CARNET DE NOTES

Picture of the Day

2008-03-17T21:11:00.001-04:00

Picture of the Day

Montreal, Sainte Catherine

Politic, YouTube and Louise Bourgeois

2008-03-17T19:52:00.004-04:00

Politic, YouTube and Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bougeois, Couple.

Algumas atividades recentes por aqui. Assisti a confer�ncia de Darin Barney, "One Nation Under the Google", sobre a dimens�o pol�tica da internet, na sexta. Barney retoma a quest�o da politiza��o da tecnologia e do potencial, ao mesmo tempo democr�tico e desagregador das novas tecnologias. Ele reconhece que a Internet oferece ferramentas para o exerc�cio da cidadania e do ideal democr�tico sem precedentes na hist�ria das m�dias (as fun��es p�s-massivas), mas que tamb�m, pelo determinismo e pela busca da neutralidade do desenvolvimento cient�fico e t�cnico, pode levar � uma despolitiza��o e � uma ader�ncia aos novos dispositivos sem questionamento. No fundo, o que ele prop�e n�o � algo novo, mas levar em conta que a ci�ncia e a tecnologia s�o ideologias (Habermas) e que por isso mesmo, devem ser objetos de questionamento pol�tico desde suas bases: por que esse sistema operacional e n�o outro? por que a dissemina��o de c�meras de vigil�ncia? por que esse sistema de TV digital e n�o outro? Por que esse tipo de celular e esse uso das redes? Na maioria dos pa�ses (ele citou casos de excess�o na Dinamarca), essas quest�es s�o deixadas nas m�os dos tecnocratas, j� que s�o "t�cnica". No entanto, elas s�o pol�ticas e atingem os cidad�os que, nessa posi��o, devem ser capazes de exercer um julgamento sobre a coisa p�blica. Ele investe assim na m�xima heideggeriana de que a t�cnica n�o deve ser vista apenas um instrumento neutro e defende a id�ia de que recusar ou aderir sem cr�tica ao desenvolvimento tecnol�gico leva ao mesmo erro: deixar a t�cnica ao seu pr�prio ritmo - ou seja, � burocracia estatal, aos cientistas e engenheiros. A palestra foi interessante, mas n�o me pareceu trazer nenhuma novidade ao debate.

No domingo assisti � avant-premi�re mundial do document�rio sobre Louise Bourgeois, Louise Bourgeois: The spider, the mistress and the tangerine (EUA, 2008) no FIFA, Festival International du film sur l'Art. Um excelente document�rio, informativo, sem ser did�tico, e buscando cumplicidade e se aproximar da sensibilidade da artista. Sua obra � uma depura��o de sua pr�rpia hist�ria de vida. Sa� apaixonado por essa senhora de hoje mais de 90 anos e que com humor, sarcasmo, ironia e muita simplicidade consegue fazer de sua vida uma obra de arte e vice-versa. Ela diz em determinado momento que arte n�o tem muito nada a ver com materiais (e � uma escultora falando!), mas com id�ias, emo��es e sentimentos. Me lembrei muito de uma exposi��o do Helio Oiticica, "CosmoCoca", mas n�o sei muito qual a rela��o ;-)). De qualquer forma o document�rio � longo mas muito bom.
No link do filme acima voc�s podem ler:

"(...)As a screen presence, she is magnetic, mercurial and emotionally raw. There is no separation between her life as an artist and the memories and emotions that affect her daily life. As an artist she has been at the forefront of a succession of artistic developments, but always on her own powerfully inventive and disquieting terms. In 1982, at the age of 71, she became the first woman to be honoured with a major retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art. In the decades since, she has created some of her most potent and persuasive work. The directors filmed the artist frequently between 1993 and 1998, at her Brooklyn Studio, and her work in museums in the U.S. and Europe. While revealing her childhood sources of pain, she describes the ritualistic processes by which her memories become embodied in sculptures and installations, whose aggressive magic the camera explores."

E hoje participei da discuss�o "Webfilm and Citizenship", um semin�rio colaborativo entre Centre for research on intermediality (CRI) e Media@McGill. Ambiente descontra�do e produtivo, com v�rios pesquisadores (rec�m doutores, professores, mestrandos) travando discuss�es sobre as novas m�dias e principalmente a Web 2.0. A �nfase foi o YouTube e ao que eles chamam, erradamente ao meu ver, de "web-filme". A partir da� apareceram quest�es ligadas � cidadania, � censura, � pol�tica e, claro, � linguagem das novas m�dias, aos g�neros audiovisuaus, � narratividade, ao papel do internauta, etc. Bom ambiente e discuss�es estimulantes. Bom mesmo foi ver a integra��o de dois grupos de pesquisa, de universidades diferentes, que falam l�nguas diferentes, participarem juntos ao mesmo debate.

Picture of the Day

2008-03-16T13:36:00.001-04:00

McGill University

Mobile City conference

2008-03-16T11:59:00.001-04:00

Mobile City conference

Mais resenhas sobre a Mobile Cit Conference em Rotterdam, ambas no Pasta & Vinegar de Nicolas Viva. A primeira retoma confer�ncias de Malcolm McCullough, Christian Nold, Jeroen van Shaik, Stephen Graham. Abaixo alguns trechos:

"Malcolm McCullough: (...) First, "the city itself is an inscription" and there lots of instances of inscriptions from graffiti to state proclamations to the contentions of branding, and from petroglyphs to banners to lit facades, the architecture of the city has been layered with lasting messages. To him, there's an tension between "locative media/emergent culture of street level participatory urban computing" AND the "built environment as a new media", sort of "tagging versus LED display". In one case, it?s about the fashion of blinking "push media" (displays), in the other, it?s a rather "pull" mode. (...)

Christian Nold: (...) To him, the work of Blast Theory or GPS drawings are nice but are only a limited account of cities and wondered about the presence of people and social relationships in there (or the lack of). He then criticized projects such as Real Time Rome stating that they are interesting but are a techno-fetishistic way to represent Rome: where is the history of Rome? What kind of social relationships are represented behind these atomic explosions? Locative Media, for Nold, is about verbs such as "gather/share/play/visualize/imagine" currently. And he thinks the field should rather focus on "collaborate (people, institutions), archive, educate, challenge (politics), change behavior (although it may sound instrumental) and organise". That's why he think Oakland crimespotting (Stamen Design) interesting because they re-interprete publicly available data and make then legible for people. (...)

Jeroen van Shaik: (...) Using examples drawn from Spatial Metro, he showed how activity patterns can represent urban attraction, invisible borders, the structure of the city, the relation between movement and people's purposes or the relation between time spent in certain places and patterns of movements. To him, tracking have challenges: - re-conceptualizes City-ICT relationships; - tracking tech are space/time adjusting (...): there is a difference between cities (which are about building streets, material stuff), which tracking technologies is not.; - re-conceptualizes the role of urban research, urban design/planning OR merely a new research instrument? (...)

