8-bit reggae project

Being a reggae/dub amateur for quite some time, I always wanted to write about it. The lack of time, and the remote character of this topic wrt to other interests made me postpone this for a long time. Last year, I started becoming intrigued by a sub-genre where artists play reggae with 8-bit machines... and I thought this would be a peculiar research topic for the Geneva bureau of the Laboratory.

So... after conducting a series of interview with musicians, a copious literature review about the history of reggae/chiptune and an analysis of technological artifacts used by performers (things like modified C64 SID turned into dub machines)... it seems the final correction has been made on the "8-bit reggae" manuscript and Etienne (Editions Volumiques) is currently working on the page layout. The idea is to have a paper-booklet on which the reader can use his phone to access media content (music, video); without a QR code (this is important as I find them annoying). To be released at the beginning of 2014!

The book is a description of how the world of reggae/dub collided with the one of video games... and how it led the birth of an intriguing, and original form of culture. It's the occasion to introduce the idea of "machine creolization" – the role of machines/algorithms in the hybridization of culture – an important feature of contemporary culture. The effort is now on working on other projects related with this concept.

Talking about the book project recently, I've been asked several times if I could give "an introduction" or "a playlist" to this subgenre, here it is!

1. Jahtari X Uprooted Sunshine: Level Up!
2. Disrupt/JAHTARI - They Lie
3. Jody Bigfoot - NINTEMPO RIDDIM
4. LEGO SOUNDS - Dubologist encephalogram
5. Helgeland 8-bit Squad - Psybeam Riddim
6. BitBurner - Shroom Roots
7. Jody Bigfoot -Kob Dub (cant think of a name for this tune remix)
8. Helgeland 8-bit Squad - Pai Mei Riddim
9. wellwellsound - Billie jean
10. LEGO SOUNDS - Dub Adub Abeba

Why do I blog this? Update on a project rarely mentioned on this blog!

"Dissident Futures" exhibit at YBCA in SF

One of the best art/design exhibit I've seen lately is called "Dissident Futures" and it's currently at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Curated by Betti-Sue Hertz, YBCA’s Director of Visual Art, it's described on their website as "an investigation into possible alternative futures, particularly those that question or overturn conventional notions of innovation in biological, social, environmental, and technological structures." The exhibit is made of a wide range of pieces based on photography, painting, installation, performance, sculpture, video and film. Operating as an echo of the innovation-focus of the Bay Area, each of these corresponds to three main topics:

• the utopian: "scenarios in which the best possible outcomes are achieved for the greatest number of people"
• the speculative: "consistently pushing beyond the known, even beyond existing systems of logic to locate potentialities that may seem impossible, unreal, or fantastical at the moment."
• the pragmatic: "groundwork for what the future will look like in the real world"

Some of the projects described there caught my attention for different reasons.

Paul Laffoley's diagrams (dataviz?) feature planes of higher consciousness or act as a mediation aids; they can be seen as utopian worldviews with a strikingly curious spin:

Some of the best piece IMHO are the ones from Basim Magdy, an Egyptian artist living in Switzerland. His fabulous series of pictures (called "Investigating the Color Spectrum of a Post-Apocalyptic Future Landscape") correspond to a stunning representation of how what Science-Fiction should be in my opinion: entanglements between the real and the fictional, between the actual and the virtual... with a peculiar and magical aesthetic. Trevor Paglen's work was also impressive and among similar lines.

Also, Magdy's series of paintings offer a compelling representation of the future with a representations that may look tongue-in-cheek at first glance... and far more serious when observed longer. I found Katie Peterson's Moonlight Sonata very subtle: "For this work Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata was translated into morse code and sent to the moon via E.M.E. Returning to earth fragmented by the moon's surface, it has been re-translated into a new score, the gaps and absences becoming intervals and rests. In the exhibition space the new 'moon–altered' score plays on a self-playing grand piano."... which leads to these beautiful framed morse scores:

Peter Coffin's video of flying fruits was also fantastic. This short film made of fruits flying through a black void has a mesmerizing effect... an impressive representation of how the ordinary can become intriguing and original when observed with a different viewpoint.

The series of pieces by Future Cities Lab were quite convincing, especially the colonisation of the now defunct part of Bay Bridge with suspended habitations/gardens/aquaponic farms:

Finally, Revital Cohen and Tuur van Balen's 75 Watts project was also revealing in the sense that it ironically frames mass-manufacturing products: "Engineering logic has reduced the factory labourer to a man-machine, through scientific management of every single movement. By shifting the purpose of the labourer's actions from the efficient production of objects to the performance of choreographed acts, mechanical movement is reinterpreted into the most human form of motion: dance. What is the value of this artefact that only exists to support the performance of its own creation? And as the product dictates the movement, does it become the subject, rendering the worker the object?"

