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Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Audio MoBlogging
To record an audio moblog, dial: (214) 615-6431
When prompted, enter your PIN: 181-197-551
Your options will be: Record and Publish, orRecord and Not Publish.
Record and Publish
If you select Record and Publish, you will be prompted for your Blog Number or Podcast Number.
Blog # 1000.
When prompted, enter your PIN: 181-197-551
Your options will be: Record and Publish, orRecord and Not Publish.
Record and Publish
If you select Record and Publish, you will be prompted for your Blog Number or Podcast Number.
Blog # 1000.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Further tips on Flickr to My Maps image sharing
You need to use url for actual image, not the url for the page on flickr.
To embed this image http://www.flickr.com/photos/kosamari/490656514/
you need to use this url : http://farm1.static.flickr.com/220/490656514_ccac510179.jpg which is listed on "all sizes" tab of each image.
Hit the "small" option to get embedding code.
To embed this image http://www.flickr.com/photos/kosamari/490656514/
you need to use this url : http://farm1.static.flickr.com/220/490656514_ccac510179.jpg which is listed on "all sizes" tab of each image.
Hit the "small" option to get embedding code.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Social Software Hell
It all may not be as easy as it sounds. We will sort it out in class, do not despair.
Putting Photos into My Maps
When you are in My Maps, you hit the "edit" button, which is on the left side nav bar, near the title that you gave the map. That is when the took bar appears and you can put in little drop marks (tags) etc. When you have tagged a location, you click on the tag (still in edit mode) and a text box will open so that you can annotate the location. It has three choices - Plain Text, Rich Text or Edit HTML. You click on Rich Text and the menu bar will appear (you can highlight the text, color it etc.) It also has a little picture icon and if you hit the picture icon, it asks you for the url to your picture. So, that is part 2. You have had to sign on to Flickr - Flickr.com and upload some photos there. You pick the picture and you want, click on it so that it is the only image displayed on the page and then you copy and paste the url from that image into the text box on My Maps - voila! You have annotated the map, and used one of your photos.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Mashups
Taking this all to the Digital arena, here is the complete description of Mashups
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)
and putting it all together:
Dada, mashup, derive, detournement, and Locative Media (which is built on all of these theoretical foundations) is
Bikes Against Bush (apologies to anyone who does not share this political idealogy - I am showing this not to support the idealogy, but to demonstrate the project:
http://www.bikesagainstbush.com/blog/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)
and putting it all together:
Dada, mashup, derive, detournement, and Locative Media (which is built on all of these theoretical foundations) is
Bikes Against Bush (apologies to anyone who does not share this political idealogy - I am showing this not to support the idealogy, but to demonstrate the project:
http://www.bikesagainstbush.com/blog/
Detournement and the Situationists, also known as Mashups
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Détournement
In détournement, an artist reuses elements of well-known media to create a new work with a different message, often one opposed to the original. The term "détournement", borrowed from the French, originated with the Situationist International; a similar term more familiar to English speakers would be "turnabout" or "derailment", although these terms are not used in academia and the arts world as they are inherently 'anti-art,' often involving the blatant theft and sabotage of existing elements. Détournement is similar to satirical parody, but employs more direct reuse or faithful mimicry of the original works rather than constructing a new work which merely alludes strongly to the original. It may be contrasted with recuperation, in which originally subversive works and ideas are themselves appropriated by mainstream media.
This practice builds upon the Political Collage that was a product of the Dada movement in the early part of the 20th century:
The real hayday for political collage came in the interwar years (1918-1939) in Germany when a group of Dadaists including John Heartfield (born: Helmuth Herzfelde, 1891-1968), George Grosz, Hannah Höch (1889-1978) and Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971) started to experiment with pasting together images from magazines and newspapers. Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Höch were lovers and together with George Grosz they claimed to have invented the technique but this is not really accurate. Collages including photographs had appeared a lot earlier and the technique of merging different images was already widely used in advertising.
Adolf the Superman Swallows Gold and Spouts Junk 1932
Dada (1916-1923) was an artistic and literary movement that attacked political and artistic norms as a direct response to the chaos of the First World War (1914-1918). Photographic collages proved to be a powerful tool to promote critical thinking about the establishment and much of the work was centered at the Wieland Herzfelde's gallery and publishing house, Malik Verlag. Malik Verlag was one of the most important printers of Dada publications. Although a lot of the early Dadaist works were a random collection of images and textual fragments John Heartfield appreciated the political possibilities of the form and in 1924 produced an image called 'After ten years: fathers and sons' that showed General Von Hindenburg, one of the key figures of the First World War (1914-1918) and soon to be President of the Republic, standing in military uniform in front of a series of skeletons, who are above a marching group of infantry.
