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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Funniest Software Ever: PawSense helps you catproof your computer.

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From the site:

"When cats walk or climb on your keyboard, they can enter random commands and data, damage your files, and even crash your computer. This can happen whether you are near the computer or have suddenly been called away from it.

PawSense is a software utility that helps protect your computer from cats. It quickly detects and blocks cat typing, and also helps train your cat to stay off the computer keyboard.

Every time your computer boots up, PawSense will automatically start up in the background to watch over your computer system.
Even while you use your other software, PawSense constantly monitors keyboard activity. PawSense analyzes keypress timings and combinations to distinguish cat typing from human typing. PawSense normally recognizes a cat on the keyboard within one or two pawsteps.
If a cat gets on the keyboard, PawSense makes a sound that annoys cats.
This teaches your cat that getting on the keyboard is bad even if humans aren't watching.

Once a cat has been recognized, PawSense blocks the cat's keyboard input. This keeps the cat from entering lots of commands to your programs or operating system...."

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Grazie, Gary Hayes! The Value of Experiential - Our New Augmented Worlds | PERSONALIZE MEDIA

Sargasso - Philip Beesley & team will launch new installation during Luminato! Can Not Wait!

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Description:

"A visionary architectural pioneer creates a responsive landscape to infuse one of downtown's busiest spaces with astonishing new life.

A worldwide pioneer in the fast-growing field of responsive architecture, Beesley and his team of collaborators pose the question “could architecture come alive?” In reply he creates spaces that dissolve into forest-like hovering fields, kin to primitive life-forms within dense jungles and ocean reefs. These responsive environments offer bodily immersion and wide-flung perception. In this new installation, Beesley combines visionary design with high-tech digital engineering to turn an everyday public space into a world of wonder.
Sargasso refers to the vast, tangled floating masses of living matter and cast-off material that drifts at the centre of the Atlantic. The environment within the sweeping atrium of the Allen Lambert Galleria makes a vast canopy, a sanctuary that slowly shifts and floats above the city. The building is no longer an entity of steel, glass, and stone but a participant in a symbiotic artistic event that shapes the nature of the environment itself.

Commissioned by Luminato."

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Monday, May 30, 2011

Sweet: Gnomes in the Woods Game Cooperative by naturalkidsandtoys on Etsy

Social Media According to The Wire (2010) / Flowtown (@flowtown)

Holy Mothra is this AWESOME! Dot: 360º video capture for the iPhone 4 by Jeff Glasse — Kickstarter

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I Love this!

538 BACKERS

$63,543 PLEDGED OF $20,000 GOAL

34 DAYS TO GO

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Hey Kickstarter-onians,

Thanks for checking out our project! We call it Dot.

It’s a stylish, durable and downright pocketable 360º (panoramic) lens attachment and app for the iPhone 4.

What does it do?

Dot lets your iPhone capture immersive, fully navigable, panoramic video in real-time - and share with friends on your phone, as well as on Facebook and Twitter, or streamed online using our awesome panoramic video web platform and player.

Cool, right?

We're excited too. Why? Because we're uber lazy, and we'd rather put down the camera and enjoy the party. We're making a bet you will too. (Not that we think you're lazy...)

But seriously, our secret beta testers have already had a lot of fun taking it to concerts, the park, on moped rides in Italy, and showing cramped apartments to mothers halfway around the world.

So? Well, up until recently it took major moolah and hefty gear to make a decent panoramic video. Now all you need is your phone and the world around you.

We haven’t slept much.

We’ve spent the past few months researching, designing, prototyping and coding. This means we have working hardware and software prototypes. Now we need your help to finish the 2nd phase of engineering around the lens and begin tooling for volume production.

Let's do it!

We’re excited to bring our cutting-edge (read: magical) panoramic technology to a much wider audience – and even more excited to see what you guys will do with it.

Thanks for your support.

Project location: New York, NY

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Do I Love Aaron Koblin? Yes I do: The Interface is the Message: Aaron Koblin at TED | Brain Pickings

The Trouble with the Online Echo Chamber - No Surprise = Affirm Biases. NY Times

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By NATASHA SINGER
Published: May 28, 2011

"ON the Web, we often see what we like, and like what we see. Whether we know it or not, the Internet creates personalized e-comfort zones for each one of us.

Give a thumbs up to a movie on Netflix or a thumbs down to a song on Pandora, de-friend a bore on Facebook or search for just about anything on Google: all of these actions feed into algorithms that then try to predict what we want or don’t want online.

And what’s wrong with that?

Plenty, according to Eli Pariser, the author of “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You.” Personalization on the Web, he says, is becoming so pervasive that we may not even know what we’re missing: the views and voices that challenge our own thinking.

