Sanja Ivekovic at MoMA

I had the pleasure of attending a press preview of Sanja Ivekovi's new exhibit, Sweet Violence, at the Museum of Modern Art this week.

Sanja's work involves a lot of manipulation of existing images (especially advertising and propaganda) to drive home messages about feminism, history, and media.

Some highlights for me included Tragedy of Venus, a collection of photographs which juxtaposed images of Marilyn Monroe with the artist's own photographs where tries to mimic the star's poses. Another was Double Life, in which the artist paired print advertisements of beautiful women wearing sunglasses with the personal stories of abused women.

Lady Rosa of Luxembourg is one of her most well-known and controversial works. We saw it in person, and got to hear the the museum director and the gallery curator discuss the work. Lady Rosa of Luxembourg came to be when Sanja's original idea for an art work was denied. She erected this monument as a critique of the original, incorporating ideas about the treatment of women.

We also got to experience the artist's performance piece, Practice Makes a Master. This piece featured a single female dancer wearing a plastic bag over her head, falling again and again as a cut from Marilyn Monroe's cover of the song "That Old Black Magic" played and a spotlight flashed on and off. At 18 minutes, the song played a couple times, slowing down gradually. By the end it was quite disturbing and reminded one of a torture chamber and a cabaret act all at once.

Class #12

1. Relational Aesthetics and Carsten Holler

Relational art or relational aesthetics is "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space." French author Nicolas Bourriard makes the first attempt at understanding the artists who practiced relational aesthetics in the 1990s, among them Carsten Holler, who fits the definition quite well. As the NY Times said of his exhibit at the New Museum, Holler's art is directed at "the humans who consent to participate in his thoroughly subjective experiments, which stand science on its head, yielding results for the sake of the test subject rather than that of the tester."

2. Eric Rosenthal

Mr. Rosenthal is an adjunct professor at NYU who specializes in imaging technology. He worked for a long time at ABC, where he made sure the network was keeping up with the latest state-of-the-art facilities, engineering, lighting, etc. Today, he's working on a project with his company to develop a "full-spectrum imaging sensor and display."

3. Post-Digital

The basic premise of "post-digital" is that the digital "revolution" is over, and that now digital technology is no longer a novelty, but rather an inevitable and ordinary part of the human experience, particularly when it comes to artistic expression. Post-digital thinking does not contend that we are in a phase of life after digital, but rather it aims to explore what life is like now that we are fully integrated with it.

Breathtaking quote from this blog post by Russel Davies : "There are a lot of people around now who have thoroughly integrated 'digitalness' into their lives. To the extent that it makes as much sense to define them as digital as it does to define them as air-breathing." The point of the article is for Davies to outline points he made in a recent presentation with post-digital ideas at the center. His most interesting point for me were that people are no longer impressed by things on screens, and that instead people are looking to see technology integrated into everyday objects. An excellent example was a small chip in the back of a book, which, when activated, would allow you to hear the book read aloud.

The Guardian's Simon Jenkins argues that "live experience" is in and "digital" fetishism is out. He gives music, politics, and museums as examples. A possible explanation? "It is possible that people who spend all day online yearn to escape a screen at evenings and weekends" I think that's a very good idea. Also likely is this explanation: people are having trouble making money off online experiences. Finally, I think Jenkins very aptly summarizes post-digital this way: "Post-digital is not anti-digital. It extends digital into the beyond. "

The Journal of Media Practice Symposium 2011 was a "one-day symposium [that] explored how digital technologies have redefined creativity and media practice within the academy." Essentially it was a summit on "post-digital."

