The Rhizome Digest merged into the Rhizome News in November 2008. These pages serve as an archive for 6-years worth of discussions and happenings from when the Digest was simply a plain-text, weekly email.

Subject: RHIZOME DIGEST: 10.31.03
From: digest@rhizome.org (RHIZOME)
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 21:48:08 -0500
Reply-to: digest@rhizome.org
Sender: owner-digest@rhizome.org
RHIZOME DIGEST: October 31, 2003

Content:

+announcement+
1. Renato Posapiani: Nike scores own goal

+opportunity+
2. Scadhr Savannah College of Art and Design: Job Opening -- Professor
of Game Development
3. Sal Randolph: Creative Commons Moving Image Contest

+work+
4. Giselle Beiguelman: wireless teleintervention
5. Francis Hwang: request for comments: Stillman
6. JoseLuisBrea: The Conquest Of Ubiquity
7. Tamara Lai: Web_of_lies

+feature+
8. Jonah Brucker-Cohen: Report from E-Culture Fair

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1.

Date: 10.29.03
From: Renato Posapiani (propaganda AT 0100101110101101.org)
Subject: Nike scores own goal

October 28, 2003

PRESS RELEASE BY PUBLIC NETBASE

Nike scores own goal
Preliminary Court Decision in Favor of International Art Project


The international sportswear company Nike is trying to get the
installation "Nike Ground -- Rethinking space", created by the renowned
artists group 0100101110101101.ORG, banned by court. Meanwhile the
Commercial Court of Vienna has taken a first crucial decision.

Quite apart from the fact that this is an attempt to ban a work of art,
the Commercial Court has rejected Nike's plea for a provisional
injunction on formal grounds. The decision was based on the fact that
the law suit against Public Netbase was filed by Nike International.
This company has its principal office not in Austria, but in the USA and
therefore would have been required to pay a deposit covering the cost of
litigation in case of a ruling in favor of Public Netbase.

Public Netbase's attorney, Mag. Michael Pilz, who consistently
underlined the artistic nature of the installation, pointed out the
formal defect in his response to the plaint. "This is a major step ahead
for the project", declared Konrad Becker, director of Public Netbase.
The law suit with Nike will now enter its next round. Moreover, the
installation remained on Karlsplatz until its official takedown on 28
October. "The Court's decision motivates us to protect the freedom of
art against the ruthlessness of corporations with even more
determination in the future", Becker concluded.

According to 0100101110101101.ORG spokesman Ted Pikul "Nike is a perfect
subject for a work of art. The Swoosh is probably the most viewable
brand on earth, more than any political or religious symbol. Now these
giants are loosing control over their own brands, which in the hands of
pop culture are turning into boomerangs".


CONTACTS:

Public Netbase
http://www.t0.or.at
office AT t0.or.at

0100101110101101.ORG:
HTTP://0100101110101101.ORG
Nikeground AT 0100101110101101.ORG

NIKEGROUND:
http://www.nikeground.com
info AT nikeground.com

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2.

Date: 10.27.03
From: Scadhr Savannah College of Art and Design (scadhr AT scad.edu)
Subject: Job Opening -- Professor of Game Development

Professor of Game Development
The Savannah College of Art and Design seeks candidates for a full-time
faculty position in the school of Film and Digital Media for Spring
2004. Qualified candidates will have an M.F.A., or M.S., or
undergraduate degree with extensive recognized industry experience. A
strong portfolio that reflects a high degree of knowledge in game design
and development is required. Experience with one or more shipping game
titles is preferred but not required. College-level teaching experience
is preferred but not required. Candidates should have a minimum of 3
years experience in the Game industry. Candidates should be able to
teach Cg programming and Game ?Modding?. Ability to teach character
design and modeling, environment design and familiarity with game
prototyping tools and methods would be an advantage. We give preference
to those candidates with experience teaching coursework through the web.

ABOUT THE COLLEGE: The Savannah College of Art and Design, located in
historic Savannah, Georgia, USA, is a private, non-profit college that
exists to prepare talented students for careers in the visual and
performing arts, design, building arts, and art and architecture. The
college offers twenty-two areas of study and awards bachelor and
master?s degrees. A low student/faculty ratio is maintained at the
college, with small classes taught by caring, dedicated faculty who hold
terminal degrees and/or other outstanding credentials.

