Video Vortex: Thomas Elsaesser on ‘Constructive Instability’

‘Constructive instability’ is how Condoleeza Rice described the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in the summer of 2006. It’s a term that brings to mind tropes of globalization – maybe a synonym of precarity, or the state that produces a desire for sustainability. Thomas Elsaesser uses it to describe the kinds of experience engineered on the Web, especially through collaborative filtering. He asks how our experience of the new forms of artificial life – “or art made more life-like” – known collectively as Web 2.0, might help us think about the whereabouts of ‘the human’ in the new ‘posthuman’ landscape.

In the mode of Web flâneur, Elsaesser took his questions to YouTube. Starting with the notion of ‘collapse’, he followed a semantic trail that led from the Honda Cog advertisement to the film it references (Der Lauf der Dingen), on to a Japanese television show and, finally, world championship domino tipping. The collective efforts of users, software, statistics and sorting algorithms presented him with a path through YouTube, one that wavered consistently between the joy of epiphanies and a constant threat of entropy. But rather than understand this pathway in the new media lineage of hypertext, Elsaesser turns to the language of cinema.

Elsaesser’s talk centered around Der Lauf der Dingen – the 1987 film created by Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss. The famous film is a 29 minute long take that follows an elaborate cause-and-effect machine made of a range of heterogeneous materials – planks, tires, candles, and so on. The film is hard to stop watching, and gains its suspense from an engineered potential for failure – its ‘constructive instability’.

Elsaesser uses the translation ‘The life of things’ rather than the official one, ‘The way things go’, and connects the film’s tension between balance and collapse to life online. The Web flâneur finds pleasure in the added value of Web 2.0 – its own versions of adaptive evolution – but there’s always another collapse, the anxiety of oncoming entropy, “the evolutionary dead-end”. Ontologically, the path through YouTube might be likened to a digital picaresque novel. It is an episodic narrative of loosely connected elements – not random but on its way there. A constructive instability whose attraction relies on that which destroys it. Going to back to his initial question, Elsaesser says that failure is the all too human factor that underlies the new forms of so-called posthumanism.

Elsaesser’s talk was itself a series of ‘aha’ moments – for me, a real highlight of the conference – and I’d never manage to capture it all in a blog post. I tried not to mangle his ideas too much, but I’m not so sure. (If his paper is published online I’ll make sure to link to it here.)

This part of the conference is dealing with curating online video and was moderated by Vera Tollmann. The main question was why filmmakers and artists working with moving images don’t occupy Youtube as the perfect way to archive and distribute their work and to reach larger audiences. Bands and musicians inhabit Myspace, but why don’t use artists the online databases as a perfect place for their portfolios? And if artists were going to do so, what would happen with the curator? Would there be something left to do for him?
Sarah cook picuture Anne Helmond
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This session is the most concrete session of today. The focus is on practical views on online video from the perspective of speakers’ practices. How do video artist, activists, programmers and curators deal with copyright issues, publishing and distributing videos? Main issue addressed in this session relates to the most ideal alternative platforms that can be created for online video. What are the differences and similarities compared to YouTube? How do these alternatives deal with open source software and p2p processes? And how do they deal with user agreemenst and proprietary software? Why not YouTube?

Seth Keen

Moderated by Seth Keen, the speakers in this session will investigate developments in the field of open source software in creating alternatives to proprietary software like Windows Media Player. Through investigating p2p alternatives and open licenses, both users and programmers aim to create a truly distributed network, in which content can freely float around without having to use centralized servers and sign strings of user agreements. Moderator Seth Keen and Geert Lovink developed the concept of the Video Vortex conference together.

Michael Smolens

All photo’s by Anne Helmond


Michael Smolens – Cross-cultural communication through real-time translation

Last minute addition to this session and first up is Michael Smolens. His main interest lies in cultural needs around the world and how digital technology can provide new means for cross-cultural communication. A documentary like 9/11 Truth shows the impact one documentary can have on public opinion. It is not hard to imagine there are numerous movies around the world with similar impact but are not accessible due to language issues. His project aims to use open source-wikipedia like software to make every movie available in all languages, in all kinds of formats. His project dotSUB does this by making use of RSS in 24 languages. It is basically a real-time translation tool on the Web. This project shows a sensitivity for cultural significance. Language is impediment in understanding other cultures but can also be a barrier that creates misunderstandings.

