"The Signal" is a unique audiovisual narrative, designed specifically for the Abstract Machine Hypertable. It maps the mysterious chain of infections that led to a poorly documented telepathic virus that spread throughout the United States of America in a historical period not so far removed from our own. Traces of this virus have been found in the strangest of milieu : in communications technologies, via teenager rituals, in mass media and advertising, through irrigation systems, in sound recordings, in political propaganda and urban myth paranoia, in sociological experiments, etc. "The Signal" charts the virus' growth across the map of the United States, allowing the Hypertable to transform itself into a sort of war map, overlooking the spread of the contagion. From a purely technological point of view, The Signal is a unique algorithmic cinema experiment. Over 10,000 video shots were culled from public archives, treated and injected into the Concrescence development software. A narration was added to each image, giving its context in relation to the story. Each image contains its own diegetic sound track, but is accompagnied by narration whenever possible (the program avoids cacaphony by singling out only related narrative information, and tries to give pause between each utterance). One all this data had been entered into the database, the software was then used to literally "teach" the computer the non-linear narrative relationships between the images. This allows the computer to make intelligent choices within the narrative material, in such a way that it can smoothly acompany the unpredictable movements of the public. As each image knows its relationship with other images in the database, it can easily modulate the arrival of new images to match narrative paths coherent with its own. This "concrescence" process is what gave the software platform its name, by the way. "The Signal" was created, therefore, to be one of the first proofs-of-concept of the feasability of the Concrescence platform. The Signal was shown at the Pompidou Center from September 2004 to February 2005, as part of the exhibition Ecoute on sound as an artistic material. I wrote the story and designed the images starting from material from the Internet Archive. Sound design by Julien Hô Kim. Keith Evans of Silt fame spoke the narration. The Signal was co-produced by the CIREN, with the assistance of Arcadi, the DICREAM, and the SCAM.

Author: destanley
Keywords: interactive installation algorithmic cinema american viral paranoia
Added: June 14, 2006

Much better quality: http://www.supyo.com/home/artworks/saic20052006/dailyj_ani/daily_ani.htm Watch, find and compare the following photos as a whole constantly completing archive: Clothe styles, locations, facial expressions, age, lighting, hair styles, growth From the information that is recorded in each picture, to the information that all the pictures serve as a archive; This can be considered a science experiment of human habits of instinct and life changes though the questionable constant of time.

Author: nerdynerdnerd
Keywords: dailyphoto daily photo jason dailyjason time lapse timelapse project experiment everyday archive outlook history develop
Added: September 14, 2006

52 weeks of beard and hair growth condensed for quick viewing.

Author: laywho
Keywords: beard charity weirdo leihu shavior insanity
Added: November 14, 2006

Radiocable.com, la cadena Ser y Barrabes.com emitieron el primer programa de radio en castellano que se emite simultaneamente dentro del mundo virtual de second life y a través de la radio tradicional. Este es el video grabado durante la emision con imagenes de los momentos previos. Radiocable.com and Cadena Ser broadcast the first radio program live in spanish for the virtual world Secondlife Wednesday, december 20th, at 10:00 AM, Radiocable.com (the pioneer radio station for Internet in Spain, broadcasting since 1997) and Cadena Ser carried out together, a unique experience in the spanish speaking world. The show "Hoy por hoy" (Cadena Ser), working with radiocable.com, made the first radio broadcast in spanish inside a virtual world. The event, organized by radiocable.com, allowed the inhabitants of Secondlife access to the virtual radio studio and to acompany the avatars -virtual caracters- of Carlos Francino (Cadena Ser), Fernando Berlin (radiocable.com) and Carlos Barrabes (Barrabes.com) The show was broadcast live on conventional radio (Cadena Ser), on the Internet (radiocable.com and cadenaser.com) and inside the virtual world of Secondlife, thanks to the spanish comunity "Seconlife Spain" To increase the audience, dozens of transistors radio were distributed through out the territory of Secondlife, and its inhabitants were able to listen to the program on their transistor, with a simple click. Secondlife looks like a videogame. But its creators say that even more, it´s a new country, a virtual world created by Phillip Rosedale (form Linden Lab) where anyone can create a second life and feel it. This "matrix" in the Internet is breaking all records for growth and, right now, there are two million residents and a PIB of 60 million dollars, acording to The Economist. The experts believe that this virtual world has made a new way of undestanding the Internet and virtual relations. Artists such as Suzzane Vega, U2 or Duran Duran and companies like Reuters, Addidas or Nike, have already jumped into the virtual worlds with similar experiments to the one Cadena Ser, Radiocable.com and Barrabes launched on wednesday.