TO APPLY: Interested candidates should send cover letter, resume,
samples of work, official transcripts and three reference letters to:
Human Resources, Savannah College of Art and Design, P.O. Box 3146,
Savannah, GA 31402-3146, or fax to 912-525-5222, or e-mail to
scadhr AT scad.edu. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. AA/EOE.
Please visit our web site at www.scad.edu.

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3.

Date: 10.30.03
From: Sal Randolph (stfr AT earthlink.net)
Subject: Creative Commons Moving Image Contest

Creative Commons Moving Image Contest

http://creativecommons.org/contest/

Create, or mash-up, a moving image that explains Creative Commons
mission, using your favorite moving image authoring tool, such as Flash,
iMovie, or Final Cut Pro. Entries can contain video, animated images,
text, and audio. We welcome and encourage the use of other people's
work, provided that you have permission or the work is Creative
Commons-licensed or public domain. The entry should be 2 minutes or
less. All entries must be licensed under a Creative Commons license of
your choosing by time of entry. Top prizes include a computer, DV
Camera, and an iPod. Deadline for entries is December 31st 2003.
http://creativecommons.org/contest/

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4.

Date: 10.26.03
From: Giselle Beiguelman (gb AT desvirtual.com)
Subject: wireless teleintervention

Hi,
I would like to invite you to help me test some features of Poétrica
teleintervention which allows to anyone post messages to 3 electronic
billboards located in downtown Sao Paulo. You can post your messages by
the web and by SMS. Poétrica is operating since Oct. 14 and we did not
have any problems with Brazilian mobile phones. All contributors are
receiving an alert by SMS or by e-mail (it depends on the way they
submit their messages), but we are not sure if it will work abroad (the
SMS alert) because of some limitations of our system. So, we really need
your posts in order to study and solve the problems.

The numbers are:

GSM: +555181128808

CDMA: +555196542600

More info: www.poetrica.net

Tks,
gb

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5.

Date: 10.27.03
From: Francis Hwang (francis AT rhizome.org)
Subject: request for comments: Stillman

I'd appreciate people's input on my newest net-art project. It's called
Stillman, and it's at http://stillman.to/ . It's sort of an homage to
Paul Auster's "City of Glass", combined with the accidental linking
dynamic of a Wiki. I wanted to create a textual space where people can
vaguely track the movements of others by seeing where they've added
texts themselves.

Like some of my other stuff, it's much more semantic than visual ... As
a writer it's a direction I like, though it can make for some crummy
screenshots.

F.

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6.

Date: 10.28.03
From: JoseLuisBrea (jlb AT rhizome.org)
Subject: The Conquest Of Ubiquity
Award/Awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (MCYT)

/**/The Conquest Of Ubiquity (intro)
José Luis Brea

Although the apparent aim of "the conquest of ubiquity" is to sketch a
brief "history of net.art", we do not set out to do this from the
immanent perspective of a more or less recent and consolidated artistic
form or genre, but rather from the perspective of what is represented
and implied by its emergence in the context of the transformation of
symbolic practices taking place in contemporary societies. Thus the
emphasis and the "key points" of this account will not be focussed
either on narrative development, or on formal "finds", or even on those
critical articulations that have been most influential to date on the
effective development of the net.art "form" as such. But rather on those
realizations which best reveal the generic process of transformation of
the "economy of artistic practices" that is taking place at the present
moment, and which (in our view) "act as symptoms", coming to light in
net.art.

Our brief ?history of net.art", then, is guided by the conviction that
what will prove to have been most important in its early development
(during these first ten years of existence), will be the extent to which
this new type of communication practice will have anticipated ­-and
brought to centre stage-­ the major upheavals occurring with regard to
visual economy and symbolic production within our societies.

In this context, two very specific qualities of ?resistance? proper to
net.art are of the greatest interest for us: one, its inaccessibility to
economies of trade and goods (and hence its potential for developping in
directions hostile to the establishment of markets within its ambit);
two, its unsuitability for conventional strategies of exhibition, which
are ultimately of a "spatial" nature. These qualities enable it to
exercise a strong resistance to the settled economy of art (an economy
of commerce and collection, supplemented by public instruments of
exhibition and patrimony), chiefly by virtue of the ubiquitous and
infinitely reproducible character of its productions (justifying our
choice of title for this exhibition, in honour of the prophetic
intuition of Paul Valéry). Given such a character, the productions of
net.art foster the deepening of the transitional situation affecting
artistic practices: the shift from a trade economy to a distribution
one.

