social fiction

2003-07-11T03:04:00.000-07:00

2003-07-07T02:25:00.000-07:00

generative drawing tool:
http://jlapotre.free.fr/dessinemoiv2/

2003-07-06T08:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.vorticism.co.uk

"Their style was architectronic, and mostly non-figurative. Some detractors have unkindly written it off as a kind of Crypto-Cubism executed by artists who didn't understand the basic tenets of multi-faceting. However, if they'd painted like Picasso, they would have been seen as mere copyists."

2003-07-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

Microsimulation of road traffic with a time-continuous model

http://vwisb7.vkw.tu-dresden.de/~treiber/MicroApplet/

2003-07-06T07:58:00.000-07:00

the lovely things you can find by accident with google:

http://www.objectivethought.com/apologetics/yahya.html

"Harun Yahya" (the pen name of Adnan Oktar) is the name of a popular proponent of Islamic apologetics, born in 1956, whose books and articles are said to receive wide publication in Turkey and other Islamic countries. He also claims himself to be an intellectual hero against neo-Darwinism." He has written no less than 180 books & if that's not enough his website greets you with 'inviation to the truth'
http://www.hyahya.org/.

This is like something from a story by Borges coming into life.

2003-07-04T06:48:00.000-07:00

getting around quicky in Paris
"a new high-speed travelator, an invention that some say could revolutionise the way we get around big cities."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3001182.stm

2003-07-04T05:15:00.000-07:00

tower bass:
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/auto/article/0,12543,460648,00.html

2003-07-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

"an invitation to contribute

Bureau of Inverse Technology [BIT] commissions the Uphone
Sparrow Report, using the pervasive technology of mobile
phones to capture data on the vanishing network of
distributed sparrows around East London. Phone in to report
your sparrow sighting, non-sighting, imitation, anti/theory
or loss.

an opportunity for the nonstandard ornithologist.

All this week July 1 -7 [24h] & ongoing
>>--- dial 0207 987 0655 ---<<
press 2 for the sparrow line

http://bureauit.org/uphone/r20pw
for listening database & more information

------------------------------------
in search of THE SPARROW SHAPED HOLE"

2003-06-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

Added some examples of ancient computing to this page

http://socialfiction.org/ancient.htm

It's not all computing though. Lincos for instance is included because it's just so cool. Also the Lullian wheels, which should be understood as magic databases are of course included.

Why this collection? For one, it is meant as to be used in relation with the non electric computing of the .walk project. Everyone who now doubts the validity of the psychogeographical computer I can now point to these examples to show it's really not that novel. Beside it's just a great thing to show to those interested in social fiction.

Am planning some major updates btw. More blogstyle, the psychogeography is not really satisfactory so that will change too & bla bla. Just wait & see if really something will change.

2003-06-29T06:19:00.000-07:00

Talking about music, have been listening to this a lot last week.

2003-06-29T05:56:00.001-07:00

http://www.generaleyes.com/ is a blog I found through the headmap blog (thank you for linking to this blog as well!!). This guy likes his music, check the gold chains link, and he has an interesting taxonomy of mobility that I will copy here:

"Location is one of many categories that can be assigned to information. A location assignment allows new ways of creating and retrieving this information. It seems like these can be broken into the following:

Wandering - moving around with little or no goal - discovering information.

Directed - following a leader without knowing future directions.

Planned - moving in response to an itinerary.

Fixed - sitting at my computer only moving to get more coffee. "

reminds me of this article.

"But in an odd sort of way, Internet shopping has brought us full circle.
According to researchers in the US, the strategies you use when you surf the
Web are exactly the same as the ones hunter-gatherers used to find food. You
may be plugged into the information superhighway, but deep down you're still a
caveman."

2003-06-29T05:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.generaleyes.com/
is a blog I found through the headmap blog (thank you for linking to this blog as well!!). This guy likes his music, check the gold chains link, as he has an interesting taxonomy of mobility that I will copy here:

"Location is one of many categories that can be assigned to information. A location assignment allows new ways of creating and retrieving this information. It seems like these can be broken into the following:

Wandering - moving around with little or no goal - discovering information.

Directed - following a leader without knowing future directions.

Planned - moving in response to an itinerary.

Fixed - sitting at my computer only moving to get more coffee. "

reminds me of this article.

"But in an odd sort of way, Internet shopping has brought us full circle.
According to researchers in the US, the strategies you use when you surf the
Web are exactly the same as the ones hunter-gatherers used to find food. You
may be plugged into the information superhighway, but deep down you're still a
caveman."

2003-06-29T05:17:00.000-07:00

With no alien in sight & with the SETI project still without delivering any prove of extraterrestial lifeforms, the contruction of a language in which to communicate with them goed on.

This site gives an overview:
http://www.matessa.org/~mike/messages.html

Lincos is still my favorite though because it's not a language but the discription of a way to contruct a language while you are using it. Totally generic. It's invented by a german math guy called Hans Freudenthal who teached at the university here in Utrecht in the sixties. He was one of the most brilliant students of L.E.J. Brouwer, a trouble maker who also played a little but important role in the debate between Wittgenstein & Popper. But that's a different story.
http://socialfiction.org/lincos.htm

But a project called CETI has "The Evpatoria Project started in the first half of 1998. The company Team Encounter wanted to celebrate the New Year by sending an interstellar message."

http://www3.sympatico.ca/stephane_dumas/CETI/

2003-06-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

Finally I can now release the news in public: socialfiction.org & ZeroG-Lab will set up DORKBOT rotterdam

http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotrotterdam/

http://dorkbot.org

more news when there is.

2003-06-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

In relation to yesterdays contest Wander wondered if there exist a search-engine that takes images as search-string. Never heard of something like that but it made me think that you might use the google image search function in the opposite way as would you normally use it. If you got a image like the one below & want to find out what it is, you can give it context by feeding the name of the image & see what comes back. Because the actual image here is a deeplink [yes, shameless bandwidth theft] you can actually find the source of the image, it's the only hit it returns. Very effective.

The prize btw goes to Chrissy Snap from Breukelen.

2003-06-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

historical drawings of the moon:
http://www.lhl.lib.mo.us/pubserv/hos/moon/cover.htm

2003-06-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

It looks Boolean.

But's not

or well

a little.

guess what it is & the person sending the first e-mail wins a discosocialist booklet
wilfried at socialfiction dot org

2003-06-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

Did you see the new .walk folder on socialfiction.org yet? then have a look:

http://www.socialfiction.org/dotwalk

Some new stuff you might want to check out & there is more in preparation.

& did you see the flashcrowd pictures?

2003-06-20T12:18:00.000-07:00
I really would like to blog more, but time...next week, promised edits on a daily basis; in the mean while check a new street art project:
http://aouw.org/

Which is a project in which Jeroen Jongeleen aka Influenza is participating: so you know it rocks.

