The Lantern Parade

a "spectacle of over a thousand candle-lit, paper and bamboo lanterns, carried through Patterson Park."

EVERYONE HAD FUN....







Except for the rat who got steamrolled by a bunch of Moms with strollers...



Nana Projects

Bioneers Conference

This Bioneers Conference is taking place at MICA the weekend of November 7-9. I just heard about it and others may not have known about it either. The conference deals with sustainablity and has presentations on urban farming, energy, food, climate change, mapping, etc. It includes a show of art by some MICA students and faculty. It looks interesting, but too bad about the registration fees.
http://cultivatingchange.org

GEO GOO

Of course JODI would do something this cool.
Visit their multiverse at: http://www.jodi.org

JODI (www.jodi.org), the wild Belgian-Dutch pioneer dopplegangers of Net Art, explore the relations between the constructed world of the Internet hybridized with mental maps and physical maps. GoogleMaps has radically changed our perception and global worldviews through it's commercial multi-user surface. JODI has recreated the 'Parc Royal' of Brussels (Warande Park) by by mapping geometrical constructs gleaned from Goolge Earth onto reality thus revealing symbols and mysteries, amplifying and deconstructing these manifestations as INFO PARK, an associative agglomeration of data.

From the press release for the show at IMAL, Center for Digital Cultures and Technologies:
For centuries, geometry has been overloaded with symbols, starting from pure mathematical objects to esoteric and mystic signs, hiding in complex figures meanings to be revealed to the gurus, the persons in the know or the psychedelic explorers. Geometrical shapes and lines were drawn on the territories, the cities, the architectures and the monuments or the crop fields. The Royal Parc of Brussels is a well known example with its triangle + circle = Masonic compass. JODI is connecting this long tradition of tracing geometry on the ground with the new geometries one can draw on the surface of the Earth as proposed by online tools such as Google Maps and Google Earth. Of course, the duo of artists draws in a pure JODI style: hectic and free traces resulting from extreme coding and hacking. As they always did since their first web pages in 1995, JODI uses the codes of Internet (e.g. html) and the codes inside the computers (binary) as their artistic material. They paved the way for Net Art and renewed Computer Arts as much as Nam June Paik opened new fields for video art. But the work of JODI plays also with the processes of coding/decoding, of deciphering cryptic data in a chaotic surface. Messages are hidden, only visible to the ones who will dare to dig into the code (see http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/). In the exhibition GEOGOO (Info Park), many things can be constructed into meanings, it just depends on you and your capacity to disconnect and reconnect: the radial glimpses of the sunshines in the video, the 3 DJ turntables laid on a perfect triangle at the visitor's disposal (backmasking!), the jogging walks through Brussels roundabouts. And if you can not reconfigure, just contemplate, it is beautifully rewarding.

Guido Van Der Werve

This left me speechless.

BLURB

Here is the little class blurb that Joyce wrote this afternoon, and I (Zack) loosely edited. The image included is also the potential graphic for the show but can be changed at a later time if need be.

This thing needs to be sent over to the PR department by 5pm tomorrow so we need some speedy responses. Is it too short? Should we include anything else? Exclude anything? Tell us what you think!

Blogger was having hiccups earlier and I was having trouble posting this. Sorry for the delay...Hope to hear from everyone soon.




“You Are Here. Christer is There.”
Wandering: Psychogeographical Explorations of Space and Place Class Exhibition
December 3 - 10, 2008 in Middendorf Gallery (Station Building)
Maryland Institute College of Art
Opening Reception: Wednesday, 4-7pm


Psychogeography, coined by the Situationists Guy DeBord and Asger Jorn, maps the mind onto the terrain, and the terrain onto the mind. Join Eve Laramée's upper-level Interdisciplinary Sculpture and Graduate level class to wander and drift through explorations of actual geographic places, represented psychological spaces, and “lived” or “other” thirdspace.

Saunter into the Middendorf Gallery via a “visionary crosswalk;” sit in a moment of meditative silence; race a runner on the “TreadMeal;” investigate homes in the wilderness, city, internet, inside, and outside. Come see our creations of the derivé.