It would seem that the two most telling "moments" in the history of
net.art in relation to the Institution-Market-Art are marked precisely
by an evaluation of that situation of change-over. Documenta X ­-which
emphatically underlined this gradual shift of art economies towards
regimes dissolved in the general, diffuse economy of an expanded system
of the technical image-­ was a high spot, a moment of maximum valuation
(reflecting the euphoria of the art-system at the birth of net.art). At
the opposite extreme, the recent closure of the New Media programme at
the Walker Art Center encapsulates the crisis, in the form of retreat on
the part of institutions. This moment corresponds to the acknowledgement
of a hopeless misfit between the economies proper to the existing
Art-Institution and the nascent new practice, at a moment of
retrenchment and growing structural conservatism within the
Art-Institution, which doubtless perceives all too clearly the dangers
to itself in the establishment of new regimes and new forms of practice.
We regard both these moments ­ euphoria and disappointment, success and
failure ­-as indications on exactly the same level of the fundamental
incompatibility between two public regimes that cannot be mixed (like
oil and water) however much they coexist in time, in a time (ours) that
we must necessarily, therefore, recognise as a period of transition and
conflict.

In a sense, then, our short "history of net.art" aspires principally to
stand as a "conflictual prehistory" of a new regime of global
relationship with the practices of symbolic production developed in the
context of the visual realm, in anticipation of the new regime that has
not yet arrived and taken root. And its arrival, if it does arrive
(something we do not doubt; at least, upon which we confidently lay our
bets) will oblige us to reappraise net.art from that retrospective point
of view. Its achievements will be recognised as an untimely
prefiguration of something that was still coming, as a projected
anticipation of a future that was, at the time, still a mere
possibility. This would mean that we, today, should perceive net.art as
a kind of an inverted "déjà vu", containing a memory of the future in
the present ­-a present which is still current, in which we can weigh
up, at this precise moment of the bankruptcy of incautious dreams, what
is at stake. And the stakes are not inconsiderable.


The Conquest of Ubiquity
www.ubiquid.net/eng

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7.

Date: 10.30.03
From: Tamara Lai (tamara.lai AT skynet.be)
Subject: Web_of_lies

Web_of_lies (Tiss=E9 de mensonges)

Interactive shocked movies (click, click & click...)

http://www.imal.org/tamara_lai/web_of_lies/index.html

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8.

Date: 10.31.03
From: Jonah Brucker-Cohen (jonah AT coin-operated.com)
Subject: Report from E-Culture Fair

Report from E-Culture Fair
http://www.eculturefair.nl
October 23-24, 2003
Paradiso, DeBalie, Melkweg
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

By Jonah Brucker-Cohen (jonah AT coin-operated.com)

Although adding the letter "e" to words like "culture" might seem a bit
too 90s, the 2nd E-Culture Fair (first was in 2000) lived up to its name
as a comprehensive showcase of over 50 projects, experiences, and
performances that combined the virtual and physical. The fair, which
took place in Amsterdam, was spread over several venues into three
distinct categories including "My-Mode" (wearable technology and
fashion), "Mobile Home" (networks at home and dispersed in urban
settings), and "Toys4Us" (gaming and playful interfaces). This fair's
theme centered on "Research and Development" in new media and took a
hands-on approach to showing work with an eclectic mixture of live demos
and events. Despite the potential brain overload, I managed to tour most
of the venues and even sit in on several project presentations.

Walking into the newly renovated Paradiso theatre, My-Mode resembled a
hybrid fashion show turned trade fair. The setup consisted of a wide
range of fashion tech hybrids that emphasized the integration of
technology on the body in everything from fabric design to reactive
clothing. Taking a playful approach to adverse weather conditions was
Elise Co's "Puddle Jumper", a raincoat with electro-luminescent panels
that lit up when water fell on the coat. Also on display was
International Fashion Machines' "Electric Plaid", a panel of interwoven
conductive thread and silk-screened thermochromic inks that slowly
changed colors when electricity was applied to the thread. This demoed
solid technological know-how, but less interesting implementation other
than some sewn light switches and pretty wall mounts. On the more
practical side was "Inside/Outside", a series of networked handbags that
measure localized pollution (smoke, audio, exhaust, etc=8A) and connect
to each other over an ad-hoc (or spontaneous) network to exchange data
and aggregate a diary of exposure levels over time. Focusing on
biometric feedback was Sompit Moi Fusakul's "Interactive Ornaments:
Emotions in Motions" which measured the wearer's heart rate and
transposed this result on kinetic and illuminated jewelry. Also included
was Jenny Tillotson's "Smart Second Skin", a dress that emits odors
depending on biometric feedback from the wearer. I got really close and
out came a Whiskey smell which means that either I remind people of
drinking or the day was getting too long.