2003-06-17T09:05:00.000-07:00
Disco socialism [Aaaahhhh] in UK struck did too:
http://www.peoplesrepublicofdis.co.uk/

plus

http://www.drainspotting.com/
http://www.dvorakgame.co.uk/
smart mobs take manhattan

2003-06-16T11:09:00.000-07:00
some mappinglinks via the UO mailinglist
http://www.mapbureau.com/
http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=208

the report on the Enschede experiment from last monday is on-line here
http://www.socialfiction.org/psychogeography/planetart.htm

2003-06-16T06:10:00.000-07:00
Oh already something on-line of yesterday .walk experiment in The Hague, I just wished that he didn't used all these picture of me!!!

my report will follow this week.

http://hagazine.denhaag.org/2003/specials/together.html

2003-06-14T23:11:00.000-07:00
Aaah I did it again: listened to some Petshopboys music & now I can't stop. This means it will probably take weeks for to get over this. It's like a flu & I really can't help it. They are just so...gay

2003-06-13T13:00:00.000-07:00
A project on social network analysis of blogs; some entries via Ross Mayfield (who is also involved in the social software site a couple of posts ago):
http://radio.weblogs.com/0114726/2003/01/02.html
http://radio.weblogs.com/0114726/2003/02/05.html#a271

pictures are:pretty as always

What is social network analysis; check the intro by Valdis Krebb, also part of the project:
http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html

Also cool Touchgraph
http://www.touchgraph.com

2003-06-13T12:47:00.000-07:00
Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) was one of those twisted Jesuit geniuses; this particular one went to China to convert the heretics but learned as much from them as they did from him. He was an omnipotent guy who made music, was a fairly good painter, (using Chinese influences!), earth scientist & many things more. Today I discovered him through some postings on the Art Of Memory Yahoo-group.

The particular discussion went about the first lines of a book called ‘The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci’ written by Jonathan D. Spence in which it is said that Ricci was the first to bring the art of memory (basically the construction of cognitive places in which things are stored to help you memorize them) to China.

There is a bit of that chapter here:
http://riccistreet.net/riccigreen/patron/palace.htm

According to the experts on the Yahoo-group it’s actually not true that Ricci did such advanced mnemonics, they only thing he did was to device a very poor way to memorize Chinese. Which he spoke fluently btw.

There is plenty of biographical information on-line so check it out.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13034a.htm
http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jmac/sj/scientists/ricci.htm
http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/ric-jour.html

If you want to find some more about the art of memory, the single most influential & acclaimed source is the book by Frances Yates

http://www.silcom.com/~dlp/yates.html

2003-06-12T08:14:00.000-07:00
http://bass-station.net/

2003-06-12T05:04:00.000-07:00
you're cat can be a frog too

http://www.petoffice.co.jp/catprin/english/#hiyoko

2003-06-12T03:04:00.000-07:00
Finally I have found a site that can explain me what the 'social software' hype is about that has infiltrated nearly blog I follow.
http://www.corante.com/many

2003-06-09T12:23:00.000-07:00
PLANETART ROCKS
Just got back from the Planetart festival in Enschede. It takes you 1 & a half hour to get their by train but as always it was worth it. Of all art festivals I have ever encountered these people remain the ultra cool: good music, friendly people, superb organisation, excellent art & healthy attitude with a decent amount of humour.

I tell you again this people rule!!!

The thing however is that they are in some outback are not really getting the credit they would if they were more centrally located. On the other hand the good thing about them is that they bring progressive culture at a place where it is rare, actually they are more progressive than any serious respected festival in Amsterdam or Utrecht. After a week of impact which is a highly respected fest the difference is clear.

For impakt I did 2 walks, for which only at the second 6 people showed up, while in Enschede there were 20 people who were all extremely interested in it all. Very cool & also very inspiring.

I tell you again this people rule!!!

Planetart is a org mainly run by Kees de Groot (Boo!) with productional help from Wilja Jurg (Boo!), the latter also runs the Hondenkoekjes Fabriek in this small protestant bible belt village called Nieuw Leusen together with Marc Monobrain & they (& 5 others) did a discosocialist-show in front of the Museum where impact took place. They were awesome. After seeing them many times you learn what to expect but as always they surprise me by their creativity & especially their zeal: because I ask you, how many people do you know that would come over from that far with a van full of the weirdest costumes to do a 30 minute show in the souring rain (thunder included) & completely go for it.

I kid you not when I say that Marc Monobrain (Boo!) is the most talented artist in this country!! & I will invite him & as many friends as he wants to take as many times as I'm able to.

2003-06-08T04:17:00.000-07:00
If this afternoons wether gets better, (if it stops raining that is), this afternoon will be filled with a .walk in mod3

// generative .walk in mod3
// zero excluded
// socialfiction.org
// d=direction; 1=1; 2=2; 3=3; 4=1; 5=2; 6=3; 7=1; etc

Set A {random[1-3]} //
Set B {random[1-3]} //

Walk
{

Repeat
{

Turn A+B=Xd{random[left; right]} // // // // //
Turn B+X=Yd{random[left; right]} // // // // //
Set A X
Set B Y

}
}

2003-06-05T23:42:00.000-07:00
Florian Cramer reviews .walk:
http://www.runme.org/feature/read/+dot-walk/+31/

2003-06-05T11:35:00.000-07:00
busy with impakt last few days, not much time to post thing ere, expect more soon. everything went fine check the pics of the opening at the site:

http://www.discosocialisme.tk

2003-06-02T10:56:00.000-07:00
finally after months of preparation

is ready to rock you.

This morning we nailed the manifest to the door of Tivoli & tomorrow is the opening of Impakt including our own opening with the implosion of the BVO beersculpture & the ragga set of DJ Auratheft.

This is the site developed by derk reneman
http://www.discosocialisme.tk
read the press release in Dutch or English

we also made it to indymedia.nl

& here is the manifesto:

DISCO SOCIALISM
[THE INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS]

#
ichiban disco[unt] socialism (Aahhhhh) haunting the dance floor the disco socialism virus is:: slowly but determined this new saturday night fever control of club & rave take:: more virus, we need, must have:: evoked from the past & clone it we then did (Aahhhhh) of ears you're disco are made but deaf the future of funky disease disco socialism is not:: more & more all of your disco are belong to us:: who controls the ears, the disco does control.

#
delicious ears these predecessors of disco socialism have:: mapping the histrionics of the disco socialist swarm:: {Haitian voodoo:: sacred rhythms in illegal jungle raves} {German jazz jugend during NAZI reign:: swing heil that white ass booty!! } {sufi masters under Taliban regime} {hiphop fighting the WASP moral majority:: sampling is a right} {tribalist nomadic rave resistance:: crusties bling blinging} {Pythagoras:: equalling with the harpsichord the universe does} {the Jungle Association of Autonomous Astronauts massive(Aahhhhh):: binary polyphonic sound system culture for outer space}
from sonic fiction to social fact dance with different ears disco socialism does

#
the filter the sound rose of disco socialism nonresistant islands impossible to map were being contaminated:: pierced with hexagon dance flash of syxy breakbeat (Aahhhhh) scooped out with nunchaku (Aahhhhh), burnt with flamethrower (Aahhhhh) and destroyed (Aahhhhh) a huge dancefloor full breezers and Heineken was.

(Aahhhhh) these, that one approach a sum use from the filter -10dB/decade to of first filters of order compensated is. It is right at within +/-0.05dB over 9.2hz (44100 Hz speed that test). The profit of the unity is in permanent revolution, but the numbers at the end of each line may be regulated climb:: disco socialism reclaims the algorhythms.

when 'club' put together of the number all similar chance has, precise as that () the position through the edge caused, the disco socialism will an almost gaussian flat distribution have. The weirdest shizzle disco socialism is (Oohh) (Aahhhhh).

