The Ten Ways To Pick Up A Dutch Girl
Read my guide on Dutch dating and mating here. Published by Amsterdam Magazine.
Read my guide on Dutch dating and mating here. Published by Amsterdam Magazine.
On April 2nd, a group of emerging contemporary artists based in Amsterdam will come together in The Hub to present their work within a creative and community-driven environment of spectators and friends. Organized by a small collective of independent artists, graphic designers and writers, the event presents the works of six young creative minds who want to share and reveal their potential as artists in and around the city of Amsterdam: Alvaro Almeida, graphic designer and creative soul from Portugal, Kim Demåne, Swedish artist working on project ‘Delicious Brains’, Alexander Tempel, creator of the brand Artists not Armies, Chad Bilyeu, running a blog on photography of Amsterdam, Dennis de Groot, graphic designer, photographer and VJ and Allison Guy, relating eating, drinking and drawing. Accompanied by indie, lounge, hip hop, soul and funk, The Hub will turn into a meeting space for some gezellig exhibition on groovy tunes.
‘Interactivity is more than a particular technological form. It provides what Deleuze calls a diagram for organising the relations between objects and persons.” (Barry, 2001)
With the launch of the Google Art Project the company seeks to cross borders of geography and bring art installations from various museums on to your screen with their Google Street View Technology. Users can enter museums from all over the world, including the MoMa in New York and the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, with the possibilty to browse through their collection and zoom into pieces of art. Visit the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam here.
In an interview with Jon Brodkin from Network World, founder of the free software movement Richard Stallman says cell phones are tools of Big Brother as they interfere with our freedom. Also he thinks that’s why Stalin would like them. Read the whole article here.
source: http://mashable.com/2010/10/29/qwiki/
We are incredibly attuned to the idea that the sole purpose of our technology is to solve problems. It also creates concepts and philosophy. We must more fully explore these aspects of our inventions, because the next generation of technology will speak to us, understand us, and perceive our behavior. It will enter every home and office and intercede between us and much of the information and experience we receive. The design of such intimate technology is an aesthetic issue as much as an engineering one. We must recognize this if we are to understand and choose what we become as a result of what we have made. (Krueger 1977)
In his work on ‘Responsive Environments’, Myron Krueger (1977) explored the relationship between the human and the machine in art and virtual reality by putting forth questions of interactivity and how content is in flux with its medium and its spectators. Now, when considering the vast amount of information circulating on the web and questions of organizing knowledge online, the notion of interactivity is more than ever on the fore when thinking about concepts such as ‘produsage’, the personalization of search results and folksonomies which all include the user’s action in deciding on relevance in filtering information.
With the mission of defining ‘the future of information consumption’, the founders of Qwiki, a self-proclaimed multimedia alternative to the text-based search provided by Google state to have launched the ‘next big thing’: a narrative search-tool based on the computer ‘telling you a story’ accompanied by videos and pictures about the term you are looking for. “Whether you’re planning a vacation on the web, evaluating restaurants on your phone, or helping with homework in front of the family Google TV, Qwiki is working to deliver information in a format that’s quintessentially human – via storytelling instead of search.”
Now, is this really an alternative to Google’s PageRank system which is now predominantly organizing the information on the web in the sense of being a ‘status-authoring device’ (Rogers 2009) in ranking sources? By seemingly providing an alternative to Google, Qwiki draws its information from Wikipedia content, Yahoo, Google and social networks (Qwiki 2011) which, besides matters of source transparency, also raise issues of privacy and diversity of information in the face of personalization of search. In their Terms of Service, the company announces that it “may store information that we collect through cookies, log files, web beacons, and/or third party sources to create a “profile” of your preference and activities. We may tie your personally identifiable information to information in the profile, in order to improve and customize our Service and provide tailored promotions and marketing offers for you. We may purchase marketing data from third parties and add it to our existing user database, to better target our advertising and to provide pertinent offers in which we think you would be interested. To enrich our profiles, we may tie this information to the personally identifiable information we have” (Qwiki 2011).