Stephen Graham: (...) Graham proposed 3 starting points: 1) To abandon the notion of a "real" and a "virtual" world. The situation is best understood not as real/virtual binary but rather simply the latest process in a long history of remediation that refashions and extends earlier media (as proposed by Bolter and Grusin in 1999). 2) Cities can be seen to emerge as fluid machines, places which combine "distant proximity" and "proximate distance". It's more accurate to follow Deleuze and Guattari when they take the city as a process and not as a shape: with flows of energy, people goods, services, etc. Therefore it's interesting to see how locative media fit into cities as a process. 3) Like all new technologies, ubicomp and locative media tend to becomes hidden and disappear at precisely the moment they become most important. (...)". Um post do Smart Mobs resenha tamb�m a apresenta��o de Graham.

O segundo pots reseenha a sua pr�rpia apresenta��o. Trechos:

"(...) my point was to focus on issues regarding interaction design and spatial environment (not that I dismiss the privacy issues of locative media or the politics of ubicomp but it's not my field). My point was to describe one of the limit of current location-based services design: the fact that most of the time space (the material environment) is assumed to be uniform and homogeneous. Based on the work we did in the CatchBob! project (a location-based gamed developed to be played on our campus), as well as some other material, I described how this was not the case.

(Picture courtesy of Patrick Jermann)

The second point concerned the heterogeneity of space. The picture shows the mapping of WiFi antennas or our campus. As one can see, they are not evenly distributed and since we used Wireless signals to compute people's location in space, it was clear that the accuracy was different depending on the location in space (it was less accurate in the lower part). In addition, the heterogeneity of space is also caused by topographical limits: indoor/outdoor transitions for example.

(Picture courtesy of Fabien Girardin)

And finally, that picture shows three different traces of a passage in space using a GPS. Depending on the level considered, the accuracy of the positioning is way different (from dots to a straight line). Sometimes it?s not even continuous, so how can we design a service based on that?(...)"

Tibet

2008-03-15T16:45:00.003-04:00

Tibet

Foto Globe and Mail

Blogosfera passa informa��es sobre a situa��o atual em Llasa, ap�s repress�o chinesa �s manifesta��es. Vejam post do Global Voice: "Just looking for any word from bloggers in the Lhasa area on what the situation is there as of Friday local time; The unrest coincides with the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan people's unsuccessful uprising against the PRC occupation of the former theocracy, and comes the day after what was being called the worldwide Tibetan people's uprising was stopped at the Indian border. Updates will be added here as further blog posts are found. The Time China blog brings us one European tourist's writing, photos and video from Lhasa earlier this week."

Busca no Technorati revela tamb�m muita atividade da blogosfera.

David McCallum

2008-03-15T10:34:00.001-04:00

David McCallum

Entrevista com o artista canadense (de Toronto) David McCallum , que lan�ou em 2003 o projeto "warbike", reportado por esse Carnet no ano passado. Abaixo trecho mostrando como a sua pr�tica criou novas significa��es no espa�o urbano:

" (...) What I found was that on my rides, my perception of the space had changed. This was a route that I took several times a day, so I thought I understood the spaces. But the backpack was screaming at me something different, that there was something else going on here that I couldn't perceive.

The experience of hearing aspects of a space, or learning something about them in a tangible sense, is far more powerful than being told explicitly, which is an abstract way of knowing something and removed from direct perception through one's own senses.

The Warbike was my effort to share that experience with people. I thought that my changing relationship to the space was fascinating, and I'd hoped that others' experiences would be as well."(...)

14 theses and ghosts for locative and mobile media

2008-03-15T10:27:00.001-04:00

14 theses and ghosts for locative and mobile media

Post do adventures in jutland indica 14 teses sobre locative m�dia e a id�ia de "Loco-motion", de Andrew Murphie. Interessante como tema das "post-mass media functions", "territorialization", mobilidade e imobilidade, temporalidade, distribui��o de conte�do, entre outros que venho discutindo, aparecem aqui com variantes:

"Mobile and locative media are now at the core of things. This is an unstable core. It's this instability I'm interested in today. I'm not trying to 'pin down' mobile and locative media. Rather I'm interesting in how what I'm calling 'loco-motion' propels an ongoing variation in living and technical systems. This has implications for thinking about media, but also for much else. I'm also interested in loco-mobile media as inter-temporal. By this I don't mean that we have lots of modes of living available to us, that we can switch between. Rather I'm suggesting that the switching itself is becoming our prime mode of living, not only with mobile phones, or locative media, but all media events, for example VJing.

14 THESES ON MOBILE AND LOCATIVE MEDIA

1 - If a body coincides with its own variati0n' (Massumi) then mobile media coincide with their own variation
2 - Location is Mobile
3 - The Locative Opens a Field of Variation
4 - Loco-motion remakes communication - but not as communication studies style communication. Here 'Communication is a mutual adjustment of
bodies' (Sean Watson)
5 - Loco-motive battles are not over content, or communications, or intellectual property, but over affective distribution.
6 - Work with loco-motion is transdisciplinary, beyond even this perhaps. There are no 'stable' media to pin down in a discipline. A self-satisfied Media Studies perishes.
7 - Mobility is often immobile, if immobile intensity. However, it's also true that mobility creates mobility.
8 - It's the phone that's mobile, not you.
9 - Loco-motion resists 'art', but is good for chasings
10 - Loco-motion brings the 'postcognitive' into fuller operation (Mark Amerika)
11 - New inter-temporalities proliferate.
12 - So do new 'pre-accelerations' (Erin Manning). So do new preterritorialisations
13 - loco-motion is about targeting (servomechanisms rule the world in most spheres of life)
14 - loco-motion 'fractalises' (Guattari) 'the screen' and with it the society of spectacle (there is no attention, no 'capture', no time of the gaze, only inter-times) (...)"

The Panopticon

2008-03-15T09:23:00.002-04:00

The Panopticon

Para quem se interessa por c�meras de vigil�ncia, h� um Flickr Group, o Pictures Of Surveillance Cameras, onde � poss�vel ver um mapa dos lugares onde as fotos foram tiradas: panoptincon do panopticon?

Muitas dessas c�meras funcionam por redes sem fio em cicuito fechado e artistas, como a canadense Michelle Teran, tentam justamente inverter a l�gica e problematizar a sociedade do controle e vigil�ncia. J� hav�amos relatado aqui nesse Carnet o projeto "Life. A User's Manual" onde ela capta imagens pelas redes wi-fi das c�meras e as exp�em em p�blico. Vejam agora o resumo do trabalho "A Beginner's Guide to Parasitic Behavior", apresentado em Madrid na semana passada no Medialab Prado:

"A parasite is defined as an organism living with, or on another organism and an intimate association between organisms of two or more kinds. In cities, associations between technological objects and networks, buildings and bodies are carried out in ways that can be considered parasitic, illustrating a continuous and emerging state of hybridity. An artist, the ultimate parasite, who creates networked, location-based works can highlight and exploit these different relationships, by hijacking transmissions and space, developing hybrid forms between the technological and everyday, nomadic and vagabond architectures and other delightful activities. Within this seminar we will explore all things parasitic and consider various strategies and methodologies for making networked location-based work."