#
of ears this virus is made:: Kunnen baby, u dit behandelen? Kunnen baby, u dit behandelen? Kunnen baby, u dit behandelen? Ik denk niet dat u dit behandelen kan:: we have obtained the brains (obtained the control center) we have obtained the looks (obtained the DJ booth) permit us the great quantity of it marks the socialism of the disco (the socialism of the disco of Oohh) (Aahhhhh) the socialism of the disco:: reclaim the dancefloor (obtained the ears) (Oohh) (Aahhhhh)

#
when we reclaim to be the control post we wholeheartedly agree with comrade disco socialist view point, but like the typical disco socialist joint these go it is a movement, a process of becoming [invisible] [forget the DJ] the disco is that I got the disco, that mine frequencies temporary and resonate your eardrums at banger anthems broad shouldered 51% comrades, that YOU turned us into Alta Vista Cult:: more conventionally not find will using Google, move the freephase and the generator Crank it on at the gigawatts at disco-fascists that manage it with the potshots, the plot mittens for these under zero condition:: we think you can make lots of original disco socialist (Aahhhhh) (Aahhhhh) material (Aahhhhh)

#
disco socialist song lines:: the music does the comrades together combination the middle-classes of song lines and the rebel comes:: sing along cartography for public space of disco~scape (obtained the islands we have) (Aahhhhh). you not need expensive shoes to navigate/dance in socialist disco space you need:: hum hum human beatbox to the renegade breakbeat science while following ears (we obtained the maps) (Aahhhhh) (snatch it we did). are you infected yet discoyen? [losing it's spatial dimension the disco is, becoming invisible the disco is] (Aahhhhh) no dr. octagon can cure:: no dr. polygon can save the greasy disco of yesterday:: the right to be 'poor' disco deserves:: disco socialism the word & the motion is.

http://www.discosocialisme.tk
http://www.discosocialisme.tk

http://www.discosocialisme.tk
http://www.discosocialisme.tk

2003-06-02T02:25:00.000-07:00
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/05/30/22FEbattlefuture_1.html:/a>

aaah finally the changing hous ething is over (sort off)

2003-05-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

"Nothing is experienced by itself, but always in relation to its surroundings, the sequence of events leading up to it, the memory of past experiences."

Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City

some links on urban planning & street patterns:
http://www.fccdr.usf.edu/projects/tlushtml/tlus100.htm
http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~rknowles/index.html
www.uwec.edu/geography/Ivogeler/

"Cities change through time, especially as technology was introduced. Distinctive street patterns, residential densities, lot shapes and sizes, house location and commercial buildings on topographic maps revel a great deal about the age and economic status of an urban area. The following images are examples of urban street patterns. A typical map has remnants of many of these patterns, often modified in ways that range from the obvious to the subtle. New modes of transportation often serve as the catalyst for major changes in the urban map. However, the changes are rarely so thorough that a skillful map interpreter is unable to reconstruct at least part of the former landscape."
http://ludwig.missouri.edu/137/urbantopo/urbantopo.html
http://www.trainweb.org/mts/fmt/fmt17.html

2003-05-25T02:28:00.000-07:00
Subcribed to another Yahoo-group.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/magister-l/

founded by the guy running this:
http://home.earthlink.net/~hipbone/"http://home.earthlink.net/~hipbone/

Found this in the archive of the list:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/print/2002/9/18/01924/0267"

2003-05-22T08:20:00.000-07:00
Database Cartography is on show currently:
http://chinabone.twenteenthcentury.com/gallery/hall_of_maps/DSCN3031

& I finally managed to find a social network analysis software that is free. Krackplot after a pioneer in the field Krackhardt. The last update on this program is from 2001, it's in DOS & they are very proud of their new .gif export!! it sure beats whacky postscript exports.
Expect some new maps & further explanation of all this shizzle later this summer.
Download your own copy here, so we can exchange datafiles (-:
http://www.analytictech.com/downloadkp.htm

http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~krack/
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~krack/gif.html

2003-05-20T10:09:00.000-07:00
no comments today just links:
Iain Sinclair
Slavoj Zizek
African Kings
William Hazlitt
Albert Camus
Steampowered Drum Machine
Marije de Vries
Trailfinding

2003-05-18T23:34:00.000-07:00
the French street art magazine world-sign just published it's third issue: excellent.

2003-05-18T13:52:00.000-07:00
TEXAS
http://images.chron.com/content/news/photos/03/05/15/redist/redist.gif

2003-05-18T11:00:00.000-07:00
Aboriginal songlines are a topic hotly debated in psychogeography recently, now I found a western map that shows the bounderies of the different tribes, proving that not a single bit of land was 'empty' or unclaimed. Cynic thing is that no aboriginal could read this map.

http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/tindale/boundaries_intro.htm

found through this blog about maps: http://www.mcwetboy.net/maproom/

2003-05-18T02:57:00.000-07:00
forgot to include a link on uchimate in the previous post, here in the rebound:
http://mundanebehavior.org/issues/v3n1/bueno.htm

2003-05-16T10:24:00.000-07:00
"This woman, Eveline -- who, I forgot to mention, was a longtime friend of Michele Bernstein -- had left me, and Nicole took her place, and Nicole was pregnant. She wanted the child, and so did I: it's Armelle. But Guy Debord and our little Situationist friends sent a young woman to Navarrenx over Easter vacation to try to persuade Nicole to get an abortion"

Never been a particular fan of situationism in general & Debord in particular, this interview with Henri Lefebvre once again shows the moral sir Debord maintains outside of his writing. There are some funny parts about the derive as well.

http://www.notbored.org/lefebvre-interview.html

Ever since I first wrote the pedestrian culture article in summer 2002 I knew I would one day write a second version because the topic is so wide & there was not included so much material & references that I know would exist if only I could find out. Time takes care of that & hopefully this summer I will find some time to get to rewriting it. The new version will have to include more about the lake poets, about Robert Walser, Kierkegaard, some nations about pilgrimages & today I found another new angle that definitely should be included, the Japanese way of walking called uchimata.

Earlier I mentioned the latest issue of Wired, one of my favorite pieces from that is now on-line:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/euro_spc.html

"…the EU thrives on diversity. The former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once complained that Europe doesn't have a single telephone number. When there's a crisis, Americans don't know who to turn to as the authentic voice of opinion. This is because Europe possesses many centers of power. Even the splits between new and old, and the accidental good cop/bad cop routine played by Britain and France, can be seen as a sign of the EU's strength. "

Even though I used to demonstrate against the European Union (back in the days) I have gradually come to the decision that all thing considered (the gigantic bureaucracy, the nasty anti immigration politics could use some revision) the unification of Europe is a good thing. I welcome the former Eastern European countries into the Union, even if that means that the west will have to pay more than it will receive initially.

After all these ages the inner borders finally are becoming irrelevant, the European Union is already changing the continent, the euro being the most obvious example & that upsets a lot of people whose live will change by that (that of farmers for instance). Bureaucracy is in that respect a good thing because it gives breathing space that will enable everybody to adapt to the new situation. Castells has said it elsewhere & Mark Leonard is saying it again in this Wired article, the multi powered make up of the union combined with the lack of an end goal, the lack of utopianism, is exactly the reason why it will work: every nation, including the new comers are able to participate in the process of unification while it is happening.

The remarkable thing is that Leonard is from England, the one country still feverishly opposed to the whole process. Only today I read some posh lady say on the radio that 'England will lose it's national identity' if it would replace the Pound with the Euro: stupid nationalism.

more Leonard here:
http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/page/0,11916,717994,00.html

2003-05-14T06:17:00.000-07:00
Went to see Bowling for Columbine when I was in New York. Michael Moore's theory is problably right when he says that bowling is an important engine of violence.
He dude; don't you remember the Big Lebowski ??

2003-05-14T05:53:00.000-07:00
some more emergent behaviour - walking path design shizzle:http://www.peterme.com/archives/000073.html

2003-05-13T09:39:00.000-07:00
a write up on the con-flux, who ever wrote this visited exactly what I missed.

2003-05-11T16:05:00.000-07:00
my last day in nyc, visiting some blogs in my spare time. But before the links, the books that I found:

The Marquise of O & other stories - friedrich von kleist
(been looking for this ever since Nick from berlin told me about it; the bits I read are worthwhile: cynic narratives of despair in a godless universe that just doenst want to be rational)

Surrealists plays -
(a collection of plays invented or revived by the surrealists, very nifty with examples of automatic writing & drawings which are not that easy to find.)