Author: fberlin
Keywords: secondlife second life radiocable fer partch fernando berlin carles francino
Added: January 4, 2007

Six student activists. Thirty-six Canadian towns. One giant corporation. A daunting experiment in activism. A group of six university students, calling themselves Wal-Town, take to the Canadian highway over two summers. Armed with thousands of pamphlets and fliers, and with one gonzo journalist along for the ride, they visit 36 of Canada's more than 200 Wal-Mart stores with one formidable goal: to raise public awareness about Wal-Mart's business practices and the effects of the company's policies on cities and towns across Canada. Wal Town: The Film is the story of their ambitious, exasperating and ultimately rewarding journey. Since the late 1980s, Wal-Mart has become an unstoppable force in the North American retail market. It is the largest corporation and the largest private employer in the world. Its growth rate is on an exponential curve that makes most economists blush. But not everyone believes Wal-Mart's soaring success to be a good thing. The members of Wal-Town foresee dire consequences for Canada and the rest of the world if the Goliath retailer is not challenged immediately. With youthful passion, they bring their message, in the form of often hilarious cultural jams, to the very heart of Canadian consumerism—Wal-Mart's front door. Interspersing frank exchanges between activists and Wal-Mart shoppers with interviews with a range of characters from either side of the issue, Wal Town: The Film takes us to the frontlines of the ongoing debate over the company's increasing dominance in the Canadian retail market. The film also creates an intimate portrait of six young activists as they experience the highs and lows of their first cross-country campaign http://www.onf.ca/waltown

Author: jfpoulin
Keywords: Global market jobs Walmart
Added: January 10, 2007

In 1980 I briefly rented a basement apartment in Athens, Greece (Lycabettus - Kolonaki district). One day while cleaning, I discovered a framed canvas that covered a metal door in one of the walls. It looked like a submarine door with an air lock. I called some friends over to help me open it. We had to remove parts of the wooden floor-boards. The bunker walls were a few feet thick. When we opened the door, we found the evidence of a Nazi torture chamber, which I immediately photographed. The chair with a hole in it was found near the bloody mattress in a corner of the Lycabettus bunker next to a pile of burnt newspaper shreds from the early 1940s featuring articles about the Nazis. A small ball of clay or soil, pressed around the foot of the chair, bewildered us. We later concluded that "feet of clay" were used to psychologically torture a hostage tied to the chair, who was probably ordered not to move, but to remain perfectly still and motionless at all times. Any movement of the chair would cause the clay lump to crumble and break into smaller fragments. The guards could then measure even the slightest movements that had occurred while they were not in the bunker, and punish the hostage accordingly. A hole in the seat of the chair may have been due to an act of extreme violence or a malicious experiment. I sent the photos to the local police department, but they arrived too late. When the authorities finally got there about a month later, I had been evicted and the evidence had already been removed. But the persons who rented the basement apartment after me were leading members of the Greek TV news media, who communicated with the Greek Prime Minister. Therefore, I cannot rule out the possibility that the bunker may have been examined by intelligence analysts before the local police arrived. What finally became of the disembodied chair and mattress? Did they go to a forensic "area" or were they discarded as rubbish? Most of the bunker witnesses later developed abnormal lumps or growth in their bodies. One died of a brain tumor. Some time later, newspapers reported that an extremely radioactive substance had mysteriously turned up in a scrap metal junkyard near Athens. After several months, a Greek-Turkish friend of mine introduced me to the owner of Athens' most influential newspaper. But my bunker photos were not published because they raised too many questions. I didn't have a story... It haunted me for some time. The big question was: who was the Lycabettus hostage or victim of this torture chamber? I visited libraries and bookstores looking for war photos that might resemble the Kolonaki bunker. Then in 1997, I found an official war picture that matched up perfectly. The mathematical likelihood that similarities between mattress folds, blood spots, and markings on the floor are due to random coincidences is astronomical. In other words, it is more probable that a comet will fall into your tea cup than for the bunker resemblances to be the results of sheer chance. Please note that I am not out to "prove" anything with this description. I mainly wish to publish a report of what was found in the Lycabettus bunker so that legal investigators can establish what may have happened there. The only problem is this: The dead person in the official photo appears to be Adolf Hitler's double. The alleged body of the Nazi Fuehrer discovered in the Berlin Chancellery garden had only one testicle according to the Russian autopsy report. The Problem: Important details in the photographs match up - but really should not - because the bunker locations are almost 2000 kilometers apart. What was a "ghost detainee" doing in the Kolonaki bunker? Was this a case of identity theft or extraordinary rendition? How long was the victim being held as a tortured hostage? How were the Nazis using the Kolonaki - Lycabettus district of Athens during World War Two? A war crime appears to have been committed in the Lycabettus bunker. But why are the authorities today not willing to discover who the victim actually was? For more please see this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc-FzhLBiF4 (Special thanks to Leonard Cohen's friends from Hydra who helped pay the last month's rent, thus allowing these critical photos to be taken. Sincere apologies to some of Dizzy Gillespie's band members who sat through our unexpected experience during their 1980 Athens Hilton performance.) Sound source: Radio clips, "fair use" (Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107) CleanBlackRaiser is www.blackraiser.com (accept no substitutes!)

Author: CleanBlackRaiser
Keywords: Forensics CSI Bunker Athens Lycabettus ALSOS Nuclear Fission Reactor Hostage Torture Rendition Crowley Hitler Nazi
Added: January 14, 2007