There's a Reason I Don't Post Very Often

It's because Blogger is always slow, or having problems, or deleting my posts. Hmpf. It might be time for Moveable Type.

Grokster Eve

Here's an interesting little article in the Economist regarding the Grokster hearing scheduled to start tomorrow: Grokster and StreamCast Face the Music.

Mark Your Calendars

One week from today, MGM v. Grokster is going to be heard before the Supreme Court. In a nutshell, close to thirty entertainment behemoths sued various companies (Morpheus, Kazaa, and Grokster) who wrote P2P file-sharing software for copyright infringement. The defendants held up rather well thus far, but the plaintiffs appealed, and the case has ended up in the hightest court in the country. If the Supreme Court overturns the lower court decisions, life as you know it will change. What do the plaintiffs seek? To make any technology that could possibly allow a user to infringe upon copyright illegal. P2P computing aside, just think of all that affects. Stumped? Go here: www.eff.org/legal/cases/betamax/countdown/index.php.

On a similar topic, I'm currently reading Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. I just got it, so I'm not very far into it yet. I imagine I'll have a lot to say about it once I'm finished, but if this blog continues as it has been of late, I'll make some huge post and then save it as a draft and never publish it. I have dozens of posts "saved as draft." I have a fear of publishing without extensive editing. I'm trying to get over that.

This Weekend, You Can See Contemporary Art on Sunday

First of all, the Armory Show is this weekend. If you've never been before, get ready for a whole lot of people packed into the gigantic space of two entire piers on the Hudson to see the work of a couple hundred contemporary artists. It's a lot to take it, and it will take a few hours to go through it. If you miss it though, you'll regret it once you find out exactly how much you missed. Runs Friday through Sunday, noon to 8pm, and Monday, noon to 5pm.

And since you'll already be in Midtown on the west side, there's another showcase just a few blocks away, as the Scope Show NYC moves north this year to Flatotel on 135 W. 52nd Street. It's your chance to see international emerging artists in hotelrooms cum exhibition spaces. Each participating gallery must devote 80% of the show to one artist, which is nice. Runs Friday through Monday from noon to 8pm.

Get to both if you can.

Teach the Kids How to Program, or at Least Tell Them what Programming Is

In the American education system, there are certain things that every student must study: English, math, history, etc. My question is, why aren't children being taught how to use computers? I understand that there are a lot of economic issues involved here, but I've heard so little about the necessity of integrating computer literacy into traditional curricula. If technology continues to dominate culture, why are today’s kids not being prepared for the future?

Where I went to school, computer classes were optional, beginning in the second grade. Once a week, those of us who took the class (for which our parents paid about $150 an academic quarter) were pulled out of regularly scheduled classes and escorted to the attic of the school where a bank of sixteen Commodore 64s awaited us. It was 1985, and the first time I'd ever seen a computer, although I had no idea what computers did. Sadly, most of our classes consisted of playing Lemonade and other games, as well as learning how to make hearts, spades and the like appear on the screen. After six class of the former, and five classes of the latter, I asked my parents to please not sign me up for computer class again, claiming that "it's boring, and all we do are the same things over and over again." They said that I had to learn how to use a computer, so I had to keep taking the class.

The next quarter went exactly the same. With one exception, we played Lemonade and made symbols for eleven weeks. On the exception week, our teacher told us to write a poem, which we could then print on the gigantic monstrosity in the corner of the attic. Admittedly, I thought that printing something was cool, but mostly because I got to tear the sides off the paper.

Second grade was the first and last time I ever took a computer class. I mistakenly thought that computers were only good for playing games and typing things. As a result, I loathed computers for years—thirteen years, to be exact—simply because I didn't understand of what computers were capable or of what I was capable of making a machine do. No one ever explained why there were computers, so I never understood their importance and simply refused to be bothered with them.

I bought my first computer in 1996. I was seventeen, was just accepted to university, and strongly advised to bring a computer with me when I arrived. I asked my then-boyfriend—who was several years older than me, worked in an IT department, and a complete asshole—to help me pick one out; he interpreted “help me” as “pick one out and order it.” Three days later, he handed me an invoice for the computer he pre-ordered for me. Not being eighteen yet, I did not have a checking account. I remember very vividly going to the bank that day to withdraw $3,600 to pay him. It had cost more than my car, and to this day remains the most cash I’ve ever physically held at one time.