Wander with us online too: http://wndrng.blogspot.com

YOU ARE HERE, CHRISTER IS THERE

Above are some screen shots I took from Google Sky & Google Earth that I thought might work for the show poster or flyer (I posted the push pin and comment in outer space): (But, of course if there's other images you want to use of your own making, please come to a consensus. These are just suggestions since I had them - they are from a series I'm doing on misplaced data.)

That was a very productive midterm discussion of works yesterday, and ideas leading towards the exhibition are developing. (Fun too). So far, for support Suzzi needs 2 pedestals, Siobahn 1 pedestal, Shane 1 pedestal; Kate B. needs an LCD projector, and Suzzi needs an LCD projector. Scott needs a treadmill. Any other special needs? Extension cords, lights, temporary walls, ???

The idea put forward for the show title is:

YOU ARE HERE: CHRISTER IS THERE
Wandering: Psychogeographic Explorations of Space and Place

Are we all in agreement on this? I'll post it on the blog, and everyone add a comment (using the pencil icon) Let's vote on this (and also the image, upload other possible images.)

The Writing Team and the Publicity Team are going to write a paragraph or two by TOMORROW....Friday, the DEADLINE!!! and Shane will make sure it gets turns into the Publicity Office on campus.

ffffound

http://ffffound.com/

कूल साईट

Biggest Bubble Ever

NYC wanderings: honey want to buy a bunny?

My wanderings in NYC this past weekend landed me across William Banksy's installation in the West Village. Absolutely delightful interventionist animatronics... not sure what to call it, but must go see it if you are in town. It's up until Halloween, everyday until midnight.

My personal favorite was the fish sticks, but do not want to give it all away here... hard to do when you are blogging about it!

http://thevillagepetstoreandcharcoalgrill.com/menu.html

http://www.woostercollective.com/2008/10/the_village_pet_store_and_charchoal_gril.html

Pinky Show Ant Broadcast

ants tell it like it is.

The Unanimous Declaration of Independence of The Chiricahua Apache Nde Nation

Full text of the Nde Nation Declaration of Independence Here http://www.chiricahuaapache.org/Declaration_Independence.htm
Indian nations, including the Nde Nation, are fully sovereign, co-equal members of the international legal system that predate the settler-state erected around them. As a consequence they are entitled to exercise sovereignty unbounded by the discretion of the states within which they have been subsumed and unlimited by any power or ideology on earth save for the fundamental norms of international law that restrict the sovereign prerogatives of all states through the operation of human rights regimes and humanitarian legal instruments.

Swarm, by Nick Flynn

When you see us swarm-rustle of

wingbeat, collapsed air-your mind
tries to make us one, a common

intelligence, a single spirit un-
tethered. You imagine us merely
searching out the next

vessel, anything

that could contain us, as if the hive
were just another jar. You try

to hold the ending, this
unspooling, make it either

zero or many, lack

or flurry. I was born,
you begin, & already each word
makes you smaller. Look at this field-
Cosmos. Lungwort. Utter each
& break

into a thousand versions of yourself.

You can't tell your stories fast enough.
The answer is not one, but also

not two.

Audubon Species--Amazing Nests!

Look at this fun article about bird nests.

Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea

"I could tell you how many steps make up the streets rising like stairways, and the degree of the arcades’ curves, and what kind of zinc scales cover the roofs; but I already know this would be the same as telling you nothing. The city does not consist of this, but of relationships of space and the events of its past…”
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities



"The seven boats, built by Swoon and her friends from scrap wood and other discarded materials, begin their sail down the Hudson River on August 15th in Troy, New York, stopping along the way for musical and theatrical performances. Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea is a two-part exhibition merging Swoon’s recent portraits, found objects of urban decay and a floating sculptural city. One part of the exhibition is on the water. The other is in the gallery."

I had the pleasure of exploring this majestic city during my trip to NYC last weekend. Months earlier I had accidentally visited Swoon studio in Chelsea as she and a gritty crew of punk-sailors were furiously engaged in constructing the Switchback flotilla. The studio was a fabricator's theater of salvaged wood, nail guns, and strewn prints. When I laid eyes on Swoon's maquettes, I knew that I would have to return to NYC to see the her vision realized.