“People love the idea of having their feelings affirmed,” Mr. Pariser told me earlier this month. “If you can provide that warm, comfortable sense without tipping your hand that your algorithm is pandering to people, then all the better.”

Mr. Pariser, the board president of the progressive advocacy group MoveOn.org, recounted a recent experience he had on Facebook. He went out of his way to “friend” people with conservative politics. When he didn’t click on their updates as often as those of his like-minded contacts, he says, the system dropped the outliers from his news feed.

Personalization, he argues, channels people into feedback loops, or “filter bubbles,” of their own predilections.

Facebook did not respond to e-mails seeking comment...."

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Is There a Social Media Tech Bubble? [Excellent INFOGRAPHIC]

Very Interesting. On Gulfnews : Gulf governments take to social media

"....A growing number of officials across the Gulf are beginning to understand the significance of social media's outreach. The experience of Saudi blogger Fouad Al Farhan illustrates this change. Al Farhan was arrested in Jeddah in December 2007 and held in solitary confinement until April 2008 after posting a controversial blog naming his ten least favourite Saudis whom he never wants to meet that included a senior Islamic cleric, a billionaire prince and a cabinet minister. In a sign of changing times, Al Farhan, whose popularity only grew after his release (he has over 15,600 followers on Twitter) was one of five Saudis invited earlier this year to meet the Governor of Makkah, Prince Khalid Al Faisal, following the 2011 Jeddah floods. The meeting, held to explain the government's efforts to deal with the floods, was broadcast on national television and the Prince asked Al Farhan to give his regards to his followers on Twitter .

Another impressive presence on Twitter is that of Abdul Aziz Khoja, the Saudi minister of information and culture. The 69-year-old former diplomat personally updates his Twitter profile and interacts with Saudi as well as non-Saudi users, even asking a journalist why he hasn't been active on Facebook recently ....

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Sunday, May 29, 2011

SO FRIGGING AWESOME! Dot: 360º video capture for the iPhone 4 by Jeff Glasse — Kickstarter

From the site:

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Hey Kickstarter-onians,

Thanks for checking out our project! We call it Dot.

It’s a stylish, durable and downright pocketable 360º (panoramic) lens attachment and app for the iPhone 4.

What does it do?

Dot lets your iPhone capture immersive, fully navigable, panoramic video in real-time - and share with friends on your phone, as well as on Facebook and Twitter, or streamed online using our awesome panoramic video web platform and player.

Cool, right?

We're excited too. Why? Because we're uber lazy, and we'd rather put down the camera and enjoy the party. We're making a bet you will too. (Not that we think you're lazy...)

But seriously, our secret beta testers have already had a lot of fun taking it to concerts, the park, on moped rides in Italy, and showing cramped apartments to mothers halfway around the world.

So? Well, up until recently it took major moolah and hefty gear to make a decent panoramic video. Now all you need is your phone and the world around you.

We haven’t slept much.

We’ve spent the past few months researching, designing, prototyping and coding. This means we have working hardware and software prototypes. Now we need your help to finish the 2nd phase of engineering around the lens and begin tooling for volume production.

Let's do it!

We’re excited to bring our cutting-edge (read: magical) panoramic technology to a much wider audience – and even more excited to see what you guys will do with it.

Thanks for your support.

Project location: New York, NY

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

I Like This Blog. Crowdfunding for Creativity | Brain Pickings

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By Maria Popova:

Excerpt:

"Success via strangers, or what Transylvania has to do with an 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis.

One of the most exciting things about the social web is its tendency to democratize the creative industry, allowing creators — artists, musicians, publishers, filmmakers, writers, entrepreneurs — to bypass the traditional industry distribution model and self-publish their creative output by crowdfunding it through platforms that connect them with their audience. Today, we look at three brilliant platforms for funding creative projects, plus a few more options specific to narrower creative fields.

KICKSTARTER

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Cool. My Freedom Or Death - Condition ONE combines filmmaking, photojournalism & mobile devices to pioneer powerful immersive experiences.

"A mobile media technology company developing the tools and platform to combine filmmaking, photojournalism and mobile devices to pioneer powerful immersive experiences."

facebook.com/​ConditionOne1
twitter.com/​danfung

Thanks to Nina Simoes!

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

SRCH – Round One Recap | Starbucks Coffee Company

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"SRCH by Starbucks is off and running. Did you finish the first round in time to win a prize? Did you get stumped and find yourself wondering what to do next? For those who want to see how it all went down, you’ve come to the right place.

The game started with a scan of the QR code in Starbucks stores or online. That directed you to the game site where the first clue was unlocked – a video of Lady Gaga quoting lyrics from her song “Born This Way.”...."

more deets on the original post!

