a means to justify a beginning

a few days ago in the bar i began toying with some peers, the idea of a CPfNE periodical publication. currently at “brain-fart” stage and far from being more then just a notion of drunken inspiration, i have thrown together a quick and dirty mind map to visualize the idea.

please take a look at the attached jpeg and let me know what you think; if it is a viable and worthwhile project, if you would actually contribute time and work towards such an endeavor and if it’s all wrong and how we should actually do it, if to do it at all.
all cut-ups welcome.

space2place transmutation part two

here is an audio track that i slapped together for the crit on friday. it is simply a selection of anicdotal conversations that we encountered during the ethnography study element we conducted for a project mentioned in the previous post.

space into place transmutation

this week at school i am currently involved in a mandatory group project involving space intervention under the guise of social capital. the project involves several students from the MA courses of CSM school of design and school of interdisciplinary studies, including the Textile Futures MA students, Design Studies MA students, our colleagues at Industrial Design MA, MA Design by Project and of course, the MA Creative Practice for Narrative Environments posse. wuzzup.

so far it has been an intense 2 days of lectures, workshops, field work, research and meetings… lotsa, lotsa meetings. the project occurs in span of three days and in this time we are suppose to do all that and a bag o’ crisps… on top of getting to know each of our cross-discipline MA fellows, do an ethnographic study AND present an investiture of some sort. tomorrow is the crit. poo.

what we decided upon for a space2place intervention was to seek out and define the areas that were monitored by CCTV within london; something pretty easy to find, actually. the average londoner is photographed 300 times a day by CCTV cameras, not to mention some commercial spaces are even being audio recorded now so that conversations can be listened into in case of dissident smalltalk and flirting… i’ll let you chew on that for a moment.

using 2 inch wide yellow packing tape we marked out on the ground of covent garden, an area that was being monitored by CCTV. we choose covent garden specifically because it was at a crossways of several pedestrian walkways and roads, and was a meeting place and also a place for tourists and locals to work, shop and be at leisure. also using the same tape, we wrote out in plain english, signs on the ground denoting areas that were in and out of CCTV range.

our goal was to make apparent the actual boundaries and physical areas that were being monitored and vise versa. working differently then just a simple warning sign, people now had new perceptions of where and when their actions were being recorded.  along with the experiment, we also conducted surveys and a small anthropological activity to create a more rounded ethnological study. as the day progresses tomorrow, i will update this post with more materials and findings.

here is a photograph gallery of our field research day in covent garden.

WoW Comic

here is the World of Warcraft comic that was created by Myrto Karanika, Pernille Schmidt, Ryo Terui and yours truly.

this project is primarily for CSM – CPfNE (rationale in bold italics) so i suppose the following text will be quite boring to read (sorry!) unless you are involved with the course and for those of you reading this that are involved with the course, sorry it’s so boring!

We choose the comic format as our wayfinding proposal for Unit Two/Project Two for its tried and true historical role of being a media that is digestible, is dissident, and is also an accessible means to communicate socio-political ideas. it is also particularly favorable towards our target audience, which happens to be the “WoW addict”. it is also indirectly targeted towards the “counseling lifestyle professional” i.e., nutritionists, psychiatrists, etc.

the comic is entitled “Worldcraft”, to point out the wayfinding system that we are proposing within the context of the hybrid narrative. we propose that the counseling lifestyle professionals such as said examples play the game as in-game counselors. Other in-game players for advice regarding their own “real life” can then access these counselors. we feel that this would be a successful means to communicate advice, for it would still exist within the comforts of the virtual space that they have already been accustomed to.

click here for the large, readable version found on flickr. hope you enjoy it!