As I wandered around the docks and adjacent Deitch warehouse last Friday, I could not help but think I was seeing one of Calvino's invisible cites made opaque. After sharing my enthusiasm with the friendly gallery assistant, he promised to pass along my praise to Swoon. My new friend Oeri then asked if I could help him carry a canoe out to the East River, explaining that he needed to tie up a loose boat. I happily obliged, and was rewarded when Oeri invited me along for the trip. We canoed around the dock, ducking ropes and maneuvering against the recycled rafts. I pulled the errant boat against our canoe and Oeri retied the worn out line. As we paddled back to the dock, my companion said Swoon wanted to take the boats to Venice, but they were unsure how to get them there. He said they could build new boats in Venice for less than the cost of shipping the originals to the Mediterranean. Either way, by cargo container or new construction, it looks like the Kublai Khan wont have to rely on Marco Polo to see through Swoon's Swimming Cities.

Behold, the floating city of dreams...









switchbacksea.org

"do-gooder" MD urban planning

Featured on NPR "Maryland Morning" today, developers are planning the first major renovation to downtown Columbia, Maryland, 40 years after the city was first planned by urban designer James Rouse. Joshua Olsen, author of the James Rouse biography Better Places, Better Lives was interviewed.

As a new "Bawlmerian" I had not heard about this "ideal" anti-urban sprawl city, some interesting historical links:
http://www.columbia-md.com/columbiahistory.html
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/remember/rouse_4-10.html

more tal

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=731

110: Mapping

Five ways of mapping the world. One story about people who make maps the traditional way—by drawing things we can see. And other stories about people who map the world using smell, sound, touch, and taste. The world redrawn by the five senses.

Prologue.

Ralph Gentles and five other people spend each summer creating a map of every crack, every depression, every protrusion, every pothole in the sidewalks of New York City. We hear why, and we hear all the things their map does not include. Mapmaking means ignoring everything in the world but the one thing being mapped, whether it's cracks in sidewalks or the homes of Hollywood stars. And, according to cartographer Denis Wood, we live in the Age of Maps: more than 99.9 percent of all the maps that have ever existed have been made in the last 100 years. (5 minutes)

Act One. Sight.

Denis Wood talks with host Ira Glass about the maps he's made of his own neighborhood, Boylan Heights in Raleigh, North Carolina. They include a traditional street locator map; a map of all the sewer and power lines under the earth's surface; a map of how light falls on the ground through the leaves of trees; a map of where all the Halloween pumpkins are each year; and a map of all the graffiti in the neighborhood. In short, he's creating maps that are more like novels, trying to describe everyday life. See some of Denis's maps.

Denis Wood is author of The Power of Maps. (8 minutes)

Act Two. Hearing.

TAL contributor Jack Hitt visits Toby Lester, who has mapped all the ambient sounds in his world: the hum of the heater, the fan on the computer. (11 minutes)

Song: "Way over Yonder in the Minor Key," Billy Bragg and Wilco


Act Three. Smell.

A story about a device that charts the world through smell—and only smell. TAL producer Nancy Updike visits Cyrano Sciences in Pasadena, California, where researchers are creating an electronic nose. (9 minutes)

Act Four. Touch.

Deb Monroe reports on how she has been mapping her own body through her sense of touch. (9 minutes)

Act Five. Taste.

Jonathan Gold goes to the places on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles that he visited back in the early 1980s. He tells the story of how he decided to map an entire street using his sense of taste, and how doing this changed his life.

Song: "I Love America," Noel Coward

Food Maps

This map shows regional food traditions in the United States. It's taken from the maps page of serveyourcountryfood.net, a website helping to network American farmers under 40. The page also includes helpful maps showing things like the telephone coverage in the US, wild grasslands, plant biodiversity, and soil orders.

This tomato plant was sited growing out of a gutter last week.

Anyone interested in foraging can find it in the alley behind the corner of Lafayette and Charles.
Did it sprout from a thrown away condiment on a sloppy sandwich? Maybe it was a stowaway seed, like the ones in this New York Times article:
Plant Seeds Hitch Rides on Traveling Shoes

Inside Animal Minds

If only dolphins ran the world!