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Gunther Sonnenfeld on Curation, Community and Coca-Cola’s Open Happiness Project | on Sparksheet - Post #2 in a series

Excerpt:

2011/04/28 | By Gunther Sonnenfeld

"In my last post, I focused on how storytelling impacts business by enlisting people as participants in stories they care about so they buy the products required to fullfill a human need.

But questions remain as to how brands can build narratives that tap into pre-existing stories and communities.

For Coca-Cola, this has become quite an exploration. While seizing market share is an ongoing battle with rival brand Pepsi, tapping into consumer advocacy and niche communities has become an equally important brand goal – a goal that was achieved almost by accident, with results that not only boosted sales but presented a host of new media opportunities.

Branding happiness

In 2007, Coca-Cola ran a series of commercials for a campaign called Open Happiness; the spots were beautifully conceived, animated brushstrokes of colour and imagination, depicting a storyworld centred around the idea that happiness is what we create for ourselves in our everyday lives.

They featured Coke as more than a product or brand, but as a support base for individual explorations around the meaning of happiness. There was no harsh product placement or forced messaging. The commercials tested remarkably well.

Coke knew that there was a bigger narrative to explore here, so it decided to expand the commercials into different narrative pieces leveraging established music and artist communities. What became the Happiness Factory created a groundswell of interest around the “metastory” of happiness that culminated in a variety of media types that were adopted, shaped and shared as new stories. This involved everything from mobile applications, to games, blogs and video extensions.

Eventually those pieces blew out even further. Open Happiness kickstarted a world tour of Coke bloggers and laid the foundation for platforms like Coca-Cola Conversations, in which brand stewards curate interesting and fun social artifacts such as Eric Clapton signature guitars, secret soda formulas, subway murals, circus caravans, old inventory lists and a host of cool memorabilia that have been generated or supported by the brand over the years.

As for the measurable success of the Open Happiness campaign to date, we know this:

- There are more than 25 million likes on Coca-Cola’s Facebook page, which is centered around Open Happiness (by contrast, Pepsi has less than 4 million likes).
- Coca-Cola’s worldwide sales have spiked since Open Happiness began.
- Open Happiness has become the new global platform for all integrated marketing for the brand.
- Earlier this year, Coke was awarded the “Best in Show” Addy award for the campaign...."

read the full post:

http://sparksheet.com/curation-community-and-coca-cola’s-open-happiness-project/

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Augmented Reality & Storytelling (& McLuhan & Golan Levin! Like!)

Infographic: The Enterprise Mobile Explosion Online Collaboration

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From gigaom.com

Original post by Simon Mackie:

"Companies worldwide are increasingly incorporating mobile technology and applications into their operations to increase productivity and revenue and reduce paperwork, as this infographic, commissioned by helpdesk software company Zendesk and based in part on GigaOM Pro research into the future of workplaces (sub. req.), clearly shows.

Forty-three percent of businesses are planning to increase their mobile use in the future, and by 2015, it’s expected that half of all devices on corporate networks will be mobile devices. This explosion in the use of mobile devices in the enterprise will help fuel demand for mobile apps, with the worldwide market expected to grow from approximately $6.8 billion in 2010 to $25 billion by 2015. Click the image for the full-size version..."

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Gunther Sonnenfeld on The Business of Storytelling | on Sparksheet - #1 in a series

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Excerpt:

2011/03/02 | By Gunther Sonnenfeld |

"We’ve entered a new Renaissance period in business that has moved us past selling products and services for the sole benefit of the companies selling them.

With global economic parity looming, companies can no longer rely on themselves for the answers. They must co-create new value systems with their customers and other businesses not only to survive, but to grow. And stories – or the act of curating them – can provide amazing new opportunities for growth.

There are a host of companies that have built strong values and a strong “metastory” around their businesses, from more traditional brands like 3M, to the modern darlings of the technology boom, like TOMS or Zappos. Across this spectrum is a way of thinking that takes on organizational inefficiences and creates layers of transparency and authenticity that permeate all communications.