Matthew Mitchem

Matthew Mitchem – Video Social: Amateur video and virtuosity in collaboratively produced media
Matthew Mitchem shows a political/activistic clip “A Cold Day in DC” that reflects on the second inauguration of the Bush administration. This documentary was his first involvement in making videos. With a background in philosophy and an interest in politics, he positions himself as a political video maker.

What are YouTube alternatives? Matthew explores this question by looking at the first answer that comes to his mind: television. In his presentation Matthew argues lines between television and online video are blurring in two ways. First of all, the boundaries between old and new media are blurring because YouTube is becoming a popular source for mainstream media to reflect upon. One consequence is that YouTube is getting more political importance. The video “Vote Different” shows a 1984ish movie based on a 90ties Apple commercial. The maker was slightly related to the Barack Obama campaign and was fired after this video got enormous airtime. During the Hurricane Katrina, CNN advised people to stay in doors, but requested viewers if they did get out anyway, to take their video camera with them. Eye reports or citizen journalism via videos were a substantial part of the CNN reports on Katrina.

For this conference Matthew decided to become a YouTube addict and got involved with commenting and replying. He shows an online video concerning Hillary Clinton and repetition. The video “Hillary Clinton: Favorite Word” shows a very narcissistic Hillary Clinton (lots of “i’s” and “me’s”). Right after the interview this video was online. Most hits for that video were on the next day. Since there were a lot of videos responding to that interview it was difficult to get many hits. If you want to be viewed tag well. The point he makes is that YouTube has become part of the political project, not separated form it.

Secondly, he argues television is not at all that distinct from YouTube because there are numerous sites that provide channels or topic specific online videos, including Godtube, Gospeltube, Ning, Channelme.tv. They are basically a ‘filter’ for online videos. In the example of Ning, you can create your own social networking site (under a license agreement) Also, Channelme.tv, is quite big and allows for alternative use. From this television perspective we don’t need to construct more alternative to YouTube because public access television is already available through these filter-like sites. These sites are often built on top of mayor sites like YouTube.

His project Multitude.tv is one such examples that provide means for Web users to create and share their filtered channels. Multitude.tv is recently redesigned and now makes use of a WordPress-like cms called Joomla! Joomla! works on database management and FTP. The benefit is that you can use your own user agreements and it has the-same functionality as YouTube, with lots of open source plugins. You can basically create your own YouTube. Unfortunately he didn’t elaborate on Multitude.tv much. Questions from the audience were mostly about Multitude.tv which provided him with the possibility to elaborate on this project. Multitude.tv is a also a filter-like project, like for instance Godtube and has multiple channels. Since they also make use of YouTube content and therefore also transferring copyright with the content they copy to their site, there was also a question relating to this. How do they deal with that? The answer was simply put: they don’t. They don’t have lawyers, mostly because they are not as financially attractive as YouTube. Furthermore, when they receive complains about a specific movie being copyrighted they remove it. Another interesting question was about the collaborate aspect of the project. When Matthew and his colleagues were filming “Cold Day in DC” they saw that lot of people were filming. Although they were only ones making feature documentary about second inauguration, there were a lot of citizen journalists. Multitude.tv is also a platform to create collaborative group where these videos can be collected and shared.

Valentin Spirik

Valentin Spirik – Open source ways of producing, distributing and promoting online video
Valentin Spirik is part of P2pFoundation.net. He approaches alternative ways of producing, distributing and promoting online video by looking at free and open-source software like 3D modeling/animation application Blender and open-media platforms and tools. Valentin is film maker and into collecting and filtering open source video tools. In the last couple of years his focus moved to online distribution. He discusses open source software by talking about the ways he as film maker promotes, uploads and distributes own videos. Providing a kind of HowTo for finding ways into existing alternatives to YouTube. With this he hopes people to be inspired and find alternatives to YouTube. His method of working with online video is illustrated with examples such as “Indiworks Channel” which involved remixing video, 3D animation and vlogging.

His first recommendation is to have a blog. Valentin uses uses WordPress, but it can also be Blogger or another blog software platform. The downside of WordPress is that it cant embed Blip.tv videos because of some security issue in the code. Only YouTube and Google Video can be embedded which is not a good thing. Valentine prefers Blip.tv over YouTube because it supports creative commons license which YouTube does not. Blip.tv also support more file types next to Flash which is the only type YouTube supports. Before using Blip.tv he used Archive.org. Archive.org is an important site because it is a free and big digital library. Archive.org doesn’t charge for storing videos. They only make you agree that people are able to download your video. In the open-source pond his video’s can still be found such as his first (half) feature film “Vincent“. Valentin makes an interesting remark about online video distribution. The notion that everything is getting faster and smaller and easier is only half the story. The other side of the story is slow distribution via the internet. In traditional cinema movies go away can not be seen again.Archive.org for instance lets you see movies and files over and over again, when you want to; it allows you to distribute your movie into eternity. And for free. This argument taps into the argument made by Florian Shneider that the Web is not about real-time but rather about “anytime wherever”.

