Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 678

Music break: AfroReggae in Brazil

*AlJazeera and the favela, together at last.

*You may find the police-and-thieves music-resistance narrative to be rather heavy going, but the vernacular video aspects, the gritty urban texture of the favela, and especially the oddly-dressed, unnamed support staff wandering around… it just reeks of futurity.

A documentary on "Live Cinema"

*Dunno quite what to make of this, but really enjoying the raffish underground look of those veejays, or 'live cinema auteurs,' or whatever they're choosing to call themselves. They've got that cheering look of young people with no institutional backing who are busy making fresh mistakes.

Live Cinema Documentary from toby*spark on Vimeo.

Dead Media Beat: Dead Computer Contest

*Last day to enter. Check out all those entries for repurposed electronics.

http://www.instructables.com/contest/deadcomputer/

"Computers are such wonderful things until they get outdated or just die on us. They may be useless to many, but we like to think of them as excellent sources of materials for new projects. In that spirit, we are having a Dead Computer Contest!"

The Globalized Voice of TV Doom

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/lionfan/20090304#1236143301

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視聴者に点滴を何十年もポタポタたらしているうちに、エンタテイメント業界の人は、視聴者はどちらかといえば受け身だと考えるようになった。彼らは、番組を視聴者にどう見せるかは、自分たちが決められると考えた。だが彼らは、互いにコミュニケーションしたいという人々の欲望を甘く見ていた。
After decades of running an IV drip right into their audience, people in the entertainment business had understandably come to think of them as rather passive. They thought they'd be able to dictate the way shows reached audiences. But they underestimated the force of their desire to connect with one...

Tough break for Netkairo and his Mariposa botnet

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/04/mariposa_police_hunt_more_botherders/

Monster botnet held 800,000 people's details

Fourth zombie admin could be in South America

By John Leyden

Posted in Crime, 4th March 2010 12:33 GMT

The Mariposa botnet had the power to dwarf Georgia and Estonia cyberattacks if it had been used to launch denial of service attacks, say Spanish police. (((Great to see that big itchy international cyberwar capacity is in the mitts of three geeky Spanish rip-off...

Augmented Reality: Layar tutorial

*I don't have even the least intention of ever doing this myself, but it's good to glance over this and realize that augmenting reality is not magic. Nor is there, like, a big red, AUGMENTING button or any WARP REALITY lever. Instead, it's a fairly standard code-monkey thing, all fraught with pop-up boxes and licences and pull-down menus and graphic design choices and such.

http://stedelijk.medialab.hva.nl/2010/03/02/creating-a-layar-layer-a-step-by-step-tutorial/

"Do you want to make your o...

Attractive City generator

*Okay, sure: not even cities as weird as Dubai, Brasilia or Fatehpur Sikri were ever conjured up with attractive plastic disks. But how could I not blog this? Millennials are just so cute! "How about some skyscrapers?" "Go for it!"

AttractiveCity - an interactive City generator from steffiX_stefanieSixt on Vimeo.

Philips Food Creation concept as design fiction

*Philips' design-fiction for a household food-printer features some of their customary top-end glossy mockups. Via Yanko Design, who can be relied on to meet your imaginary-gadget needs.

http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/03/02/printing-my-food-by-the-molecule/

"Printing My Food By The Molecule

"Molecular gastronomy studies the physical and chemical processes that occur while cooking. It basically tries to investigate and explain the chemical reasons behind the transformation of ingredients. We...

Augmented Reality: Tour des Convoyeurs

via @burnlab

AntiVJ - MUTEK 2009 from AntiVJ / Joanie on Vimeo.

Audiovisual installation, May 2009

Mutek festival, Montreal - Canada

For the occasion of MUTEK_10, the Old Port's Conveyors' Tower becomes the object of AntiVJ's attentions, as they bring the structure back to life with mapping projections.

PRODUCTION TEAM

VISUALS:

Olivier Ratsi

Joanie Lemercier

MUSIC:

Thomas Vaquié

PRODUCTION:

Nicolas Boritch, Hugues Monfroy

CONTACT:

hello -at- antivj -dot- com

Augmented Reality: Curious Displays

*Design fiction from Art Center. Way to go at the ol' alma mater.

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Curious Displays from Julia Tsao on Vimeo.

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"Curious Displays is a product proposal for a new platform for display technology. Instead of a fixed form factor screen, the display surface is instead broken up into hundreds of ½ inch display blocks. Each block operates independently as a self-contained unit, and has full mobility, allowing movement across any physical surface.

"The blocks operate independently of one another...