At the same time, more and more companies are taking on the complex problems of the world – from socio-economics, to trade, to education and government. The ability to directly address problems and provide solutions to complexity is the bedrock of storytelling in the 21st century...."

read the full post:

http://sparksheet.com/the-business-of-storytelling/

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Saturday, May 28, 2011

The Burning Room :: Interactive Ghost Story

Tali Krakowsky & Apologue's Gorgeous LA Plaza Media Walkway: Dynamic Signage System Shares Stories in Real-Time

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"Apologue, an experience design studio founded by Tali Krakowsky, created a dynamic signage project based on cloud computing and real-time generative graphics. The public digital installation is part of the LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes cultural center in Downtown Los Angeles, which opened to the public on April 16th."

more deets on:

http://www.dexigner.com/news/22961

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

I blogged about this talk on Thursday - great clip! | TVO - Jeff Melanson on Toronto's Graffiti Summit

Jeff Melanson on Toronto's Graffiti Summit
Published Date: 05/27/2011 | Length: 02:56 | Views: 20 Related Videos
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Charles Foran on Mordecai Richler and Nationalism

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Piergiorgio Odifreddi on the Arts and Mathematics

04/21/2011 | 55:19 | 109 views
Dr. Piergiorgio Odifreddi, asks What Can the Arts Do for Mathematics?

Jeff Melanson, executive director of Canada's National Ballet School and special advisor on arts and culture to the Toronto Mayor, discusses the genesis of the Graffiti Summit Town Hall, to be held at the Drake Hotel on Tuesday, May 31st. This is an excerpt from Mr. Melanson's lecture on the Evolving Role of the Arts in Canada, recorded at the Gardiner Museum and produced in collaboration with the Literary Review of Canada.

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Awesome. An Oxygen Dress For Surviving The Apocalpyse In High Style [Slideshow] | Co.Design

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Video & deets on fastcodesign.com site

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Bonus! Listen to this: Arcade Fire – “Speaking in Tongues (feat. David Byrne)” | GORILLA VS. BEAR

It seems this track was played on BBC1 on May 23 2011 & will be on the deluxe re-release of The Suburbs on August 2.

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Neil Strauss Talks About Mastering the Game of Storytelling

"In his Rise to the Top interview with David Garland, Strauss shares some of the tactics he's used to develop such interesting stories. Although most inbound marketers will never find themselves in a position to interview such notorious celebrities, many of his strategies can be applied to everyday content creation."

Points discussed in the interview include:

Be patient.
Choose your medium wisely.
Tackle difficult topics.
Listen.

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/14914/Neil-Strauss-Talks-About-Ma...

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Andrea Phillips Poised on the Border for a Canadian Invasion! - Deus Ex Machinatio

I am taking over Canada, you guys. Which is to say, my latest round of press and speaking engagements have a distinctly Canadian flavor to them. Mmm, maplicious.

  • I'm starting my invasion by air -- that is, I'm going to be on the CBC Radio show Spark this weekend, in the final episode of their series on Marshal McLuhan. The show will air on Canadian public radio at 1:05pm on May 29. But if you can't wait that long... the podcast is up already.
  • Then, to expand on my infiltration of Canada, I'm going to be in Toronto! I've been invited to speak about transmedia ethics at the FITC Storytelling X.1 conference on June 20. If you're there, please do introduce yourself to me. I'd love to meet you!
  • The talented and charming J.C. Hutchins asked me to come onto his Ultracreatives podcast not so long ago, and I neglected to post about it. It was fun chatting with him, and if you have a listen, I hope you like it, too. He is not Canadian, but he's nice enough you could be forgiven for thinking that he was.
  • And last on the calendar but certainly not least, I will definitely be speaking at ARGfest this year, in Bloomington, Indiana. But to tie into the theme, I'll be there mainly because I simply can't say no to organizer Jonathan Waite, who is, as you may already have guessed... totally Canadian.

And that's a wrap for today. Let's hear it for Canada!

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Secret G8 memo reveals outbreak of internet harmony | From FT Tech Hub | FTtechhub - Industry analysis – FT.com

A private memo from within the G8 meeting on Thursday between internet chiefs and world leaders indicates strong levels of support from Barack Obama, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and co for the principles of internet freedom put forward by Facebook, Google and their peers.

The confidential document, seen by the FT, supports the internet’s role in furthering the distribution of knowledge and free speech, broadly accepting a light-touch, internationally harmonised approach to regulation.

This private view from inside the Deauville meeting – billed as a potential clash between internet entrepreneurship and a French president hell-bent on taming the web – suggests a much more friendly and positive exchange.

The leaked document sets out around a dozen of the G8 leaders’ responses to the presentation by Eric Schmidt of Google, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Yuri Milner of DST Global, as well as France Telecom’s Stephane Richard, Rakuten’s Hiroshi Mikitani and Publicis Groupe’s Maurice Levy.

The very first item holds up the internet as a vehicle for the positive forces in society that helped bring about the end of the cold war. Although the web can scarcely have played much role of a in the fall of the Berlin wall, it’s an eye-catching comparison that puts the internet on an even bigger pedestal than the latest Arab spring may indicate.