The walk - Robert Walser
(For this book did I really searched a long time; Walser was a well know writer in the German speaking world of his days, this book is a collection of his stories that mostly report on his walks. very peripatic.)

That's it, apart from the new Wiredwhich has Rem Koolhaas as a guest editor. obviously thet only thing bigger then Koolhaas' building is his ego but "tracking is one of the oldest continous traditions of systematic knowledge in existence today", makes me want to do some more following people like in the crowd psychogeography experiment.

http://www.marginwalker.org
It took a little time but this community site is starting to rule badly (&it's name is problably borrowed from one of the few guitar bands I would'nt mind hearing: fugazi)

globalization = not americanization
take that naomi

the one about the monkey's typing Shakespeare
I prefer the painting elephantsor robots oh no art painting robots

The OMA site; the koolhaas site is pretty horrendous: this is probably the worst use of flash by a company that is supposed to be so advanced.

Lee Walton is one of the people I met here: he is not a conceptual artist but an 'Experientialist'. right!

2003-05-09T12:49:00.000-07:00
To be read at the psy geo conflux festival in NYC
(a quick draft that might not be used at all.)

"These are exciting times for psychogeography. In the last one or two years or so the discipline of psychogeography has found new breath, it has ripped itself free from the body of academic thought where it was slowly decaying into an obscure theoretical subculture.

Of course in England a few psychogeographical groups operating in cities like London, Manchester & Nottingham have kept the spirit alive & over the years they have developed a unique framework that combines radical politics, the occult & the composition of the urban environment into a coherent & slightly paranoid ideology.

Since the Hot Summer of Psychogeography 2002 also outside the British isle's countless new psychogeograhers on the block have rediscovered the walks or rather the Dérives of the French post Freudian avant-garde movements like surrealism & lettrism which culminated in the well know consortium of European groups called the International Situationist who managed quite falsely to secure the term & the practise psychogeography in the eye of the public as their own invention. Psychogeography however is practise as old as human civilazation itself. In the 14th century the Italian humanist poet Petrach climbed the Mont Ventoux for no other reason then to find out how the view from the top would affect him, a strangle exploit for which he had to seek anecdotes from to past to make it look sane to his contemporaries. In ancient greece there was the peripatic shool of Aristole who developed their philosophy while walking: for them thinking or rather contemplation & movement where indistinguable.
Psychogeographers, which combines the previous examples have always been interested in history: the city is an artefact, a product, of history itself. But, as the Psy Geo Conflux festival will show it's also very much concerned with exploring new the spaces created by technology, by science: using algorithms, databases, GPS systems, PDA's, Lap-tops, Minidiscs, mobile ephones, psychogeographers are now annotating space, rediscovering their own neighbourhood, are mapping invisible spaces like open nodes in Wi-Fi networks, the city is used as a chessboard or as a logic gate. Psychogeography is a strange hybrid between walking & technology, between DIY & high tech, between philosophy & engineering.

I'm still not sure what a definition of psychogeography might look like: nobody can't tell you what psychogeography is & what it's not, therefore you should not trust people who say they know. This is important because psychogeography as it's exist today is a process. Every few weeks I get e-mails from new groups all over the western world, who are all doing their own thing for their own reasons, it's very exiting, & it's relevant in many field. Psychogeography can be practised as artistic practise, as a branch of urban exploration, as a form of social commentary & often it's all these thing at the same time. Psychogeography also has it's own paranoia in the sense that it believe that any environment can induce behaviour. Perhaps you remember the main character in Albert Camus' novel The Stranger who commits a murder for now other reason than the way the ocean reflects the sun in his eyes. This is a very clear & powerful example of a psychogeographical effect, an effect that can be consciously engineered in the composition of the city.
William Burroughs tried to expose subliminal messages in newspapers by chopping them up, psychogeography as a city space cut-up does the new thing: it tries to find out what's out there, encrypted beneath the surface, by navigating through it in unusual ways.

The design of the city, of public space, is very much in vogue right now. Psychogeography has always taken an active approach to these topics. A psychogeographical walk is meant to create your own environment: by exploring it, by breaking free from daily habits, by adding your own technology, our own creativity to the environment.

One of the thing that always amazes me is the influence a map of any given place has on your image of a place, even though you can't recognise the map in the territory. The visualization of Psychogeographal drifts therefore often starts with representing the city without reference to the actual spatial dimension: a cartography based around directions, connection, itineraries, experiences.

The 3 days of the psy geo conflux will expose the new élan, the faces of current day psychogeography to the world, the presentations & the exposition will clarify the different ideas that are being taking to the boundaries of their own logic, the different walks enable you to participate, the parties in the evening open up the opportunity to meet the people here presenting their work for the first time in such a specific context.

Even though these 3 days & a night are very busy you should remember that the organisers could have quite easily filled an entire week if only time, energy & possibility would have allowed it. As said this first psychogeographical conference/festival will not define the practise but it will hopefully stimulate the innocent bystander; encourage them to do their own crazy walks. To add your own psycho to the geography. Because words, documentation, can only partly communicate the experieneces of a psychogeographical detour

To conclude I would like to thank Christina ray from Glowlab & Dave Mandll from the Brooklyn Psychogeographical association who have made the ludicrous come true by organising this event that will pose so many challenges to the administrative powers at the ministry of funny walks.
Bo!

wilfried hou je bek"

2003-05-08T13:27:00.000-07:00
hacking as a creative dicipline that can be compared to painting (or writing, or architecture, or ..)
http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

2003-05-07T13:30:00.000-07:00
I'm new york right now, typing away in the computer room of the abc-no rio the festival HQ

be sure to check out the new psychogeography forum

The festival made it to the pages of the village voice

2003-05-03T12:23:00.000-07:00
Psychogeography in Prague: the virus is moving into the domain of incomprehensible languages:
http://psychogeografie.blogspot.com/
40 people showed up for their first expiriment: not bad at all

--

another slashdot entry that makes you wonder:
http://www.secunia.com/advisories/8642/

2003-05-01T11:01:00.000-07:00
Found this on slashdot today:
http://www.sensorsmag.com/articles/0403/30/main.shtml

"The goal is to make all types of Web-resident devices (e.g., flood gauges, stress gauges on bridges, mobile heart monitors, Web cams, and satellite-borne earth imaging devices) discoverable and accessible using standard services and schemas.
make all sort of sensors accessible over the internet."
Stelarc was doing this decades ago, but this is an interesting development that will add to the net as a omni potential medium.

This site appeared on the dutch nettime ago
http://www.anti-apathy.nl/

sort of interesting new project in what they try to do, a bit dull in what they actually do

2003-04-27T07:47:00.000-07:00
The report on the toronto walks is now on-line
http://www.socialfiction.org/psychogeography/dotwalktoronto.html

For the disco socialism project we will do for the next impakt festival I secured the www.discosocialisme.tk domainname. Derk is already working quite hard to prepare the design, wander is preparing all sorts of different things in the background & for me; I will write the most wickedest shizzle you have ever read.
What we will do exactly is either unclear or secret but it will rock many dancefloors.

This page offers a interesting overview of 'form' in art.
http://hjem.get2net.dk/3boxes/desert.htm

2003-04-24T07:30:00.000-07:00
psychogeography in Cardiff

note the non algorithmic disclaimer; has it come this far that psychogeographers warn each other against it. (-:

--

one of the things of the internet I like is the pictures of parties you didn't go to; especially if they are making funny faces to the camera!
http://www.girlture.nl/Drs._BesBorrel_kleiner_gemaakt/P4120010.htm
Hey you; where ever you are sent me url's to your pictures too.