Nicely complementing the previous speaker who talked about ‘filters’ for online videos, Valentin discusses a possibility for creating alternatives to YouTube by creating channels. On Videobomb.com you can bookmark favorite videos and make playlists. After making a playlist, you can create a feed and it becomes basically a channel. In aggregators such as Getmiro.com you can can submit your channel. Before this possibility of creating channels existed he used Ourmedia.org. Ourmedia.org is very simply put a community built on top of Archive.org. This was actually an ‘alternative to YouTube’ before YouTube existed. These alternatives are both mainly about link copying. In linking it to your own site, you create your own video channel – a very strong and easy alternative to YouTube. This is great for independent film makers because you can create your own channel. According to Valentin there is no excuse left to not post your stuff online. On the p2pfoundation.net wiki on the Audiovisual Guide page, there are all kinds of documentation on ways how to get your stuff online.

By showing trailer mash-up between terminator and E.T. “The Real Digital Revolution” Valentin shares his thoughts on copyright issues. The mash-up is a commentary of what is going on online. Concerning copyright, this trailer has some discussions around it. The power of video is that you can show it. Strange is that we are allowed to quote text, but not video. While the thing is with videos that you have to show them, not talk about them. To not be able to show videos is absurd.

The last open source solution Valentin addresses is Blender, which is a 3D application. You can even change the code if you want. While the commercial version of software like this costs between 2000 and 5000 dollars and the code cannot be changed. Blender is free and works. To demonstrate Blender Valentin ends with a preview of a Blender-made movie that is not yet finished called “Vivaldi-rock”.

Philine von Guretzky

Philine von Guretzky – Bridging the gap: Redefining the platforms for moving image
Berlin based Philine works with an organization called Tank.tv. Online gallery Tank.tv is dedicated to showing video artist in different contexts. It is an alternative to YouTube specifically for video artist. The artworld is at a change this moment, also in video art. Recently video art is been made more available, blurring the line between traditional art categories. Tank.tv is experimental and acts as an online gallery especially for independent and new artists. Since 2003 they have been online and mayor changes are happening now. The number of viewers increase, content increases, and ways of working change.

Artists and traditional galleries initially were afraid for publishing online because it would devalue the work and make it easy to copy. Tank.tv is now more accepted within institutions and they curate shows a couple of times per year in collaboration with other institutions. The videos shown online are reduced to three minute-videos and in museums (such as Tate Modern), on a big screen, full videos are shown. Together with Park.nl Tank.tv has also curated for a whole year an Urbanscreen in the south of Amsterdam. No commercials, just video art.

In what way is Tank.tv really different than YouTube? First of all videos are not embeddable on sites. They have the philosophy that it is more respectful to the piece and more about the piece itself when it is shown on this curatorial site. Some artist don’t want to be shown next to a funny kitten movie and Thank.tv provides a platform for such artists. The strength of Tank.tv lies with the group as such. It is a small curated amount. Copyright issues are not a problem for this alternative and dealt with rather easily; the artist signs that its not Tanks.tv’s problem if it turns out to be a video that is copyrighted by someone else.

Ian White wanted to create a list of lists of videos. They are an online gallery that only show what is admitted. Therefore you are invited to submit to the list of lists. Best is on minidvd for submission.

Jay Dedman

Jay Dedman – Show-in-a-box, WordPress video distribution system
Presentation of videos is very important for online works and media activists. Open source and sane copyrights are also important. Jay Dedman and college Ryanne Hodson have developed Show-in-a-box, a tool that makes WordPress better suitable for WordPress. With the goal of creating the ultimate videoblogging platform by providing WordPress installs, this alternative builds on YouTube and WordPress.