Other items include advocating the faster deployment of fibre-optic broadband, greater cooperation on cyber security and “open data” principles for governments. Everyone in the room opposed internet censorship in any form, and said every nation has a role to play in keeping the web “open”.

There was even acknowledgement of the need to update some aspects of copyright – albeit more along the lines of the UK’s Hargreaves Review proposals to allow things like format-shifting, rather than the radical overhaul advocated by Lawrence Lessig and John Perry Barlow at the e-G8 Forum in Paris earlier this week.

On the crucial issue of privacy, the G8 leaders seem to have heeded Mr Zuckerberg’s plea not to conflate greater protection of personal information with a broad-brush regulation of social networks and other web services.

The very fact that a passage confirming the G8 leaders’ commitment to a “strong and flourishing internet” has been included in the public declaration is a great endorsement of the technology industry’s “essential” role in today’s society.

Both David Cameron and Barack Obama have made much of their internet-friendly approach to government. (Indeed, some have criticised Mr Cameron for being too close to Google.) And political smiles behind closed doors don’t always result in public action.

Nonetheless, the meeting must have given the internet delegation further confidence that it was worth making the short-notice trip to France. Perhaps we can expect to see an e-G8 every year.

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Sooooo Cool! Film Makers Turn to iPad for Interactive Storytelling - Gigaom.com

Excerpt from original post:

By Janko Roettgers May. 26, 2011, 3:32pm PT

"What would our world look like if books could fly? That’s a question that’s at the center of the a new iPad app called The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore that was added to the iTunes app store on Thursday.

The app is based on the animated short film of the same title, in which a book lover finds himself catapulted into a world where books are alive, capable of flying, dancing and playing piano. It’s an interesting metaphor, especially during times where some people bemoan the supposed death of the traditional paper book in light of the growing importance of tablets and e-readers.

“An iPad app book is sort of like a book that flies,” said Moonbot Studios co-founder Brandon Oldenburg when I talked to him and two of his colleagues on the phone today. However, Moonbot didn’t mean to provide cultural commentary with its app; instead, the company just tried to explore new avenues of interactive storytelling. Check out a trailer for the app...."

read the full post:

http://gigaom.com/video/ipad-interactive-storytelling/

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Nice Post from Gunther Sonnenfeld on The Business of Brand Storymaking | on Sparksheet

Excerpt:

2011/05/26 | By Gunther Sonnenfeld |

In his latest column on “The Business of Storytelling,” corporate technologist Gunther Sonnenfeld explains how brands like Audi, Kraft and Red Bull are using stories to curate meaningful experiences for people.

Storymaking is a word I’ve made up to describe the discipline of good curation. Brands and marketers have become curators of stories, most often so that they can provide people – their customers – with relevant content, or empower them to curate content and connect to other like-minded people.

If communities are connected through content, then they are also encouraged to build upon those conversations by sharing stories of their own.

Good storymaking consists of four core tenets – the “4 Es”:

Entertainment – how does the story make you feel about yourself, your culture or your environment?

Engagement – how does the story foster participation with itself and with other people?

Enlightenment – what do participants learn (and perhaps teach others) in the process?

Experience – how do participatory moments or events culminate in stories that live alongside or beyond the media channels they are delivered in?..."

read the full post

http://sparksheet.com/the-business-of-brand-storymaking/

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Friday, May 27, 2011

La La La LOVE! The First Location-Aware Album: The National Mall by BLUEBRAIN. The Album as App. How Cool is That.

'The National Mall' is the first ever location-aware album, created by music duo BLUEBRAIN. Available as an app for the iPhone, the music changes and evolves based on the listeners chosen path within the National Mall park in Washington DC. It is the first in a series of site specific compositions the duo plans to release. For more information, visit bluebra.in **Android and iPad versions coming soon**

Bluebrain is Hays Holladay and Ryan Holladay
Follow on Twitter: @BluebrainMusic

Brandon Bloch - Director and Editor - brandonbloch.com
Fernando Ortega - Director of Photography - vgfilms.com
Featuring - Victoria Milko
Production Assistance - Chris Winter

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Why I Love the 80s: Blank City Doc on NY's Experimental Film, Music & Art Scenes

From the site:

Blank City
Documentary - 94min
directed by Celine Danhier

BLANK CITY tells the long-overdue tale of a disparate crew of renegade filmmakers who emerged from an economically bankrupt and dangerous moment in New York history. In the late 1970's and mid 80's, when the city was still a wasteland of cheap rent and cheap drugs, these directors crafted daring works that would go on to profoundly influence the development of independent film as we know it today.