Why do I blog this? I see this show as part of a much larger series of exhibit focused on "the future"... with an interesting and aesthetically-convincing series of weak signals about the possible, the potential and the virtual. The pieces presented here look far more intriguing than what Scifi produces and better frame the discussion about tomorrow's paths. I'm definitely looking forward to reading the book which is planned to be published by the end of the year.

Speech at UC Berkekley: Adventures in Algorithmic Cultures

Last week, I was in the Bay Area for a series of events about the future of the book. On Oct 23, I spoke at "Creating Minds" at UC Berkeley, along with James Bridle, François Bon, Bernard Stiegler, Warren Sack or Kathryn Hayles. Here are the slides of my speech, which basically dealt with the new forms of creolization (cultural hybridization) enabled by algorithmic culture, and its consequences for textual production:

[slideshare id=27610032&doc=2013-berkeley-131027040418-phpapp01]

Beta knowledge

Btw, since I've less time to blog here, most of the things I run across (insights, data points and “weak signals” in a very basic/raw way…) goes to my tumblr called "beta knowledge"

OKCon next week in Geneva

The Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2013 is happening next week in Geneva, Switzerland. An event about Open data and open knowledge conference, running since 2005, it will feature a series of talks, workshops and discussions about the various dimensions of these themes. I took that as an occasion to ask few questions to Hannes Gassert, one of the co-organizer:

NN: What's OKCon and what are its purposes?

HG: The Open Knowledge Conference is the global gathering of a movement that strives to open up knowledge and make it used and useful. In Geneva, the event is bringing together developers and diplomats, designers and data activists to broaden and deepen the idea of open data. At the same time OKCon marks a major milestone for Switzerland: at the event, Switzerland's own "data.gov" will be launched at opendata.admin.ch.

I believe that's a big step for the movement as well as for Switzerland: we don't have some president saying "I want this", but a participatory political process touching all levels of governments, and I think that data-driven transparency will eventually emerge as the natural complement to our direct democracy. But I digress.

NN: "Open" culture is here for sometime now, but I always wonder about the difficulties. What's tough when it comes to Open Knowledge and the use of Open Data?

HG: Openly releasing your pictures, your music or blog posts were personal decisions. Now, as "open" is becoming a movement and a concept as important as "green", we're getting into actual politics. When we're talking about open government data and how, properly done, they foster transparency, accountability and public sector innovation, we're talking about things we can't decide on an individual level any more - now we're talking politics, now we're talking about data, like spending or crime data for example, whose mastery means actual power.

NN: Are there any areas where open-ness is not possible or relevant? That's a curious one but it's an issue I always wonder about because it leads to discussing the pros and cons of that approach.

HG: There's a clear limit, and it's given by strict standards of individual privacy. The individual person's right to "informational self-determination" is paramount. But this is a value to be applied to people, not to corporations or countries. Those too have legitimate interests in secrecy, but they need to be constantly balanced with the public interest.

NN: Open Source and Open Data are interesting but I'm even more intrigued by "Open Knowledge" and open knowledge construction. This is why my tumblr is called "Beta Knowledge" as a way to reflect the idea that our cultural material (science, art, etc.) is always in flux. It also highlights that "releasing knowledge" can be a way to let people do something out of it that is different from the original intention of the persons who created it at first. Can you elaborate on the longer-term consequences of an "Open Knowledge" society?

HG: Open knowledge is what open data becomes when it’s useful, usable and, in the end, actually used - so I'm right with you when it comes to emphasize the empowering aspect of Open Knowledge! "Open" doesn't mean much if it's not useful, that is accessible, understandable, meaningful or helpful to solve a real problem, make a relevant point or have an impact on how we think and live. In order to make this actually happen, we will need types of skills, increased data literacy among them, and tools that help turning raw material into knowledge that people can act upon.

Additionally, I do in fact believe that the great power information elites have already today, the great power data analysts, software developers and information visualization experts means great responsibility indeed. There are large groups of highly educated experts both creative and technical that have come to see themselves mainly as "citizens of the internet". It's beginning to dawn on everybody that that's not the case, that real-world realpolitik is indeed shaping both the bits and atoms that make up our world. What we're seeing in this movement is a chance for these groups to get involved with the society they live in, it's a chance for an new political awareness. Not using big data and affecting global changes right now perhaps, but using small data, and making a difference right here.

OKCon, in any case, is where many people come together who are committed to bring about those skillsets and toolsets, who are committed to the vision of a global movement building an open knowledge ecosystem. People who want to make a difference. I recommend to come and talk to them. You might be one of them yourself.