The Mobile City Conference

2008-03-15T09:04:00.001-04:00

The Mobile City Conference

Lego na entrada do evento: "Contemporary cities are the realization of a vision that was once upon a time played with, perhaps even on a table filled with Lego."

Post de Roman Tol Blog faz uma bela s�ntese do encontro em Rotterdam. Tive um paper e a participa��o nos workshops aceitos, mas n�o fui por n�o ter tido apoio para a viagem (uma fortuna de Edmonton para Rotterdam), e logo ter surgido o evento em Madrid com todo o apoio. Bom, uma extensiva resenha com v�rios projetos e reflex�es interessantes. Para uma vis�o completa veja o post. Aqui apenas a conclus�o.

Anne Nigten, StalkShow: StalkShow deals with the threat of insecurity and isolation in public space.

"(...) There are optimistic and pessimistic ways of looking at technological advancement. Ambient, ubiquitous or locative media, like all new technological systems, tend to become hidden and disappear at precisely the moment that they become important. They weave themselves in the practices of everyday life. Infrastructure is embedded, transparent, temporal or spatial reach or scope, is learned by its users, and is linked to conventional practices (e.g. electricity). From the cerebral discussions, the project presentations, and questions from the audience it can be concluded that there are three domains which technological expansion and the ?hybridization of space? influence: consumerism, militarism/security, and urban activism (art + activism). Technology is placed in the city with good intentions, but now the architecture is there for control. Database coupling and searches result in that we have become statistical persons. Political choices establish how algorithms are determining networks; it can be used commercially, militaristic, or for reformation. The topics moved beyond city architecture and touched upon urban culture and identity. Moreover, it questioned the interplay of physical and digital urban spheres in an age of mobile media. (...)"

Jackson, Mississippi

2008-03-15T08:36:00.001-04:00

Jackson, Mississippi

Pequeno v�deo sobre o evento Black Public Media: NMI 2007 Locative Media, que busca documentar a cultura do Blues no Delta do Mississippi.

"As part of NBPC's New Media Institute 2007, 26 producers gathered in Jackson, Mississippi to create new media pieces documenting blues culture in the Mississippi Delta. Their final products are as varied as their talents; video and audio pieces, interactive locative media geo tags, even website architectures. NMI 2007 was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

Locative Media Projects. For the 2007 NMI, three teams of media makers were convened in Mississippi to use a mix of visual descriptions and audio soundscape impressions to paint a picture of three historic Blues landmarks; the Hisckory Street neighborhood in Jackson, Mississippi, the Riverside Hotel, and the WGRM radio station. These projects plan to use a mixture of GPS technology and mobile media distribution to create site specific experiences for the audience. The video here narrated by team leader Leslie Rule, utilizes a visual "screencast" (video capture of the computer interface) to recreate what the mobile or computer experience would look like."

Serious Game and Communities

2008-03-15T08:10:00.001-04:00

Serious Game and Communities

Post do MediaShift Idea Lab, de Leslie Rule, mostra como os "Location-Based Mobile Games" podem ser usados de forma mais "s�ria", para educac�o, por exemplo. Sobre o conceito: "The term Serious Games is in the vernacular, and we see games that teach, inform, and enlightened but are not necessarily in formal learning environments. They are being used to teach more traditional organizational change issues like Systems Thinking, Collaborative Learning, Leadership, and Professional Development. There are Games for Health being built for healthcare applications and to explore new ways to improve global healthcare. Games are also being designed to effect
overlay on the physical spaces you inhabit, thereby sharing the embedded cultural knowledge we all have."

Um projeto interessante informado nesse sentido � o "Create-A-Space", tamb�m usado para a educa��o e que permite a cria��o de hist�rias (produ��o de textos, imagnes, sons) e localiz�-las com GPS. O Create-A-Scape � fruto de uma parceria do Futurelab - Bristol e a HP, e � um software modificado do mSpace da empresa. O software permite criar o que eles chama de "mediascape":

"A mediascape is composed of sounds, images and video placed outside in your local area. To see the images and video, and hear the sounds you need a handheld computer (PDA) and a pair of headphones. An optional GPS unit can automatically trigger the images, video and sounds in the right places.To create a mediascape, you start with a digital map of your local area. Using special, free software, you can attach digital sounds, pictures and video to places that you choose on the map (see below). By going outside into the area the map covers, you can experience the mediascape. Using the handheld computer and headphones, you can hear the sounds and see the pictures and video in the places the author of the mediascape has put them. All sorts of exciting things can happen as you explore the mediascape." Aqui � poss�vel ver um v�deo feito por um estudante.

Em rela��o ao post de ontem sobre comunidades e tecnologias m�veis, o post do MediaShift informa tamb�m sobre o projeto "Pleasurable Cities", do Futurelab, Bristol, GB, que visa investigar como as tecnologias podem ajudar a criar refor�o comunit�rio, logo politico e social, entre os jovens, principalmente com o uso de telefones celulares e servi�os baseados em localiza��o.

Sum�rio: "The Pleasurable Cities project is an investigation into how everyday technologies might be used to create a dialogue between young people about their local community spaces. The project explores the pros and cons of technology-enhanced systems (utilising located media and mobile phones) to enable young people to share their ideas with peers and policy makers and to affect change to the environments in which they, live, play, work and learn."

A quest�o das comunidades, e mais precisamente das "Mobile Communities", o do "Mobile Social Networking" � um tema chave para compreender as rela��es sociais mediadas pelas tecnologias m�veis e consequentemente, a dimens�o pol�tica (em breve um post sobre essa quest�o). O evento, "Mobile Communities Unconference", na California vai precisamente discutir isso. Justificativa:

"Another? Scale. The number of mobile handsets in use just dwarfs the number of PCs. Another? Experience. You can take it (your network) with you. With the user experience that advanced handheld devices like the iphone bring, you no longer signifignanty compromise your online experience when using a handset. And last but not least: Location. Locative experiences and media are going to explode soon. I got a taste of this when I worked at Autodesk, but just the simple fact of knowing where you are geographically, and where friends, family and potential contacts are relative to your position adds a whole new layer of meaning and experience to social networking. Want to join the conversation? We have an AWESOME group of folks lined up to discuss this next Thursday, March 20th in Palo Alto." Mais infos no link do evento.

