Stories in Digital Media

What will the web do to content, in terms of… high cost, expensive, time consuming content.
Now we can see where that comes from.

Smooth Zarathustra of Design Stefan Sagmeister held a brilliant note at TED recently. It’s about his sabbaticals and funny and informative. This is the second fantastic video I saw today (actually the third, but the third one does not belong here).

In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers.

The film is open for remixes, and there should be a version 2.0 released in 2010. The current version can be viewed on opensource-cinema as well.

via fm4.

Check out this recent rhizome interview with Processing founders Ben Fry and Casey Reas. They talk about the roots, the development since 2001 so far and they let us have a little glimpse for the future.

I don’t remember if I started with Basic or Logo, but I learned a little with both. I hit a wall and I wasn’t motivated to learn more. (I love playing video games on the computer more than writing my own small programs.) (Casey Reas)

[...]

We’re only looking as far into the future as 2.0. We’re planning a 1.5 release before that, which will have two additional components.

The outcomes of the Tiny Sketch competition mentioned in the interview are very nice. The goal was to implement a processing sketch with only 200 characters length.

If you are a EU resident please consider signing this petition against any form of freedom-regulation. All bills to introduce a formal net neutrality which is guaranteed by law were declined to this day and the discussion is still vivid.

Fifty years ago, Miles Davis legendary Kind of Blue was released. Kind of Bloop is a hommage to the Album in 8-Bit Sound. Before I heard it I was fearing the worst since chiptune remakes tend to add an infantile and unsophisticated timbre (is it just me?), a quality highly arguably in Jazz. I would like to say that those guys prevented the worst and that alone is a highly seldom judgement you will hear from me when it comes to that kind of musical modification.

Read the rest of this entry »

Art & Copy is a cinematic documentary about advertisement. I would say – according to the trailer – it is one typical self-criticizing and at the same time self-adulating fast paced movie with the motivation of mystifying things more than they probably deserve to be. Maybe it’s all of that not because it’s just the trailer. Then again, you know what they say about trailers. Well, have a look for yourself.

I feel that people started to listen to Radiohead just because their usage of distribution is not only just innovative but because the whole thing, how they play with media became a social experiment. People wanted to be a part in this experiment. But Radiohead are not necessarily the ones, who are playing, or are they?

A couple of days ago, shortly after Radiohead presented their song “Harry Patch“, in dedication to the last british survivor of the first world war who has recently deceased, they announced that they probably would never release a full Album again. I remember hearing this even on the local radio station. Then, probably only one day later, a new song called “These Are My Twisted Words” surfaced, first seemingly over unofficial channels, then officially available on the waste.co.uk website. And with this release came up the rumour of, well, a new album called “Wall Of Ice”… Read the protocol here.

On September 3rd – 8th this years AEC festival takes place in Linz. It’s a special one, as this year the new building (see it here) of the AEC was opened, which increases the available space quite a bit. Also, Linz is European Capital of Culture (Linz09). Reasons enough for me to go there (who else is planning to visit it ???).

The programme features…

• - A lot of Exhibitions
  • — CyberArts 2009 @ Offenes Kulturhaus
  • — Showcase of Interface Culture Student Projects
  • — Human Nature Exhibition @ Brucknerhaus
  • — 30 Years Ars Electronica Exhibition History Lounge @ Brucknerhaus
  • — SEE THIS SOUND @ Lentos
  • —Japan Media Art Festival @ Hauptplatz
• - “IMPETUS” Works from the MIT Media Lab
• - An Animation Festival
• - Discussions and round tables

Also nice: The facade of the AEC will be illuminated during the festival by VJ’s hosted by FM4.

Looks like an in really nice programme. The reduced festival ticket costs 85 €.

Find more info on the festival website.

I read in the news recently that most Internet users are chinese now. Still, only 19% of them use the Internet regularly. Biggest per capita rate is in Japan, followed by the US. Click on the graphic below to see the numbers of some of the biggest Internet countries in 2008.

Internet Users 2008