:: Notes from Somewhere Bizarre ::

:: Friday, February 14, 2003 ::

War sites

On the eve of the anti-war demos being held tomorrow, a few links to online-driven initiatives:

"Join us in challenging dangerous nations that produce and conceal weapons of mass destruction. Rooting Out Evil is sending a weapons inspection team to the United States to inspect the chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons produced and concealed by the Bush regime."

the wartime project: reflections on and reactions against wars, past, present and future by digital and network artists.

ANTI-WAR.US is dedicated to the free distribution of anti-war graphic material.

Webcam in Iraq project.

Poets against the war




:: ashleyb Friday, February 14, 2003 [+] ::
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Spatial politics and cartographies of power

Cartography of excess (an article)
Geography and the politics of mobility (an exhibition)

Bureau d'études (storyboarding the songlines of power)
Multiplicity (the art of territorial investigations)
Frontera Sur RRTV (exploring mediterranean borderlands)


:: ashleyb Tuesday, February 11, 2003 [+] ::
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Drug madness

Incredibly ironic to think that a country that continues its war on drugs goes to war on drugs.

And will use drugs to kill (from the NYTimes - reg. required): “the federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled yesterday that officials in Arkansas can force a prisoner on death row to take antipsychotic medication to make him sane enough to execute”.

:: ashleyb Tuesday, February 11, 2003 [+] ::
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33 Links

It's marixxx' s birthday tomorrow. These links are for her:

Images of Argentina
Movie posters in Ghana (Antonio Banderas)
Sexy sculptures
Invisible clothes
Design playground
Lady D. paper doll
On the road
Gay superhero
High definition camcorder
Your laptop
William Gibson blog
Ghetto fabulous dolls
Cat clone
Phyllis Curott
Tokyo avant-garde
Estrazione lotto 7 febbraio 1970
London bloggers
Hollywood air
Smoking Heidi
Hollywood and pulp
Wild hearts and sacred arts
Air hostess uniforms
Magic(k)al tech
Ganguro (tokyo street fashion)
Bathroom mania
Sushi art
Zen
Viola
Ken
Barbie
Moodstats
Googlism (ashley benigno)
The 33rd is not a link, but a world wide web of joy, love and passion for you.



:: ashleyb Thursday, February 06, 2003 [+] ::
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Space invading memories

Came across this site today. Memories of Space Invaders as my first digital obsession:

I was a gangly prepubescent kid growing up in late seventies Rome, when the game came out; humble aliens bringing a massive paradigm shift after decades of pinball rule – from shiny steel ball to green pixel. Leaving early for school to stop off for a few morning games. Rushing out in the afternoon for a few more – seeking status in top scores. The invariably cigarette-scarred console conjuring a taster of proto-cyberpunk aesthetics, as junkies hustled for change in the streets outside and fashion hooligans made wheelies on souped-up Vespas with Pioneer sound systems embedded in the glove box.

:: ashleyb Tuesday, February 04, 2003 [+] ::
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Narration Architecture

A couple of days ago I was laying in bed with hardcore stomach cramps, running a fever, when the memory of similar moments came flooding back: like the time I lay huddled against a betel stained wall of Mumbay's airport . Thoughts of travel led me to ponder once again the differences between neo-wanderers and nomads, the latter shrouded in the sound of songlines collapsing into Chatwin. Thinking of writers, I am reminded of Henry Miller and of how he was always going for walks, dreaming his world into existence during his strolls around Brooklyn. Then I think of current experiments like annotate space and 34n118w and I cant help but image myself wandering around NYC searching for Miller's thought blog on street corners, disused theaters and chinese restaurants.

Henry Miller walking around Paris, thinking up Tropic of Cancer, a novel that defied many previous literary conventions.

Finding new ways to tell stories; defining new ways to roam through space.

Walking and talking.

Evolving, transforming storytelling.

Vast landscapes that come into being through narration architecture.

And then I think of how delicate such stories could be. How fragile their permanence in time. How similar in essence to oral traditions. How vaporous our current digital production is. Websites that disappear, early software that can no longer be accessed, silent hardware. Will streets that start talking still be heard in decades, centuries to come?

And are there already stories embedded around us, we can no longer hear? Is technology linked to magic?

Then all questions, thoughts fly away as marixxx walks in and kisses me with paradise-soft lips full of haikus.


:: ashleyb Friday, January 31, 2003 [+] ::
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Blogs - Virus and Mutation

The Guardian has an interesting article about the viral spread of blogging into the realm of business models and concepts - from Nick Denton's "nanopublishing" to knowledge management systems mutating into k-logs.

And on the subject of blog mutations, check out Augmented Moblogging (via headmap)


:: ashleyb Thursday, January 30, 2003 [+] ::
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Always-on people locked in overload now

My open-space neighbour and friend Fabio Sergio has written an interesting essay on the erosion of time by those technological devices that were once supposed to save us time. At one point he writes:

"Results of our rising expectations towards constant availability are already well known, like the disappearing boundaries between work and play, between our professional and personal life."

On this aspect, what is interesting is that we are not witnessing a balanced merge between work and play, but an invasion of our personal sphere by the forces of work. Ever had a day off, an evening out, a moment of play disrupted by a call from work that just couldn't wait? The "couldn't wait" part is important. A symptom perhaps of what Fabio has dubbed Interaction Anxiety; lets call it the immediate response syndrome, the need to answer an email, reply to a voicemail, provide a solution NOW. Hyper-speed in work practices becomes akin to driving full speed without taking into consideration the need to slow down to tackle the approaching bend. With bleak pessimism, digital (counter)culture theorist bifo writes (in italian): "A depression epidemic has hit planet earth. After 20 years of economic fanaticalness, superwork and competition have brought the psychic energies of humanity to the point of collapse".

"We live in the now" writes Fabio. This "now" however, does not free us from the tyranny of time, allowing us to bask in the richness and heat of the pure present. Instead it leaves us locked in overload now

:: ashleyb Thursday, January 23, 2003 [+] ::
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From the gift economy (and its interpretations) to open source, from copyleft to creative commons, the Net continues to act as a hotbed of socio-economic experimentation: if you don't want to sell the goods and cultural commodities you no longer want, why not try bartering?


:: ashleyb Tuesday, January 21, 2003 [+] ::
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