Place, Space and City

2008-03-14T11:36:00.003-04:00

Place, Space and City

Artigo publicado na revista Liminalities, "Making Sense of the City: Place, Space, and Rhetoric in Portland?s Pioneer Courthouse Square", de Erin Daiana McClellan, retoma as discuss�es sobre lugar, espa�o e significado do uso das cidades que tenho feito aqui no Carnet.

Alguns trechos interessantes para a nossa discuss�o sobre lugar e locative media:

"Each city is often connected to a central public square in discussions of the city's
health, culture, and demographics. And each public square often (re)presents itself to the world in terms of the city within which it resides. The public square, in this case, plays a pivotal role in determining how people make sense of the written, oral, and performative texts that are consumed within and about it. Such sense-making processes include individual and collective interpretations of public squares, which take into account two different types of understanding: spatial (grounded in concepts of space) and platial (grounded in concepts of place). Both spatial and platial approaches to understanding always require each other in some degree but continually appear as privileged or disadvantaged in particular sense-making processes of how some aspect of public life is meaningful. In other words, place functions in an inherently dialectical tension with space; both are used in sense-making processes, articulated in discourses, and performed in meaningful ways. Understanding a city?s public space requires both understanding how that space is made sense of in terms of particular places, and how a particular place provides definitional parameters for making sense of more abstract public discursive space. A central public square is one way that this abstract-tangible, space-place relationship can be seen to appear in the ways its users articulate and perform its meaning.

(...) For instance, a person without a home may make sense of a public square as a place to sit without getting hassled, while a tourist visiting the same square may make sense of it as an historical landmark. This tension does not preclude collective negotiation to reconcile different sense-making processes or even coexisting contradictory meanings, but it does require recognizing the multiplicity of possibilities, including verbal, Portland?s Pioneer Courthouse Square ...

(...) Recent theoretical distinctions have been made between place and space in rhetorical studies, most often in an attempt to discuss public memory in relation to museums, monuments and other public commemorative structures, and landscapes. But other disciplines have produced scholarship also attempting to differentiate the terms conceptually before practically concerning themselves with the effects. For instance, Philip Sheldrake argues that the difference between place and space exists in the (lack of) concreteness of each term. Place, in this distinction, is a concrete and tangible entity and space is abstract and intangible. Space generally refers to abstract and intangible evocations of discourse, as a host to discourse about place, or as an overarching contextual backdrop in which discourse occurs. Place, on the other hand, is generally discussed as a physical or tangible entity in which social, political, and cultural discourses are understood, a limited or bounded area in which rhetoric emerges in and about, or as an approachable or exclusionary tool for making sense of a larger discourse in specific ways. Particular contexts require particular rhetorical strategies to be effective.

(...) Sometimes scholars have chosen to privilege space over place in their discussions of rhetorical 'effect.' For example, Benjamin Barber downplays place in terms of its relationship to democracy (and/or capitalism): 'The communities that communitarians yearn for are not likely to flourish between the crowded freeways and the denuded public squares of an overweening commercial civilization, where corporate developers claim they have won another victory for democracy every time they build a new mall.' Barber presents squares as connected places and very different than the destination for lively discussion of 'public good' that occurred in the Agora or polis of antiquity. The 'public good' in Barber's discussion is determined not by all interested parties' involvement in open debate, but by the most powerful voices that are able to effect the creation of policy. Instead of a collectively experienced and negotiated understanding, place for Barber is the effect of a larger system gone awry. The consequence of adopting this meaning, Barber claims, is a hyper-focus on the particular with little thought to how the particular affects the general. Without understanding that the larger community within which a public square resides may not need another commercial venue but instead an open and accessible forum within which to participate is a consequence of privileging one conception of place in a sense-making process about the square as meaningful.

(...) While Barber privileges space over place, others employ the idea of place over
space in their explanations of the public sphere. For instance, Sennett emphasizes place as the location where ideas take action. He grounds his concept of theatrum mundi, or the ability to hold codified beliefs that allow us to understand drama in the theater as apart from and simultaneously reflective of everyday social interaction, in the connection between performance of meaning and a larger sense of belonging. Place and space are coordinated in this manner but remain consequential in the way they are understood, employed, and interpreted in any given situation. For Sennett, the place where people gather signifies both the opportunities and constraints people understand to be a part of their sense-making processes of place. In this view, we can only perform what we understand to be possible 'in the world.' (...) Although the latter is engaged in specific discursive spaces with others, Sennett sees the physical places where these beliefs are enacted to be the more valuable in helping to understand how our cities are meaningful.

Rather than hypothesizing about abstract spaces that host ever-changing and competing discourses, Sennett points out that all experiences and social connections are all grounded in particular places. Similarly, all discursive spaces are bound by opportunities and constraints connected to the situations and places within which they occur. These practical reflections, however, often raise even more questions of possibility: If we are only able to create meaning based on our experiences grounded 'in the world,' then are we fated to live within the realm of current possibility forever? Can we ever move beyond the tangible constraints within which we understand the world to be meaningful? Or can we eventually imagine a world void of such tangible constraints that allow us to entertain possibilities of meaning not accessible in our current experience 'in the world'?

(...) Edward Casey distinguishes between place and space by tracing the concepts back to their Greek roots. Place is associated with topoi, meaning the commonly negotiated and understood categories (commonplaces) that help us to make sense of our world in particular, tangible, and contestable ways; space is associated with ch�ra, referring to the ?room? within which bodies move and is understood to shape those bodies? opportunities in abstract, hypothetical, and intangible ways.

(...) First, place precedes rhetoric as a performance in itself. It provides material context for rhetoric, and in this way, can be understood to construct meaning and inform sense-making processes for individuals and collectives alike in particular and tangible terms and enactments. Second, space encompasses place and rhetoric in a way that allows for both to be imagined and negotiated in meaningful ways. Different people imagine (and practice) sense-making about a public square that reflects and engages larger understandings of opportunity and constraint presented in and about the city within which it lies. (...)"

Mapping everything

2008-03-14T11:02:00.002-04:00

Mapping everything

Interessante texto de Jessica Clark, "The New Cartographers What does it mean to map everything all the time?" (via Locative Media) esclarece pontos interessantes que coloquei recentemente em minhas �ltimas comunica��es em Alberta e Madrid (no final desse post).

Trechos:

"We no longer go to maps to find out where we are. Instead, we tell maps where we are and they form around us on the fly. (...) Maps are everywhere these days. The ubiquity of global positioning systems (GPS) and mobile directional devices, interactive mapping tools and social networks is feeding a mapping boom. Amateur geographers are assigning coordinates to everything they can get their hands on?and many things they can't. 'Locative artists' are attaching virtual installations to specific locales, generating imaginary landscapes brought vividly to life in William Gibson's latest novel, Spook Country. Indeed, proponents of 'augmented reality' suggest that soon our current reality will be one of many 'layers' of information available to us as we stroll down the street. Like other technological innovations, this trend gives with one hand and takes with the other. For some, mapping has become a vibrant new language - a way to interpret the world, find like-minded folks and make fresh, sometimes radical, perspectives visible. For others, maps portend threats to privacy and freedom of movement. Just see Privacy International's Map of Surveillance Societies Around the World, which classifies the United States as an 'endemic surveillance society.'

