Tim Berners-Lee On Network Neutrality

Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the web, so to speak, weighs in on Net Neutrality.

When, seventeen years ago, I designed the Web, I did not have to ask anyoneÂ’s permission. [3]. The new application rolled out over the existing Internet without modifying it. I tried then, and many people still work very hard still, to make the Web technology, in turn, a universal, neutral, platform. It must not discriminate against particular hardware, software, underlying network, language, culture, disability, or against particular types of data. The Internet is increasingly becoming the dominant medium binding us. The neutral communications medium is essential to our society. It is the basis of a fair competitive market economy.

More than anyone, I think it is time for start-ups and their backers to take stock of what the loss of network neutrality would mean to their business. Win or lose, this one has business implications, more so for many of the smaller corporate citizens. [blogged by Om Malik on Broadband] WHAT YOU CAN DO. Continue reading

Call for Participants

Mobile Processing Workshop: INTERACTIVE APPLICATIONS FOR MOBILE PHONES WITH FRANCIS LI–Lisbon, Portugal, 15 - 19 May 06, Espaço Atmosferas, Rua da Boavista, 67, Lisbon.

The mobile phone has reached a level of adoption that far exceeds that of the personal computer. As a result, they are an emerging platform for new services and applications that have the potential to change the way we live and communicate.

Mobile Processing is an open source project that aims to drive this innovation by increasing the audience of potential designers and developers through a free, open source prototyping tool based on Processing and the open sharing of ideas and information. This workshop will introduce the Mobile Processing project and prototyping tool and provide hands-on instruction and experience with programming custom applications for the mobile phone. Continue reading

Call for PAPERS, PRESENTATIONS AND PERFORMANCES

(re)ACTOR: THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DIGITAL LIVE ART September 11, 2006 The Octagon @ Queen Mary, University of London London, England, UK, Deadline for 2-page submissions 26 May 2006. In cooperation with HCI 2006: ENGAGE; The 20th British HCI Group conference in co-operation with ACM

DIGITAL LIVE ART is the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI), live art and computing. This conference seeks to bring together practitioners and academics from the varying worlds of live art, computing and human-computer interaction for a lively debate and event which will explore this emerging field. Our specific context focuses on club cultures as a living context for digital live arts practices. Our expected outcomes are to create a community of digital live artists and to present strategies for designing, developing and evaluating Digital Live Art. Such an event provides an opportunity to open up conversations between digital art and live performance and will allow us to explore how it is used to increase our understanding of human-computer interaction in general. Continue reading

Fast Forward - Art History, Curation and Practice After Media

CALL FOR PAPERS – DEADLINE 31 MAY: Fast Forward - Art history, curation and practice after media; CHArt TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL CONFERENCE, Thursday 9 - Friday 10 November 2006, London venue to be confirmed.

Everything is changing. In particular our media are changing and developing in extraordinary and unprecedented ways and with great rapidity. This is particularly true of so-called ‘new media’, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web, mobile telephony, and digital video. All of these either enable us to do things we did before differently, or more often and more easily, or to do things we could previously barely imagine. This is transforming how we understand and use what we still call ‘media’, even as we enter a ‘post-media’ age. More dramatically, these developments are in the process of transforming not just our world, but our very selves, how we understand who we are. We are in the midst of dramatic shifts in terms of the paradigms by which we understand and act in the world. Continue reading

Asian Cyberart - Technology, Memory and Place

ASiA, IIAS and Waag Society organise Cyberasia Part Three: Asian Cyberart - Technology, Memory and Place: Wednesday May 10, 20.00 – 22.00 hrs. Language: English. Location; Waag Society, Nieuwmarkt 4, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Livestream.

New media are changing the contemporary art world profoundly. Under forces of intense globalization, the internet is being transformed into a worldwide spectacle of utopian fantasies and lost memories. In our highly networked society, however, the longing for a place, for a sense of identity - ‘virtualÂ’ or ‘realÂ’ - remains. At the same time, rapid urbanization and the related destruction of nature, old buildings, and neighbourhoods put places under constant threat. Particularly in Asia. art and technology provide a virtual resort, where the self can have it’s own space. Continue reading

Book Release and Talk

Art, Time and Technology examines the role of art in an age of ‘real time’ information systems and instantaneous communication. The increasing speed of technology and of technological development since the early nineteenth century has resulted in cultural anxiety. Humankind now appears to be an ever-smaller component of dauntingly complex technological systems, operating at speeds beyond human control or even perception. This perceived change forces us to rethink our understanding of key concepts such as time, history and art. Art, Time and Technology explores how the practice of art - in particular of avant-garde art - keeps our relation to time, history and even our own humanity open. Examining key moments in the history of both technology and art from the beginnings of industrialization to today, Charlie Gere explores both the making and purpose of art, and how much further it can travel from the human body. Continue reading

Wearing Tactile Space

Palpable City is a location aware garment that allows walkers to feel the spatial form of the urban grid as vibro-tactile rhythms on their body. The rhythms of the city space are parameterized by local conditions as the walker encounters them, reflecting the influence of time, light, temperature and humidity on the experience of space. The tactile space created can only be explored by moving through it.

The system consists of a GPS and a torso tactile display that communicates tactile textures related to the spatial form of the environment. Vibrotactile actuators are used to produce sensory saltation. Sensory saltation occurs across the senses resulting in the perception of apparent motion. Continue reading

Collaborative Images

An online environment that allows artists, designers, photoshop junkies, pixel pushers, collage artists & photographers to collaboratively design & edit a single image. In kollabor8, each image chain is an open digital image mutation collaboration, displayed like threads in a forum. Each link in the chain is in some way a derivative of the previous image, as designers iteratively add aesthetic features in a collage-like way. See also gridlove & swarmsketch. [blogged on information aesthetics] [Related: Imprimatur] Continue reading