"We may be closer to the apes than we think—when we think. Scientists at the Living Links Center study human evolution and the relation between primate and human behavior by observing resident colonies of primates."

MoOn TEAM: MISSION FOR WORLD PEACE

Beki Basch, who is an I.S. Senior worked on this video with Thane Lund, and other study abroad students in Ireland. Collectively they made this fantastic video, MoOn TEAM: Mission for World Peace. Beki is featured as the Time Doctor. It's in two parts.

Lynchian Space and Time

Here's a link to an electronic essay on space & time in postmodern, nonlinear cinema, as in the film we saw tonight, LOST HIGHWAY, by David Lynch: "The Image-Interface": New Forms of Narrative Visualization, Space and Time in Postmodern Cinema / Chiara Armentano The essay is from the e-journal, Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture. The part on Lynchian Space begins with paragraph 23, however the entire essay is worth reading.

Those who are interested in reading Lynch's actual screenplay, you can read it here: LOST HIGHWAY - THE SCREENPLAY.

And here is the City Of Absurdity's Lost Highway archive: CITY OF ABSURDITYwhich includes essays, storyboard, location notes, soundtrack info, and a whole lot more.

simon evans

Simon Evans

(b 1972, UK)

Simon Evans uses language as an integral part of his work, which often takes the form of collages and drawings. He manipulates words as he does surface textures, with their various meanings and double-entendres. His humorous statements and observations are highly personal and introspective but resonate with universal truths and a poetic poignancy. His DIY aesthetic of skateboard culture often subverts lists, maps and diagrams. In Untitled (Cigarette Burn) the paper is removed to create an intricate constellation, while in 28 Years Evans uses pencil shavings to construct the rings of a tree on which he marks important moments and events in his life.

Misty's Disappearance

Misty's Disappearance, by Eve Andree Laramee
/seconds #8 Edited by Peter Lewis

Here's a link to a project I have in the online journal "slashseconds" #8. The issue, "Vanishing Point: The Vicious and Virtuous Circle" focuses on works inspired by the 1971 film Vanishing Point, directed by Richard Sarafian, a quintessential road film. To view the project online:
Misty's Disappearance, by Eve Andree Laramee
My project, Misty's Disappearance, is a photo-text piece that is in response the true story of a woman who stole the last running Dodge Challenger used in the film, and drove off into the Mojave Desert. My fictionalization retells the story from her perspective, giving it a different ending than in reality. Each page is clickable, so you can read the text in an enlarged format.

I wish to thank Richard C. Sarafian, director, and Dennis J. Parrish, art director and prop master, for kindly sharing their experiences and memories by telephone on June 30, 2008. They spoke candidly about the making of the film, and the incident when the last running Dodge Challenger was stolen by a woman who drove off with it into the desert. I learned of this event by way of Sarafian’s audio commentary on the 2003 UK DVD release where he states: “Finally we had only one car left, and what happened, there was a lady, or we’ll call her a hooker, that the crew thought they sort of saved from a local hook joint, and she was traveling with the crew, and the word came back that Misty took off with our only car. The state police tracked her down in a helicopter, we were late that morning to work, but we got the car back. And we often talk about Misty. I don’t know where she is now.” In the telephone conversation with Sarafian, he said that after Misty spent the evening with several men on the crew, possibly at the Mitzpah Hotel in Tonapah, she stole the keys from one of them, and was eventually tracked down by helicopter at the California Border. Parrish has a slightly different account of the event: he does not remember the woman’s name but is certain that Misty is incorrect. He did confirm that a woman by another name, who was well known to the crew, did in fact steal the last running Challenger, and was apprehended by the California Highway Patrol in the Reno/Lake Tahoe area two or three days later. Parish too said he did not know where Misty was now, or if she is still alive. He said, Sarafian “took it all in stride finding the event hilarious,” and that any other director would be furious and screaming, but he accepted it as part of the extended story. They both described the weeks during which the film was shot as a series of magical surreal, moments in time, and remarked on the metaphysical and spiritual subtext of the film and how this quality significantly sets it apart from other road films of the era.

