrackMeNot, transmission, TV, user-generated, visualization, web 2.0, webcam, widget, Wikipedia Art, YES MEN
BACKGROUND
“Networked” proposes that a history or critique of interactive and/or participatory art must itself be interactive and/or participatory; that the technologies used to create a work suggest new forms a “book” might take.
In 2008, Turbulence.org and its project partners — NewMediaFix, Telic Arts Exchange, and Freewaves – issued an international, open call for chapter proposals. We invited contributions that critically and creatively rethink how networked art is categorized, analyzed, legitimized — and by whom — as norms of authority, trust, authenticity and legitimacy evolve.
Our international committee consisted of: Steve Dietz (Northern Lights, MN) :: Martha Gabriel (net artist, Brazil) :: Geert Lovink (Institute for Network Cultures, The Netherlands) :: Nick Montfort (Massachusetts Institute for Technology, MA) :: Anne Bray (LA Freewaves, LA) :: Sean Dockray (Telic Arts Exchange, LA) :: Jo-Anne Green (NRPA, MA) :: Eduardo Navas (newmediaFIX) :: Helen Thorington (NRPA, NY)
Built by Matthew Belanger (our hero!), http://networkedbook.org is powered by WordPress, CommentPress and BuddyPress.
Networked was made possible with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts (United States). Thank you.
We are deeply grateful to Eduardo Navas for his commitment to both this project and past collaborations with Turbulence.org.
Jo-Anne Green and Helen Thorington
jo at turbulence dot org
newradio at turbulence dot org
We knew you could make great music on the iPhone. With instrument apps such as Smule’s Ocarina and Leaf Trombone. Still, while they’re cool and surprisingly rich mobile instruments, they’re not all that practical for creating, sampling, and recording musical compositions on the fly.
DopplerPad [iTunes Link] is a turntable-like instrument iPhone app built by one of the two creators of FourTrack [iTunes Link]. Unlike some other apps, this one doesn’t feature just one instrument – it has 37. It doesn’t just play notes; it lets you sample them, no matter where you are. And most of all, you can record and combine the beats to create your own electronic remix.
From left to right: Eduardo Navas, Seidel Brito, Mónica Mejia (CCE Program Coordinator), and Clara Astiasarán. Discussing the ongoing selections of Arte Joven.
I visited San Salvador in June. This time I was invited again by Cultural Center of Spain to be a juror for their Premio Arte Joven 2009 (Young Artist Award 2009). The prize has been in place for ten years now, and has proven to be an important cultural element in supporting young artists in their early professional development.
From far left to right: Saidel Brito and Eduardo Navas, discussing the selection process with applicants. Clara Astiasarán participated via Skype.
I was in excellent company with fellow jurors Cuban artist Saidel Brito, and Cuban art critic Clara Astiasarán. We spent several intensive hours going over 71 proposals, from which we chose eight by artists: Ernesto Bautista, Héctor Bermúdez, Boris Ciudad Real, Mauricio Esquivel, Melissa Guevara, José David Herrera, Mauricio Kabistan, and Hugo Rivas. Their projects will be featured in an exhibition in October 2009. From the selected artists three will be chosen by a different set of jurors for first, second, and third place awards that include cash prizes. The October exhibition is complemented with a well produced catalogue.
Aside from meeting with the eight artists to discuss the possibilities of installation and development of their proposals, we, as jurors, also decided to meet with all applicants to explain the selection process and encourage artists to meet each other and converse. This was a way to support and expand the growing art community of El Salvador. The turn out was great and we had an extensive and constructive exchange about art practice and professional development.
DJ A Todo Color, warming up the crowd for recording artists Ikah and Ari Puello on the International Day of Music, June 20, 2009.
Ikah keeps the crowd shaking during her set.
During my stay in San Salvador, on Saturday June 20, I was able to attend a concert also organized by the Cultural Center of Spain in collaboration with the Cultural French Alliance, featuring local rap artists, including Pescozada and Five o Three. This was the second year in which the French initiated public event “International Day of Music” was extended to the streets of San Salvador. The main feature of the night was Latina Urbana, a touring act consisting of Ikah, based in Madrid; and Arianna Puello, based in Barcelona. Both recording artists consistently tour throughout Latin America. They were gracefully supported by the beats of DJ A Todo Color (DJ total color), also from Barcelona.
Ari Puello breaking it down from beginning to end.
The evening was well organized as Pescozada and Five o Three warmed up the crowd for Ikah, who with her R & B compositions kept the crowd going. Ari Puello closed the evening with a strong set of some of her best hits. Ikah has one album and Puello has four. Puello is actually considered an important artist in Latin American rap. Many people in the audience sang along with her while waving their hands in acknowledgment of her well calculated rhyme and beat.
Wikipedia, Flickr, and Twitter aren’t just revolutions in online social media. They’re the vanguard of a cultural movement. Illustration: Christoph Niemann
Bill Gates once derided open source advocates with the worst epithet a capitalist can muster. These folks, he said, were a “new modern-day sort of communists,” a malevolent force bent on destroying the monopolistic incentive that helps support the American dream. Gates was wrong: Open source zealots are more likely to be libertarians than commie pinkos. Yet there is some truth to his allegation. The frantic global rush to connect everyone to everyone, all the time, is quietly giving rise to a revised version of socialism.