Directed by French newcomer Céline Danhier, BLANK CITY weaves together an oral history of the “No Wave Cinema” and “Cinema of Transgression” movements through compelling interviews with the luminaries who began it all. Featured players include acclaimed directors Jim Jarmusch and John Waters, actor-writer-director Steve Buscemi, Blondie’s Debbie Harry, Hip Hop legend Fab 5 Freddy, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, photographer Richard Kern as well as Amos Poe, James Nares, Eric Mitchell, Susan Seidelman, Beth B, Scott B, Charlie Ahearn and Nick Zedd. Fittingly, the soundtrack includes: Patti Smith, Television, Richard Hell & The Voidoids, The Contortions, The Bush Tetras, Sonic Youth and many more.

GET THE LATEST INFO HERE: blankcityfilm.com

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

SOUR / MIRROR - Love this video... A MUST PLAY.

Brilliant. Interactive Video from SOUR / MIRROR Messes with Your Social Media (make sure you're looking good!)

Jeff Melanson on 'The Evolving Role of the Arts in Canada': Tomorrow's Leaders Need Support Today!

 

You might have missed this but on May 18, 2011 Toronto City Council unanimously approved the new Creative Capital Initiative Report, Creative Capital Gains: an Action Plan for Toronto. The six recommendations and thirty-three actions outlined in this updated Culture Plan for Toronto foreground culture as “an economic catalyst” and support of the arts and culture at the institutional and community levels as integral to strengthening “Toronto’s economy and enhance our competitive advantage on the world stage” 
 

 

This remarkable achievement in the City Council was highlighted by Jeff Melanson, Executive Director of the National Ballet School and Special Advisor to the Mayor on Arts and Culture, in his talk on “The Evolving Role of the Arts in Canada,” given Tuesday May 24th as part of the Literary Review of Canada’s Big Ideas series. As he noted with justified frustration, the unanimity of Council on this report failed to get the media attention that more acrimonious exchanges in Council on the privatization of garbage have received .

 

I had the great good fortune to attend this talk and hear Melanson speak about his vision for the arts and culture and of the necessity of building relationships between artists, communities, private and public stakeholders. His talk was both a clear-sighted overview of how the arts have been positioned and supported in Canada since the formative Massey Commission’s Report in 1952 and a window into his own experience as a series of case studies of best practices leading the Royal Conservatory of Music and Canada’s National Ballet School.

 

Listening to Melanson speak one can see why he has been so successful. He’s engaging, articulate and extraordinarily positive. In describing an early meeting at the National Ballet which was then wrestling with a substantial annual operating deficit, Melanson recalls realizing and stating “We can’t afford to have a recession!”  In his talk and his answers to the questions following, his challenge was to find to find ways to reimagine the role of arts and culture, to articulate the value of the arts and culture in all spheres from business to cultural (and to recognize the interdependence of these spheres), to open new lines of dialogue between artists, communities, private and public sectors, and to approach the future of our cities with an openness and spirit of collaboration rather than suspicion and cynicism.

 

As one example of a risk-taking initiative, Melanson invited us all to the Toronto Graffiti Summit Town Hall at the Drake Hotel on May 31. As he noted, the value of bringing together graffiti artists, community members, and law enforcement officers was the discovery that all communities were equally concerned with how to protect graffiti art and deter vandalism.

 

Melanson began and ended with his three recommendations for the future support of arts and culture in Canada.

 

  1. Redo The Massey Commission.   
  2. Re-imagine the role and implementation of arts education.
  3. Establish an independent cultural policy think tank that should be privately funded in order to offer objective recommendations.

 

Melanson’s call to redo The Massey Commission foregrounds how profoundly different the Canada of today is from the 1950s and the necessity of understanding the distinctive challenges Canadians face and the diversity of stories Canadians now tell. Perhaps one of the great strengths of Melanson’s talk was his ability to clearly connect the past to the future, to tell us a story that detailed practical strategies for realizing a better future for all of our GTA’s Three Cities. In speaking to an audience that was for the most part, older, established and successful, he left us with a number of challenges beginning with the importance of fostering an early engagement with the arts, of supporting the future generations who are here now in order to find those under 25 who will be tomorrow’s leaders in arts and culture.

 

So take note, Toronto! we only have Jeff Melanson until September when he will be leaving to head The Banff Centre. Let’s benefit in every way we can from this creative visionary while he’s here. 

 

 


Read the report here:

 

http://www.livewithculture.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/CCI-Final.pdf

 

http://www.livewithculture.ca/category/creative-capital-initiative/

 

http://www.1loveto.com/tag/toronto-graffiti-summit/ 

 

 

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Jeff Melanson's on 'The Evolving Role of the Arts in Canada': Tomorrow's Leaders Need Support Today!