Most Influential

1. Ten Nelson and hypertext

Before this class, I had never imagined that the Internet could exist any other way than it exists now. Previously I knew that it was Tim Berners-Lee's brainchild, but I had no knowledge that the Internet had precursors or that there was controversy around the idea of the net (except for issues of net neutrality). Nelson's notion of hypertext is interesting because it envisions the web as something for academic use, made to enhance knowledge and organization. Today's Internet does that in a sense, but its multiple other uses make it indeed something different from what Nelson imagined. Though Nelson's Internet may never exist the way he intended, I think it is important to keep his goals of academic integrity and intellectual lineage in mind as the World Wide Web continues to evolve.

2. Science and math as art - Ken Perlin and Carsten Holler

You can't have digital art without math and science, and I think what I will take away from this class is that the art does not come despite the scientific nature of it but BECAUSE of that very nature. The beauty, as I learned from Ken Perlin and Carsten Holler, is in the very processes that go into making the digital art. In school we art taught that art and science/math are opposed, but in fact more and more they are connected in meaningful ways, to the benefit of both math/science and art. Math and science make digital art possible, and I think that is good, because it allows more people to get involved with art, both right brainers and left brainers. Those two types of people can even work together, and that is where the real magic happens.

3. Intellectual curiosity

There are certainly other big concepts that I will remember from this class including digital journalism (Michael Strickland), data visualization (THINK exhibit), and the future of technology in daily life (augmented reality), but there is something else that I will remember first and foremost: the virtue of constantly learning about the world around you — its past, its present, and its future. Whether it's music or fashion or art, Cynthia taught me, by example, that pursuing an interest in the constantly changing world is a fulfilling way to live life. Whether it was literature, or a museum, or a YouTube link, Cynthia was always excited about something and being with her made me feel inspired to pay more attention to things that are new and positive. This is a lesson whose importance transcends the classroom.

The Met, window watching, and the movies

At the MET Museum we saw Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Creche, an annual display there since 1957. Cynthia asked us to make up a story based on the figures beneath the tree. Mine was about a sultan named Raj who traveled to Italy on his elephant. He couldn't find anyone who would celebrate the holiday with him because they were all scared of his elephant. The exception was a man named Filipe, who was unafraid because he grew up in a circus. We also saw the exhibit, Infinite Jest, about the history of satire. I agree with the New York Times' observation that, "caricature has not undergone the kind of extreme transformations that the finer, higher arts of painting and sculpture have." Throughout history you see some of the same techniques used by many artists-- turning people into animals, exaggerating physical features, etc. I think this is a good thing; it makes satire an art with longevity. Though you could see the humor in every image, it was helpful to have context to better understand the circumstances that inspired each drawing.

The windows at Bergdorf Goodman were absolutely spectacular. I found this video produced by Bergdorf Goodman that explains more about the process of making the windows and their significance. David Hoey and Linda Fargo are the head designers who have been working on the windows for over a decade.

Finally, saw the movie HUGO in 3D at the spectacular Ziegfeld Theatre. I truly enjoyed the film. The scene design and filming were so innovative I felt at times I was watching something entirely animated (actors included). I'm not sure the movie made any particularly BOLD statements...messages about finding one's purpose, and coping with loss etc. were poignant but not necessarily original. I don't think that mattered much though because the sentiment was good and the style was so specific and imaginative. Also the film must get brownie points for re-visiting the legacy of George Melies.

My Time At The New Museum

Carsten Höller's goal is to inspire doubt and uncertainty in the people who experience his work. For me, he succeeded! But I still had a lot of fun along the way.


The carousel on the fourth floor left me wondering why we would ever find a carousel fun under any circumstances. Höller's ride stripped down the carousel to its most fundamental element-- circular motion. Without speed, and sound, and visual candy, the carousel seems useless and silly.

The slide had a similar effect. I keep thinking about Höller's quote in which he says going down a slide is like a barely controlled fall. I never quite felt that way until I went down Höller's slick, metallic slide. It's fast and you feel, at least toward the end, like you are losing control. The added effect of being seen through the tube as you go makes your mad descent a spectacle for others.