In détournement, an artist reuses elements of well-known media to create a new work with a different message, often one opposed to the original. The term "détournement", borrowed from the French, originated with the Situationist International; a similar term more familiar to English speakers would be "turnabout" or "derailment", although these terms are not used in academia and the arts world as they are inherently 'anti-art,' often involving the blatant theft and sabotage of existing elements. Détournement is similar to satirical parody, but employs more direct reuse or faithful mimicry of the original works rather than constructing a new work which merely alludes strongly to the original. It may be contrasted with recuperation, in which originally subversive works and ideas are themselves appropriated by mainstream media.
This practice builds upon the Political Collage that was a product of the Dada movement in the early part of the 20th century:
The real hayday for political collage came in the interwar years (1918-1939) in Germany when a group of Dadaists including John Heartfield (born: Helmuth Herzfelde, 1891-1968), George Grosz, Hannah Höch (1889-1978) and Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971) started to experiment with pasting together images from magazines and newspapers. Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Höch were lovers and together with George Grosz they claimed to have invented the technique but this is not really accurate. Collages including photographs had appeared a lot earlier and the technique of merging different images was already widely used in advertising.
Adolf the Superman Swallows Gold and Spouts Junk 1932
Dada (1916-1923) was an artistic and literary movement that attacked political and artistic norms as a direct response to the chaos of the First World War (1914-1918). Photographic collages proved to be a powerful tool to promote critical thinking about the establishment and much of the work was centered at the Wieland Herzfelde's gallery and publishing house, Malik Verlag. Malik Verlag was one of the most important printers of Dada publications. Although a lot of the early Dadaist works were a random collection of images and textual fragments John Heartfield appreciated the political possibilities of the form and in 1924 produced an image called 'After ten years: fathers and sons' that showed General Von Hindenburg, one of the key figures of the First World War (1914-1918) and soon to be President of the Republic, standing in military uniform in front of a series of skeletons, who are above a marching group of infantry.
Guy Debord and the Situationist International
Guy Debord led the Situationist International group which led the Paris uprising of 1968.
The Situationist International, a political/artistic movement organized by Debord and his colleagues and represented by a journal of the same name, attempted to create a series of strategies for engaging in class struggle by reclaiming individual autonomy from the spectacle. These strategies, including "dérive" and "détournement", drew on the traditions of Dada and Surrealism.
Here is the wikipedia article on Guy Debord: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Debord
More from wikipedia:
In the situationist thought, a Dérive is a concept meaning an aimless walk, probably through city streets, that follows the whim of the moment. It is usually translated as a drift.
French writer and Situationist Guy Debord used this idea to try and convince readers to revisit the way they looked at urban spaces. Rather than being prisoners to their daily route and routine, living in a complex city but treading the same path every day, he urged people to follow their emotions and to look at urban situations in a radical new way. This led to the notion that most of our cities were so thoroughly unpleasant because they were designed in a way that either ignored their emotional impact on people, or indeed tried to control people through their very design. The basic premise of the idea is for people to explore their environment ("psychogeography") without preconceptions, to understand their location, and therefore their existence.
Like the earlier flâneur, the Situationist dérive was a general reaction, manifested in the shadow of the Parisian landscape, as the casual stroller of flânerie moved towards the more directed urban pedestrian.
Derive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dérive
The Situationist International, a political/artistic movement organized by Debord and his colleagues and represented by a journal of the same name, attempted to create a series of strategies for engaging in class struggle by reclaiming individual autonomy from the spectacle. These strategies, including "dérive" and "détournement", drew on the traditions of Dada and Surrealism.
Here is the wikipedia article on Guy Debord: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Debord
More from wikipedia:
In the situationist thought, a Dérive is a concept meaning an aimless walk, probably through city streets, that follows the whim of the moment. It is usually translated as a drift.
French writer and Situationist Guy Debord used this idea to try and convince readers to revisit the way they looked at urban spaces. Rather than being prisoners to their daily route and routine, living in a complex city but treading the same path every day, he urged people to follow their emotions and to look at urban situations in a radical new way. This led to the notion that most of our cities were so thoroughly unpleasant because they were designed in a way that either ignored their emotional impact on people, or indeed tried to control people through their very design. The basic premise of the idea is for people to explore their environment ("psychogeography") without preconceptions, to understand their location, and therefore their existence.