(...) Google Maps Mania, a personal blog run by Canadian Mike Pegg, documents the world as seen from hundreds of different perspectives. You can track UFOs, point yourself toward Mecca, find out where your pet fish is from or browse books by their geographical location. Or, if you're the Secret Service, you can request that Vice President Dick Cheney?s house be blurred on Google Maps for security purposes. After all, no one likes being watched, right?

(...) Multimedia designer Sha Sha Feng recently completed a Master of Fine Arts project at Hunter College in New York titled ?MapaboutMaps,? using Google Earth as a platform to host video interviews about new directions in mapping with geographers, artists and programmers. (...) Feng was particularly interested in examining the role maps can play in building community. She interviewed Wendy Brawer, the founder of Greenmap Systems, a website that engages local mapping teams to chart their communities' natural and green living landmarks, including farmers markets, organic food producers, fair trade shops, indigenous sites and the best spots for star-gazing. 'Maps are very personal objects,' says Brawer. 'People look for themselves on them.' Participatory mapping tools have 'opened the world of maps from a few to many,' says Feng. "Maps are powerful tools. Many people take them as fact, but they tell the story that the creator wants you to see. Grassroots communities and artists welcome this technology because it allows their voices to be heard.'
(...) But while mashups and social software have opened the horizons of cartographic creativity, the maps themselves are still proprietary?Google and others license them and make them available to users as part of their marketing strategy.(...) In contrast, projects like OpenStreetMap eschew commercial or government-owned maps in favor of data generated directly by users. Volunteers generate 'traces' by walking or cycling routes while carrying a GPS tracker, and then upload the results and edit them online. Following the precepts of open source software and Wikipedia, the project encourages collaboration and makes the results free for others to use. The site has a lively discussion board populated by amateur geographers, many of whom organize 'mapping parties' to survey specific locations.

(...) In many ways, these mapping tools are re-locating us as the center of our personal universes. We no longer go to maps to find out where we are. Instead, we tell maps where we are and they form around us on the fly, a sensation that can be comforting or stifling. After all, while finding the right map can orient you, having dozens can threaten to tip the signal-to-noise ratio toward cacophony. On balance, though, the democratization of mapping and visualization tools generates possibilities for self-expression and social action. Two decades ago, postmodern theorist Frederic Jameson argued that developing new maps would be central for activists hoping to grapple with the emerging global business and communication systems. '[The] incapacity to map socially is as crippling to political experience as the analogous incapacity to map spatially is for urban experience,' he wrote. The tools are now available. The question now: Where do we go from here?".

Escrevi recentemente:

"The uses of maps and mappings process are unprecedented. With new locative media systems mapping is new practice of place. Maybe we're realizing the idea of Borges in "Del Rigor en la Ciencia" (1960) where the map has the dimension of the territory. The map is the territory. Mapping my moves on the streets is controlling the space, is territorialization. The use of GPS and other devices for location and location-based services puts emphasis on control and domination over a territory.

Deterritorialization is getting lost. Controlling or losing control, the locative media is given new functions to places. We have also a social changing. Technicians, governments and private companies controlled mapping. Now we have an ownership shift because the bureaucratic power is now moving to the users, ordinary people. With electronic popular mapping, the urban space is being used as a tactic for produce sense in daily life, dealing with the constraints of rationalization in urban modernity. We know that maps are constructions, ideologies represented in the world and serve, always, to the constitutive powers. Today maps can be produced to represent people, community, a more legitimate space and place that show how people see and fell their environment. We have a button-up process of representing the world, not mediated by the instituted powers."

History and Locative Media

2008-03-14T10:19:00.002-04:00

Intersections and My Square

Dois projetos interessantes en NY mostram possibilidades de reconstruir hist�rias de pra�as, bairros e outros lugares das cidades atrav�s das tecnologias m�veis, associando mobilidade, produ��o de conte�do livre e resignifica��o dos espa�os urbano. Vemos aqui como os lugares ganham novos significados com as experi�ncias com m�dias locativas. Acho que � mesmo uma resist�ncia � impessoalidade e a tend�ncia massacrante da acelera��o e dissemina��o informacional que come�a na modernidade.

O primeiro � Intersections: where the past meets the present, de Gaelen Green, Alexis Lloyd e Ana Velez, onde atrav�s de QRCodes, passantes podem acessar hist�rias do passado de lugares atuais que, em v�rios exemplos, n�o guardam mais nenhuma rela��o evidente com esse passado. No site � poss�vel fazer um download de um mapa, imprimi-lo e sair explorando os pontos com as tags (QRCodes) e, assim, explorar a intersec��o entre passado, presente e futuro, entre o espa�o urbano e o ciberespa�o.

"Intersections is a site-specific project that enables you to explore the layers of New York City history using your mobile phone. Currently installed on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Intersections is comprised of a series of stickers bearing semacodes. These semacodes, or 2-D barcodes, can be photographed using a web-enabled camera phone, and are then decoded to download a historical photo of that very location. This mobile interface allows users to compare the historical image with the current view of the location, thereby gaining greater understanding of the layers of history and change inherent to the city."

O outro projeto � o My Washington Square, de Alexis Lloyd, tamb�m com o objetivo de recontar hist�rias sobre um lugar, aqui Washington Square em NY. O objetivo � explorar as diversas camadas hist�ricas de um lugar. Pesssoas podem adicionar suas hist�rias, ressaltando novos sentidos dos lugares.

"My Washington Square is an experience-mapping project exploring contemporary and historical stories situated in New York?s Washington Square Park. Through personal stories submitted by online visitors as well as historical information, this project explores the ways in which physical spaces contain many layers of memory and experience. You are invited to explore the stories submitted by others and to share your own experience of this rich and complex place."

Esse projeto tamb�m faz eco com o Banff e-History que j� reportei nesse Carnet onde crian�as da escola da cidade fazem pesquisas sobre locais, os indexam por GPS e recontam suas hist�rias. Os links dos dois primeiros projetos v�em do blog de Anne Galloway.

