after much babbel blogging re: ar5_3l3etc. here, my full review is now online @ pixelsurgeon … woooheee.

Ars Electronica 2004: Timeshift – The World In Twenty-five Years
An ambitious theme for an ambitious festival

“The spimes are coming. The spimes are coming.” Bruce Sterling [more]

555 artists from 28 countries
587 accredited journalists form 33 countries
34 000 visitors (not counting the visitors to the many public exhibits around linz)
4.4 mio hits at aec.at
(7 mio counting the two weeks before)
137 000 page views per day

traceencouters.org:
20 000 contacts
2 000 primary contacts
and counting…

pieceoBlog
1 very exhausted blogger

:flash: last day in linz. i am pretty exhausted. my system has reached information overload. and…

what else is there to say?

the weather in linz will be “heiter”.

they say so on tv. i am all packed up to go, checked out from the hotel, eager to leave. but my train leaves only tonite 2322. this must have been the worst planing ever. i got here one day early an dleave here a day late. damn.
and no, i am not complaining. this bitch is i am bitchin, whinin and moanin.

:flash: actually my most burning question after almost a week thinking about what the future will bring is the following one, ready? when will “they” get it together to invent beaming? “beam me up [which in this case means home], scotty [wifey]” probably i will end up having to invent it…

:flash: traceencounters.org is starting to look nice. this is the project that handed out 1000 pins to ars visitors. the pins register encounters between the people carrying them and download the data to a database to create patterns and networks.
in other words, data mining in an artistic context.
its also the project that got bruce sterling into soldering and saying: “linz is probably completetly hallucinating each year during ars electronica, you know, with these thousands of people running around wearing badges, blinking pins and spimes…” and he probably said it much better than that, so dont quote me on that… oh, and he also said that the defining point of such festivals like ars is that people wear fancy shoes. which he has proved so eloquently on his blog…

:flash: in fact listening to bruce sterling spew his rants was TEH *HIGH*LIGHT ov TEH FESTIVAL. yesterday he spoke downstairs in the kitchen of the electrolobby – a much more initimate setting. deep stuff man. plus i have not laughed this hard in decades. he started out with a 5 minute diss on open source water [image here]. how it tasted like regular tabwater… the bottle was poorly designed… the water bottled in a source nobody had ever heard of… he said, he was deeply dissapointed. open source water should taste and look great.

dont even get me started on software patents. they are truely the devil…

lawrence lessig 06.09.2004

please check my moblog for images…

finally someone is leaning out the window and making a prediction about the world 25 years from today…

interviewer: will you make a prediction about the world 25 years from now?
bruce sterling: sure…
interviewer: oh good, because so far nobody on this panel has done so…
bruce sterling: [...] ars electronica in 25 years will be this place – 25 years from now. not much else can be said about it. some of you will be here, some of you will have died. all of you will be 25 years older, i can guarantee you that… [...] the future never arrives here. there will never be a point where we will sit here and say this is the future. the future has a future. dystopias and utopias are just tries to stop the passing of time… but time passes whether you think about it or not.

scoop: gilberto gil, david byrne, cornelius, beastie boys might put there work out under a creative commons license… after a slight music specific license adaption which will be launched next month. lawrence lessig just hinted towards something like that during his speech.

:flash: re: floating tank. first, i got it all wrong. and second, i whimped out…
iso-phone is a floating tank, and it has nothing to do with a think tank, which gerfried stocker had reported during the opening press conference of the festival. it was probably wordplay on his part. the other thing is that the communication is not between the two people in the two separate tanks, another stocker invention. to have the two tanks communicate with eachother would have been too awkward, said james auger, one of the projects developpers from MIT europe. so this is how it goes: person in tank a is isolated except for a mobile phone line through which they can speak with a person of their choice. person in tank b speaks via a small headphone/speaker system to whoever happens to be outside on the plaza. one person who went into tank b told me afterwards, that it had been quite an awkward experience.
so me, i whimped out. but with style… as i said earlier i had actually a date for saturday to go into floating tank a. but i had huge resistance. a mixture of my various neurosi, if this is in fact the plural form of the word… neurosis —> neurosi ??? anywhich, luckily i got a call. they had to cancel because of technical problems. so i guess i was saved by the bell. in this case the phone bell.