In asking for a revolution in online video, he claims that it already happened. YouTube is a revolution. However, “YouTube makes my work look bad”, that is the main problem. Although this argument for an alternative to YouTube sounds similar to the argument made by Philine, Jay does not argue for presenting the pieces he makes as stand alone videos. Jay considers himself a storyteller and requires good quality for his videos. Showinabox.tv. mixes your WordPress site with good video displaying. Most storytellers are not familiar with php, html etc. so they really need tools otherwise they will get left out. Voices need to be heard. What he considers problems concerning online video can be solved by adjusting WordPress. A blog works well for text, but not really for video.

Jay started to make a list with critical thinkers, film makers to see how they deal with distributing and presenting videos and the problems they come accross. Momentshowing.net was the blog he started with. The blog format looks like a diary and it is almost impossible to find old videos except on date search or clicking through the archive. As more speakers have addressed in this conference, it is important for video artists videos can be found “anytime wherever”. Because video archiving and searching does not work good, the blog does not serve this need.

As a second example he shows Politicalvideo.org, a political video scraper that allows you to mix these videos. The blog does not allow video to easily work with it: too much text-based. For visual creators, a blog often does not suffice and support creativity. Also when vlogging is about raising money for visual projects, donating via paypal for instance, again a blog is not ideal. For this to work they even needed to hack WordPress.

Another project deals with getting 8mm movies online, still difficult to find a format that handles these files. The Show-in-a-box project is about volunteers that create open source plugins in order to create a good alternative YouTube that does not scramble with your quality. A first pilot is Ryanishungry.com. It is a blog, but offers different video formats and shares (called VPIP, video paste in place). Point to make is that video artists need to get involved in the creation of new media tools. Pledge drive features plugin for WordPress is about also financially helping each-other out (because youTube isn’t gonna!).

Tatiana De La O

Tatiana De La O – Independent media
Tatiana approaches alternatives to YouTube yet from another way. Not addressing YouTube alone, rather the Web 2.0 revolution as a whole. Tatiana is part of Indymedia, however she is not representing them. It is the first open independent open source publishing site and she wants to talk about how they are different to the 2.0 revolution. Independent media sites are looking at web 2.0 with two different attitudes. On the one side they want to learn to network the different producers better and spread good material better. On the other, narcissism and individualism of the blogosphere is seen as counter productive by most of the activist programmers.

Sites like Indymedia and Archive.org are about seriousness of the information that is on display. They are often event-driven and reactive to reality. Independent media are mostly run by volunteers and reactionary. The problem is that they are sometimes anxious that the police will come and shut their servers down and they do not have that expensive professional software. This does not always makes them look as professional as commercial Web 2.0 sites. It is however not so that Indymedia is unstable and Flickr or YouTube is stable. The police can also remove your video from YouTube.

2.0 is about friends of your contact list. The advantage of 2.0 sites is that you can control the feedback, It is gentle, more stable, more fun. In many independent media sites one cannot do this. She makes a point about content politics, taking democracy to media production. Her main argument against 2.0 is that it takes down democracy. People that like kittens and fun are free on YouTube. People that are serious or political not always. Who is adjusting content? What is democracy? Something unequal. Just like 2.0? A pervert thing in Flickr is that they have sneaky ways of hiding content by not showing tags in searches. If your pictures are dirty they get tagged nipsa which means it can not be found in a search. If you admit to Flickr your picture is nipsa yourself, only that picture is removed from the search results. When Flickr find out themselves, then the whole account is removed. This is about diverting information (agency and control). Old-school politics are transferred onto media sites. Indymedia did Web 2.0ish things as well, but called it open-publishing.

Tatiana ends her talk with 2.0 lessons. Indymedia were fighting for revolution and people went to 2.0. Their first reaction was “why! have you seen the licensing!”. The first lesson is that they learned not to be jealous. People use the tools they can use and they will use it (YouTube, Flickr). Why fight it? Secondly they think more about syndicating content via YouTube. Try to talk more with users what features they like (not too much though). About marketing and means, they want to make revolution irresistible! if content is elaborated, it gets more attention. Still, it has to be quick. Lots of open source and free software is emerging. We are now preparing tools for this new revolution. We show what we are doing. They are not reactive to market (2.0 buzz), but to what people are doing.

The last few weeks it has been in the news numerous times; in Guangzhou, South China, snow and ice storms have stranded tens of millions of people, most of them migrant workers traveling to their families to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Since the storms began on January 10 officials have tried to keep more travelers from coming to the stations by closing them off in order to prevent riots. Furthermore the government has urged migrant workers to cancel their travels for the New Year. (more…)

Radio Dada

The video-images are constructed out of nothing but the image that feedback created [I focused a high end camera to my screen that showed, in real time, what I was filming, which created a feedback loop]. Then I glitched the video by changing its format and subsequently I exported the video into animated gifs. I [minimalistically] edited the video in Quicktime. Then I send the file to Extraboy, who composed music for the video.