Territory and Locative Media

2008-03-13T11:22:00.001-04:00

Territory and Locative Media

Post do Purse Lip Square Jaw comenta o texto de Mike Crang and Stephen Graham, "Sentient Cities: Ambient intelligence and the politics of urban space". N�o li o paper j� que ainda n�o tive acesso ao PDF, s� ao abstract que reproduzo abaixo:

"Increasing amounts of information processing capacity are embedded in the environment around us. The informational landscape is both a repository of data and also increasingly communicates and processes information. No longer confined to desk tops, computers have become both mobile and also disassembled. Many everyday objects now embed computer processing power, while others are activated by passing sensors, transponders and processors. The distributed processing in the world around us is often claimed to be a pervasive or ubiquitous computing environment: a world of ambient intelligence, happening around us on the periphery of our awareness, where our environment is not a passive backdrop but an active agent in organizing daily lives. The spaces around us are now being continually forged and reforged in informational and communicative processes. It is a world where we not only think of cities but cities think of us, where the environment reflexively monitors our behaviour. This paper suggests that we need to unpack the embedded politics of this process. It outlines the three key emerging dynamics in terms of environments that learn and possess anticipation and memory, the efficacy of technological mythologies and the politics of visibility. To examine the assumptions and implications behind this the paper explores three contrasting forms of 'sentient' urban environments. The first addresses market-led visions of customized consumer worlds. The second explores military plans for profiling and targeting. Finally, the third looks at artistic endeavours to re-enchant and contest the urban informational landscape of urban sentience. Each, we suggest, shows a powerful dynamic of the environment tracking, predicting and recalling usage."

Retenho esse coment�rio que me parece interessante e afinado com as minhas id�ias sobre lugar, territ�rio e locative media, inclusive com questionamentos que merecem aten��o. Trechos do Purse Lip Square Jaw:

"(...) Rather than making us passive or controlling our actions in particular places, locative media and art 'allow us to claim and mark our territory' (807) in multiple ways: as publics, as individuals, as citizens. While many projects can be seen to romanticise a renewed public sphere, the collaborative nature of most projects is still distinct from the one-way, top-down models offered by commercial and military players. They also tend to make socio-spatial relations visible, rather than rendering them invisible. The primary drawback here is that 'these moves risk making what was formerly protected by its opacity and transitoriness, visible and recordable' (812). But as Crang and Graham also put it, 'these artistic media are trying to densify the liquid ? not solidify places' (810) and 'the effect of memory is not the creation of perfectly known environments. Rather, it involves a destabilization of spaces, a haunting of place with absent others' (812).(...)

'Urban ubicomp clearly has a fetishistic power in appearing to finally offer solutions by rendering place and space utterly transparent in some simple, deterministic way. Indeed, we would argue that there is a danger that locative media are equally seen as a technical fix for oppositional voices and alternative histories in art projects. In this sense the myths matter and have effects. But they are only mythologies of a perfect, uniform informational landscape. In reality, the seamless and ubiquitous process of pure urban transparency that many accounts suggest will always be little but a fantasy. In practice, the linking of many layers of computerized technology is generally a 'kludge'...

Far from the pure vision of what de Certeau calls the 'concept city', we may find the production of myriads of little stories ? a messy infinity of 'Little Brothers' rather than one omniscient 'Big' Brother. Some of these may be commercial, some personal, maybe some militarized. There is a real issue about proliferating knowledges circulating routinely and more or less autonomously of people. But it would seem to us that the political options are not those of rejection or romanticizing notions of disconnection. Rather, it is to work through the inevitable granularity and gaps within these systems, to find the new shadows and opacities that they produce'(813-14)."

RFID e Copyright

2008-03-13T10:55:00.003-04:00

RFID e Copyright

Quest�es relativas a privacidade e direito de prorpiedade intelectual. O primeiro � uma provoca��o (via o site de Aram Bartholl), sugerindo que coloquemos etiquetas em nossas ID's para doar nossa propriedade intelectual ap�s a morte. V�deo e sticker podem ser baixados aqui:

"Why let all of your ideas die with you? Current Copyright law prevents anyone from building upon your creativity for 70 years after your death. Live on in collaboration with others. Make an intellectual property donation. By donating your IP into the public domain you will 'promote the progress of science and useful arts' (U.S. Constitution). Ensure that your creativity will live on after you are gone, make a donation today."

O segundo vem de um post do Engadget mostrando como cart�es RFID est�o vulner�veis a a��o de hackers, expondo a nossa ID a clonagens e outros desvios:

"Even as RFID tech grows more and more ubiquitous, fears about its safety and security haven't dwindled -- which is why we're just disappointed, not surprised, to learn that over 1 billion RFID cards based on the Milfare Classic RFID chip are now at risk. Two different teams of security researchers managed to crack the encryption on the cards, which form the basis of a national payment system in the Netherlands and are used widely in other applications around the world. With the encryption broken, hackers can now make perfect clones of the cards, spoiling all that radio-frequency fun. There's no word on how easy that actually is yet, however -- one of the two hacks will be demonstrated later this week, and the other is being kept secret -- but still, it might be time to go back to cash and bump-proof locks, eh?"

Mobile Community

2008-03-13T10:44:00.001-04:00

Mobile Communities

Formas comunit�rias emergem com sistemas locativos. Post do Smart Mobs mostra como tecnologias m�veis est�o ampliando formas de mobiliza��o, criando novas sinergias sociais e usos dos espa�os urbanos. A quest�o colocada no post:

"If ingenious games designers can inspire thousands of people to collaborate to solve a puzzle, could we do something similar to tackle global warming, keep communities safe, provide support for the elderly, help disaster victims, lend and borrow money, conduct political and policy debates, teach and learn, design and make physical products?"

O texto aponta para perspectivas de uso "de baixo para cima" das tecnologias de comunica��o m�vel para mobiliza��o pol�tica.

"(...) By the powerful storm of the new communication technologies, mobs that think and act collectively are taking over areas dominated before by scholars, organizations, institutions, and corporations. There?s an evolutionary process taking place as we speak, a process that is experimenting with replacing the hierarchical top-down organizations with peer-to-peer forms of mob organizing. Citizens have now a worldly opportunity to organize themselves without the trappings of traditional organizations. Nowadays we have mob politics, mob branding, mob science, mob learning and so on. Leadbetter offers wonderful examples of each mob. What I found to be interesting is the observation about processes that truly promote democracy: the broadband by which mobs communicate, get organized and act proves itself to be more efficient in bringing democratic change ?- consider the example of the political opposition in Vietnam, entirely founded and organized via Internet ?- than the billions of dollars spent by US on the war in Iraq.(...)"

No mesmo esp�rito, post do New Mobilities comenta artigo do NYT mostrando o crescimento de redes sociais m�veis que utilizam blogs, micro-blogs e software sociais a partir de dispositivos m�veis para manter v�nculos sociais em mobilidade pelo espa�o urbano. Tamb�m diversos projetos de mobiliza��o pol�tica e de refor�o comunit�rios podem ser vistos no site do MobileActive.org, como os recentes sobre v�deos sobre direito das mulheres: "about women's rights is one of three mobile phone videos made by Egyptian artist Ahmad Sherif, designed to be spread virally on mobile phones.(...)", ou sobre guias para ONGs utilizarem SMS para pressionar representantes: "(...) text-to-screen campaign allows for exactly this: A large screen, placed right outside the State House, for example, that brings your constituents? text messages to legislators' eyes."