"Grand Theft Auto V" level design

Fantastic article about "Grand Theft Auto V" level design. It's a very interesting account of their process with "location scouts, architectural historians, off-duty police, DJ Pooh and our own research team." The description about how they dealt with light as well as the diversity of geographical signifier Some excerpts:

"Our process has been to block the world in quickly and then collate our reference and build out each part till we hit a good visual bar and a reasonable level of solidity. This is probably where in the past we would have stopped and finished off. Instead, we have done pass after pass of refinement for all sorts of reasons. Simply, does it look good enough? Does it play well enough? Does it feel distinctive? Does it sit well with its surroundings? Does it get across the character of the area we’re trying to create? How does it sit in terms of vistas and general sculptural composition? Do we need more color, contrast, branding, or lighting? Does it feel weathered? Does it have a sense of place and history? Can we layer story over it, whether through ambient, “generalized story” (who lives here, what have they done to the place, who lived here before them, where do they shop, what do they do for fun, do they keep their garden nice, do they have a fetish for gnomes and pink flamingos?) or whether it’s layering our actual story over it: mission detailing, filling out areas that belong to characters, random events or beats, and random characters you might meet. We take all the elements the story and mission guys add and layer more detail over the world based on it. [...] I know there are bigger games out there geographically, but I don’t think there are in terms of content. I want to stress that not only is this world huge but it’s absolutely handcrafted. Every little bit of this world has had a large number of extremely talented artists pore over it. There’s always something to discover, something weird or interesting to see or interact with. It’s absolutely not a massive, empty world. We’ve considered the placement of every tree. We’ve simply not copied buildings around the map or procedurally generated the terrain to pad it out. It’s all handcrafted, all unique, and we’ve gone over it all again and again and again to make sure there’s enough layering of detail that I don’t think many people will ever see everything we’ve put into the world. That in itself, though, means that most people will have different experiences."

I also love the way they understand the complexity of spatial experiences ("Even elements like the radio and their ads have an influence on the map.") and use these kinds of tricks in the game. Why do I blog this? Fascination towards the recreation of Californian space and the way it's addressed to engage players.

Digital Creativity on design fictions

For people interested in design fictions, the latest issue of Digital Creativity is a special issue about design fiction. It features papers by people like James Auger or Andrew Morrison, Ragnhild Tronstad and Einar Sneve Martinussen. As proposed by the editor of this issue, Derek Hales, in his introduction entitled "Design fictions an introduction and provisional taxonomy":

"In crafting this issue we were interested in reflecting on design fictions as a methodology and on the ways in which fictional constructs, such as future scenarios and ‘diegetic prototypes’ (D. Kirby 2009), might open design discourse. As much as we might perhaps simplistically suggest that the fictions of non-linear narrative, the achronological and asynchronous, have been central to contemporary media design and to media art, we might also say that the convergence of narrative and technology is central to design fictions: as we will see, design fictions exploit the power of media design to craft and deploy compelling visions of the future. Further than this, though, design fictions have become a significant means through which designers are exploring the ‘present’ condition of interface culture."

Why do I blog this? Gathering material about design fiction for the upcoming Laboratory retreat and for next Friday's workshops in Annecy, France.

Kenneth Goldsmith's 'Uncreative Writing"

Kenneth Goldsmith's 'Uncreative Writing" was certainly the best book I've read so far in 2013. It's basically about techniques, which are traditionally thought to be unrelated with literature (word processing, databasing, recycling, appropriation, intentional plagiarism, identity ciphering, the Internet of Things), inspire the reinvention of writing. The author presents and discusses the tactics he put in place in a class he taught at the University of Pennsylvania.

What does it mean practically speaking?

"We retype documents and transcribe audio clips. We make small changes to Wikipedia pages (changing an a to an an or inserting an extra space between words). We hold classes in chat rooms, and entire semesters. Each semester, for their final paper, I have them purchase a term paper from an online. Each student then must get up and present the paper to the class as if they wrote it themselves, defending it from attacks by the other students. What paper did they choose? Is it possible to defend something you didn’t write? Something, perhaps, you don’t agree with? Convince us. All this, the suppression of self-expression is impossible. "

The type of assignment in gives to students are the following: retype five pages with no further explanation, transcribe a short piece of audio, take a film or video that has no screenplay and make one for it, etc.

And why is that important from his perspective?

"The uncreative writer constantly cruises the Web for new language, the cursor sucking up words from untold pages like a stealth encounter.

Where do we go from here? We could take this text and attempt to find patterns that would aid an investigation into the plasticity and mutability of language posing as image. Or we could do a close reading on this text alone, commenting, for example, how curious the row of fifty-one 7s is in the third line or on the random but somewhat even spatial distribution of graphical apples on the page.

because of this new environment, a certain type of book is being written that’s not meant to be read as much as it’s meant to be thought about.