2003-04-22T02:33:00.000-07:00
The Man Who Shouted Teresa
by Italo Calvino

I stepped off the pavement, walked backwards a few paces looking up, and, from the middle of the street, brought my hands to my mouth to make a megaphone, and shouted toward the top stories of the block: "Teresa!"
My shadow took fright at the moon and huddled at my feet.
Someone walked by. Again I shouted: "Teresa!" The man came up to me and said: "If you do not shout louder she will not hear you. Let's both try. So: count to three, on three we shout together." And he said: "One, two, three." And we both yelled, "Tereeeesaaa!"
A small group of friends passing by on their way back from the theater or the café saw us calling out. They said: "Come on, we will give you a shout too." And they joined us in the middle of the street and the first man said one to three and then everybody together shouted, "Te-reee-saaa!"
Somebody else came by and joined us; a quarter of an hour later there were a whole bunch of us, twenty almost. And every now and then somebody new came along.
Organizing ourselves to give a good shout, all at the same time, was not easy. There was always someone who began before three or who went on too long, but in the end we were managing something fairly efficient. We agreed that the "Te" should be shouted low and long, the "re" high and long, the "sa" low and short. It sounded fine. Just a squabble every now and then when someone was off.
We were beginning to get it right when somebody, who, if his voice was anything to go by, must have had a very freckled face, asked: "But are you sure she is home?"
"No," I said.
"That is bad," another said. "Forgotten your key, have you?"
"Actually," I said, "I have my key."
"So," they asked, "why dont you go on up?"
"I don't live here," I answered. "I live on the other side of town."
"Well, then, excuse my curiosity," the one with the freckled voice asked, "but who lives here?"
"I really wouldn't know," I said.
People were a bit upset about this.
"So, could you please explain," somebody with a very toothy voice asked, "why you are down here calling out Teresa."
"As far as I am concerned," I said, "we can call out another name, or try somewhere else if you like."
The others were a bit annoyed.
"I hope you were not playing a trick on us," the frecled one asked suspiciously.
"What," I said, resentfully, and I turned to ther others for confirmation of my good faith. The others said nothing.
There was a moment of embarrassment.
"Look," someone said good-naturedly, "why don't we call Teresa one more time, then we go home."
So we did it one more time. "One two three Teresa!" but it did not come out very well. Then people headed off for home, some one way, some another.
I had already turned into the square when I thought I heard a voice still calling: "Tee-reee-sa!"
Someone must have stayed on to shout. Someone stubborn.

from Numbers in the Dark

2003-04-21T23:45:00.000-07:00
yes, back home & at work again. feeling very tired. Next thing coming up; walk + spoken word performance in Gent/belgium next friday: http://www.urbanmag.be

2003-04-20T10:18:00.000-07:00
so, my visit to toronto is coming to an end, in an hour or 2 somebody is gonna pick me up & drive me to the airport & at then 10 in the morning I will arrive at schiphol. accompinied by a huge jetlag, no doubt.

yesterday was the closing party with HOP FU, a slapstick kung-fu movie with added live turntabilist effefcts, pretty cool, afterwards I got my share of electrclash: brutal underground shit: a non ventilated extremely hot basement 2 meters high & fabulous music at earsplitting volumes: chicks on speed, wire (you're love so sweet, you're sweat so sour), front 242 and lots of other stuff I didn't know but was awesome.

also interesting; there are quite a few second hand bookstores here & this is what I bought:
-the complete peotry of Wordsworth
-A book on the English Romantic age
-seletected writing of Coleridge
-The fold - Deleuze
- A book the history of cryptography
- utopia or oblivion - buckminster fuller
- The history of O
- the path to rome - hilaire Belloc

It's wat too much but it was all so cheap that I couldn't help myself. of course I also bought some presents, (including a saving pig from Niagara Falls)

2003-04-18T18:38:00.000-07:00
just got back from a lecture/video presenation by/about negativeland: way cool, makes me want to get back home & set to work, als 2 days wait

http://www.negativland.com/

2003-04-17T13:49:00.000-07:00
bummer:
http://www.subculturefanzine.co.uk/xtra/disco.htm

somebody has already done a disco socialism manifesto; thanx wander for pointing this out to me.

2003-04-17T13:42:00.000-07:00
AAA toronto has put this link at their site; mandala cartography

2003-04-16T15:03:00.000-07:00
not much to say from toronto, I'm so in teh middle of it all that I can't find the energy to write about it, so read a bit about todays .walk. Without pictures as yet. Check back to socialfiction.org about a week from now to see them.

TORONTO APRIL 16TH .WALK

A full report of the 3 walks socialfiction will do this week during the Image Festival in Toronto will be published at our site at a later date, (yes, complete with witty remarks). Here follows a quick overview of todays experiment (16 april)
At 1PM a group of about 15 psychogeographers gathered at the Value Village 2nd hand store at 1319 Bloor W. to execute a cute .walk script that looked like this:

// WALKING APART TOGETHER
// HEX-DATA CUT-UP
// SOCIALFICTION.ORG

// W=Workfield;; O=Recordfield;; P=Position;; D=Direction;; S=Self;; O=Other

Def W
{

E0CA B793 F2D3 A5E4 98C8 9885 6FA9 1CCC 4532 BEF4 DDFA 0FA4 31BC D326

}

Forever

{

Import to agent P[1-4]
Delete W;;P[1-4]

Vector Pn;; P1 to P4
{
If Pn = numerical; D = right
If Pn = alphabetical; D = Left
}

Vector Pn;; P1 P2 P3 P4
{
Run Pn;; random[1,2,3,4] D)
Replace P1 (random at corner)
Print P1 to R
}

When meet
{
parse RS P[1-4] to WO P[1-4]
}

W empty?
{
Transport R[1-4] to W[1-4]
}

Record R
{

}

}

In the 'W' field you find series of digits taken from a .gif of Toronto opened in a hex-editor

the .walk processed these digits, as well as gave left/right rules for the walk. The processed data was then fed back into the image causing all sort of distortion. this is the list of the permutations done in the original file, between ( ) the frequency of each permutation. The geeks might wonder what letters higher up in the alphabet than G are doing in here. they were not replaced.)

F0D0 > F1D6 (1)
D099 > A811 (2)
4500 > 6492 (5)
0440 > 8950 (3)
D118 > E617 (1)
0A4E > 3C4E (1)
5155 > 4154 (1)
1A2D > 3FYL (2)
F051 > V353 (1)
21DC > 06PN (1)
8035 > 2313 (8)
F037 > V136 (2)
F404 > 5494 (1)
D26A > L15M (1)
884F > 6265 (1)
0C89 > 4P65 (2)
86A2 > 78V2 (3)
8500 > 7566 (4)
3C61 > 9B25 (1)
2D4D > 7A6B (1)
262B > 435S (1)
1823 > 1425 (2)
3D88 > 6S15 (2)
7645 > 3PIN (1)
A939 > K913 (2)

The resulted cut-up of the map will be used to navigate around in the experiment next saturday (apil 19th, 84 Nasseau, ideal coffe, 1 PM) [join us if you can.]