O uso de tecnologias m�veis como telefones celulares devem ser priorit�rios j� que h� mais usu�rios de celular do que de internet e recente pesquisa confirma essa tend�ncia. Post do Geek mostra como os celulares s�o "mais necess�rios que internet": " Uma nova pesquisa do Pew Internet & American Life Project mostrou que os telefones celulares ultrapassaram a internet e a televis�o na lista de prioridades entre o p�blico americano.(...) A pesquisa tamb�m descobriu que 62% de todos os americanos j� utilizaram um celular para aplica��es n�o tradicionais (enviar e receber chamadas), ou acessaram a internet a partir de uma conex�o sem fio. Entre os usos mais populares para celulares e PDAs est�o envio e recebimento de SMS (31%), fotografia (15%), jogos (8%), acesso a informa��es (7%), reprodu��o de m�sica (6%), mensagem instant�nea (6%), grava��o de v�deos (3%), visualiza��o de mapas (3%) e reprodu��o de v�deo (3%). O estudo completo traz divis�es �tnicas e et�rias e pode ser lido, em ingl�s, neste PDF.

Por �ltimo, post do MediaShift de Paul Lamb mostra sitema mashup, Netsquared em S�o Francisco projetado para encorajar a participa��o civil e de organiza��es sem fins de lucro: " For example, a submission called Community News & Caring Map is aimed at allowing writers to know where their readers are geographically located. The idea being that if you know more about who your audience is, the better you can speak to them and provide more informed journalism. (...) Another listed contender is called NewsFlash: Mapping top stories in 200 plus countries. This one is already live, and allows you to pick top stories from around the globe from a colorful world map. The idea here is to encourage people to expand their news horizons through a graphically rich interface. (...) My favorite idea submitted so far on the news front is called Ushahidi: Mapping Reports of post election violence in Kenya. This mashup intends to help document issues of violence and death not reported by the government, police or the mainstream press. The effort seeks to provide a graphical timeline of events, document specific cases, and ultimately provide pictures and information about unreported or underreported victims. This strikes me as a very practical and important tool, not to mention representing "citizen journalism" at its best."

Como coloquei na minha fala no Medialab Prado sobre comunidade:

"The city is seen as a place that insulates people, where prevailing the lack of contact and privacy. The community is a social pre-urban form, with emphasis in place as "home". Could locative media locative recreate community feelings of belonging? What are the goals of bottom-up projects if not, effectively, creating more effective ways of communication and new forms of fighting against anomie and separation? We can see collective and collaborative processes with virtual communities on the Internet (virtual communities like forums, chat rooms, newsgroups) and today with locative media projects (mobile social networks, collaborative maps, urban annotations, bottom-up mobilizations, location-based games, smart and flash mobs). We can see these experiences as ways to combat the emptiness of urban space, to rethink the social bond. For young people, community are friends and family members that they can stay in touch by face-to-face encounters but also, by information exchange in blogs, micro-blogs, social software, SMS text, cellphone photos and videos. Community only makes sense today in terms of mobility, fluidity. Theses online relations don't kill face-to-face relations AND the urban spaces. They create new forms and NEW temporalities of communities and places. Discussions on Facebook, updates in micro-blogs, synchronization of activities by SMS, perpetual contact with cellphones is all new activities that reinforce social relationship, the community belonging and the use of urban spaces. We must avoid a nostalgic vision of communities, of places and cities, on the risk of no longer see the urban realm that is growing in front of us."

Maps - GeoLife

2008-03-13T10:12:00.001-04:00

Maps - GeoLife

Mat�ria do The Guardian de Jack Schofield aponta para mais um sistema de mapeamento e tracking de posicionamento com possibilidades de adicionar fotos, compatilhar com amigos, agregar sensores que podem indicar condi��es ambientais. etc. O projeto, GeoLife, est� sendo desenvolvido pela Microsoft Research's Beijing Lab.

Trechos:

"If you'd spent a day seeing the sights in Beijing, it would be nice to be able to review your trip afterwards by watching an avatar trace your route on a map - with popup photos, if you took any.

If you wanted to give other people access, your friends and relatives might enjoy the trip too. And by comparing the routes and photos taken by thousands of visitors, Beijing's city planners would be able to make improvements. They could, for example, highlight the most popular regions, and install helpful English language signs at the spots where tourists typically take wrong turns.

This sort of "life experience tracing" is not something you can do in Beijing today, unless you know Yu Zeng and his colleagues in Microsoft Research's Beijing lab, where GeoLife is just one of many projects. It was also one of about 40 shown to the world's press on the first day of TechFest 08 in Redmond last week.

(..) GeoLife could, of course, use a version of the wearable SenseCam, developed in Cambridge, which is being used in the company's long-running MyLifeBits life-caching project. But Yu's approach is to use ordinary mobile phones with location detection or increasingly common global positioning satellite technology. "In the future, phones might be able to detect pollution and other things that we could incorporate," say the researchers.

(...)The idea is that you have a lot of small sensors and spread them around the environment to monitor something, such as a glacier. Being practical, Microsoft is using them to monitor some server farms, where heat is a problem.(...)".

Outra mat�ria sobre o mesmo tema vem do Le Monde, sobre como o Google Streer View foi enquadrado pelos militares americanos e for�ado a retirar detalhes de uma base americana no Texas.

Trechos:

"Google Earth ou Google Street View r�v�lent des petits secrets que les services gouvernementaux militaires et de renseignement se passeraient bien de voir diffuser. Un �v�nement a fait r�agir le gouvernement am�ricain : il concerne une base am�ricaine du Texas, Fort Sam, � Houston, investie il y a une dizaine de jours par une des �quipes du service Google Street View, qui permet de visiter une trentaine de villes am�ricaines en prises de vue panoramiques. Le conducteur du v�hicule sp�cial de Google avait simplement demand� l'autorisation d'acc�s � la base, qui avait �t� accept�e.

(...) Le d�partement de la d�fense am�ricain, apr�s avoir 're�u un rapport (...) informant que Google avait collect� une imagerie d�taill�e et des vues � 360 degr�s d'une base au Texas', a demand� � la soci�t� de retirer l'ensemble de ces clich�s. Ceux-ci repr�sentent, selon le g�n�ral Gene Renuart, chef du commandement militaire am�ricain responsable de la d�fense int�rieure, 'un v�ritable risque pour la s�curit� [des] installations militaires [am�ricaines]' (...) Google a acc�d� � cette demande et retir� ces images de son service de cartographie locale.(...)".