The upside down glasses were a perfect metaphor for Höller's entire exhibition. When you enter his world, your world is literally turned upside down. After falling down the slide, spinning on the carousel, this exercise was the thing that finally left me with a headache as I left the museum.

I've recommended it to all my friends.

Class #11

1. New York Times

Carsten Holler

Favorite quote: “It’s a very odd thing with a slide; it’s quite an efficient way to go from place to place, but it is also like a barely controlled fall. It’s a very specific kind of madness to go down one.”

Wikipedia

This nicely sums up the range of experience at the New Museum: "Höller creates situations which question familiar forms of perception and allow exhibition visitors to experiment on themselves, often inviting the public's active participation in so-called “influential environments."

New Museum

Höller was originally trained as a scientist, and now draws on "research and experiments from scientific history" in order to "alter the audience’s physical and psychological sensations, inspiring doubt and uncertainty about the world around them."

2. Elements of Style as Occupy Movement Evolves

NYTimes article describes how OWS became a global phenomenon. Using the hashtag symbol makes it optimal for spreading on social network sites. The "Occupy" part of OWS helps brand other satellites of the movement around the world. And "We are the 99%" helps communicate a message clearly, which can be easily translated and applied in other countries.

3. Interview with the man behind OWS' "Bat Signal" on its two-month anniversary.

Mark Read, 45, used a Sony 12K lumen projector that sells for around $10K to get the graphics on the wall. He used the apartment of a relative stranger in the building across the way from which to project. He wrote the words himself.

4. Saks Fifth Avenue Holiday Light Show Features 3D Projection Mapping

Creative agency Iris created a 3D projection called "The Snowflake and the Bubble" which plays every night for five hours. Customers can also scan a QR code in the windows of Saks in order to enjoy the show at home.

5.Hackers Give Rise To New Ideas For Microsoft Kinect

Kinect seems to be about more than just Microsoft. Coca Cola has created an interactive billboard, where people can appear to play inside a waterfall of soda. Appears to be using a technology similar to Microsoft Kinect.

Another video on the page by Kinect lays out a vision for the future of Kinect, in which the technology is a more integral part of peoples' lives. Applications are imagined in music, medicine, teaching, etc. Really cool.

6. Converting Music Blogs Into a Song Discovery Platform

Tim Heineke's Shuffler.fm aggregates music from music blogs into channels that focus on a genre. In an interview, Heineke says he says it as "a more human Pandora or a new version of rolling stone magazine or sort of MTV for music blogs." And it works with blogs/sites hosted on WordPress, Tumblr, Posterous, Typepad etc.

7. ITP Showcase

NYU exhibit of student work in the ITP graduate program in Tisch. The program's mission is " two-year graduate program located in the Tisch School of the Arts whose mission is to explore the imaginative use of communications technologies — how they might augment, improve, and bring delight and art into people's lives.

OWS

1. New York Times article talks about the genius behind OWS branding:

"By christening its first camp “#Occupy Wall Street,” Adbusters set a precedent whereby other groups could instantly invent their own versions of “Occupy” in different locations..."

"Occupy" is easily customizable and translatable into different languages. The hash tag helps people search for the movement on Twitter. Using a raised fist as a symbol places the movement historically.

The crux of this argument, which highlights the irony of this success, is here:

In short, “Occupy” is a stellar example of both what is known in marketing as an umbrella brand name and what the anti-corporatists in the movement could call beating them at their own game.

2. Interview with the man behind OWS' "Bat Signal" on its two-month anniversary.

Mark Read, 45, used a Sony 12K lumen projector that sells for around $10K to get the graphics on the wall. He used the apartment of a relative stranger in the building across the way from which to project. He wrote the words himself.

Class #10

1. New York Times article about Carsten Höller, the artist now showing at the New Museum. His work captures a sense of innocent fun and experimentation, especially his famous slides. He also is interested in altering the viewer's mental state.