As attachement you will find the map before & after the .walking

(thanx to all participants in this brainfrying experiment)

2003-04-11T09:15:00.000-07:00
first post from toronto & I have to say, this place is way cool, I'v been walking around a lot, passing scyscrapers, old churches, residental eara's all a block removed. The jetlag is not bothering me right now, but I won't by typing any more right now because this mac is giving me RSI

more soon have a look at this in the meanwhile
http://www.interaccess.org/ia.php

2003-04-09T11:19:00.000-07:00
to bad I will miss this:

"The Road to Gagarin…

The Dutch photographer Rene Nuijens and Canadian writer Steve Korver would like to invite you to their exhibition dedicated to the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. It opens on Space Day, April 13 (10am-5pm) at the European Space Agency’s Space Expo in Noordwijk and runs until May 11th 2003. "

Steve is a canadian living in amsterdam, a greta writer & gagarin freak, read this for instance

2003-04-09T07:32:00.000-07:00
tomorrow at 10 in the morning my flight leaves from amsterdam, I intend to blog about my entire Toronto experience but if it remains silent here you know why, in the mean while check out these links

B Traven,
never read his books, but the story surrounding him is luther blisstt worthy
link 1
link 2
link 3

Petrarch
14th century Italian poet whose biography proves interesting from a psychogeograhical point of view.
http://petrarch.freeservers.com/
especially this famous one of course
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/petrarch-ventoux.html
this last one is hosted in this wonderfull resource;
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook2.html

--
Neil from disconaut AAA started blogging here

loads of german architecture here [don't you like the interface]

some arc pictures here

to conclude this link, a dutch art log, with euhm loads of naked woman. (via arie)[those nauthy artists, while they should be discussing the social implications of database technology in the light of Russian new media theory on nettime.]

2003-04-07T13:13:00.000-07:00
together with Arie this blog is now a proud member of the dutch weblog community! isn't it great!! now hope the accidental surfer stumbling on this page doenst bother too much about my crappy english.

may I add to that this blog is part of a larger project called social fiction
http://www.socialfiction.org
http://www.socialfiction.org
http://www.socialfiction.org
http://www.socialfiction.org
http://www.socialfiction.org
http://www.socialfiction.org
http://www.socialfiction.org
http://www.socialfiction.org
http://www.socialfiction.org
http://www.socialfiction.org

2003-04-07T13:05:00.000-07:00
this I will check out, practical history:
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

"A fully searchable online edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.

2003-04-07T10:49:00.000-07:00

Added a txt from le Corbusier on Socialfiction today; engaging but Oh So dictatorial writing about planning a town for 3 million people.

plus some links

http://hjem.get2net.dk/3boxes/desert.htm

http://www.cockrockdisco.com/

http://www.bluespoon.com

http://www.graftlab.com/

slub has added some tracts to their site:
http://www.slub.org

pass the dutchies on your left hand site
http://wwww.bandinabox.tk

&

a psychogeography blog from/about Glasgow
http://www.blackdrop.blogspot.com/

Still have't heard anything on the Toronto masterclass, for whome?, for how many?, about what?

Another problem to solve is what to read in the plane? mmm

2003-04-06T07:26:00.000-07:00
Only 2 days ago I heared that I'v got to do a masterclass when I'm in toronto next week. Nice, but know I feel I have got to prepare myself but am not sure how, or what for... mmm so I have been googling in search of more african fractals, sacred geometry & the link between architecture & 'perfect' form.

http://www.btinternet.com/~connectionsinspace/index.html
especially this

http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/casa/melbourne.html

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/gina/arch.html

2003-04-03T09:21:00.000-08:00
This is being blogged everywhere:
The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head

This is the place to order a great fashion atribute not yet in your wardrobe

& I joined the Empyre mailinglist yesterday, there are discussing Software art, data landscapes etc, a bit too snobbisch academic perhaps but who knows what it will lead to.

here is a bit from the openingstatement of their latest discussion:
"My recent writings examine issues of orality and literacy with
respect to the proliferation of wireless ubiquitous computing and
location-aware systems in art and everyday life. This work was
recently presented at the CAiiA Consciousness Reframed Conference in
Perth, Australia. Through my practice I have consistently sought to
challenge rational, ocular-centric constructions of space and time
implicit within mainstream urban design, architecture, digital
systems and GPS technology itself, as a product of military and
scientific research. However, explicit critiques of the military
origins and uses of GPS have remained at the margins of my practice -
acknowledged, yet unexplored.

Given the theme of this month's discussion and the recent outbreak of
war with Iraq, I am compelled to give the discussion over to
questions of psycho-geographies and data landscapes as they relate to
war. More than any other war, we are seeing satellite imaging and
GPS technology used to guide missiles, construct high definition
data-embedded maps, direct movement of troops and aircraft, and image
space as territory. Questions regarding the representation of space
and corollary constructions of identity are raised with every
broadcast, press briefing, illustration and photograph. Real-time
unpacking of the rhetoric behind these cartographic texts and tactics
is urgently needed. I look forward to this month's forum unfolding
as a space for such discussion and debate."

http://www.subtle.net/empyre

2003-04-02T09:29:00.000-08:00
a new psychogeography group in Orlando, Florida.

Their logo sure rocks

2003-04-01T08:05:00.000-08:00
found this site today
http://www.feestfotos.com

party pictures taken in utrecht, all at parties I wourd NEVER in my life go to.
sad thing is that I recognise a lot people, like at this one
http://www.feestfotos.com/psy241202.html
it's a psycedelic circus event (that's why a lot of people look like they have takien drugs; they have!) well know for playing music I would like to see removed from this face of he earth.

perhaps the atom bomb was not such a bad invention after all

2003-03-31T11:47:00.000-08:00
started reading Michel de Montaigne (1533-90) today, after 2 essays I knew that I should have done this much earlier.

Here are some of his texts on line

"If you found your pleasure upon drinking of the best, you condemn yourself to the penance of drinking of the worst. Your taste must be more indifferent and free; so delicate a palate is not required to make a good toper. The Germans drink almost indifferently of all wines with delight: their business is to pour down and not to taste; and it's so much the better for them; their pleasure is so much the more plentiful and nearer at hand."

wow,

2003-03-31T09:19:00.000-08:00
I was in need of a new pair of shoes for ages because my old timberlands were down & out, there were holes everywhere & after 10 minutes of walking my feet started to ache. After visiting over different 10 stores I decided to buy some monster skate shoes (together with a bunch of 12 year olds)

aren't they rad

because there are some *classic* generative walks coming up I was looking for a walk to generate the algo's in a less labour intensive way. I haven't tried printing it yet but here is a on-line generative algorithm engine for your benefit too.

yes it's nerdy I know

2003-03-30T22:25:00.000-08:00
ANNOUNCING THE cON fLUX

2003-03-30T06:42:00.000-08:00
a few posts back you find a post about African fractals, now have a look at the catal-hyuk-map made in babylon around 6,2000 BC.

& here a schematic version of what it portrays

mmm, it does like a path generated by a algorithms, sort of random walkish.

pictures taken from this site:
http://www.rain.org/gis/catal-hyuk-map.html

2003-03-27T23:03:00.000-08:00
http://www.stlimc.org/front.php3?article_id=6598&group=webcast
An American Pro-War demonstration.

Did it occur to anybody that with the heavy resistance from the Iraqi this war that started out as a clear cut operation is evolving in the Star wars movie Lucas never made: the war between the Darth's Imperial storm troopers & the tusken raiders.

**
http://nypress.com/16/13/news&columns/feature.cfm
"11 Henry Kissinger, Political Consultant

It would be one thing to allow this scheming, paranoid, old thug to live out his last days in merciful comfort—two hours of fresh air every day, unlimited access to the prison library, accordion lessons—but New York still treats Henry Kissinger like royalty, regularly soliciting his opinions in the New York Times (whose reporters he once ordered wiretapped), breaking down his door with lucrative offers for consulting work and breathlessly reviewing his delusional memoirs. Only diminished relevance keeps him from the top 10."

