visual narratives and explorations in anthropology

A continuous flow of perspectives, voices, desires and emotions creates a poliphonic form of expression that goes well beyond written language, creating an experience that is closer to the world we live in.

AC is a simple actionscript interface that will be used as a starting point in a series of developments.

The first one simply grabs pictures about “anthropology” in real time from flickr.com, displaying them in a mobile, variable, multi-author visual composition that aims to create a visionary stream of consciousness of the multitude of people involved. A chaotic, suggestive, emotional, harmonic-and-dissonant narrative.

click here to open: AC, Antropologia Culturale

In the next steps, this form of narration will be expanded to define a world-medium that will be used to build a digital layer of reality that you will be able to experience in physical space, trough mobile phones and other handheld and wearable devices. A narrative augmented reality and a new form of publishing.

Stay tuned. :)

AOS at the AHACamping

The event was took place at the SALE Docks and it featured talks and performances on art, hacking, activism and critical theories on technology and on the ways in which they are transforming our lives in the contemporary era.

Here are some pictures

Here is a review on ArtsBlog

we will upload some videos in just a few days, together with a more detailed report.

This:

s1_s2_doc_v1

is the PDF of the research we presented at the AHACamping: S1/S2 a peer to peer (p2p) social network built on a parallel internet, implementing a true relational ecosystem assessing the issues in terms of privacy, control, user exploitation currently found in classic social networks such as Facebook, Youtube and the others like them.

You can find a first, fast report in the rest of the post, below.

Special focus was put on the critical approaches to social networking.

We (xDxD.vs.xDxD and penelope.di.pixel) presented S1/S2, the first phase of an experimental project featuring a social network built on the Netsukuku network: a meshed network that redefines the classical internet protocol stack to create a new network that is piggy-backed on the internet. This technique allows users to escape the control operated by service providers and by governments, as the parallel network is peer to peer and encrypted, and it is separated from the providers’ areas of control.

Or, to say the least, Netsukuku makes monitoring users a real tough job (practically impossible).

S1/S2 is a social network that is being implemented on the Netsukuku network. It has been presented at the AHACamping for a specific case study dealing with the possibility to implement a collaborative History of the Arts, but it really is a more generalized project.

S1/S2 approaches two main issues:

- infrastructural squatting

- the relational ecosystem

By infrastructural squatting we designate all those techniques through which an internet user can use the physical connectivity in ways that guarantee users autonomy, privacy and self-determination in terms of the posibility to define who can what/when/where a person can do something on the network, and in terms of being able to decide who can observe our informations, our relations, our interests and, in the end, our lives. Netsukuku has been chosen as the base platform to perform infrastructural squatting.

By relational ecosystem we describe the lives of the users on the S1/S2 environment. Everything is oriented to create the tools to enable people to freely define their own identities and to establish relationships, processes, services, information and content exchange. S1/S2 deeply differs from classic social networks: there is no “profile”, no authentication, no centralized service. There actually is no website, as S1/S2 is designed as a set of tools through which people can define their own data, store it on their computers or servers, and connect and communicate with others by using a peer to peer network built on Netsukuku. Identities are self-defined (even for everything that concerns the structure of data), as is content. Both can interact and be integrated, creating structures and relationships described by networks of identities, concepts, multimedia, informations, communication channels.

S1/S2 also introduces the concept of networked welfare, defining the tools through which the network can collaboratively enact processes whose aim is to create services that can be used by the collectivity, with specific concern for the weaker components of the ecosystem: content persistence, high availability and reliability, communication facilities, distributed, co-hosted stored facilities, virtualized systems to serve specific purposes and internet gateways that will allow for publication of people-selected contents on the “regular” web.

S1/S2 is currently under development, and our estimates indicate that there will be a first usable release of the environment in about 3 months.

We are currently looking for support. If the you find the concepts behind S1/S2 and Netsukuku interesting, and if you feel like contributing in any way you can (develop, execute beta installations and tests, explore the nexts steps…) you are truly welcome to do so, and you can contact me at:

xdxd.vs.xdxd [at] gmail [dot] com

Here is the document (only in italian for now: check back in a week or so for the english version) presented at the AHACamping for a case study of an S1/S2 application: a social network created to support a collaborative Art History.

s1_s2_doc_v1

Just back from Liverpool where we attended the (re)Actor3 and HCI2008 events presenting Degradazione per Sovrapposizione di Corpi.

check out how it went with full video coverage here:

> report from Liverpool

connect to the events at

> (re)Actor3

> HCI2008

OneAvatar connects your body to your Avatar in virtual worlds.

You and your Avatar will be finally one, sharing the same experiences even at physical level.
You get hurt, you Avatar gets hurt.

Your Avatar dies, you die.

Connect to your avatar and watch out for yourself at

> at NeRVi website

> videos on Youtube

also spotted at:

> Twitter

> Art Feed

> Archive.org

> Turbulence.org

The Planetary Collegium presented this conference titled “Being Syncretic”. Researchers and artists from all over the world converged in Vienna to present the state of the art of research on technologies as they access reality in integrated ways.

We presented our research on identity and on the evolution of the body in a technologically ecosystemic perspective.

check it out at these links

> CR9 website

> the Planetary Collegium

> Wien’s University for Applied Arts

> the Publication

my little hacks and pranks page has been featured in JODI’s wonderful webcra.sh parade across the streets of Holland.

JODI’s webcra.sh in which websites become street banners for a joyful(?) parade and we get to eat del.icio.us bookmarks.

A wonderful meal done by cooking del.icio.us bookmarks and e-books followed.

make your website banner and stroll along the streets of digitality with us at:

> website

Art is Open Source and NeRVi present Angel_F project in Mexico City at the Computer Art Congress 2.

The international meeting researches on the evolution of digital practices as they affect arts and society.

I presented there the Angel_F project, together with penelope.di.pixel.

check out the informations about CAC2 at

> CAC2 website

> Laboratoire Paragraphe

> Tecnológico de Monterrey

> Europia
.

A new narrative, sitting across the borders running between materiality and immateriality, organic and inorganic, architecture and body.

These borders have been deleted by digital technologies in the contemporary era, perpetrating a continuous shift from object to communication, from product to service, from the mass to a plurality of multi-viduals.

NeoRealismo Virtuale dives into this scenario, hybridizing disciplines and practices

From Baudelaire, to Benjamin, to the contemporary flaneur.

hybridize yourself with NeRVi at

> website

> the NeRVi blog

> the NeRVi-ous “Other”

also seen at:

> AHACamper

> Loreto Martin

What are the challenges artworld is facing in the time of globalization and increasing technologization?

At the conference I presented the Biodoll project and Angel_F.

In collaboration with CIANT (International Centre for Art and New Technologies), Center for Global Studies (Academy of Sciences and Charles University), Prague Biennale 3.

check it out here

> website

> flickr

> Prague Biennale

> Center for Global Studies

> CIANT