2. At the New Museum, Spartacus Chetwynd reacts to "over-professionalism" in contemporary art with a ragtag group of dancer-performers who celebrate improvisation and amateurism.

3. Face recognition

New York Times article explores the marketing trend of the future: facial detection and facial recognition. It explores issues of privacy associated with this advance and the murkiness of the law surrounding it.

4. Duck Duck Go is a search engine that seeks to eliminate the problems of the filter bubble caused by the algorithms in Google and Bing. It doesn't track your information to tailer a search result for your taste. Without that, you are able to encounter ideas that don't necessarily fit with your world view.

In this article, a rep from Google tells us how we can avoid some of Google's built in personalization features.

In this book, Eli Pariser explains the online filter bubble, an "individual universe of information" and argues that it is bad because it leaves "less room for the unexpected encounters that spark creativity, innovation, and the democratic exchange of ideas."

In this article, Parisner is quoted as saying that the Internet "can encapsulate us in a little bubble of our narrow interests, or it can connect us to new people and ways of thinking.” Parisner proposes that a greater collaboration between editors and code can solve the problem of the filter bubble.

5. Emerald Demo

Hunch is a recommendation site. It is also described as a collective intelligence decision-making system. These service-y sites are on the rise now, it seems. I can think of two, Jinni and Goodreads that serve similar functions.

6. My Demo!

A new camera for the iPhone lets you take panoramic video. It's a relatively cheap add-on with lots of potential uses. I can imagine it catching on.

7. Pearl's Demo

Pearl showed us a tourism video that lets users interact with panoramic images. Taken from a plane, the click of a mouse lets you see all different angles as the craft soars above a landscape. A great way to travel without leaving your seat!

8. A headset that reads your brainwaves

Tan Le's headset lets one alter images in a computer program with the power of one'smind. It was most effective in the demonstration when the tester performed a pre-programmed command. It was less effective when he had to rely more on his imagination to make the box disappear.

9. Brain-powered iPhone?

Hackers harness electrical activity in the brain to command Siri for the iPhone. It's not mind-controlled necessarily but it's a neat trick.

New York Historical Society

I had never before been to the New York Historical Society, but I recently had the chance to go shortly after its renovation with Cynthia.

America's history is rich and colorful and the museum serves to celebrates it. In the lobby, I saw the real pistols that Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton used in a duel. I also saw interactive, quasi-augmented reality screens that helped me learn about different artifacts. I was also introduced to the new smart phone app connected to the museum. I never got to use it, but it's interesting to consider how new media is influencing the museum-goer's experience.

I also saw paintings that explored the notion of taste. These included America's dramatized landscapes, and I particularly remember one painting that combined imagery of New York City with Ancient Greece. On the top floor, I viewed a vast collection of artifacts, including election buttons, lamps (where I remembered Abigail who lives in Connecticut), chairs, daggers, and busts. I saw a ghostly display of chairs with outfits slumped on top of them as though a crowd had just vanished from them. I learned about voodoo and lots of other stuff which now slips my mind (I still have work to do on my memory tricks).

It was a fun visit, followed by a nice walk in Central Park. The weather was lovely.

A Few Notes On The Woody Allen Documentary

This weekend I watched Robert Weide's two-part documentary of Woody Allen on PBS.

I have long been a fan of Allen's work and found the documentary fascinating.

I knew little of Allen's early career, especially the fact that he got his start writing for television, and was a late bloomer in New York's stand up comedy scene. I found it amusing that Allen was such a reluctant performer, considering how much natural ability he seems to have to entertain.

It's also amazing to reflect on how much control Allen got of his work so early on. Indeed, Allen has always relished creative control in his films, and you can tell by how bitter he still is about his first film, which was butchered by the studio. It is interesting then, how flexible he seems to be with his actors, allowing them to improvise, and offering little critique of their performances. These two practices, control and restraint, seem to fly in the face of one another.