:flash: right after visiting the floating tank project on hauptplatz i went to get ice cream. two flavors. they had poppy flavor. so i said i’d like heroin and cocaine. the guy did not find this funny. i still do.

:flash: after a few rather busy days, with conferences, exhibits, openings and parties, the sunday was more relaxed. more sunday-like. as far as presentations the winners of this years prix ars electronica spoke about their projects. which i did not go to. arrogant me says, quite generally, artists speaking about their own work is more than boring. should be illegal. in the evening there was a longish (2 1/2 hours!) talk by itsuo sakane about the history of interaction between art and technology. or maybe it was in fact a NA (= Namedroppers Anonymous) meeting.

technology has always such a problem…

itsuo sakane, 05.09.2004 ars electronica

please check my moblog for images…

yup he can!
see it here

:flash: dude, last night i found out that i could still pass for a pizza delivery guy… and i think thats a good thing.
i came home to my hotel carrying a pizza box and told the guy my room number (sexy girls in the neighborhood. please take note. hotel sommerhaus), room 1239, please. the desk clerk immediately turned to the phone and started to dial my room. it took me a moment to sink in… yeah that… he he

:flash: bruce sterling has commented on my blog. joi ito not. yet… just goes to show. errr. i dont know what it actually does show but uhm… catch my drifteee
btw. have you seen? bruce sterling, who from now on shall be refered to as my 6th reader, is featuring a shoes in linz special on his blog! very funny. he started this after josh on’s talk on wednesday during which josh had aked a group of people to lign up according to who’s shoes they prefer. image here. they were asked to put their hand onto the guys shoulders who wears the coolest shoes. after inspecting the other guys shoes one guy put both his hands onto his own shoulders.

:flash: during yesterdays morning session of the symposium there was a guy wearing a gta vice city t-shirt sitting right in front of me. image here. i asked him about it. he said he was a journalist from spain and that sometimes people sent him nice stuff… anyway, the panel was sort of boring … errr … at least as i recall. either that or i was too tired or had reached my internal of information absorbtion threshold. but it was morning, so… anyway, in the end two of the speakers, sherryl turkle and geetah narayanan, started to do some game bashing. you know. *wave warning finger in air* the terrible things games do to kids. i etched the gta vice city tshirt guy to say something. he turned back to me and said, you know, i do have an answer to that … [--- insert rethoric pause here ---] hugging is better in real life – gaming is better in games. and with that he walked up towards the front of the lecture hall. i think he wanted to say it. but he didn’t after all.

:flash: oh, and marvin minksy from MIT AI lab talked via video conference. in my opinion this guy suffers from what in german we call “altersradikalitaet”, and i dont know if there is an english equivalent for this. it describes that stubborn almost desperate radicalness elderly people sometimes get into when expressing their viewpoints. minksy in two and half sentences did away with soul, culture, carl jung and jungians. some people even clapped. others did not.

my goal is to build a machine that will be proud of me.

unknown computer scientist quoted by sherryl turkle, MIT

in the future half the world will be busy reporting on the other half.

the more they know about you the less you exist.

marshall mcluhan quoted by derrick de kerckhove, mcluhan program, university of toronto

nobody designs a dystopia. they design an utopia. then it becomes a dystopia.

stewart brand, the long now foundation

please check my moblog for images…

:flash: i am pinned now. a group of artists is handing out 1000 small pins. pins equipped with micro computers that will start to communicate among eachother via infrared. whenever i meet another person wearing such a pin, my pin will register the encounter, and the next time i walk by the mother node it will download this data and start to create patterns, networks, nodes… quite cool. its just too bad it does not communicate via bluetooth. infrared is weak, man… imagine the patterns that could emerge in hotels and trains and from random encounters in the city… but i guess bluetooth would have been too expensive.

:flash: for tonite i have an appointment to go into the think tank on the main square – another amazing project, in my opinion. there are two tanks filled with water at 32° C. people get to go in wearing an oxygen mask equipped with a microphone and headphones. once inside they are totally isolated from the worldn – like free floating in water, dude – and only able to communicate with the person in the other tank. in the end they are asked to write down some of the thoughts they had.
me? i am kinda nervous because slightly claustrophobic. i just hope its not gonna be a sink tank.