Like the earlier flâneur, the Situationist dérive was a general reaction, manifested in the shadow of the Parisian landscape, as the casual stroller of flânerie moved towards the more directed urban pedestrian.
Derive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dérive
Monday, October 6, 2008
The Digital Divide
Enjoleah posted an interesting article on her blog that questions issues about the Digital Divide. Since the mobile web 2.0 technologies and ideas that we explore in this class relate to the idea of e-Democracy, I thought that a good place to get information about this discussion is on Wikipedia.
Here is the link to a definition of the Digital Divide:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide
If we are thinking about binary oppositions and their effect on place and space, here is another way in which we can discuss polarities in access and information.
Here is the link to a definition of the Digital Divide:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide
If we are thinking about binary oppositions and their effect on place and space, here is another way in which we can discuss polarities in access and information.
Borges
Here is some background information about Jorge Luis Borges, which will help enrich your understanding of The Garden of Forking Paths.
Borges
Jorge Luis Borges composed only small essays or short narratives.
Wealth of invention, tight mathematical style.
Argentinian by birth, nurtured on Universal literature, Borges had no spiritual homeland. Born in 1899 and settled in Beunos Aires in 1921, after his education in Switzerland and Spain. His parents were intellectual middle class. Influened by the post WWI social aspects of the convergence of impact of war, industrialism and the emerging modern European art, he became part of the Argentine “ultraismo” – a mix of modern expressionist form and a nostalgia for certain national values…
Creates outside time and space; imaginary or symbolic worlds
Kin to Kafka. Poe amd always to Valery by the abrupt projections of his paradox into what has been called “his private metaphsyics.” He had a radical insistence on breaking with the known world and postulating another.
Started as a poet but from 1930 – 1940, he underwent a huge change and turned to the short narrative genre. A lot of what had emotionally fueled his earlier work became ranked within a larger context of vast universal processes. Oppressed by physical disabilities and the turmoil of Europe, Borges sought to create a coherent fictional world of intelligence. Some of his stories, like Tlon, project a tentative utopial into the future beyond the grim year of 1941 when it was written.
Sources are wide. Has read everything and very obscure literature:
The Cabalists
The Alexandrine Greeks
Medieval Philosophers
Pascal wrote, “Nature is an infinite sphere whose whose center is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.” Borges set out to hunt down this metaphor. Drawn from a 3rd century French theologian, Alain de Lilles “God is an intellogible sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” Such researches, carried out among the Chinese, the Arabs or the Egyptians, led him to the subject of his stories. Not a science ficton of probability, he admired the notion of possibility or impossibility. He said, “God must not engage in theology; the writer must not destroy by human reasonings, the faith that art requires of us.”
Inspired by the English writer John William Dunne, author of curious books about time, in which he claims the past, present and future exist simultaneously, as proved in our dreams. In death we shall rediscover all the instants of our life and we shall freely combine them as dreams. “God, our friends and Shakespeare will collaborate with us”. Nothing pleases Borges better than to play this way with mind, dreams, space and time. The more complicated the game becomes, the happier he is.
Looks for paradoxical intellectual possibilities. “ If this absurd postulate were developed to its extreme logical consequences, what would be created?’
The “Library of Babel” is the image of the universe, infinite and always starting over again. Most of the books in this library are unintelligible, letters thrown together by chance or perversely repeated, but sometimes in this labyrinth of letters, a reasonable line or sentence is found. Such are the laws of nature – tiny cases of regularity in a chaotic world.
Attracted by metaphysics but accepting no system as true, Borges makes out of all them a game for the mind. Of the fables that attract him, certain ones particularly fascinate him. The Endless Recurrance, or the circular repetition of all the history of the world; that of the dream within a dream; that of centuries that seem minutes, seconds that seem years; that of the halucinatory nature of the world. Borges once claimed that the basic devices of all fantastic literature are only four in number: the work within the work, the contamination of reality by dream, the voyage in time, and the double. These are both his themes and his techniques of construction.