The Web functions both as a site for reading and writing: for writers it’s a vast supply text from which to construct literature; readers function in the same way, hacking a path through the morass of information, ultimately working as much at filtering as reading

Having a computer write poems for you is old hat. What’s new is that, like Wershler and Kennedy, writers are now exploiting the language-based search engines and social networking sites as source text.

the language generated by the Web is a far richer source material—ripe for reframing, remixing, and reprogramming—than anything we could ever invent.

We’ll see how the modernist notions of chance, procedure, repetition, and the aesthetics of boredom dovetail with popular culture to usurp conventional notions of time, place, and identity, all as expressed linguistically.

Digital text [computer code] is the body-double of print, the ghost in the machine. The ghost has become more useful than the real; if we can’t download it, it doesn’t exist.

Words exist for the purpose of détournement: take the most hateful language you can find and neuter it; take the sweetest and make it ugly."

Why do I blog this? An intense interest in applying these tactics both for writing and other types of design project. The crux issue here is how to manage language in the digital age. I see this as a quite relevant set of tools to craft networked fictions in a compelling way.

'Curious Rituals' in Milan for the Design Week 2013

Quick update: "Curious Rituals: gestural interactions in the digital everyday", the book and our short film, was shown few weeks ago in the Logotel's (In)visible Design - 100 Stories from the Future and Beyond, an exhibition for Milano Design Week 2013. Thanks again Stefano Mattei and Francesca Rizzo!

Some general pictures of the exhibit from their Flickr Gallery and recap document:

Besides, it's now possible to buy the book on lulu.

Art/tech scene

An interesting quote seen in this NYT article I saw today:

"“I’ve been a bit disappointed by the disconnect between New York City’s art world and technology space,” he wrote in an e-mail later. “It’s extremely rare to see start-up people at gallery openings, for instance.”

There are all sorts of plausible explanations: the tech industry is relatively new (especially in New York); its members are young, busy and most did not plod through four years’ worth of liberal arts syllabuses.

But as many in the art world point out, there is no reason new-media moguls cannot get a remedial art education now."

Why do I blog this? This remark about NYC would totally stand here in the Geneva/Lausanne area. Apart from certain exceptions, I generally feel the same disconnection. Although it's hard to see what groups we are talking about here (tech moguls, developers, designers, new media artists), I don't see many connections betweens these different people. When we started Lift a while back, we had intuition that it would be valuable to foster such a mix, and we were right. However, it's kind of hard, for various reasons. Three of them bother me a lot:

• The importance of silos here in French-speaking Switzerland (and the francophone countries of Europe I would say): with so many "sub-communities" trying to exist, there is a tendency from people to differentiate themselves from others and not try to be part of a community. For instance, the debate about the difference between interaction designers and new media artists can be problematic for that matter. So... if it's already hard to bring these two together, how can we expect start-up people to go to art exhibit! That being said, I'm sure there are exceptions.
• The idea that technology is for technicians and that it's some sort of dirty thing that art should not really bother about.
• The fact that art related with digital technologies (video games, new media art pieces...) is part of popular culture, and hence less important than more noble realms of art such as theatre pieces, opera, contemporary dance or literature. Spending time in California for the laboratory activities (and having fun), this looks utterly weird and passé.

10 years!

I just realized this the tenth year of Pasta and Vinegar! What started as a PhD student notepad is still around. There's less blogging than it used to be but I still intend to keep this blog running. Weak signals and links are generally posted on beta knowledge, but P&V will still feature longer posts, slide decks and other updates.

Thoughts about brain-machine interaction

Brain-computer interactions is a pet topic I investigate on the side for quite some time; actually since I was an undegrad in Cognitive Sciences back fifteen years ago. In the last ten years, we saw an interesting evolution in terms of hardware possibilities with the advent of headcaps... this led to a novel situation where prototyping interaction was less cumbersome as it used to be. Plus, the availability of software (games, relaxation apps, etc.) also allows to conduct tests and observe the usage of such devices out of the lab. This is a dimension I'm interested in as wearing these devices in public is not neutral (even more than Google glasses?) and lead to weird technical problems (signal noise) or interaction possibilities (why would I need such device when waiting for my bus?).

This kind of down-to-earth/blue-collar-design perspective was actually the topic of my talk at the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting 2013 in a session called Advances in Brain-Machine Interfaces: Applications and Implications, along with Miguel Nicolelis, Todd Coleman, Martha J. Farah and Brent Waters.

[slideshare id=16969260&doc=2013-aaas-brain-130306035111-phpapp02]

Why do I blog this? In order to move forward, I'm thinking about a new teaching workshop about this topic next year. The panel as well as the discussion with experts there was quite intriguing and led me to think that there's a good opportunity in these topics when it comes to design/foresight.