I went away to college several months later armed with a pre-G3 PowerMac 6400/180, with every imaginable extra that I, a computer illiterate, would never need. If I recall correctly, most people in my dorm came to college with computers but without printers. Such was not my case. As a result, for the first couple of weeks of class, those who did not configure their computers to print on the dorm’s shared printer, printed from my machine, and were running into and out of my room every night. Besides becoming annoying, the constant printing quickly drained my ink supply before I ever printed anything of my own. Conveniently, the ink-outage was discovered a few hours or so before I had a paper to turn in. Someone suggested that I actually hook my computer up to the network so that I could use the shared printer.

Network? What the fuck is a network?

Over the next couple of years, my circle of friends grew to include a good number of people “involved” with computers. I couldn’t participate in their conversations because I didn’t understand exactly what they were talking about, but I listened. With limited knowledge based on nothing more than hearsay, I applied for a position in an IT department on campus as a “technical office assistant,” which basically meant that I had to help the technical office manager (who, admittedly, was my friend, but he wasn’t allowed to hire me—I had to be approved by the department) order hardware when machines broke and take broken hardware out of machines. I remember my interview there. I was asked one question: “What is a motherboard?” I knew the answer and got the job.

Over the next couple of months, the department experienced a high attrition rate. Before long, the IT department was reduced to four, including myself. While my pay never went up, I got a lot more responsibility. I had become the “technical office manager,” whose job description had just expanded to include software-sided tasks. I was happy to take it on, though. When I didn’t know how to do something, there was always the internet and O’Reilly there to help me. Then one day, the database architect left for good. The next day, my boss was informed that we were being audited and had two days to pull a report together for the university. The only problem was that all the information was in the database that we could all access, but could not manipulate. My boss said, “How well do you know SQL?” “Sequel?” I responded. “Uh, not well, but I’m sure I can figure it out.”

At this point, mind you, I had just figured out a few weeks earlier what html was and for what it was used.

I have a problem. I like challenges. I like them too much, and consequently, I often get in way over my head, but I always get out. I was determined to get myself out of the SQL hole I had dug for myself. I headed to the bookstore, but could find no books about “Sequel.” I called my friend, the guy whose job I now had, to ask him about it. He informed me that a) it was “SQL” not “sequel,” and that b) I was royally fucked. He went on to say that not even he, a skilled computer professional, would be able to figure it out. That, of course, just made me want to prove him wrong. Thirty-nine hours and a case of Pepsi later, I did.

That event was an important one in my life for several reasons. First, it showed me that I really did work well under pressure. Second, I finally understood how computers could be used. That was my first taste of anything resembling programming, and somehow, it just all made natural sense to me. Something had clicked, and it was suddenly as though the entire world was different. The last thing that I discovered was that I liked making the computer do what I told it to. I liked figuring out what to type to make things happen. I may not have gotten most things right on the first try, but for having no background or training in what I was doing, I got things right pretty damn quickly. It all just made so much sense. I was actually upset when I was finished. My boss was elated, but I was more than a little disappointed that I had to go back to installing harddrives and recovering papers that grad students swear they saved.

Granted I’m no wizard, but I can now safely say that I know my way around computers. I’m fascinated by them, by various programming languages, and a slew of other ubergeeky things along those lines. Had I only known this years ago, I am certain that I would have gotten a BS in ComSci. It’s not that I regret getting a degree in cinema, it’s just that I wish I did both. I wish that in the second grade, or sometime in my formative years, someone had just said, “You can do more with computers than just play games,” but no one did.

Things have obviously changed a lot since 1985. Preschoolers today would laugh at the Commodore 64 and the dot-matrix printer that amazed me the first time I saw them, just like kids twenty years from now will laugh at us for using ridiculously oversized and under-powered machines like the MacMini. I can’t help but feel that if kids were just taught that computers could be used for more than just the internet and gaming, and, if at all possible, how to use them for such purposes, this country would have a chance to compete academically with the rest of the world. As it goes though, the future is not ours.

Thrill-O-Meter

Brendan Walker at the Royal College of Art created a device which, when mounted to one's self, will automatically take a picture of the bearer when emotional levels are heightened. Go here to see a diagram of the contraption. How did he do it?

Walker worked with Media Lab scientist Dr James Condron to develop the microprocessor algorithm at the heart of his machine. The algorithm identifies the moment of thrill by analysing GSR bio-signals measured at the [user]'s fingertips, and searching for specific arousal signatures.

A two-volume set entitled The Taxonomy of Thrill and Thrilling Designs is due to come out when the exhibition opens this coming Saturday. The show will run until February 27.

Susan Sontag is dead.