My project is a fictionalization of Misty/Desirée’s point of view of the car theft. Rather than interpreting her story as a crime, or a reversal of loss, or worse a disaster, I seek to create a fictional terrain: geographic, psychological and cognitive, in which the reader/viewer imagines the days of her disappearance. The intention is to provide “Misty” with an escape into an alternative history and an alternative future, had her luck or circumstances been different. I delight in the fact that Sarafian saw her actions as a “perfectly surreal event” in relation to the film. My project opens up a space for Misty’s release: she makes her get away, was not apprehended, the crew cheers her on, there are no surveillance helicopters, no California Highway Patrolmen, only her own psychological complexities to deal with. She makes it to the waters of the Gulf of California, that slip of sea between Baja and mainland Mexico to begin her new life. Ever onward, Misty/Desirée. Plus ultra, more beyond.

Noah Purifoy Environments

Images from Noah Purifoy's sculpture park in Joshua Tree, CA. His sculptures are human-sized, and despite the rusted metal and wires jutting out everywhere, they let you walk through the structures.

Road in the Nile Valley Interrupted by Sand Dune

Road interrupted by a sand dune, Nile Valley, Egypt. Dunes cover nearly one-third of the Sahara, and the highest, in linear form, can attain a height of almost 1,000 feet (300 m). Barchans are mobile, crescent-shaped dunes that move in the direction of the prevailing wind at rates as high as 33 feet (10 m) per year, sometimes even covering infrastructures such as this road in the Nile Valley. [map] (© Yann Arthus-Bertrand)

The Wandering Jew

Visionary Crosswalks - MTR

Last week I set up my first public art intervention in Baltimore. "VXW-MTR"is a continuation of the Visionary Crosswalks project I started in Bushwick, Brooklyn last spring. I set up the installation along Mount Royal Ave, between Lafayette and Lanvale, next to the MICA green. After jaywalking across this block on a weekly basis - and seeing many others doing the same -, this became the first public space in Baltimore I felt comfortable working within.

For this crosswalk I enhanced my original singular, neon-orange, over-spray design by drawing three parallel lines connected by corresponding "X" markings. The overall layout is derived from the surrounding architecture of the plazas in front of the MICA Brown and Main buildings. The Brown building's diagonal layout opens up to Mount Royal Avenue, clearly suggesting a visual and pedestrian connection to the historical Main building. It no surprise then that students, professors, and workers are constantly cutting across Mount Royal Avenue mid-block. VXW-MTR is my attempt to both highlight this casual path to motorists, and "legitimize" the experience as a pedestrian.







In addition to the street markings, I am also bringing an element of performance to my Visionary Crosswalks project through my inclusion of "G-Mack the Construction Guy". G-Mack is the character which I embodied during the nighttime installation of the crosswalk. As a character he serves three purposes: 1) to convince possible authorities that whatever I am doing in the middle of the night is legitimate, 2) as a personal/social entry point to the project for other pedestrians, and 3) as humorous acknowledgment of my role as the artist in creating this piece of slightly absurd direct-actionist, intervention art. Look out for future appearances from G-Mack, both as a construction worker and soon-to-be crossing guard!

Mt. Royal Holiday Pageant (tomorrow!)

Opening reception: tomorrow, Friday, Oct 3rd 5-7p
Fox 3rd floor gallery

GPS Mapping....old style

Strange Maps Blog reports that:
Satellite navigation (SatNav) is considerably older than previously thought, older than man-made satellites in fact. Depicted above is a device called the ‘Routefinder’, a 1920s version of the contemporary GPS system in high-end automobiles.

Using the Routefinder, drivers in the UK manually scrolled through the roads they were travelling, providing them with mileage statistics and the journey’s end. This early 20C technology quaintely consisted of a tiny map scrolled inside a watch, worn by the driver as he/she travelled along on the map. A "trip-tik" of scrolls would be inserted into the watch to customize the planned route of travel.

More info here: Strange Maps

Wind Speed World Map with U.S. detail

The U.S. is geographically suited for wind-powered energy....with most of this kinetic energy in the middle of the country...look at how the speed changes just East of the Continental Divide, blowing across the Great Plains.