Mapear � produzir uma representa��o do mundo, uma constru��o ideol�gica, e isso desde os grandes imp�rios do passado (Roma, Portugal, Espanha, Gr�-Bretanha) at� hoje com os "imp�rios" das tecnologias informacionais. Embora ampliando e democratizando as formas de produ��o de mapas e conte�dos localizados, sistemas como o Google Maps/Earth/View n�o s�o neutros e est�o a merc� dos poderes constitu�dos (vejam post sobre evento em Madrid onde comento palestra de Julian Oliver sobre esse tema). Al�m disso, os sistemas, embora gratuitos, n�o s�o de c�digo aberto e um API do Google Maps que usamos hoje livremente pode ser requerido no futuro pela empresa.

Mas Piernas

2008-03-10T15:44:00.001-04:00

Mas Piernas,

Meu �ltimo post mostrava "piernas en la ventana". Agora me chega pela Soledad Caballero, de Montevideo, essas "piernas na calle". A foto � do fot�grafo uruguaio Panta Astiazar�n (Buenos Aires, 2006) e foi publicada na revista Dixit...Junto veio um conto de Mario Levrero, Paris, que reproduzo um trecho que se pareceu (j� estou bem melhor e viajo amanh�) com a minha situa��o. E hoje, depois de dias de sol, Madrid est� cinzenta. Obrigado Soledad!

"(...) La tarde era tan gris como la estaci�n, como la ciudad, como yo mismo. Me siento gris
por dentro y por fuera y deseo vehementemente un cambio; pero desde hace tiempo me
obsesiona la idea de estar demasiado ligado al mundo exterior; de que, en realidad, todo
mi ser forma parte del mundo exterior; no puedo precisar los l�mites: hasta aqu� el mundo
exterior, aqu� empiezo yo; de que no puedo cambiar mientras todo permanece inmutable
alrededor, o cambia lentamente y en una direcci�n desgraciada. Dudo de mi propia
existencia.

?�Usted cree que pueda hablarse de un mundo interior? ?le pregunto al chofer?. A
veces pienso si no somos otra cosa que cortes de situaciones exteriores...

El hombre no me escuchaba. Not� entonces las telara�as. Lo sacud�, con un poco de
asco. Estaba muerto, momificado.

Me tiro hacia atr�s en el asiento y deseo poder dormitar. Hace a�os que no duermo, tal
vez por falta de necesidad, y no es que en este momento necesite hacerlo, pero tengo
ganas. Me paso las manos por la barba. Tiene un tacto agradable, ofrece cierta
resistencia. Pienso en cada uno de los pelos vistos al microscopio, enormes �rboles
plantados cuidadosamente en mi mejilla, creciendo a impulsos desordenados. Pienso en
la yema de mis dedos, en las papilas t�ctiles, en mi forma de causarles dolor, de herirlas
con mi barba; pienso que tal vez ese placer que me provoca el tacto de la barba en la
punta de los dedos puede significar un dolor considerable para cada uno de los puntitos
sensibles de las yemas. Si estas papilas fueran individuos con una conciencia de s�
independiente, y quiz� lo sean, qu� angustia deber�n sentir ante esta agresi�n
injustificada, injusta... pens� en muchas otras cosas, sin poder dormir, hasta que por fin
lleg� el relevo, quit� el cad�ver y lo arroj� sobre las losas de la plaza.(...)"

Mario Levrero, Par�s

Tormentas

2008-03-10T10:55:00.001-04:00

Tormentas

Tento sair de Madrid mas n�o consigo. Tempestade e ventos fortes em Londres fecham Heathrow e tempestade de neve do s�culo em Montreal me mant�m aqui. Volto ao hotel e n�o sei quando viajo...Cansado e irritado, olho pela janela do quarto e vejo "piernas a la ventana"...Para manter o bom humor.

Rastros de Madrid

2008-03-09T19:20:00.003-04:00

Rastros de Madrid

Mais uma ciberfl�nerie...Andando...Depois coloco fotos de alguns pontos...

Picture of the Day

2008-03-09T17:29:00.003-04:00

Pictures of the Day

Saindo de Madrid para Montr�al...

Calles

Siesta

Norte?

Elei��o Espanhola

2008-03-09T12:03:00.001-04:00

Elei��o Espanhola

At� agora, 14 horas (pelo El Pa�s, mas j� s�o 17 e nenhuma atualiza��o no jornal), o �ndice de participa��o situa-se em 40%, baixo, mas parece o normal historicamente pelo hor�rio. Sa� �s ruas e surpreendentemente e, muito diferente do Brasil, n�o vi nada, nada de boca de urna, de panfletos, de sujeira, de faixas, nada. Literalmente n�o vi nada e um turista desavisado nem sabe que est� se desenrolando uma elei��o geral aqui. Incr�vel. Um domingo normal, parece.

A partir das 21h pode-se saber do andamento das contagem no site www.generales2008.mir.es. Mais informa��es no ELPA�S.com

Elecciones 2008

2008-03-09T04:13:00.001-04:00

Elecciones 2008

30 anos de elei��es na Espanh�

Nesse domingo realiza-se as elei��es gerais, inclusive para Presidente do Governo, na Espanha. 30 anos de elei��es desde 1977 quando os espanh�is puderam pela primeira vez votar em seus representantes. Para uma vis�o geral veja a edi��o espacial do El Pa�s: Elecciones 2008.

Voto eletr�nico?

Os espanh�is votam em urnas cl�ssicas, embora j� tenha havido experi�ncias com voto eletr�nico, inclusive pela internet, mas apenas para teste. N�o haver� teste esse ano e o voto eletr�nico encontra na Espanha barreira legal j� que ainda n�o tem validade jur�dica. Conta-se na m�o e coloca-se os dados em 11.000 PDAs que enviam os dados por redes sem fio (GPRS, em canal seguro) a computadores para compilar os dados.

Mobilidade

No entanto, os cidad�os espanh�is poder�o acompanhar o resultado das contagens dos votos por dispositivos m�veis, enviando mensagem de texto "elec-con" e/ou "elec-sen" ao n�mero 7743.

Vou �s ruas ver o movimento...

Madrid Wi-Fi

2008-03-08T08:03:00.002-05:00

Madrid Wi-Fi

Andando pelas Calles de Madrid n�o � dif�cil achar conex�es wi-fi abertas. No hotel onde estou vendem o acesso a 12 euros por 24h, mas tenho do meu quarto duas redes abertas e uso esse "territ�rio informacional" para me conectar sem passar pelo controle do hotel.

Loki me localiza, triangulando redes Wi-Fi, e oferece informa��es sobre o que tenho ao meu redor.

Agora mesmo estou no meio da rua, sentado em uma Taberna (La Mina) e pego v�rias conex�es, duas abertas de onde estou blogando agora. Cidade desplugada, com acesso que me faz aderir a determinados lugares. Esse, e outros, para al�m do circuito tur�stico, come�am a ter um outro sentido pra mim. O territ�rio informacional das ruas redefine certamente os lugares. A Taberna n�o � mais apenas um territ�rio l�dico, e gastron�mico, mas tamb�m informacional (informacional digital, digo, j� que todo territ�rio � informacioal).