 

You might have missed this but on May 18, 2011 Toronto City Council unanimously approved the new Creative Capital Initiative Report, Creative Capital Gains: an Action Plan for Toronto. The six recommendations and thirty-three actions outlined in this updated Culture Plan for Toronto foreground culture as “an economic catalyst” and support of the arts and culture at the institutional and community levels as integral to strengthening “Toronto’s economy and enhance our competitive advantage on the world stage” 
 

 

This remarkable achievement in the City Council was highlighted by Jeff Melanson, Executive Director of the National Ballet School and Special Advisor to the Mayor on Arts and Culture, in his talk on “The Evolving Role of the Arts in Canada,” given Tuesday May 24th as part of the Literary Review of Canada’s Big Ideas series. As he noted with justified frustration, the unanimity of Council on this report failed to get the media attention that more acrimonious exchanges in Council on the privatization of garbage have received .

 

I had the great good fortune to attend this talk and hear Melanson speak about his vision for the arts and culture and of the necessity of building relationships between artists, communities, private and public stakeholders. His talk was both a clear-sighted overview of how the arts have been positioned and supported in Canada since the formative Massey Commission’s Report in 1952 and a window into his own experience as a series of case studies of best practices leading the Royal Conservatory of Music and Canada’s National Ballet School.

 

Listening to Melanson speak one can see why he has been so successful. He’s engaging, articulate and extraordinarily positive. In describing an early meeting at the National Ballet which was then wrestling with a substantial annual operating deficit, Melanson recalls realizing and stating “We can’t afford to have a recession!”  In his talk and his answers to the questions following, his challenge was to find to find ways to reimagine the role of arts and culture, to articulate the value of the arts and culture in all spheres from business to cultural (and to recognize the interdependence of these spheres), to open new lines of dialogue between artists, communities, private and public sectors, and to approach the future of our cities with an openness and spirit of collaboration rather than suspicion and cynicism.

 

As one example of a risk-taking initiative, Melanson invited us all to the Toronto Graffiti Summit Town Hall at the Drake Hotel on May 31. As he noted, the value of bringing together graffiti artists, community members, and law enforcement officers was the discovery that all communities were equally concerned with how to protect graffiti art and deter vandalism.

 

Melanson began and ended with his three recommendations for the future support of arts and culture in Canada.

 

  1. Redo The Massey Commission.   
  2. Re-imagine the role and implementation of arts education.
  3. Establish an independent cultural policy think tank that should be privately funded in order to offer objective recommendations.

 

Melanson’s call to redo The Massey Commission foregrounds how profoundly different the Canada of today is from the 1950s and the necessity of understanding the distinctive challenges Canadians face and the diversity of stories Canadians now tell. Perhaps one of the great strengths of Melanson’s talk was his ability to clearly connect the past to the future, to tell us a story that detailed practical strategies for realizing a better future for all of our GTA’s Three Cities. In speaking to an audience that was for the most part, older, established and successful, he left us with a number of challenges beginning with the importance of fostering an early engagement with the arts, of supporting the future generations who are here now in order to find those under 25 who will be tomorrow’s leaders in arts and culture.

 

So take note, Toronto! we only have Jeff Melanson until September when he will be leaving to head The Banff Centre. Let’s benefit in every way we can from this creative visionary while he’s here. 

 

 


Read the report here:

 

http://www.livewithculture.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/CCI-Final.pdf

 

http://www.livewithculture.ca/category/creative-capital-initiative/

 

http://www.1loveto.com/tag/toronto-graffiti-summit/ 

 

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Backtracking & Bookmarking! Was the Portal 2 Alternate Reality Marketing Campaign Worth It? from Mashable

Excerpt (but I'm reading the whole thing!):

"...The campaign began April 1, when a collection of indie games collectively dubbed “The Potato Sack” was released on Steam (Valve’s cloud-based delivery system — sort of an iTunes for video games). Players began noticing strange symbols and coded messages appearing in the games. Savvy users began to connect these “glyphs” to other games — which were receiving new content from Steam — as well as to external websites and real-world locations. A wiki and IRC channel were created by gaming forum denizens to start pooling information about what has come to be known as the Portal ARG (alternate reality game).

While it’s only been in motion for a few weeks, the ARG is exceedingly complex and tended to unfold in real time, with clues hidden across the web, gaming forums, podcasts, YouTube videos, and the Potato Sack games themselves. Highlights include cryptic blog posts that were deleted soon after discovery, messages in Morse code, clues encoded in the waveforms of audio files, and a handful of interconnected images sent from Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve himself, to a few prominent gaming blog editors..."