:flash: bruce sterling is a trip, man. an almost cynical almost rambling almost maniac. who will go on and on. in extralarge texan drawl. almost putting you to sleep. till you almost miss the fine point he is about to make. his mixture of arrogance and sharp comment presented poetry style, and with an unimitable sing song, sure generated a great amount of laughs. afterwards, i shake my head, and i notice that i can’t even really reproduce what he just talked about. yet something sunk in because i still chuckle. it was subliminal i believe.
is bruce sterling a hypnotist?
all objects in the world all gizmos and gadgets need their own email adresses. anything that has the potential to kill a child should at least have an email address. the future is already here, its just not well distributed yet. the spimes are coming | the spimes are coming…

it is the business of the future to be dangerous.

peter whitehead

please check my moblog for images…

joi’s 7600
joi 7610
Mediachef
Mafiamob
Z
Telefon
Bart

only one accepted to be bluejacked … ?

the future is already here. its just not well distributed yet…

bruce sterling 03.09.2004 linz @ ars electronica

who r my 5 readers? apparently 5 people on average read any given blog…

… i am speechless. again. same as a few years ago. such a wonderful optimistic view.
joi ito is actually who inspired me to start blogging! let this be said.
in the catalogue they annnounced joi ito as the “star blogger”.
so when i saw him in the hallway i said: “oh, the star blogger…”
he laughed out loud and started saying “i didn’t…”
no need to say more.

joi speaks about the fragile positions monopolies are in these days. monopolies try to convey that you are happier as a passive consumer. but people can create their own content easier and easier, be it via blogs, be it using acid or garage with music. and people are getting so good at it.
they are what’s called pro am’s. these are high scale amateurs that are starting to surpass low scale professionals… and: people want to freely distribute their content. the huge come-down on filesharing is the monopolies trying to bully users into submission. but intimidation is not gonna work. people will only use the monopolies as long as they have to. as soon as there are alternatives they will switch. crucial times for that.
to illustrate this further he shows the bush jokes video and the atmo.se video with the bush and blair love duet…
i am trying to find a smart critical thing i can say about this speech. but no, this guy is wonderful… thanx for the inspiration, mr star blogger!

ps: i am curious to see if joi finds this. in his talk he claimed he would…

please check my moblog for images…

josh on was on. he actually was. at two previous festivals i went to josh was announced as a speaker, but he did not actually show. yesterday he did and was supposed to speak about networks and power based on his theyrule.net project.
dude, i have a question:
how do you deal with a situation like this one? you admire somebodys work, but he or she cant really talk about it? do you start to doubt their work?
what josh had to offer was a pretty strange mixture between gang-ho lets-all-be-activists polemic, marxist doctrine and a graphic artist show and tell – i did this, did that etc. a swedish man i talked to afterwards pointed out to me, that it is a relatively new art school thing that artists nowadays not only have to create great work, but also have to be very eloquent when talking about it. good point there. often the work does speak for itself. and josh on has done a great number of incredible pieces… but uhm.

the mystery about all the japanese swarming linz sporting ars electronica badges has been solved. they are not joi ito fans and/or groupies as was previously suspected (yup, joi ito will speak this afernoon *psyche* he was announced as the japanese “star-blogger” in the programm. lol), uhm where were we? oh right, not joi ito fans (waiting to throw their panties on stage, maybe?), but in fact media art students from ogaki, gifu. the iamas is this years guest school with a media art focus – with students showing their projects. its especially interesting to compare this body of work with last years work from the last guest college hgkz from zurich, switzerland. last years presentations were funky, with as much cable junk laying around as possible. the japanese present their work in a much more tidy fashion – and who is surprised somehow… and they explain their projects to you in the most adorable way. as opposed to arrogance and whatever last year. lovely.