I learned more about Allen's admiration for the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, and how his influences come from both high and low culture. Allen's body of work straddles these two extremes, from slapstick comedies like Bananas to mock-philosophical films like Love and Death. Allen himself seems to struggle with his identity as a filmmaker and writer. He really wants to be a tragedian but in fact his natural gift is comedy.

Allen's career has had ups and downs, as has his personal life. I was pleased to discover that, after the financial triumph of Midnight in Paris, he is feeling more confident in his abilities. It is unfortunate, however, that a man of such talent has never considered himself a success by his own standards. Perhaps that's the byproduct of being an artist. Filmmaking for Allen is a lifestyle, and maybe he will always chase the notion of a great film. I feel lucky, as a viewer, to be able to follow him on that journey.

Class #9 New Media Reader

Chapter 14- Four Selections by Experiments in Art and Technolgy

Intro

• Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) formed in 1966 by four guys after one of them, Billy Kluver from Bell Telephone contributed technology to a sculpture called "Homage to New York."
• The organization helped advance the possibilities of technology and art
• E.A.T. made a performance exhibition called 9 evenings, which received mixed reviews but served as an inspiration for the new media field

The Garden Party by Billy Kluver

• The sculpture "machine" he helped make destroys itself
• He calls it a spectacle
• The destruction of the machine is an ideal of good machine and a good human
• Both New York and the machine has humor and poetry

The four selections

• variations VII by John Cage- a piece of music that is created using the sounds already in the air at the performance
• vehicle by Lucinda Childs- consists of animate, inanimate and air-supported materials that make a sort of music. Inolves a doppler sonar, a refrigerator vacuum, etc.
• carriage descreteness by yvonne ranier- a dance whose choroegraphy is relayed over walkie talkie with multimedia in the background
• open score by robert rauschenberg- tennis as dance improvisation. wireless mic on a tennis racket
• a press release calls the exhibition a marriage of new technology and art that should have always developed together and that, together, open up new creative possibilities

The Pavilion by Bill Kluver

• The Pavilion is open-ended, an environment that allows for personal choice
• The artist shows how technology can be used in new environments
• It was a collaboration of artists and engineers in Japan and the US. There was some confusion and frustration when artists and engineers tried to switch roles.
• Aspects of the Pavilion: the Fog, the Mirror, the Clam Room, the Mirror Room
• There were programmers who lived inside the structure
• Pavilion was "theatre conceived of as a total instrument"
• This brought up interesting questions about the role of the artist, legally. Also talks about the relationship of the artist and industry.

Chapter 15 - Cybernated Art

• Nam June Paik is considered the first video artist
• He coined the term "information superhighway"
• There was a history of TV before it was even invented
• June wrote a manifesto, which provides a cybernetic/ Buddhist context for his work

NOTE: On the topic of technology and art, here's an interesting contribution from Brooklyn artist Adam Frank. "Performer" is currently in Times Square.

Chapter 31- Will There be Condominiums in Data Space?

Intro

Artists changed the viewer/video dynamic

Bill Viola is a video artist who has a poetic approach to the video medium

Will there be Condominiums in Data Space? by Bill Viola

• Really interesting quote: "Possibly the most startling thing about our individual existence is that it is continuous. It is an unbroken thread -- we have been living this same moment ever since we were conceived. It is memory, and to some extent sleep, that gives us the impression of a life of discrete parts, periods, or section of certain times or 'highlights.' Hollywood movies and the media, of course, reinforce this perception."
• "Life without editing it seems, is just not that interesting." Old video art recorded everything and didn't "forget."
• Memo-technics = artificial memory
• Data space - imagined physical space must exist in order to operate within it
• Video and holism- the idea that the art exists before it is executed
• Reality is people putting together pieces that were originally whole
• Art and structuralism, the author argues that it is important
• The marriage of video and computer: "the ultimate recording technology: total spatial storage, with the viewer wandering through some three-dimensional, possibly life-sized field of prerecorded or simulated scenes and events evolving in time." THE VIDEO GAME!
• The idea of a "Master" edit and "original" footage will disappear in the future
• "Playback speed....can be modulated, shifted up or down, superimposed, or interrupted according to the parameters of the electronic wave theory...." TIVO?
• Moving from constructing a program to carving out one....infinite points of view as opposed to one singular product
• Mapping conceptual structures of the brain into technology- the matrix, branching, idea space, etc.
• The author concludes that artists need to start paying attention to video.