Carlos Garaicoa

An interesting Cuban artist that works with his hometown terrain of Havana. His work explores urban politics, life and decay, specifically expressed in architecture post-1959 Cuban Revolution. He had a show last year at the ICA in Philly: http://www.icaphila.org/exhibitions/garaicoa.php

Other People's Mail

after reading the link siobhan posted, the this american life episode, "other people's mail", seems apropos. especially act three in which they talk about what happens with undeliverable mail.
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=70

GoogleEarth Life Trail

Here is documentation of the google earth slide show as it should have been

Also I was trying to research what the United States Postal Service does with mail that has no destination and stumbled upon this
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/why-does-the-post-office-deliver-mail-that-has-no-stamp/

Detroit Demolition Project

http://www.landliving.com/articles/0000000995.aspx

Really interesting group of artists working with abandoned buildings marked for demolition in Detroit.

Braille version of Playboy Magazine

Photographer Taryn Simon's image.

The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), a division of the U.S. Library of Congress, provides a free national library program of Braille and recorded materials for blind and physically handicapped persons. Magazines included in the NLS’s programs are selected on the basis of demonstrated reader interest. This includes the publishing and distribution of a Braille edition of Playboy.

See her website: Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar.

To Remain Suspended without Sinking or Falling

Floater Magazine

Floater magazine suggests an inventory of floatation mechanisms within architecture; Without Stability, Without Foundation / Flip is an ocean research platform that capsizes in order to maintain its stability. Yannick Vassiloulis presents the mechanism of this paradoxical stability / Armin Linke’s images of astronauts and divers project the realities of a utopian body equipped with prosthetics that provide the ability to exist in conditions of No Gravitation / Wave Garden by Yusuke Obuchi and Medusabloo by b. are performative, highly intelligent environments capable of collecting and administrating data / In 1968, Takis invented Oscillation of the Sea; a device that translates the motion of the sea surface into kinetic energy / Dimitris Antonakakis describes the chronicle of an unusual project commissioned to Atelier66; redesigning the cruiser Libra Y the parameters of instability and non foundation demarcate a new territory for the architect / Louisa Adam explores architectural strategies and practices within contemporary cultural concerns, commenting on OMA’s Harbour of Ideas

From BLDGBLOG: "The design of the website itself – with mobile images you can rearrange according to taste – can be quite cool. Better yet, all the articles can be downloaded as PDFs – so you can read them on the go."

Link to Floater Magazine HERE

I want to do this please. Anyone up for helping/coming along for the ride? I'm thinking San Francisco, or possibly Iceland as a destination...

"An oblong city, between two rivers, with streets like deep...

"A spy camera video exploration of Brooklyn's designated bike lanes, a conceptual video which addresses the inefficiency of a car-centric city structure, while presenting a whimsical view of a life in constant transit."

This piece was created by my friend Meghan Ciupka-Whiteford; a Brookln-based public artist dealing with environmental and transportation issues. The video's pedal-fixed perspective results in minimalist view of cycling in the city. While initially disorienting, the video's "oblong" and repetitious structure soon acclimates the viewer to the textural and aural subtleties of bicycling through the Redhook neighborhood of Brooklyn. A rythym of pulsing traffic sounds filtered through an ungulating pattern of view is broken only by variations in artist's speed and tactful coasting techniques. The near micro-level examination of travel demonstrates the artist's travails as she dodges traffic, jumps curbs, and takes refuge along sidewalks. The video provides a stylistically fresh and conceptual relevant take on the sensoral and at time dangerous qualities of cyling in a city.

Welcome Home

Signage on road approaching Burning Man

Giant Swallow Returns!

http://www.complex.com/blogs/2008/05/20/giant-birds-nest-takes-over-office-building/

Dervish, by Lewis DeSoto

Sound & light installation by Lewis Desoto. More information on his work (including the Lost Ship piece, and the Tahualtalpa (Mount Slover- Mountain of the Ravens) piece shown in class this week) at http://sotolux.net

Yestermorrow

http://yestermorrow.org/video.htm

Richard Serra-Nancy Holt Boomerang

http://ubu.com/film/serra_boomerang.html

sign up dammit

Upload links to interesting stuff, your ideas and images and videos to this blog, and post your research bookmarks on delicious!