Vox Populi, Vox Dei!

if and when i do complete my studies at the University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design, Masters of Arts in Creative Practice for Narrative Environments, i will be the only one in the world with my combination of degrees along with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Monumental Art, which is my undergraduate degree. i know this doesn’t mean squat at the end of the day, but it is a thought that strokes my ego quite nicely.

for those of you who are thinking WTF?!? is Narrative Environments, i did manage to find a wikipedia entry regarding Narrative Environments within the sphere of Narratology. here is an excerpt from the entry:

A narrative environment is a space, whether physical or virtual, in which stories can unfold. A virtual narrative environment might be the narrative framework in which game play can proceed. A physical narrative environment might be an exhibition area within a museum, or a foyer of a retail space, or the public spaces around a building – anywhere in short where stories can be told in space.

hope this confuses you enough to be impressed… go wikipedia!

Vox Populi, Vox Dei! (the voice of the people is the voice of God!)

LUA – CSM – MA CPfNE – ARUP – STEEP group – manual research aggregator (that’s a mouthfull!)

This is a link to the blog for the CSM – CPfNE – ARUP project STEEP groups and those of us who are too lazy to remember or bookmark the actual URL of the address (like me) and have to navigate to certain pages by retracing the series of links visited before stumbling upon the one you actually wanted.

cpfne-arup.blogspot.com

come to think of it, i am starting to navigate and remember the psychogoeography of nodes around the internet through the use of virtual landmarks (kinda like “go to boingboing, left on slashdot under the -1 modded troll comment in whatever article, click through the banner ad, straight to flickr and then right on the link found in the signature of the dude who started the google cached discussion about monkey-less bananas on the LastFM forum). it kinda reminds me of when i first moved to the netherlands.

not really being able to navigate around urban spaces like i was used to in toronto (the grid of streets found in toronto and other north american cities pretty much ment it was “up and over or over and up” to get to certain places. this personal navigational system was replaced by concentric circles of streets, twisty roads, bridges and dykes that radiated from the center where the church was and became the “where the fuck am i and where the hell am i going, but i am riding a bike so try not to think about how stoned you are or you’ll get crushed by the tram” system of dutch city way-finding), so i had to begin to remember the progression in which i came across certain landmarks in order to get to specific places like my favorite coffeeshop for instance, only to realize that all the while i was taking inefficient routes to places for years after friends native to holland would actually, physically show me that where i wanted to be was just around the corner and not around the city in a downward spiral movement… or maybe i couldn’t navigate that well because of time spent in the coffeeshops… ah, i can’t remember any more… i’m hungry..

…oh and yes, i know i could use del.icio.us… and i do. just to confuse myself even more i have two accounts and also aggregate all the fii_research material on the CPfNE-ARUP blog… for those who actually get all the diminutives and abbreviations, this post is for you. come to think of it, bookmarking the URL would have been easier by now since i have started to make this a full blown blog post. i will make sure to tag this in the “excuses for posting inconsistently” category… ok… shutting up…

…now.

my first assignment for CPfNE

this video was my contribution to the first assignment for my MA in Creative Practice for Narrative Environments (CPfNE) at Central Saint Martin’s College (CSM); University of the Arts London(UAL).

this was essentially a “get to know your peers” assignment in which i made a short stop-motion animation narrative of a colleague in the class. i had just a couple days to create it using a computer, dslr and mp3 player with microphone.

enjoy.

Technorati Tags: artist, villainous.biz, smallcaps, art, creative practice for narratice environments, london, video, youtube.com, designer, central saint martin’s

the nonsensical political antics of a “neutral” country

on the 1st of october, austrians around the world will join in communion and vote in their new supreme overlord of the once great and prolific habsburg empire, which pretty much conquered the entire known universe (earth, heaven and all) by sending sons and daughters to various european empires to essentially sleep their way to the top of the euro-charts, in and around the 18th century.

like how most kookoo politicians around the world do, various tactics are employed to woo (that’s “to woo” not “tha wu” ’cause tha wu-tang clan ain’t nuttin’ to fuk wit) the hearts of the plebeian voters. this phenomenon is no different in austria. here is a song performed by the austrian educational minister from the 70’s. the title of the song translates roughly to “hands of my pussy” in english and is a testament to the sons and daughters that this fine nation has produced, and lays the stage for the next generation of austrian leaders who will be voted in next month.

