The lack of Corporate and Governmental transparency has been a topic of much controversy in recent years, yet our only tool for encouraging greater openness is the slow, tedious process of policy reform.

Presented in the form of a Soviet F1 Hand Grenade, the Transparency Grenade is an iconic cure for these frustrations, making the process of leaking information from closed meetings as easy as pulling a pin.

Equipped with a tiny computer, microphone and powerful wireless antenna, the Transparency Grenade captures network traffic and audio at the site and securely and anonymously streams it to a dedicated server where it is mined for information. Continue reading

Webcasts of Media Squares - International Public Seminar on the New Forms of Protest and their Media (hosted by De Balie, Amsterdam, September 30, 2011).

Social protest has become almost inseparably linked to a plethora of media images and messages distributed via internet, mobile phones, social media, internet video platforms and of course traditional media outlets such as newspapers, radio and television. A popular category to have emerged recently is the ‘twitter-revolution’. In almost all cases (Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, London) the role of the platform turned out to be less than essential in retrospect. Protests mostly manifested on the streets and particularly the public squares (’Take the Square’). Continue reading

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Betabeat wrote: “For anyone who wasn’t aware, there are a few hundred protesters hanging out downtown in a park plaza two blocks from Wall Street. Despite allegations of Twitter censorship, tweets are collating around the hashtags #occupywallst, #occupywallstreet, #ows and #nycga. So when Betabeat walked past an iPad hooked up to a projector showing short hashtagged messages with the occasional photo, we assumed we were looking at a Twitter client. Turns out that’s not what it is. This app is called Vibe, the “new kid on the social media block,” and it’s something different: a Twitter-esque messaging system built by Hazem Sayed, a professional developer from California who built the app as an anonymous alternative to Twitter, reports the New York Daily News…” More >> Related: TXTmob (2004) by the Institute for Applied Autonomy.

The Rise of Performance Architecture: Camp-Conference on Art/Urban Strategies :: September 22 - October 1, 2011 :: Grisar Park, Brussels, Todays Art Festival.

“Accepting architecture as cultural production, its performative dimension must also contribute to a critical role, that is, to architecture’s capacity to produce commentary regarding the ongoing transformations of culture and society. In this sense, the notion of architectural performance implied here feeds directly upon the tradition of performance art.” — Pedro Gadanho, “Architecture as performance”, revista Dédalo N°2, Porto, 2007 Continue reading

Fluid Nexus is an application for Android phones and desktop computers enabling exchange of messages without the need for centralized mobile networks. Messages are transferred by short-range networking technologies like bluetooth and through the movement of people from one location to another.

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, networks continue to be defined by their stable topology represented in an image or graph. Peer-to-peer technologies promised new arrangements absent centralized control, but they still rely on stationary devices. Mobile phones remain wedded to conventional network providers. Continue reading

Tracing the Ephemeral: Tactical Media and the Lure of the Archive by David Garcia and Eric Kluitenberg

“Tactical Media emerged when the modest goals of media artists and media activists were transformed into a movement that challenged everyone to produce their own media in support of their own political struggles. This “new media” activism was based on the insight that the long-held distinction between the ‘street’ (reality) and the ‘media’ (representation) could no longer be upheld. On the contrary, the media had come to infuse all of society.

To challenge dominant (strategic) structures in society, it was necessary to develop new (tactical) means of producing and distributing media. Not a specialised task separate from the social movements, but a key activity around which social movements could coalesce.” [1] Continue reading

PWRT (The Psychoeconomy War Room Table) by Gustavo Romano, with Chema Diez del Corral, Álvaro Jesús Osuna Martín — part of Project Showcase, Visualizar’11: Understanding Infrastructures :: until July 30, 2011 :: Medialab Prado, Plaza de las Letras. C/ Alameda, 15 · 28014, Madrid. Continue reading

Dead Drops Master Class with Aram Bartholl :: June 29, 2011; 10:00 am - 4:00 pm :: V2_, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam.

The term “Dead drops” refers to places where spies leave information behind to be picked up by others; a method often used among spies during the Cold War. In Aram Bartholl’s version of the dead drop, USB memory sticks are installed in public locations for anyone to upload or download information. By doing so, an anonymous, offline, peer-to-peer network for the exchange of digital information is created. More information about the project and current Dead Drop locations is available here. Continue reading

Madame Wang: Journal of Geographically Dispersed Collaboration:

Madame Wang is a Quarterly Arts journal dedicated to dispersed collaboration, migration and encounter architectures, co-action and Post-human writing programmes. It has been formed in response to a mounting need to examine, engage and critique an emerging arts-practice that is multiple, data intelligent and severally located.

Madame Wang participates in the unfolding of critical and intuitive modes of production by working closely with artists and other disciplines to deliver texts. Group writing, recursive dialogue, critique and text-artworks are all part of the pallet of approaches to the subject. Through these means, we can properly test the propositions and strategies of distributed decision-making and the possibilities of its rhetoric. Continue reading