2003-03-25T10:29:00.000-08:00
found some interesting articles today;

The Next Christianity
We stand at a historical turning point, the author argues—one that is as epochal for the Christian world as the original Reformation. Around the globe Christianity is growing and mutating in ways that observers in the West tend not to see. Tumultuous conflicts within Christianity will leave a mark deeper than Islam's on the century ahead

A Tale of Two Colonies
Keep in mind that terrorism is an entrepreneurial activity, dominated by enterprising self-starters. An American military expert told me, "In Yemen you've got nearly twenty million aggressive, commercial-minded, and well-armed people, all extremely hard-working compared with the Saudis next door. It's the future, and it terrifies the hell out of the government in Riyadh."

European unification in the era of the network state
by Manuel Castells
The integration of Europe, both response to and expression of globalisation, has provoked nationalist reaction in the member states, putting the project at risk. Europe needs to mediate between global and local spaces; this requires the building of a European identity that complements national and communal ones, and is founded on a progressive concept of governance and economy.

Memoria Technica by Lewis Carroll
according to Byron form the Giordanisti e-group Lewis Carroll was heavenly influenced by Bruno.

2003-03-23T04:08:00.000-08:00

African fractalshttp://www.rpi.edu/%7Eeglash/eglash.dir/afbook.htm
doenst that look a bit like the images of genarative walks on a perfect grid below?

some notes on fractals:
http://math.rice.edu/~lanius/fractals/dim.html
I read this in Flatterland already; fractals are really different dimensions.

brilliant stuff; fractal psychogeography will be coming near you this summer

2003-03-23T03:58:00.000-08:00
LINKS

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/03/mann.htm
The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán dazzled Hernán Cortés in 1519; it was bigger than Paris, Europe's greatest metropolis. The Spaniards gawped like hayseeds at the wide streets, ornately carved buildings, and markets bright with goods from hundreds of miles away. They had never before seen a city with botanical gardens, for the excellent reason that none existed in Europe. The same novelty attended the force of a thousand men that kept the crowded streets immaculate. (Streets that weren't ankle-deep in sewage! The conquistadors had never heard of such a thing.)

http://www.lacma.org/Places/main.htm
"Each of these images provides a view of the world shaped by the artist who created it. As you explore this site, think about these questions:How might a place inspire an artist? How do artists represent places?Why do artists represent places? What do artists tell us about places?"

http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/mar03/valery2.htm
"Characteristically, Valéry disapproves of the words “deep” or “depth” to describe thinking. He held that “only what is on the surface can have meaning,” by which he can only have meant that, if one has the intelligence to read the surface accurately, one will easily enough discover what lies beneath it."

http://www.rpi.edu/%7Eeglash/eglash.dir/afractal.htm
|African fractals

http://www.jupitter-larsen.com/
"Another accumulity is the polywave. The polywave is simultaneous movement in all directions. The theory being that each individual direction is a cross section of a larger accumulative effect. This theory goes on to state that everything except for nothingness moves as part of the polywave."

2003-03-22T08:02:00.000-08:00
nerdy stuff, tweaked the DBN script a little bit to make it draw 4 direction walks, as it happens this works very good on perfect street grids. some algorithms loop, but some of them don't & some do loop but don't close. Of course on a normal straatgrid it all works different

http://www.socialfiction.org/psychogeography/grid_DBN.htm

The Dutch translation of 'programming .walk for dummies is on line here

2003-03-20T23:02:00.000-08:00
http://www.imagesfestival.com/source/
The art program during the Images Festival in Toronto; yes socialfiction.org will be there to do some psychogeography

2003-03-20T11:46:00.000-08:00
Kazys Varnelis writes":

"In this lecture I propose a tentative introduction to some of aspects of what Lewis Mumford called the "invisible city," the largely unseen, underground world of cables, wires, and connections that has shaped, and continues to shape, our landscapes. As our public obsession with the visual continues at a breakneck pace – witness the mad rush to create visible evidence of Los Angeles's appearance as a global city through architectural monuments such as the new Cathedral or Disney Concert Hall – it is the invisible that increasingly determines urban structure. We stand at the dawn of the regime of the invisible."

read more here

2003-03-20T11:26:00.000-08:00
http://socialfiction.org/psychogeography/dbCARTO.htm

Draw the paths generated by generative psychogeographical algorithms when executed on a perfect grid in a Design by Numbers script

socialfiction is downloading Man Parrish
Be Bop

2003-03-19T10:21:00.000-08:00
A new database map; a little bit of manhattan

2003-03-18T11:45:00.000-08:00
This is a true bunch of nutters:http://www.freestateproject.org/

"The Free State Project is a plan in which 20,000 or more liberty-oriented people will move to a single state of the U.S., where they may work within the political system to reduce the size and scope of government. The success of the Free State Project would likely entail reductions in burdensome taxation and regulation, reforms in state and local law, an end to federal mandates, and a restoration of constitutional federalism, demonstrating the benefits of liberty to the rest of the nation and the world."

Didn't already Marx said that this isolated kind of utopism can't work. But the strange thing with these people is that they try to get 20.000 people to move somewhere, without these knowing each other or even having a shared agenda. They just march in & change the law. As soon as they start they will find out that they do not agree on a lot of topics & the backstabbing can begin.

here some utopism from the past

2003-03-17T00:37:00.000-08:00
a database map with a added bit of color & a photoshop Twirl Filter. A map that only looks normal when you are drunk (-:

2003-03-16T09:30:00.000-08:00
exhausted after doing some heavy updates on social fiction.

Especially the new Database Cartography pages might prove themself to be somewhat progressive. A lot of projects dealing with collective cognitive mapping are active, but this is yet something else.

also mirrored the Camus text blogged about yesterday:
vintage camus:

"For myself, I cannot live without my art. But I have never placed it above everything. If, on the other hand, I need it, it is because it cannot be separated from my fellow men, and it allows me to live, such as I am, on one level with them. It is a means of stirring the greatest number of people by offering them a privileged picture of common joys and sufferings. It obliges the artist not to keep himself apart; it subjects him to the most humble and the most universal truth. And often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he felt himself to be different soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his difference unless he admits that he is like the others. The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge. And if they have to take sides in this world, they can perhaps side only with that society in which, according to Nietzsche's great words, not the judge but the creator will rule, whether he be a worker or an intellectual."

2003-03-15T06:46:00.000-08:00
Perhaps I will go to this tonight:
http://www.stickit.nl/expo/level_1.html

On this good blog (with a interesting mix of 2 step & literature) I found a link to the speech Camus did when he recieved the Nobel Price

2003-03-14T07:12:00.000-08:00
Someone on the Giordano Bruno E-mail list found this beauty of a site on the subject:apparantly there is movie about him in preperation. What amazes me is this picture of another film:

What's this Bruno featuring in a tearjerker?

2003-03-14T02:30:00.000-08:00
http://www.glowlab.com/neuroscape.html
antwerp by car

2003-03-13T23:27:00.000-08:00
Lo_Y has done a funny thing. A while ago Dutch Web artist released the ZNC browser, it takes the raw HTML & processes that into color & music. When you let it render a 'normal' page it's all very random, now Lo_y has made a page that is only to be watched with ZNC.
http://www.socialfiction.org/03030122325.htm

A simaler project like ZNC was the project 'music to watch URL's by' The same principle; raw HTML gets converted to sound, but in this case the music is much like old Eno ambient records:
http://www.twofivesix.co.uk/snd/index.html

2003-03-12T06:20:00.000-08:00
Uploading socialfiction.org at the moment.

What am I doing at the moment?
Haven't added much this year, but I have been busy & will be even busy the coming 2 months.
here is my rough schedule
10-20 April; Psychogeography in Toronto
25 April; spoken word performance (+ a walk maybe) in Gent
9-11 May; Psycho Geo Com New York
Start of July; Stroom Excursion, (wrote about this earlier, everything went well)

Some others yet to be confirmed. & off course there are several deadlines for magazines, sites etc.

