ars electronica 2005 h-word: day 62 min read

strip six

i already moaned about the net vision prix winners. so that was about all i have to say about yesterday. the “mcluhan still dead? 25 years later” lecture by derrick de kerckhove was interesting, but i can’t say much else about it since i am neither a mcluhan expert nor was i awake the whole time. i wrote down exactly 2 things: “everybody lives in a global world but it’s more global for some than for others” and “move from analog to digital and now to wireless. the characteristics are …”. sorry. nothing else. oh wait one anecdote stuck with me, mcluhan was asked by a journalist why his stuff was so hard to understand, mcluhan answered, “don’t worry i don’t understand it either”. pheew. apparently he often just rambeled on, speaking from “the right hemisphere”, fully stream of conciousness, just letting the thoughts loose and watching where they went.

i loved the video that got shown – must get that for samples. mcluhan had this grand american 50’s/60’s voice, raspy and sharp as a razor. may or may not be a good thing to catch on stream. depending if you are into mcluhan and if very fast speaking canadians with thick french accents are your bag.

okay, here, i’ll spoil it for you, mcluhan is no longer dead. hah.

some of my favorite projects that i have not mentioned yet:

USED Clothing by martin maringer: RFID chips get sown into used clothing. some information about the owner the clothes gets stored in the chip. future owners of the clothes will be able to access that data. [read more at textually.org]

Bordergames by la fiambrera obrera, medialabmadrid: a video game where you slip into the skin of a young marroccan illegal immigrant and you have to find your way around madrid avoiding the police and finding work etc. socially concious gaming coming up!

ACTION HALF LIFE by AES+F: the radical photo works by this russian crew showing kids carrying huge guns is even more impressive when you see it big. somehow very hitleryouth.

TENORI-ON by toshio iwai, yu nishibori: fantastic visual sequencer/digital instrument that looks like great fun to play with. but i never got my turn… 🙁 toshio iwai also released a nintendo ds game called electroplankton that would almost be an argument to buy that konsole). [read more at we-make-money]

more later. statistics from the press conference.

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