Group Project Proposal 1

Point of View Project:
Interactive webpage displaying a map of Longmont Elementry. Hotspots will link to photographs taken by students, teachers, and maintanence workers, of the thier respective "most important areas of the school. Helps introduce the students to photography and the internet, while providing a visual reference of the different ways that the school is seen, and at what angles. We will be especially interested in the same places or objects being chosen by the different groups, and how they see the differences in a similar object.

Remember?

Well check this out!

KiSS Dolls

OK. Weird. Little girls whose clothing comes off. Cartoon characters you can dress in drag. And board games


Unfortunatley, as an OSX user, I was unable to find a working tool to create a kiss doll of my own. Many of the exsisting kiss sites are subscription service only, so it seems tha some of the freedom has left the community.


Searching through Kiss sites did lead me to resin figures, casts of characters who also occupy KiSS space. I collect small figures from the graffiti-sculpture community, and these little cultural cross-overs intrigue me.

Filter Feeding

Everyone is a filter feeder. We have filters built from our culture, our society, our languages, and our parents. Our knowledge and self-image is the result of this filtering of the world.
Of course there are many people who filter the ideas of other people. News announcers, teachers, politicians. Most anybody with an idea is building off of the filtered information of others. Bloggers filter thier filtered world into the general mish mash of things (ie the web). Technology like Google lets you filter the web through specified terms, while services like Blogwise and blogSearch let you filter the filtered information of other bloggers. Modern filter feeders are still just standing on the shoulders of giants.

Comment Spam

Those tricky "male enhancement" fellows are sending out spam-ad as comments on popular public communities online, like blogger, myspace, flickr, etc. You know when your single-entry blog is one of someone's "Top 3 Favorite Blogs" that there's somethin goin on. Like penile extension.

Discussion Questions for Chapter 2: Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance in The Electronic Disturbance Theater

1. How is the current situation according to CAA's(Critical Art Ensemble) view different than it used to be? Whats wrong with capitalism, and what went wrong in Cuba or Russia?
The current situation has invisible, nomadic bases of power, and cannot be touched by resistance or activism. Cuba and Russia were idealistic, but actually found themselves bound down by bureaucracy.

2. Why are CAA critical of activism?
Activism is outmoded, the power bases cannot be found, resistance is useless.

3. How do they use the metaphor of water and liquid?
Water is Power, and we can either sink or swim. It is not firm, and can flow any which way.

4. Why do they talk about the military tactics of the ancient Sythean hordes?

their nomadic tendencies made them too hard to find, there was no centralized power base to subvert or destroy. The Sytheans could choose to remain invisible if they did not want to engage the enemy, and could choose their location if they did.

5. What is it "we" should be fighting?
non-stationary power bases, international norms.

6. What role can hackers play?
They could disable and remove the channels of communication.

Or they could become nomads too.

7. Do you agree that physical protest is no longer viable?
Not at all. If 100,000 people show up in the street, it will cause more of an impact than if 1,000,000 digital signatures appear in an email browser.

8. In your view should artists be activists?
I don't think artists should be activists, but activists would do well to be artists.


Speaking of nomads and art and stuff, Artnomad.

Your Prescription:

if you havent seen End Of World, then go see it.