the last day of mankind (or, maedelmaedel grad 2006)

not only was i in enschede in the month of june, but i also had a chance to catch maedelmaedel’s graduation in graphic design from the university of applied arts in wien, austria.

finishing as magister (the german education systems’ equivalent of masters degree) and with honors in the class of fons hickmann (for some reason, the professor of the class is important to point out in the austrian/german education system… oh, and btw beware of pop-ups!!!… intelligent design… ha!), her grad project involved the creation of a visual language to move beyond the confines of the simple illustration of an obscure austrian play about war, revolution and the human condition.

using the tools/skills/imagination that were afforded to her through trial, error and experience, the contextualization of the the piece Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (which translates to the last day of mankind) involved illustration, character design, font design, layout and dialog that came together to form a huge, multi-panel poster that was presented on a public viennese poster column. not only was a font created specifically for the project, but she also managed to draw 175 individual caricatures to interpret each character that appears in the play.

I believe in regards to the pertinent dialog within the text, it was almost necessary to point out the importance of such a play as Die letzten Tage der Menschheit, especially in regards to our own day and age… not that i have read it, or anything.

in october maedelmaedel will move to london to begin her studies at the illustrious central st. martin’s college of art and design, where she will be doing her masters in creative practice for narrative environments. congratulations and good luck, we’ll need it!

ensche-daze AKi endexam 2006

i recently had a chance to return to enschede and found myself back in the city of my alma mater, and paid a long overdue visit to the community that raised me so well at the aki. i also spent a few days at the offmess (a former military air base turned squat house that i lived in during my final year in the aki) to help my friend danja vasiliev, aka binary.koala construct his endexam installation, PowerOnOff.

calling upon my much sought after skills of messy soldering and bad jokes, i helped danja where i could (like lifting things) and even picked up a few new skills (like putting things down) and also helped out with the much neglected process of documentation OF process (something all artists have problems with during the heat of creation… haha, i said “heat of creation”… uf.. too much family guy).

about the installation: the concept as i initially perceive it; for i wont get to see the end result until the end of the month at the opening, involves translating how ones actions in a virtual space (i.e. surfing the web) can affect the real-life or actual world.

about the artist: danja vasiliev – super cool (russian) guy, MPC colleague and brotha-from-anotha-motha. what can i say, like all good artists his work speaks for himself. he recently was invited to join the masters program at the piet zwart institute in rotterdam. congrats to you, man!

back to the installation: parts of the installation consist of an interface that is familiar, like a standard laptop and a common web browser, and also a custom built computer consisting of a GNU/linux installation and 7 optical relays that control the power given to all the chosen house hold devices that make up of the rest of the installation; hence the name PowerOnOff.

as an experience, the installation draws the viewer into an inclosed space initially deprived of light. once given a chance to ajust to the slight sensory depravation, an arrangement of standard household devices used everyday will become apparent in the space, presented on a stage. situated before the stage will be the laptop where people can surf. on another screen, an ascii readout of the behavioral patterns of the participant will be tracked.

as you surf you build credit for visiting certain websites. this credit is translated into energy that powers for instance the lights, fans, an old school audio tape reel recorder, a washing machine, etc., thus providing the resources to do things we take for granted every given day.

it is an installation that reveals the ever increasing transparency between our online and off-line existence, and also tries to address the fact that what we do in these two seemingly separate worlds (real and online) does in fact have an effect on one another, making the world we live in and the world we have “created” as one..

..well that was a’lil esoteric i suppose. anyways its soooo freaking cool (LOL!!) so check it out if you are in the neighborhood, OK?. visit the AKi’s webpage for more details, and i will of course follow up with updates on this humble weblog, eventually.