Reality Publishing: The Case of Re-Magazine

Before I say anything, I just want to point out that Rem Koolhaas stated about this magazine: "I am a fan." Rem Koolhaas, people.

Re-magazine, which can be found at www.re-magazine.com/, is, in their own words, "A magazine about one person." And it's not about a famous person whom everyone knows.

In the past couple of months, I've become increasingly interested in the phenomenon of reality television. I'm not interested in it for purposes of entertainment, and not even why it's become so popular, but rather the reason for it being in the first place. I have this crazy theory that modern history has been assessed incorrectly for the last fifty years or so, that television plays a key role in that incorrect assessment, and that reality television should be a clue that something's wrong. It's not quite as straight forward as that, but it's a start.

After reading about Re-magazine on BoingBoing this morning, I haven't been able to stop thinking about how "reality" has begun to spill over into other modes of information dissemination.

There's so much more I'd like to say, but it's all jumbled in my head. Exciting (really, really exciting), but jumbled.

Paying for Less

Fork over $8.95, and you too could own the coaxial cable that blocks all FOX News brodcasts. Advertisement here. Genius. My question is, do you think enough people would fork over enough money to either make a difference, or even to bring attention to the fact that people are willing to spend their money blocking something that is offered to them for free? Not turning it on is one thing, but this is really taking it to another level.

IFAR on Photography

Last night I attended the lecture "Authenticity Issues in Photography," given by the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR). Some of the speakers were spectacular. Denise Bethel, who's the directorof Southerby's photogtaphy department, gave a talk on the problems that arise with photography due to the lack of catalogues raisonnés, which are available for other mediums. She discussed the case of a Man Ray photograph whose subject and date of production were unknown (also unknown was whether it was actually made my Man Ray). She explaind the process she and others went through to authenticate it.

Bethel was followed by Man Ray scholar Steven Manford who discussed various issues surrounding posthumous prints. I don't want to go into detail here due to time constraints, but if you're interested, let me know.

And then, there was conservator, Paul Messier. His presentatation was, to me, absolutely fascinating. It dealt with the photographs of Lewis Hine, and their saturation of the market. Essentially, an issue was raised as to whether the prints were actually made by Hine. It was like they performed forensics of the prints, using paper fiber samples, chemical samples, brightening ageints, etc., to determine scientifically if the prints could have been made before Hine's date of death. They were not.

When I was an undergraduate, shortly after I made the decision that I would pursue an academic career, I came up with an idea for a class I'd like to teach one day-- the history of photographic chemistry. I suppose I was about tweny years old at the time, and quickly became enthralled with the subject. I couldn't figure out there was so little information about it. I recalled every book from libraries all over the country I thought might contain some historical information regarding the progression of chemistry used. In all, I think I only had 20some books, none of them what I wanted them to be. I played with the idea of writing my BA paper on the subject, but then thought, "But where would I find the information?"

For future scholars, Messier is in the process of compiling just that, complete with images. I can't wait.

"Mark on Punk"

I like looking at people who listen to the music I like. I like looking at people who make the music I like. I don't mean that I judge a record by its cover, but rather that I am intrigued and often seduced by it....I was seduced by punk. Not at first by the sound, but by the visual noise that came from it, from the scene, from the different styles of the bands and the style of their fans." --Marc Jacobs, Introduction to We're Desperate: The Punk Rock Photography of Jim Jocoy, powerHouse Books: 2002.

My photo project is pretty much the opposite of this. I was attracted to the music, but had no visual references. I'm trying to make them now.

It's a great book. Exene Cervenka and Thurston Moore, in addition to Jacobs, offer the sole words found in it.

Where can I find a disused high school gym?

I have an idea that I would like to pursue, but it involves the use of a gymnasium. Not for a few hours, but for a few days, at least. It will require major setup and an even more massive clean-up. It will also involve a large noctournal gathering. I would prefer it to be in Manhattan, Brooklyn, or Queens, but beggars can't be choosers. I would also like it to no longer function as an institution of learning. Hell, I'm no MoMA, but there's got to be someplace. I mean, there's a theatre company on Second Avenue that's in an old public school. I just need something like that. If anyone knows of anything, let me know.

Martha Colburn

On Friday evening, I went to see a selection of short films by Martha Colburn, which were being screened in a garden on Houston Street as part of the 2004 Howl Festival. All I can say is, if anyone can get his or her hands on some, it would be a good thing. She makes short animated pieces, with the animation coming from magazine cutouts. I think if I were to describe them, it would do them, and Colburn, a great injustice.