Class #9 Delicious Posts

1. Why your next phone might be bendable

flexible displays can mimic paper

it might allow any surface to become a screen

2. Hacking the drug cartels

Boing Boing- speculation about whether Anonymous really plans opcartel to take on a murderous Mexican drug cartel

Wired- though Anonymous has lately begun to take strong moral stances, many within the organization have distanced themselves from the op

3. History of the Guy Fawkes Masks concerning Occupy Wall Street

Guy Fawkes was a British conspirator who plotted to kill King James, but was unsuccessful. He is celebrated in England.

Anonymous grew out of 4chan, and the group idolized comic book hero V, from V for Vendetta, who wore a Guy Fawkes mask

Anonymous helped the OWS movement, and now many in the movement have adopted the mask

4. Floating Cars- Quantum Levitation

Quantum locking-- the water object stays locked in place even as it moves along the track

This technology might be used to make floating cars in the future

5. Hacked Kinect, Projection Device

OmniTouch is a wearable projection system that turns any surface into a digital interface

You can interact with menus, keyboards, and other applications on any surface

6. Bergenz Festival

Toxel- Creative floating stage changes every two years for Bregenzer performing arts festival.

BregenzerFestival website- This year's opera, Andrew Chenier, is set against the background of the French revolution.

Live picture- The festival has a webcam that updates viewers with a new picture of the floating stage during construction every two minutes.

Class: Interactive News

Interactive news is a recent and innovative field in journalism, helping find new and creative ways for readers to consume and participate in news. It combines data journalism with data visualization and all the latest tools of the web including social media.

Michael's presentation showed us some of the possibilities of this field, especially in the area of sports. He showed us how the New York Times covered the soccer World Cup, using live-updated maps of the field that changed to display ball possession. Michael then showed us how he adapted this model for last year's coverage of the Quidditch World Cup for the Washington Square News.

Michael also showed us what he's working on for this year's Quidditch World Cup, including a new website and an iPad app that will let Cup officials update the website with stats instantaneously.

Interactive news is exciting, but as Michael told us, it is not a perfect science yet. He showed us some unsuccessful examples of interactive news, including one from Al Jazeera that seemed to have limited functionality. Michael explained that a lot of news organizations don't have the means to draw the best talent to this field, and even with the talent that they have, they don't have as much resources to devote as is really necessary.

Michael's presentation, however, showed me that this is a field that deserves one's full attention. While it is no substitute for a written article, interactive news has the potential to tell stories and engage audiences in ways that are not possible in a print medium. I believe the field will really take off once more accessible tools are developed so that smaller organizations and individuals can contribute, and not just the big organizations.

Rich's Video Game Presentation

The main goal of Rich's presentation was to trace the development of narrative in video games.

Though I missed the latter part of the lecture to go to the Huffington Post, I was able to catch some of Rich's points.

One of his contentions is that creating a good story in video games is not necessarily dependent on excellent graphics. He also sought to show us how sometimes in video games a good story sometimes comes at the expense of good game play.

To demonstrate these fact, he showed us an old game, Final Fantasy IV, that had relatively simple graphics, but a rich, complicated story that gamers could experience by clicking through dialogue exchanged between characters. The clicking, Rich explained, is actually a much more active way of experiencing the story than some of today's games. Those games use cut scenes that take the control completely out of the gamer's hands.