Ah & Our struggles to find a new house are over; we just found one. Great. Will cost lots of my time though.
In the mean while I'm getting ill & am working on a Design By Number scgript that draws algoritmic walks on a 'perfect' grid. This might be helpful for the Toronto walks because they have a gridded street system.

To concluse; some cool pictures from WILDSTYLE, the 1982 graffiti film you should have seen

2003-03-11T12:07:00.000-08:00
As you might have noticed, socialfiction.org is off line due to a server crash, hopefully it will get back on line wednesday.

--

After Rhizome, a new website dedicated to the facts about the rhizome community fee rhoizome wouldn't want you to read.

2003-03-10T00:27:00.000-08:00
'Virtual graffiti' is a term that pops up now & then. But the way it is used is actually misleading, because graffiti is after all vandalism, trespassing. Graffiti would only be virtual if you would wake up & notice that your site is got somewhere in the corner a message that you didn't put there; like Killroy Was Here.

There is already the hackers scene that busy themselves with defacing site, but that's more like hijacking. The strength of graffiti is the fact that people don't bother to remove it & virtual graffiti should be something like that, you don't know where's it from, you don't who put it there, but it just not important enough to remove it from you code. Perhaps you even like the artwork?

Defacing is hard work, business for real hackers, but would it be possible to make graffiti using dynamic content? I just added a blogroll to this blog & they deliver the service for automatic link exchange. But instead of adding a link to someone's blogroll you feed the RSS a tag (in the future maybe a small .JPG or a flash animation). But there is all sorts of technology related to this in development& you know how it works, as it becomes more complicated it also becomes more vulnerable for this kind of intrusions.

This virtual graffiti would then become an independent artform, but of course it would also become a spamming method used by the son of the former president of some African country who wants you to pick up some gold from the vaults of a Suisse bank.

2003-03-09T01:46:00.000-08:00
Because we are living in luxurious 1 room apart that means that when one of us is ill, the other must be quiet. So yesterday was one of these days for me to make no noise, so I spent it reading, first another bit in Flauberts travel descriptions, then I did some shopping & dropped into the library where I did some good findings; "Marius wil niet in Joegoslavie wonen" a collection of essays by Karel van het Reve (de broer van) of which I didn't even know that it existed. Van het Reve is always a funny polemic writer & it was nice to find something I didn't read of him already. Especially because all the rest of his books I must have at least 7 times the last 10 year.
Than I found one part of a 3 part colelctuion of essays of Jorge Louis Borges & I started in a book calles "Flatterland, like flatland but even more so" A great title & a wordwhile book too written by Ian Steward , "science" fiction based on the Abbot book , but incorparating new mathematical insights. Best thing about it is the heavy play on words all the time; in a 2-d world they should talk different after all.

And I'm trying to download some Dizzy Rascal tunes at te moment but every time the connection fail;
code poerty;

Warning: Too many connections in /web/al4/htdocs/include/db_connect.php on line 10

Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Too many connections in /web/al4/htdocs/include/db_connect.php on line 10
Unable to connect to database

So I have will have to stick with the More Fire Crew then; Oi
http://www.ukgmusic.cjb.net/
http://www.2step.isonfire.com/

2003-03-07T08:00:00.000-08:00
wrote 2 small pieces today, bot bad, one short bit for Kindamuzik, which of course is about J. Lo & another piece for the neuro~scape series on Glowlab, It's about the beauty of Antwerp when you drive pass it. Will notify you when it's online.

Do you remember my promise to make a map on which you could show the Church Cross in Utrecht? the 5 churches layed out like a cross? here it is.

note that 2 of the 5 churches have been demolished.

2003-03-06T22:30:00.000-08:00
Have been busy collecting links, here are a few

http://www.ericharshbarger.org/cgi-bin/j.cgi?maze/index.html
Java script that generates random mazes

http://www.girlsbrushingtheirteeth.tk/
long live colgate

http://www.supertotto.com/super_data/download_icons_vip.html
Hussein & Blair desktop icons

http://www.supertotto.com/super_data/download_icons_vip.html
Design your own barcode

http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/mapen.html
a map of the logical structure of Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, including the text. It would be great if somebody did this for Spinoza's Ethica, you would problably get much more of a complex network of relations.

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/030310fa_fact
Simon Schama about anti americanism; "By the end of the nineteenth century, the stereotype of the ugly American—voracious, preachy, mercenary, and bombastically chauvinist—was firmly in place in Europe. Even the claim that the United States was built on a foundation stone of liberty was seen as a fraud. America had grown rich on slavery. In 1776, the English radical Thomas Day had written, “If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.” After the Civil War, European critics pointed to the unprotected laborers in mines and factories as industrial helots. Just as obnoxious as the fraud of liberty was the fraud of Christian piety, a finger-jabbing rectitude incapable of asserting a policy without invoking the Deity as a co-sponsor. This hallelujah Republic was a bedlam of hymns and hosannas, but the only true church was the church of the Dollar Almighty. And how could the cult of individualism be taken seriously when it had produced a society that set such great store by conformity? "

2003-03-03T10:28:00.000-08:00
Karen O'Rourke who is also part of the algoritmic psychogeographic cabal added the English translation about her itinerary database to her site.
quote; "this project is a place to exchange itineraries. It aims to develop a method of notation which allows participants to represent their urban itineraries online and a Web application capable of restituting their subjective experience of them in the form of images and sounds. Perhaps it is a "Map of Tender" charted by surveillance technology...
Haven't added one yet, but will surely do soon. Find more info on the project & a look at the routes already submitted here:
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/korourke/map

Lot of French there so look out.
She will also be in New York for the Psycho Geo Con Flux I think so that's cool.

(By the way, did you know that Chirac used to call Hussein a personal friend? That does put his anti war stance in a rather different light. Yesterday it was in the news that Chirac was regarded as a hero in Algeria because of this. Does anybody remember the opposition the protest against Chirac when he ordered some more idiot nuclear test in Mururoa? (or whatever it was called). that must have been only some 7 years ago.)
(does anybody remember Albert Camus? what would he think of it all?)

Sent in my proposal for the potlatch psychogeography mentioned earlier. I had to find a way that it's free to participate but there is still some money being made. The concept of the experiment proposed is a combination of the Genetic Generative experiment we did in the artificial harbour islands of Amsterdam last November & the prisoner dilemma. The idea is that the participants have to give each other Euro coins or parts of algorithm when they meet. It's devised in such a way that you can participate without giving anything but you will then have to walk on a [2nd left, repeat] algorithm for 1 1/2 hour. While can buy yourself extra positions or get them as gift from others. It should work in this way that if you never give anything you will not receive much either because people will warn each other about your egoism.
There are some other rules as well to enhance the distribution of the wealth in the system & the gradual influx of new coins. At the everything will be potlached back to the organisation.

I have no idea if this will work as I think but it's worth the try.

But I do hate writing proposals. Only for them to determine if they want to have anything to do with me they need 2 meetings & a proposal. In this time I could have written an article!! What a waste of time.

I am reading Flaubert's report on the walk he did together with Maxime Du Camp in the Loire Area & Bretagne (but that might be called different in English). The idea was that they would split their tour in 2 & each would write a report on their assigned bits of travel. Du Camp never came trough, so there is only Flauberts shattered accounts. Not that it matters, Flaubert is genius as always, what I like best about him is that he interested in gory details as much as the picturesque. Did you know that at that time (1850ties) they applied crocodile teeth to the sole for grip? like spikes?

2003-03-03T05:37:00.000-08:00
all serious computer manufactories have a logo

2003-03-02T03:28:00.000-08:00
Google is not a search-engine but they are providers of the most adequate map of the internet.

from kottke