Despite the wide array of perspectives presented in MyMode, there seems
to be a continual emphasis on cause and effect relationships with
wearable technology. Something happens in the environment, space or
activity the wearer is engaged and the clothing or device acts as a
display or highlights these actions. The next step might be to look at
reciprocal relationships between the object and the wearer where each
plays a crucial role in each other's development and output over time.
Is it possible to create objects and clothing that are not only aware of
their inhabitants, but also of each other?

Spread over DeBalie and Melkweg venues, the "Mobile Home" theme
displayed projects that featured fixed technologies for interacting in
both public and private space. Victor Vina and Hector Serrano's
"NetObjects", were a quirky collection of networked household objects
including an umbrella that relays weather reports and a koo-koo clock
that displays headlines from rightist and leftist newspapers. Another
experiment in connected familiar spaces, the "Remote Home" featured
networked furniture in each building, where sitting on a couch would
trigger a linked couch to boot off the person sitting in the other
space. Despite the playful interplay with the furniture, questions arose
as to the importance of transposing identity as well as presence across
distance? If you are unsure that the ambient display is outputting the
movements of your significant other, does that cause more anxiety than
reassurance?

Escaping the confines of indoor space, wireless-based projects seemed to
pervade the fair. Delivering mobile wireless hotspots was Shu Lea
Chang's "RICHAIR", featuring three wired up roller skate girls carrying
mobile 802.11b repeaters and mini-computers with embedded webcams for
relaying network connections and images across town. There was also an
emphasis on the social impact of technology through Doors East's
"Mapping Mobile Phone Usage Among Auto Rickshaw Drivers", a project
examining the changes mobile technology has had in Bangalore, India for
taxi drivers. The main implementation would be to create a mobile phone
booth by integrating a pay system into cell phones integrated into the
rickshaws. Finally, Marc Tuters' "Geograffiti" project envisions a
future of collaborative cartography based on localized information
exchange where public 'digital' space is annotated with graffiti.

Moving onto the playful side of technology, the "Toys4Us" exhibit looked
at everything from collaborative DJ scratching and virtual puppetry to
public installations of shared stories. Marcus Kirsch's "Rashomon" pit
video capture with Street Fighter gaming where visitors' kicking and
punching moves were captured and imported as game characters into a
two-player fighting match. Also integrating public input was Merel
Mirage's "Holy", a networked vending machine with an embedded LCD screen
that allowed visitors to www.holy.nl to author animations and send them
to the display. Also STEIM showed up with some impressive MIDI
instruments and sound experiences including a pair of headphones with
tilt sensors that sped up beats-per-minute on the audio depending on how
fast you shook your head.

After two full days of demos and talks, questions arose as to the
cyclical nature of information and interface design. On one hand there
is a trend to build interfaces that encourage social interaction, but
there's also a tendency to create experiences that discourage chance
occurrences by highlighting personal experience. There should be a way
to balance experiential design so that it not only allows for
collaboration but also maintains an ambient presence that blends
seamlessly into everyday activity. This was evident in some of the
projects at the fair, but most had trouble escaping their
categorization. Nevertheless, events like the E-Culture Fair are great
for encouraging cross-pollination of research and practice along with
showcasing the current state of the field. By emphasizing interactivity
and the participatory nature of projects, the event had a distinct
science fair-like atmosphere. This approach succeeded in presenting not
only the latest gadgets and whimsical interfaces to come, but also the
experience of participating in this landscape.

-Jonah Brucker-Cohen

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Rhizome.org is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and an affiliate of
the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

Rhizome Digest is supported by grants from The Charles Engelhard
Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for
the Visual Arts, and with public funds from the New York State Council
on the Arts, a state agency.

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Rhizome Digest is filtered by Feisal Ahmad (feisal AT rhizome.org). ISSN:
1525-9110. Volume 8, number 44. Article submissions to list AT rhizome.org
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