The composing process started with a hand held world radio. Extraboy scanned through frequencies and experimented with holding the radio in different parts of the room while touching different objects. Eventually he got the radio to oscillate noise in the tempo that he perceived the video to have. The synthesizer sounds that were added were played live to further build on a non-digital sound and rhythm. This was later contrasted with drums which were digitally synthesized and processed through effects with a very digital sound to them. Just like the video, the music is a mix of digital and analogue.

rosa-menkman.blogspot.com
internet2008.se

pro-anaWhile watching Hart van Nederland (I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t…;-) I saw a news item on girls who motivate each other to practice a pro-anorexia lifestyle. At first i thought it was one of those blown up techno fear stories, but to my surprise it wasn’t. There are many so called pro-ana weblogs where girls (and sometimes boys) discuss their life as a pro anorexic. Here are a some links to dutch pro-ana websites:

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If anyone was interested in further investigating the subject of the article of Lev Manovich ( ‘The Poetics of Augmented Space: Learning from Prada’ (2002)) that we have read for our last class of “Nieuwe Media Theorieen“, they may like to attend this seminar (or workshop) from VP and V2!

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One of the many upcoming Web 2.0 applications is Remember the Milk (RtM), an online personal agenda with the very appealing option to add the locations of your appointments to the map. And yes… it is Beta.

Remember The Milk

Since this coming weekend is going to be very busy, I decided to enter all my weekend appointments in RtM to see just how it works and if it is really usefull. The interface to add your appointments is quite basic, but with some very usable features.

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Feed Shark

Feed Shark is a service that will allow you to list your blog at the main blog services, such as Technorati, GeoUrl, and Weblogs.com. All you have to do is fill out the form in which you have to give the name and URL of the blog and the RSS URL, or/ and the podcast URL. The last two options are optional.

Next you will have to select the services that accept blogs, services that accept RSS feeds, and/or services that accept podcasts. This step is very easy, since you can select all services by using the “select all” button. Now you have to summit your entry and your blog will be listed at the selected services.

Finally, you can add the add a code to your blog to allow Feed Shark to track your submission.

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To see how this program works, I have used the MLGK blog to list at all these services. I did not think it would be wise to select our blog, since the final URL is not in use yet. As soon as this URL is in use, I will list our blog at all services that allow blog and all RSS services. Then I will also investigate if the blog has been listed at all these services. This sounds like a good service to use. It’s very easy to use and it saves a blogger a lot time getting listed services that list blogs.

So I’ll update this post as soon as our new URL is available.

WebjayWhat’s it for?
On Listible I found the website Webjay which is a so called ‘playlist community’ from Yahoo. The site introduces itself as ‘a tool that helps you listen to and publish web playlists.’ People can upload songs from the web or from their own pc to create lists of songs of their own taste. Those lists can be listened to by every visitor of the site, using MP3 players like WinAmp, iTunes, RealOne or Windows Media Player. There are two tabs in the menu option browse: one is a ranking of popular playlists, the other one of new playlists. Users name their lists, they can give an indication on what to expect of the style. On the right side of the page the most popular or newest songs are highlighted and there’s a link to the creator of the list. The website claims to be legal, ’cause it does not store or transmit music itself, it just provides the links to the music.

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T-shirt: Floppy style

Print templates:

T-shirt front (Set printer to landscape! Acrobat: File – Printsetup. Choose landscape/liggend)

T-shirt back : good for 2 t-shirts (Set printer to landscape! Acrobat: File – Printsetup. Choose landscape/liggend)

And of course we need some business cards:

business.gif

Masters of Media business cards (suited for HEMA 150 Visitekaartjes 90×51 mm)

At Wikipedia I have added a quote from Marshall McLuhan. I found this quote last year when I was writing my bachelor thesis. However, I could not find the book or article where this quote came from. So I sent an e-mail to the official Marshall McLuhan website and I got an e-mail back from Eric McLuhan, Marshall’s son. This is what he said in his e-mail:

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A friend was inspired after a conversation about the cut-up method and the article William S. Burroghs wrote. The result is below the fold, enjoy.