Babel reloaded

I thought this piece by Julee Holcombe was a good culmination, I have often found that between the widespread use of English and the ability to irradicate "long distance" via the internet we are at the epoch that the "Tower of Babel" speaks about.

How does international geography shape morality?

Sept. 11 And The Non-Crisis Of Values by Dick Meyer
from NPR's "Against the Grain"
Dick Meyer is the editorial director of Digital Media at NPR.org. His "Against The Grain" column is a mix of sarcastic sociology and comic moral philosophy that occasionally descends into political commentary.

A friend forwarded me this article in NPR about the perceived political crisis of values in a post 9/11 America. I thought it was apt to our class discussions with the timing of the 9/11 anniversary and the presidential elections... and a generally interesting perspective on (moral) wandering amidst our cultural geography.

Meyer illustrates the difference between values of countries around the world via a sociologist, Wayne Baker. "From a broad, global perspective, Baker examines human values on two planes. The first is a range of values from traditional to secular-rationalist. . . The second axis of value runs from survival values to self-expression ones. . . When material needs are well met, self-expression, self-realization, environmentalism, gender equality and creativity become more important. All societies are a mix."

How are we as individuals and as a country wandering this moral international landscape? How is our freedom to create a by-product of our political and cultural values?

You Are Not Here

You Are Not Here (.org) is a platform for urban tourism mash-ups. It invites participants to become meta-tourists on simultaneous excursions through multiple cities.

Passers-by stumble across the curious You Are Not Here signs in the street. TheYANH street-signs provide the telephone number for the Tourist Hotline, a portal for audio-guided tours of one place on the streets of another. Through investigation of these points and with or without the aid of a downloadable map, local pedestrians are transformed into tourists of foreign places.

Current walking tours include Baghdad through the streets of New York City and Gaza City through the streets of Tel-Aviv.

News Telescope

NEWS TELESCOPE

"A fixed public device which allows people to view news from around the world in the form of RSS feed content displayedon screen. The news is chosen and acquired by physically interacting with this device; moving the telescope part of it, so as to train sights - set direction and distance - in order to focus on and pick up news from a particular geographical location."

My friend Edd is working on this public space infoscope at the Goldsmith Media Research Programme. He tells me that they have 5 years of funding lined up to continue developing public use technology in urban space.

See the prototype on his Flickr page...

Bridge to Nowhere

Dark matter 'bridge to nowhere' found in cosmic void
NewScientist.com news service, Rachel Courtland

More than a dozen galaxies seem to be lined up along a bridge of dark matter inside a region of nearly empty space. This 'bridge to nowhere' could shed light on how small galaxies formed in the early universe.

Galaxies in the universe are arranged in a lacy structure that contains many holes, or voids, that are largely bereft of galaxies. But the voids are not completely empty; astronomers expect they are criss-crossed by filaments of dark matter.

Now, astronomers have found a total of 14 galaxies that appear to be part of a dark matter bridge at least 1.5 million light years long.

The string of galaxies spans just 0.5% of a 'mini-void' – a region of space containing mostly dim, dwarf galaxies kept small by their relative isolation from other matter. But the underlying dark matter bridge may be far longer than that.

More information HERE

Greetings Wandering Psychogeographers

This website is a collective effort of the WANDERING: Psychogeographic Explorations in Space and Place class at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Those of you enrolled in the class (and other invited authors) can post to this blog once you respond to the email you will receive from Blogger.com. (We will go over basic blog functions next week for those of you unfamiliar with the technology...it's simple!) Also, please sign up for a del.icio.us bookmark account, and add me to your network. My screen name is Netherzone. (My bookmarks are at http://delicious.com/Netherzone. Check out some of my "All Tags" links on psychogeography, space/place, geography, map, maps, mapping, etc.

The best ever archive of on-line links to research on space and place has been compiled by Bruce Janz here: http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~janzb/place/home.html
Check it out.

Have fun, make art, make music, make magic.
Remember, it's summer 'til December in this class.
Eve (a.k.a. flyingoutofthisworld)