This pattern seems to resemble the current discussion on personalization of search and the organization of information on the web, particularly in relation to the business of search: as search engines and first and foremost Google with its dominant market position have come to be the number one device for information retrieval on the web, the matter of search increasingly becomes a matter of power and representation. As its ranking system supposedly functions “as a mere (vote) counting mechanism” with ‘no human involvement’ in its process, “users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information” (Rieder 2009).
However, when considering that the categorization of information does not involve the users in the case of Qwiki, but rather presents them a finish product, the question of objectivity immediately puts itself out of action. Also, when having the use of personal queries for targeted advertising in mind, the question suggests itself of how information can be organized objectively and transparently on the web at all. In the case of Qwiki, the content given is not only predetermined and categorized beforehand, as users cannot ‘choose’ from sources like in Google but moreover, when moving towards a fusion of personal settings and personal histories on the site, “the search engine’s acquaintance with the user would ultimately provide the uncanny, as if it knew what you were looking for and desiring all along” (Rogers 2009) which implies convenience for the user, but will be used for commercial gains. In this regard, Qwiki has a solid potential for small businesses to promote their products by telling a visualized story about them and offering them to a targeted audience, but not in the sense of offering a suitable alternative as an objective and transparent search device next to Google.
Krueger, Myron (1977). “Responsive Environments.” In: Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Montfort, Nick (eds). The New Media Reader. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Rieder, Bernhard. “Democratizing Search? From Critique to Society-oriented Design.” Deep Search. The Politics of Search beyond Google. Eds. Konrad Becker, and Felix Stalder. Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2009. 133-151.
Rogers, Richard. “The Googlization Question. Towards the Inculpable Engine.” Deep Search. The Politics of Search beyond Google. Eds. Konrad Becker, and Felix Stalder. Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2009. 173-184.
Qwiki, 2011. Sunday, retrieved March 20, 2011. http://www.qwiki.com/
‘Qwiki Founder: How I Launched A Talking Search Engine’ Huffington Post, 2010. Retrieved Sunday, March 20, 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/09/qwiki-founder-doug-imbruce_n_780706.html
My article republished on OWNI.eu, Digital Journalism - Technology, Politics and Culture.
‘One frame of fame’ project - directed by Roel Wouters & Jonathan Puckey
- If I would be the director you would be my actors
In his presentation on online video art and the design of fluid digital environments, graphic designer and project director Roel Wouters introduced the audience to interactive projects which include dynamic media such as web video and animation to install crowdsourced performances. With his collegues Luna Maurer, Jonathan Puckey and Edo Paulus he has published the Conditional Design Manifesto, which is based on the work of his collective called Conditional Design and emphasizes the idea of following processes in the digital realm rather than its products.
source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/networkcultures/5517171211/lightbox/
In their work, Wouters and his fellow group of designers focus on the increasing blur between consumers and producers which comes about as a result of web technology enabling user participation in the creation of online video art. Roel Wouters presented two projects that are based on users taking part in the installation of a video, one based on people taking pictures of themselves with a webcam, prior given the instruction to resemble a particular frame and one based on creating a video, resembling a particular scene or act. As if to say “If I would be the director, you would be my actors”, these projects are based on collaborative story-telling in creating online video art which participants can share with their friends online.
“It is surprising how these projects result in really beautiful photography. People are not self-conscious when resembling the frame which they are given and that is why they appear very natural” stated Wouters when presenting the two projects “One frame of fame” and “Now Take a Bow” to the audience. His collective Conditional Design was recently involved in the 5days off festival in Amsterdam with a project based on an iPhone application which Routers calls a ‘social photo toy’, resembling ‘the ultimate amateur photo’, which is people taking pictures of themselves in front of a mirror using flash.