Communal aspects of digital culture run deep and wide. Wikipedia is just one remarkable example of an emerging collectivism—and not just Wikipedia but wikiness at large. Ward Cunningham, who invented the first collaborative Web page in 1994, tracks nearly 150 wiki engines today, each powering myriad sites. Wetpaint, launched just three years ago, hosts more than 1 million communal efforts. Widespread adoption of the share-friendly Creative Commons alternative copyright license and the rise of ubiquitous file-sharing are two more steps in this shift. Mushrooming collaborative sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, the Hype Machine, and Twine have added weight to this great upheaval. Nearly every day another startup proudly heralds a new way to harness community action. These developments suggest a steady move toward a sort of socialism uniquely tuned for a networked world.
As I write this entry, the Internet is flowing with comments and information about Michael Jackson. Here is my drop in the sea of data that will be archived in places people who adopt RSS as part of their daily life will never know exist.
As critical as I am about pop culture, I have to admit that Michael Jackson was ever-present in my growing years; the teenager in me mourns, while the critic cannot help but reflect on the implications of this unexpected and unfortunate death. As sad as Jackson’s passing away is to millions of people, one cannot help but notice how media has changed in the way it handles celebrities and public figures. Just a few years ago there would have been some distance from the dark side of a person’s life. This may still hold true for presidents of the United States as one hardly heard anything negative about Richard Nixon during his funeral. Watergate had become so abstract that it could be cited as a historical moment with no major shame for the country or Nixon’s presidency. This is the power of ahistoricity: people’s lack of historical knowledge made possible by 24 hour news cycles.
But with Michael Jackson a different kind of mourning takes place. His accomplishments and setbacks are cited simultaneously. Everywhere, from CNN to all major newspapers, like the NYTimes and El Pais in Spain, Michael Jackson is remembered for all his deeds–good and bad. As he is remembered as the King of Pop, he is also remembered as a person who was accused of child molestation (this was not proven in court). He is subjected to the aesthetic of reality TV.
In a way this might be healthy for the way people perceive celebrities, as people may become more accepting of public figures’ shortcomings. The sad thing is that scandals sell, and this is the last thing Michael Jackson is remembered for. The King of Pop was planning a comeback, but this one was not to be. He will be remembered as a conflicted figure, who will inevitably be romanticized for his early production and his conflicted last years.
And now, it is time to settle for reissues of MJ’s music in whatever form networked culture will allow. As I write these lines, files of Jackson’s songs are being swapped across the Internet–bootleg remixes made in bedrooms across the world to be shared in just minutes, while music executives figure out a way to cash in on MJ’s music legacy. Such cash-in will be mixed and hard to control. Michael Jackson dies in a time when things for the music industry are not so clear cut and no celebrity is perfect, and that imperfection in the end may mean more cash
He was a person who everyone knew through spectacular images. He may have known himself through the same images as well. As constant exposure rises with social networks, Michael Jackson, the most famous person vanishes. Let this be a rupture in the era of networked media. Michael Jackson is about to become an institution, like Marilyn, like Presley, like Warhol. He will live forever as a spectacular figure. But let’s not forget that somewhere in there was a child who was trying to understand himself. I may be accused of a bit of romanticism with this last statement. Let it be. This is why I chose an early image of Michael Jackson to complement this short reflection on a celebrity I felt I knew, as I had no choice but to acknowledge him everywhere I turned as I grew up. I accepted him as I was bombarded by his presence, just as I am now by the repetition of his spectacular absence. I admit to have moonwalked. RIP MJ.
The following text was written for Interactiva 09 Biennale, which takes place the month of May and June of 2009. Other texts written for the biennale can be found at the Interactiva site.
NOTE: I have written a text in which I discuss Twitter in social activism, something which is not included in this text. Please see “After Iran’s Twitter Revolution: Egypt.”
In March of 2005 I wrote “The Blogger as Producer.”[1] The essay proposed blogging as a potentially critical platform for the online writer. It was written specifically with a focus on the well-known text, “The Author as Producer,” by Walter Benjamin, who viewed the critical writer active during the 1920’s and 30’s with a promising constructive position in culture. [2]
In 2005 blogging was increasing in popularity, and in my view, some of the elements entertained by Benjamin appeared to resonate in online culture. During the first half of the twentieth century, Benjamin considered the newspaper an important cultural development that affected literature and writing because newspaper readers attained certain agency as consumers of an increasingly popular medium. During this time period, the evaluation of letters to editors was important for newspapers to develop a consistent audience. In 2005, it was the blogosphere that had the media’s attention. In this time period, people who wrote their opinions on blogs could be evaluated with unprecedented efficiency. [3] Read the rest of this entry »
Just saw this shirt at a local Waffle shop in State College. We asked the guy wearing it where he got it, and he said, with a blank stare, “from DC…”
“Ahh!” we said… “Of course!”
On the web, leave it to Boing Boing to have the tip:
“Photographer and Boing Boing pal Glen E Friedman, who shot many of the iconic photographs of the hiphop band Run DMC, shares this t-shirt with us — he’s seeing them everywhere in NYC, I understand they’re all over the place. But this was the first time I’d seen the design, so I LOLed and blogged. Larger view. Link to a few related shots.”