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I found two nice articles about optimizing your blog:

  1. 31 Days to a Building a Better Blog Project on Problogger (almost an overload of tips)
  2. 5 ways to building a better blog by Neil Patel on Pronetadvertising (especially the visibility section is useful)


Hugh Hewitt reviewed in 3 minutes:

Book Review

sllogoRecently Second Life has been suffering from “destructive, malicious activity”. Read the blogpost about it here at the Second Life blog: Security and Second Life. If they want to make a model of the real world, there should be tough Scarfaces and criminals right? Your world, your imagination right? Or maybe not?

A remark by Michael just came back to me: Did you already start that career as Second Life bum?

timeYahoo! launched a new subpage called Timecapsule at timecapsule.yahoo.com. Although not very popular in the Netherlands, a timecapsule can be put in the ground with some stuff you think are important to you at that time, you dig it up fifty years later and you can look back at all those memories.

Jonathan Harris, the man and artist behind Yahoo! Timecapsule, thought this would be a great idea to try out on the web. And so we now have a digital timecapsule. Accessible to the whole world to put in their messages of Faith, Sorrow, Fun, Anger and lots more. In a personal note on the website, Harris notices: “Yahoo! Time Capsule sets out to collect a portrait of the world – a single global image composed of millions of individual contributions. This time capsule is defined not by the few items a curator decides to include, but by the items submitted by every human on earth who wishes to participate.”

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panopticonOn the left you can see the prison that philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed in the 19th century. In this design the prison cells are being build in a circle around a centre in which the guard resides. The guard can look at all prison cells, because the guardhouse has glass all around. All prison cells are lit for 24 hours and the guardhouse is darkened, so the prisoner knows the guard might watch him at any time, but he doesn’t know when he is being watched. Therefore the strength of this type of prison is that the prisoner does not know when he is being watched, which has a disciplining effect because the prisoner will feel that he has to behave correctly at all time.

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1_day_logo1.gifNot unlike Yahoo’s Timecapsule, BBC points to a British initiative to use a mass blog to record ‘everyday life’ on October 17th. We used to only come together to commemorate the past or yell at the present, now we can supplement that in mass attempts to pre-figure how we will be seen in the future. “Dear future Internet…”

descartes.jpegWhy are there so many pro-ana blogs? What makes them so attractive to people who suffer from anorexia nervosa? I would like to make clear that this post is not going to answer these big questions, but I will try to offer an interesting view on some of the philosophical developments that have had influence on the phenomenon. (more…)

Jan PronkUN envoy for Sudan Jan Pronk has to leave Sudan because of a weblog post about the Sudanese army. The post in question can be read here: www.janpronk.nl/index120.html.

Pronk states that the army has lost a lot of soldiers in fighting the rebels in the country. The Sudanese army now claims that Pronk is trying to set up a psychological war against them, and says he has to leave the country in 72 hours.

Democracy on weblogs seems to be as democratic as the country you live in. The CNN article can be found here: Sudan orders U.N. envoy to leave.

MyCreativity: Michael StevensonMatteo Pasquinelli took the podium for the second presentation, followed by Rosalind Gill and Danielle van Diemen.
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Winners Innovation LabThe Innovation Lab 2006 winner of the 10.000 euro price for further development is Blendid. Chairman of the jury, Frank Alsema, presented the price to David Kousemaker and Tim Olden, with their project ‘Sound World: Audio-Augmented Experiences’. This Innovation Lab has been realized by Media Guild assigned by ICTRegie.

Projects description:
Walk around in real life and enter a magical world as you hear your surroundings come to life. Audio-augmented experiences offer users a natural and intuitive way to tap into extra layers of meaning in their environment. It enables the user to navigate audible information by simply walking through a space. Sound World aims to implement these experiences in the context of cultural institutions. However, in the near future this medium could be of use to anyone that wants to provide new and exiting ways to convey content.

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In addition to Heleen’s list of interesting locative media websites: you might have come across the article in De Volkskrant of December 7th that reported how easy it is to search for webcams through Google. Many webcams are, of course, mounted for the global public display of locations through the Internet. But there are also quite a lot of webcams trained on places that are not meant for the general public to see, like research laboratories, schools, or on semi public places where one would like to have a bit of privacy, like libraries, bars and lounges for instance.

On the website ‘Voelspriet.nl‘ you can find the commands you have to feed into Google.

Another website is ‘Camorati.com – Unveiling the Unprotected Live Webcam Streams‘. And that is what it does.