“Texture v.2 is getting interesting now, reminds me of fabric travelling around a loom. Everything apart from the DSP is implemented in Haskell. The functional approach has worked out particularly well for this visualisation — because musical patterns are represented as functions from time to events (using my Tidal EDSL), it’s trivial to get at future events across the graph of combinators. Still much more to do though.”
It wasn’t until I left broadcasting that I realised how complex and controversial the words ‘story’ and ‘audience’ really were. I called my company ‘Storythings’ for two reasons - one was because I’d been running a conference called The Story for a few years that was pretty much the genesis of the company, and the second was because I was more interested in stories than I was in technology. I’m fascinated by how we tell stories now, and the new relationships we can have with audiences across all sorts of interesting contexts and platforms.
But when I started talking to clients, I was surprised by how those two words - Story and Audience - meant completely different things to different people. Stories seemed to be the hot new idea in marketing, and every brand wanted to know how to tell their story, or to hear their customers’ stories. Transmedia gurus were trying to convince us that stories were many-tentacled hydras, performing complexly choreographed dances to lure fans into their narratives.
But no-one outside of broadcasting really used the word ‘audience’. There were customers, fans, users, subscribers, followers, networks, communities and participants. Audiences were points in a cloud of big data, or a constantly updated Chartbeat report. Audiences were presented as infographics, or studied as psychological experiments.
“This paper estimates fossil fuel subsidies and the economic and environmental benefits from reforming them, focusing mostly on a broad notion of subsidies arising when consumer prices are below supply costs plus environmental costs and general consumption taxes.
Estimated subsidies are $4.9 trillion worldwide in 2013 and $5.3 trillion in 2015 (6.5% of global GDP in both years). Undercharging for global warming accounts for 22% of the subsidy in 2013, air pollution 46%, broader vehicle externalities 13%, supply costs 11%, and general consumer taxes 8%. China was the biggest subsidizer in 2013 ($1.8 trillion), followed by the United States ($0.6 trillion), and Russia, the European Union, and India (each with about $0.3 trillion). Eliminating subsidies would have reduced global carbon emissions in 2013 by 21% and fossil fuel air pollution deaths 55%, while raising revenue of 4%, and social welfare by 2.2%, of global GDP.”
Little Printer is a product of now. It is a product, a tangible thing, but is also a product, in the sense of a consequence, of contemporary culture. It humbly and accessibly exemplifies how physical and digital have merged to become one, to become hybrid objects, to demonstrate how objects might become networked, and how domestic objects might behave.
“Perhaps true, total photography […] is a pile of fragments of private images, against the creased background of massacres and coronations.” —Italo Calvino
For the last three (solar) years i’ve taken at least one photo per day, every day, in an ongoing series of small acts of deliberate persistence. After more than 1000 days patterns emerge, inspiration ebbs and returns, the pile of fragments grows. While i’ve never made a deliberate attempt to narrow the focus or or create further constraints than ‘one photo per day’ it’s inevitable that subjective and analytic patterns become visible.
I’ve begun to see this daily practice as a point of departure, a habit to maintain focus (or resemble it) curiosity and ambiguity. Some of the more persistent photos from 02013 were sliced from moments of distraction, accident or circumstance during which suggestions and new directions may emerge.
In a sequence, each image absorbs metadata, footnotes, contextual bleed (images within images) it becomes dislocated with images rendered from the middle ground between mechanical/chemical and electronic/networked where each image is no more than a scratched line across spacetime. fleeting. crystalised. repeated.
“When I’m dreaming back like that I begins to see we’re only all telescopes.” —James Joyce
Every year hundreds of Photobook Lists are published. They now come in a wide variety of sizes, designs, and quality, offering something for all. A healthy Photo List collectible market has developed, and indie stores selling Photobook Lists are popping up all over. We’re living during a true Photobook List renaissance. The unlisted number of Photobook Lists is not just astonishing. It’s probably beyond listing.
Zbigniew Karkowski, krakus osiadły w Tokio, był jednym z najbardziej znanych polskich kompozytorów na świecie. Przełamywał bariery między środowiskiem akademików, awangardystów i “laptopowców”. Ratunku przed rakiem szukał w peruwiańskiej dżungli. Miał 55 lat.
SciFoo is the brainchild of O'Reilly, Nature publishing group and Google. It takes place every year at Google’s Mountain View headquarters in Silicon Valley, California, where around 200 of the world’s preeminent scientists gather together. Nobel Laureates rub shoulders with rocket engineers, roboticists, angel investors, science writers and the odd science celebrity.
It’s always the electronic frontier. Nobody ever goes back to look at the electronic forests that were cut down with chainsaws and tossed into the rivers. And then there’s this empty pretense that these innovations make the world “better.” This is a dangerous word. Like: “If we’re not making the world better, then why are we doing this at all?” Now, I don’t want to claim that this attitude is hypocritical. Because when you say a thing like that at South By: “Oh, we’re here to make the world better” — you haven’t even reached the level of hypocrisy. You’re stuck at the level of childish naivete. The world has a tragic dimension. This world does not always get better. The world has deserts. Deserts aren’t better. People don’t always get better.
Welcome to the 2013 edition of the Bruce Sterling/Jon Lebkowsky State of the World conversation/rantfest. Bruce and Jon, old friends and rambunctious digerati, have made this annual mess every year of the 21st century; this year’s model should be particularly interesting, given the current hyperactive state of the world and the abundance of available conceptual lenses.