In his talk on the cultural value of amateur video, the author of “Watching Youtube: Extraordinary Videos by Ordinary People”, scholar and artist Michael Strangelove explained how amateur productions will gain greater value due to their potential of challenging the meaning of things, their subvertion of a capitalist mode of production and their use by individuals as tools for self-representation of the world. Why does ‘Laughing Baby’, ‘David coming back from the dentist’ or the ‘Star Wars Kid’ make a difference in our lives? And what is it that makes online video different from TV? Dr.Strangelove’s answer to this is straight to the point: “It’s the amateur”.
source:http://www.flickr.com/photos/networkcultures/5516725175/in/pool-541643@N23/lightbox/#/
When elaborating on how online video is entering into our culture as part of the material we use for creating our world, Michael Strangelove referred to Michel Foucault’s notion of compulsory visibility and how the new generation of digital natives is growing up with the thought of radical transparency in representing themselves. This drive to be visible and to reveal one’s private life is reflecting how online video matters in people showing bits of themselves, always having in mind that any moment of their life could be moment visible for others, a Youtube moment.
“What we see through online video is what is different and what is the same” states Strangelove, pointing to the value of amateur video for constructing reality and shaping feelings by challenging the tastes and styles that are commonly recognized by the general public. In this regard, online amateur productions particularly convert the capitalist mode of production away from a centralized power, from ‘the few to the many’, from ‘homogeneity to heterogeneity’. People will talk about their mundane lives, women will be de-marginalized and given a voice, which will overall result in the challenge of official versions of the worlds and in contesting the prevalent situation. Online video then serves as the source material used for expressing what attracts us, what repulses us and how we construct reality. This alternative mode of cultural production further enhances new forms of aesthetics as through online video we can see others and we can also react with intolerance.
When asked whether critical notions of ‘the amateur’ such as the one put forth by Andrew Keen are justified, Michael Strangelove answered ambiguously. He stated that there is a valid critique of the amateur’s production and notions of free labour of users are becoming more important in the face of using user-generated content for commercial gain. As for now, the work of the amateur is showing contradictory effects and pulling in two directions: it moves between an increase in expressive capabilities and the recapturing of these capabilities into the commercial market system. However, there is a clear map of forces at work and the substantial impact and value of amateur production does not primarily lie in the production, but in the contestation of meaning of things.
On March 2nd, author and journalist Nicholas Carr presented his new book “The Shallows: How the Internet is changing the way we think, read and remember” at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. After his famous 2008 essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, Carr again makes his audience ponder on how contemporary technologies have an immense effect on the way people think.
The mind in the net
They are everywhere: Ipads, Ipods, mobile phones, wireless communication in various sizes and shapes. The Internet is heavily involved in our everyday life, and Nicholas Carr says it is shaping every single of our thought, no matter where we go. In his new book “The Shallows: How the Internet is changing the way we think, read and remember”, he deals with technologies, how they change the way we think and how our brains adapt to how we retrieve information. To make a long story short: we are no longer masters of our technology, but our technologies have overtaken mastery over us.
When talking about how he lost the ability to focus on one thing such as reading a book from cover to cover, Carr explains how he thinks that the human brain has the ability to regress with the intellectual technologies it is using. The Internet and its technologies as tools we are using to think with, to find, store, organize, analyze and share information and ideas with are, according to him, all about distractions. “The Net bombards us with distractions and interruptions” he emphasizes, pointing to Rodin’s sculpture of “The Thinker” which we can easily say good-bye to in the face of the interruption system named world wide web.
“The web is an interruption system. Computer technology trains us to have faster and faster responses and we are used to get immediate responses” Carr states, lamenting how humans are constantly distracted by hyperlinks, messages and other interruptions when being online. Although he does not neglect the net’s feature of being a powerful technology in providing us with information of all kinds, such as connectivity, multiplicity, velocity, interactivity, he sees a radical change in our habits and therewith, a radical change in our brains and our ability to sense where we are. Just like the map or the watch shifted the way people think, the Internet has changed our attention span to the extent that we are merely “streaming” pages instead of attentively reading them.
“We carry our inbox with us all the time”
Carr states that we are in a perpetual state of distraction. No matter how many gains the Internet has to offer, be it new strengths in visual-spatial intelligence, information gathering, filtering, offeringavenues of expression and collaboration, it weakens mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection with our working memory being in a perpetual state of cognitive overload. So, even when you don’t click on the links that are flimmering online - your cognitive control goes down the hill and is lost in the ‘all-consuming screen’.
Is Carr holding on to old patterns of knowledge or are we seriously done with thinking deeply?