yesterday evening local woman m. told me a few interesting things about this place. here’s linz in a nutshell for you:
if you did not know this, the location here is spectacular. imagine a huge area surrounded by mountains with the river donau flowing right through the middle of it. so when the romans came here they built lentos. jump to the 20th century. for hitler, a child from around here, linz had always been the big city in the area. so when he took power he made it one of his first projects to turn linz into a cultural capital. his plan was to create a cultural island on the banks of the donau. meanwhile hermann göring kicked off the industry in the area. to this day one of the big industrial complexes is called the hermann göring werke. now fast forward to the late 70′s of the last century. in the meantime linz has grown into a major industrial city with a mostly working class population. the alternative youth culture is etchy and dark. the influentual underground industrial scene starts what was originaly a video festival. ars electronica quickly turns into the most influential new media art festival. in the late 90′s and early 2000 the ars electronica center, a permanent museum associated with ars electronica, and lentos, the museum of modern art, get built.
on the banks of the donau.
linz is currently appyling to be cultural capital of europe in 2009.
she told me all this while we walking to the party that was held on one of the mountains surrounding linz. in a dark forest, candles along the way, up to a tower made of stone…
you can read all about the linz hitler connection here

today the symposium will start to tackle the humble question: what will the next 25 years bring in technology and new media?
an ambitious theme for an ambitious festival. lets see. bring it on, man

cool idea: under aec.at/predictions users can submit their predictions about the future. what will the next 25 years bring? these will then get displayed and voted on.

please check my moblog for images…

not much yet.
the elevator at my hotel howls like a wolf. every 2 minutes. all night long…
*hoooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuwwwwwhhhhllll*
things are picking up slowly. the conference will only really kick off tomorrow and i am starting to think that i might have come a day early.
now, in every other place this would be a good thing. find your way around. check out local pussy. get a feel for place. organise drugs.
but not linz. linz gets me every time.
teh fuglyness!
i think this part of austria is where white trash originally came from. they are the true inventors. they are the patent holders. they invented it long before it moved to the trailer parks in the us of a.
on the trainride yesterday a group of teenagers talked for 2 1/2 (!) hours about mc donalds food. another group was wearing braids and bob marley tshirts. then they started to drunkenly sing knock knock knocking on heavens door.
yeah dylan.
yeah alcohol.
there are tons of japanese around town wearing festival passes. and the new media dept. of the english college ravensbourne had their “opening party” last night. you can check some of the picts at my moblog…
*hauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuwwwwwhhhh*

just got done walking through this years cyberarts prix arts electronica exhibition at ok center and i must say i am quite exited. this just a quick first impression: the art seems to be much less about interface, but much better presented.

barbara musil (a) has built customised car alarms into people’s cars. on show is a car that starts playing “i’m too sexy for this car” when you touch it.
another artist called ken rinaldo (usa) has put vietnamese (?) siamese fighting fish, and these fish would fight eachother to death if left in the same bowl, into separate bowls, that they can move around in a given space via a light interface. he calls it an interspecies installation. fish meets robot. he calls this augmented fish reality.
the most impressive piece is by mark hansen/ben rubin and it uses rows of led-displays to project words generated in real time from internet chat rooms and forums. the search terms and its results are quite simple, i like …, i am …, i love …, but the way they are projected and read out loud by computer voice in surround sound is quite impressive…
but its hard to describe, you had to be there…
some images here

please check my moblog for images…

“I’ll throw the damned rearview mirror out of the damned window because I don’t want to know where I’ve come from, but where I’m going,� Frank Lloyd Wright, the American architect, is reputed to have said once in the ‘30s, and indeed he did actually break off the car’s rearview mirror and throw it out of the window. A brilliant anecdote. But that was before the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Vietnam, before the first flight to the moon, before Chernobyl, before 9/11 and the Iraq War, before the discovery of the DNA double helix, Dolly the cloned sheep, and the deciphering and patenting of the entire genome, before the development of the transistor, the age of digital simulations, the development of the Internet and the triumphal advance of cell phones and computer games… That’s quite a lot of future reflecting in our rearview mirror. But what lies ahead of us?

[introduction from the official festival statement]

well, i cant tell you yet what lies ahead of us. but i sure as hell know what lies ahead of me. 14 hours of train as i am making my way all the way to linz. slowly. i am prolly right about now bitchin and moanin with self-pity [if not quite yet screamin and yellin with disgust]. lame train.
but hey, i’ll let you know as soon as i found out what lies ahead of us. promised. i swear. no prob.