Rich also showed us a newer game, Heavy Rain, that had better graphics and a complex environment but had game play issues. In the introductory scene, we are a father looking for his son in a shopping mall. As he runs around shouting his son's name, the only option the gamer has is when to shout.

The other problem with this game is that the character design is close to reality, but not quite close enough to seem real. Rich showed us a chart that explained the range of realism in characters and how that relates to our suspension of disbelief. We are able to connect to a stick figure because we know he is meant to be merely a symbol of a real person, but when we see a figure who is meant to be human but does not fit the bill we cannot believe it as easily. He showed us a scene from Mass Effect 2 to further prove his point.

The field of video game development, Rich said, has expanded beyond the big game makers to every day consumers. As an example, he showed us a game he developed using software that you can purchase. Today, playing video games is not a passive activity, but one that can involve creativity and individual expression.

Later, Rich showed us an example of a game that combined great storytelling with great graphics. The scene we saw was the climax of the game in which the protagonist kills a crazed character, and learns that he has been motivated to kill all along by a string of code words. Rich' assertion, that video games are an art form, seems to be proven by this scene, which shows the potential of a form that many once belittled.

Class #6 pt. 3 Chapter 34

New Media Reader- Chapter 34- Introduction- VIDEO GAMES AND COMPUTER HOLDING POWER

• Sherry Turkle in 1980s- video games play social and psychological role, allowing people to act out persona they did not express in real life. She wrote the book The Second Self.
• Contrasting a game like Asteroids with a more complex computer games that engage players in a different way.
• People who don't like video games don't like computers in general because of generational disconnect
• Video games are prime example of new human relation with machines, and are key to understanding computer culture
• Video game differ from TV because video games are interactive. They are not simply "mindless", they require skill and thought and concentration.
• Video games not constricted by physical limitations, unlike pinball. This allows designer freedom.
• Arcade game has memory of high scores while pinball you start fresh every time.
• Case study of gamer Jarish. He is used to show how kids really invest in and care about video game stories. Also used as example of how interest in video games transfers to interest in computers and programming.
• Video games, as opposed to a passive Disney ride or pinball game, involves active participation.
• First video game invented in 1960 called Space War at MIT Pong invented by MIT grad who made video games accessible to a lot of people. But Space Invaders started video game culture.
• Newer games will allow greater personalities to emerge from video games, causing better human connection to the game
• Games in which player takes role of character (crossing the line between playing games and being in a movie)
• Will gamers of the future be users of someone else's program, or programmers themselves?
• Rule-driven video games require consistency, "everything is possible but nothing is arbitrary"
• Role playing games, dungeons and dragons, Adventure computer game
• To play video game, you enter an altered state to identify with what's on the screen. Video games require serious concentration, and can help people relax because they don't have to think about anything else. "meditation with macho"
• Video game could go on forever. They are potentially infinite.
• Case study Jimmy wants to play video gams to achieve "perfection" that he cannot achieve in his own life due to birth defect
• Computers make you feel bad about being imperfect
• Video games come with sense of urgency not provided in everyone's daily life. It's a pure test with consequences.
• Children who program their own games experience a second self.

Class #6 pt. 2 "Occupy Wall Street Readings"

a. Occupy Wall Street History

1. Wikipedia- ongoing demonstrations started by Adbusters protesting social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and influence of corporations.

2. Mashable- OWS inspired by Arab Spring movement. Goal is to maintain sustained occupation of Wall Street in order to draw attention to economic structure and Wall Street misdeeds.

3. Protests grow- Support for OWS exploded after September 17. Unions joined, Anonymous shut down NYSE.com, We Are the 99 Percent blog started.

b. 928 Offshoots on Meetup.com

1. Overnight- Movement grows to include 200 cities across the U.S. Meetup.com helps people involved in OWS connect and start related events nationwide. Meetup is designed for grass-roots organizing.

c. Occupy Wall Street Hackathons

1. Mashable- Groups build digital tools for OWS movement. Some ideas help OWS articulate its goals, make decisions and cast votes.