Borges felt that it was we who had cast a spell on ourselves, we who have dreamed the universe. We can see in what it consists, the deliberately constructed interplay of mirrors and mazes of this thought, difficult but always acute and laden with secrets. In all these stories we find roads that fork, corridors that lead nowhere, except to other corridors, and so on as far as the eye can see. For Borges, this is the image of human thought, which endlessly makes its way through concastenations of causes and effects without ever exhausting infinity. Why wander in these labyrinths? Because the present infinity, these “vertiginous symetries” have their tragic beauty. The form is more important than the content.
Borges thought and style is highly original. Of the metaphysicians in his story “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, a history of an unknown planet, he writes “ they seek neither truth nor likelihood; they seek astonishment. They think metaohysics is a branch of the literature of fantasy.” That pretty well describes the greatness of Borges.
Borges
Jorge Luis Borges composed only small essays or short narratives.
Wealth of invention, tight mathematical style.
Argentinian by birth, nurtured on Universal literature, Borges had no spiritual homeland. Born in 1899 and settled in Beunos Aires in 1921, after his education in Switzerland and Spain. His parents were intellectual middle class. Influened by the post WWI social aspects of the convergence of impact of war, industrialism and the emerging modern European art, he became part of the Argentine “ultraismo” – a mix of modern expressionist form and a nostalgia for certain national values…
Creates outside time and space; imaginary or symbolic worlds
Kin to Kafka. Poe amd always to Valery by the abrupt projections of his paradox into what has been called “his private metaphsyics.” He had a radical insistence on breaking with the known world and postulating another.
Started as a poet but from 1930 – 1940, he underwent a huge change and turned to the short narrative genre. A lot of what had emotionally fueled his earlier work became ranked within a larger context of vast universal processes. Oppressed by physical disabilities and the turmoil of Europe, Borges sought to create a coherent fictional world of intelligence. Some of his stories, like Tlon, project a tentative utopial into the future beyond the grim year of 1941 when it was written.
Sources are wide. Has read everything and very obscure literature:
The Cabalists
The Alexandrine Greeks
Medieval Philosophers
Pascal wrote, “Nature is an infinite sphere whose whose center is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.” Borges set out to hunt down this metaphor. Drawn from a 3rd century French theologian, Alain de Lilles “God is an intellogible sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” Such researches, carried out among the Chinese, the Arabs or the Egyptians, led him to the subject of his stories. Not a science ficton of probability, he admired the notion of possibility or impossibility. He said, “God must not engage in theology; the writer must not destroy by human reasonings, the faith that art requires of us.”
Inspired by the English writer John William Dunne, author of curious books about time, in which he claims the past, present and future exist simultaneously, as proved in our dreams. In death we shall rediscover all the instants of our life and we shall freely combine them as dreams. “God, our friends and Shakespeare will collaborate with us”. Nothing pleases Borges better than to play this way with mind, dreams, space and time. The more complicated the game becomes, the happier he is.
Looks for paradoxical intellectual possibilities. “ If this absurd postulate were developed to its extreme logical consequences, what would be created?’
The “Library of Babel” is the image of the universe, infinite and always starting over again. Most of the books in this library are unintelligible, letters thrown together by chance or perversely repeated, but sometimes in this labyrinth of letters, a reasonable line or sentence is found. Such are the laws of nature – tiny cases of regularity in a chaotic world.
Attracted by metaphysics but accepting no system as true, Borges makes out of all them a game for the mind. Of the fables that attract him, certain ones particularly fascinate him. The Endless Recurrance, or the circular repetition of all the history of the world; that of the dream within a dream; that of centuries that seem minutes, seconds that seem years; that of the halucinatory nature of the world. Borges once claimed that the basic devices of all fantastic literature are only four in number: the work within the work, the contamination of reality by dream, the voyage in time, and the double. These are both his themes and his techniques of construction.
Borges felt that it was we who had cast a spell on ourselves, we who have dreamed the universe. We can see in what it consists, the deliberately constructed interplay of mirrors and mazes of this thought, difficult but always acute and laden with secrets. In all these stories we find roads that fork, corridors that lead nowhere, except to other corridors, and so on as far as the eye can see. For Borges, this is the image of human thought, which endlessly makes its way through concastenations of causes and effects without ever exhausting infinity. Why wander in these labyrinths? Because the present infinity, these “vertiginous symetries” have their tragic beauty. The form is more important than the content.
Borges thought and style is highly original. Of the metaphysicians in his story “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, a history of an unknown planet, he writes “ they seek neither truth nor likelihood; they seek astonishment. They think metaohysics is a branch of the literature of fantasy.” That pretty well describes the greatness of Borges.
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