Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 712

Polish Transition Architecture

*The formerly-communist, retrofitted "stuffed animal." There's half a continent covered with this stuff. It's a colossal story.

*The remarks in this article about buildings with "Polish identity" being built by offshored Polish guys who spent their lives learning architecture in the West…. Well, you know you're "glocal" when your regional identity-design exists to please guys who climb out of jets.

Alessandro Ludovico from Neural.IT

*Italian cyberculture at its most cyberrific.

http://www.labforculture.org/en/content/view/full/58748

"Neural is a magazine on new media art, hacktivism and e-music that is published three times a year in English and Italian. It is complemented by its blog http://www.neural.it/, which features daily news and reviews.

"The following interview between Alessandro Ludovico and Annette Wolfsberger took place on 2 June 2009 in Rotterdam.

"What was the trigger for you to start Neural, and what format...

Margaret Atwood making her case

*Science fiction writers like to get on Margaret Atwood's case because she badmouths science fiction as a commercial category, but maybe ol' Margaret can just write about Canadian mutant urban algae farms and we'll all be happy.

*I follow Margaret on Twitter and she comes across like a perky seventeen-year-old, which isn't bad for a glum, heavily politicized apocalypse-fan in her 7th decade.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/10/margaret-atwood-speculative-fictions-apocalyptic-optimist

For a...

Osmotic Power

*There's about a million eccentric power-generation schemes; this one's especially cute because it's osmotic. There's an Arthur C. Clarke story — gosh, must be 50 years old by now — that had a passing mention of an "osmotic bomb."

*You gotta like the idea of Norway somehow running on membranes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8377186.stm

Norway's Statkraft opens first osmotic power plant

By Mark Gregory

BBC News technology correspondent

The world's first power project that generates energy by m...

Thanks for the rain

*An awful drought. Really bad. Things do look much better now.

*There are some few Texan ranchers *still inside* the shrinking areas of extreme drought, guys watching their neighbors recovering while they stay seared by the crisis. I wonder what kind of Thanksgiving those people are having. A stoical one. "Cow people, out of the old rock," as J Frank Dobie used to say. Well — maybe it'll rain.

Texas Ranchers Welcome Rain After Historic Drought

Date: 26-Nov-09
Country: US
Author: Ed...

One year later: terror attack on Mumbai massively strengthens Israeli arms industry

(((The takeaway here:)))

"Military Ties
"• Military cooperation and arms sales have become a central aspect of Israel-India relations.[28:] 

• In 2009, Israel overtook Russia as India's leading arms supplier, with Israel and India signing more than $1 billion in defense contracts in 2007 and 2008.[29:] 

• India has increasingly turned to Israel for sophisticated weapons systems. The Mumbai terror attack in November 2008 was particularly significant in expediting India's acquisition of air and n...

At last, a federal bailout for American hippies

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/07/politics/washingtonpost/main5368594.shtml

(…)

"To some authorities, the new laws are essentially licenses to grow money. With a $100 investment in enriched soil and nutrients, almost anyone can cultivate a plant that will produce two pounds of marijuana that can sell for $9,000 in hundreds of medical marijuana clubs or on the street, according to growers.

"High-end marijuana grown under such special conditions often fetches 10 times the price of...

Motion Comics

http://www.guttergeek.com/page184/october2008/motioncomics/motioncomics.html

"The biggest issue of motion comics may be that they're trying to fill a niche that simply doesn't exist."

Henry Jenkins' notes on interstitial arts

*Okay, first, just have a look at THIS:

"Tears of the Black Tiger," a modern Thai cinema effort:

http://henryjenkins.org/2009/11/on_the_pleasures_of_not_belong_1.html

(…"

"Paradoxically, though, genres have had a tighter hold on our imagination in recent years as the range of cultural choice has broadened and audiences have fragmented. Film historian Rick Altman tells us that far from imposing rigid boundaries between genres, the old studio system depended on the idea that the same film could...

Avatar Machine

Avatar Machine [LONDON:] 2008 from MARC OWENS on Vimeo.

http://www.marcowens.co.uk/index_frame.htm

"Avatar Machine is a system which replicates the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface.

"The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment…."

via @_neural