2. Another Mashable- Hackathons for OWS have started independently in several U.S. cities.

3. Occupy Together- a website hosted through Meetup unites computer whizzes who want to help the movement spread through new online tools.

4. FreedomBox- a new project helps people develop personal servers for increased privacy, described on Wikipedia.

d. Twitter Buzz Builds for OWS

1. Social Media Buzz Builds- A study of Twitter shows that online buzz around OWS reached a peak on October 6. Greatest single day of boost to the movement occurred when hundreds were arrested on Brooklyn Bridge.

2. Twitter- Collects all posts on Twitter tagged with #OccupyWallStreet. This list grows every second.

3. Call to action by Adbusters- "Tahrir succeeded in large part because the people of Egypt made a straightforward ultimatum – that Mubarak must go – over and over again until they won. Following this model, what is our equally uncomplicated demand? ...We demand that Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington." I think if OWS protestors articulated this founding demand then there would be fewer people in politics asking what OWS really wants....

e. NYPD arrests in WSP

1. The video - Protestors in WSP are given the opportunity to leave peacefully. They refuse, sing songs, and taunt officers and are arrested. I support the movement but I think this was unnecessary.

f. OWS gaining momentum in social media

1. Nmincite- The original study conducted by NM Incite which points at October 6 as peak for OWS interest.

2. Occupy Together- An informal home based for OWS worldwide, providing resources and news for protestors.

3. Mashable- Photos and video of the Brooklyn Bridge arrests that brought interest in the movement to a high point.

4. Reuters- Reporter covers OWS events around the world in what looks like a live-stream format, including short information bursts and photos.

g. Birds-Eye View

1. Maps- shows the reach of the "Occupy" movement using map, which relies on social media data for conclusions about hotspots.

2. Another map- map hosted on Cravify shows OWS activity worldwide.

3. The Guardian- Adds to the maps of OWS online. They say the listings they've created are drawn from all "verified news reports" of activity.

h. Does 1st amendment grant absolute right to protest?

1. Boing Boing- Link to Pro Publica article on state restriction of protest.

2. Pro Publica- 1st amendment is not absolute. Time, place, and manner restrictions apply when it comes to public spaces. This goes for any protest, regardless of content. The rules are different with a private space such as Zucotti Park. Private owners can ask police to evict demonstrators. Some readers say the Park is in a legal grey area because it is a privately owned public space, which makes no sense to me.

i. Occupy Wall Street Newspaper

1. Mashable- Article about The Occupied Wall Street Journal, newspaper about and for OWS community. Funded by online donors.

j. George and Luke

1. Occupy George- Website with tips on how to apply graphics to American currency that spreads message of OWS. Looks like data visualization gone viral!

1. Luke- funny web graphic depicts Star Wars' Luke Skywalker as member of OWS 99% because he was raised poor and joined a rebel group.

k. Protest Posters

1. Boing Boing 1 and 2- studio portraits of protestors puts human face to OWS.

l. OWS Propoganda

1. Boing Boing- Atlantic columnist's words end up on a OWS poster.

2. Boing Boing Octopus- Clever OWS play on words to describe old cartoon about the FED.

3. Pittsburgh- Photos of OWS in Pittsburgh focuses on signage.

m. Role of Anonymous

1. Fast Company- argues that Anonymous serves to promote and publicize the OWS movement.

2. Boing Boing- Link to government press release that calls Anonymous a domestic terrorism organization.

3. Wired- article describes how Anonymous has expressed it wants to take down American infrastructure. DHS thinks it's unlikely that the group has the capacity but is issuing the release anyway.

4. Public Intelligence- Link to PDF of the DHS bulletin, which highlights past actions of Anonymous, which are of concern.

n. Ice cream

1. Ben & Jerry's- gets behind OWS. We all scream for ice cream.