furtherfield blog
Thinking about love and friendship
At first it was disconcerting to find myself being hugged so warmly again and again by complete strangers with tears in their eyes. Gradually, though, as these people told me their names and I began to grasp the context, I realized that they were not strangers at all: they were my sister Amy's colleagues and friends, people she had shared with me and me with them, people who had been part of her life and were now mourning her death with us.
Gustav: Day Three of Five
Day Three: FEMA @ WalMart
We got up at 6:30 or so, and I said that I wanted to just go and get at it. Now, keep in mind that I am writing this on Day Six after landfall, and i dont' know whether I'm tired, hazy, or blanking it out. It's just that I feel like sweeping detail is dropping away, and if you're tired of my sprawling narrative, you might be thankful, although I probably still won't spare you by much...
Reserved Translations
A few months ago Aileen posted about being a translator and seamlessly conveying artists and writers ideas across languages. I’m sitting on an airplane where the person next to me is reading a newspaper article about me in Spanish (which I can’t read) and wishing I was a translator…
Gustav: Day Five of Five (Out of Sequence)
Day Five: Exit Strategy/Holding One's Breath
Live from Gustav - Day Two of Five
Day Two: Leigh Arrives.
Addendum to Day One:
Live From Gustav in Baton Rouge: A New Media Artist's Perspective
Day One Sept 4, 2008 – 48 hours after landfall
A quick proviso – I'm starting to write this on the night of my third day in Baton Rouge, and I'm exhausted from working on the house, and we're hemorrhaging money at the moment. We were so lucky, as our home just had huge amounts of debris and only a moderate size bough hitting the roof and a few broken shingles.
A New Cultural Economy Symposium IIMedia, Fans and Copyright
More rough notes from Ars Electronica.
Paul keller (ars)
Existing rights holders don't use their rights that they have because they await a time when someone will turn up to pay them a fortune for those rights. Knowledge land project. An attempt to digitise all the media.. copyrights in the netherlands do not allow for granting rights yet.
150 euros to digitise and put on line but theyar don't have the rights to do so yet. Youtube takes the stuff that people have no outlet for. There are many pages of the web that tries to creat these online archives
A New Cultural Economy Symposium I Production and Creation in the Commons
here are some rough notes made during the conference at ars electronica 2008 conference. the introduction is:
""
A New Cultural Economy Symposium I
Production and Creation in the Commons
The discussion chaired bu Joi Ito(http://joi.ito.com/weblog/)
Art on spam: part 1. Analogue translation- Spam into different format/medium
Considerable time between my posts, but here you go. I’ve been trying to find out who has been using spam emails, junk mails and bogus forum posts. Most artists seem to be interested in the content and wording of the spam and just translate it into some other format, either by painting it, by making it audible (there is a Spam radio!), writing a program that makes a picture of it or creating an algorithm of some sort that they then use for something else.
The Aotearoa Digital Arts Reader
i've just been to the auckland launch of the Aotearoa Digital Arts Reader - the first collection of essays about digital arts in new zealand, written by, for and about nz digital artists.
Being Audience
While Helen has been busy coming to terms with different time zones, I have been playing my summer role again as audience herder for a summer theater production. Since independent summer theater productions take place in unusual temporary locations without established paths or traffic flows, it can often be helpful to have an extra person or two to aid the audience in playing their respective role. That's my summer job.
080808 is about to begin ...
we're an hour away from the start of the 080808 UpStage Festival. i've uploaded the last-minute media, done a restart, & checked my email - seems there are no last-minute panics (yet) ... in typical cyberformance fashion we've had numerous interesting technical gremlins in the last days, but everyone has been very patient & persistent, & douglas has worked miracles. i've just about gone insane over the time zones - i'm sure there will be at least one mistake still in the schedule but i've done my best.
Jake Elliott + Dirty New Media
Chicago based artist-hacker Jake Elliott (who is also my close friend, colleague + collaborator) recently gave a talk entitled "Dirty New Media: Art, Activism and Computer Counter Cultures" @ HOPE, the Hackers on Planet Earth conference in NYC, NY .US
Finding the Pathway
In trying to write an essay on some aspect of media arts, it's difficult sometimes to find your way through the malaise of information coming at you when you free type and try to capture as many ideas as possible in one session, that's the whole idea sometimes of just getting stuck in and finding out where the sentences lead you.
on time
i have spent days between time zones and no, i haven't been travelling. i've been working out the schedule for the 080808 UpStage Festival. this online festival runs for 18 hours over the 8th & 9th of august (depending where you are in the world) and there are 14 different performances, each playing twice (some three times) with performers in 14 different time zones (possibly 15 - i'm not sure where in canada some of the performers are).
Revenge of the misfits?
A book that has long been on my "wish list" finally arrived recently, and it is every bit as delightful as I had anticipated: She's Such a Geek, edited by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders. Reading this book, though, thoroughly identifying with various aspects of many different stories, enjoying a sense of "belonging", somewhere in the back of my mind, odd questions have been unexpectedly intruding themselves.
I'm invisible!
As I explained in my introduction page, one of the things that makes it a bit difficult to explain my work is that the better I do my job, the more imperceptible my work becomes. Yesterday I was thrilled to find myself completely invisible.
joining the blogging of furtherfield
hallo all, im very happy to be joining the furtherfielders + those reading, receiving + commenting on these feeds!
Foreign Identity
I consider myself a pretty avid traveler. I grew up traveling to many different places and my family opted to take our own routes as opposed to big group tours. I’m often embarrassed when I see other Americans in foreign cities looking loudly for the nearest hamburger, sporting t-shirts freshly bought from street vendors of the city we’re in, and laughing at different customs. I am proud in many ways of my American identity (although that pride seems to be diminishing in recent years) however I’ve also always been able to blend in to local customs. (Except in Asia perhaps where I am clearly an outsider, but could be from seen as from the majority of western countries.)