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Chris Pullman on What I've Learned: Design Observer (#6 is my Fave)

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Chris Pullman is the only person who can be said to have won not one but two of the highest possible honors from AIGA. The first was the Corporate Leadership Award, which the company he shaped, Boston public broadcasting network WGBH, won in 1985. The second was the AIGA Medal, which Pullman himself won in 2002.

Chris Pullman was a young teacher at the Yale School of Art when he was recruited by Ivan Chermayeff, who had just redesigned WGBH's logo, to take charge of the station's in-house design department. He joined the company as Vice President for Design in 1973. This past spring, after 35 years, he announced that he was stepping down. At an emotional going-away party on October 28, he talked about his three-and-a-half decades at the station. He has kindly given us permission to publish his remarks here. [The Editors]

The chance invitation to work here at WGBH placed me in an environment that was a perfect fit for my temperament, and for my aspirations as a professional and as just a plain person.

Once I came here, I recognized, gradually, why it felt so right as a place to work and associate. I’d like to take this opportunity to share ten lessons I learned in the past 35 years.

[I've pulled the headings - worth reading in detail]

1. Work on things that matter

2. Work with people you like and respect

3. Be nice

4. Have high standards

5. Have a sense of humor

6. Design is not the narrow application of formal skills, it is a way of thinking

7. Variety is the spice of life

8. Institutions have a character, just like people do

9. We’re all in the “understanding business”

10. You are what you eat

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Must Read: It's Not the Technology, Stupid! Cathy Davidson's Response to NYT "Twitter Trap" | HASTAC

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on May 23, 2011, 10:35 AM

For HASTAC readers too young to understand the reference in my title, here's a bit of history: Long, long ago, way back in the past millennium even, Bill Clinton ran a successful presidential campaign against the supposedly unbeatable incumbent, George H. W. Bush, who was ignoring the recession (Clinton insisted) in order to focus on the end of the Cold War or the Persian Gulf War.   Whenever Clinton would veer into those debate areas, his campaign director James Carville would get him back on course with his trump card by reiterating:  "It's the economy, Stupid!"  

I wasn't going to respond at all to New York Times Executive Editor's plaintive, if hyperbolic, critique of all social media, "The Twitter Trap," but I'm hearing Carville-like yelling in my ear and realize I have to. Far, far too many powerful, brilliant, important people who should know a lot better are blaming technology for all kinds of things, and I better come clean and start entering the debate at that level. So, okay: "IT'S NOT THE TECHNOLOGY, STUPID!"  

It is just so hard to believe how many reputable intellectuals, writers, scientists, social scientists, and even educators are willing to indulge in a specious logic that they would never allow on another topic. They like to say that the Internet makes us shallow, stupid, distracted, lonely, or, in the case of this piece by the executive editor of the New York Times, that it somehow compromises us morally and spiritually: "My own anxiety," Keller writes, "is less about the cerebrum than about the soul."  I can only imagine an executive of his stature snickering with derision remembering how so-called "primitive people" said exactly the same thing about photography.  

Here are two facts:  (1) we now know from the new science of attention and the most recent findings in neuroscience that our brain is not, as was previously thought, an inheritance that comes with all of its components fixed and certain; the brain is a learning organism and that means it is constantly changed by its environment, but what it experiences, and by its interactions.  But (2) except in B-horror movies ("The Brain that Wouldn't Die" or "The Brain from Planet Arous" and so forth), the brain doesn't power itself and it doesn't power us. The brain R us. That is, what we experience our brain experiences.  If we give it a steady diet of junk food or alcohol or Ritalin, it changes. If we give it a steady stream of "Jersey Shore," that's what it learns. If we give it a steady diet of item-response multiple choice testing (the ridiculous form of testing which, we know, does nothing except prepare students to do well on that particular form of testing), it learns how to think like those tests.  If we inspire ourselves to curiosity, expose ourselves to challenges and then succeed and reinforce our ability to take challenges, our brain learns how to extrapolate from challenges.  And if we spend all day on line doing idiotic things, then, well, that is what we learn how to do well---spending all day on line doing idiotic things.  We are what we do.  Our brain is what it does.

But that's not about technology, it's about humanity.  Between the human brain and the computer screen, comes us, our will, our desires, our habits, our training, our work, our incentives, our motivations, our culture, our society, our institutions, all of the things that make us human.   It's NOT the Technology, Stupid!  It is about what we--you and I--do with the technology.  It always has been, it always will be.

This is not to say technology doesn't matter.  It does. We are fifteen years into the biggest communications revolution since the invention of steam-powered presses and machine-made ink and paper.  That mechanization of printing technologies suddenly made books and newspapers affordable to the masses for the first time in human history. That happened starting in the late 18th century and continued through to the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth, with more and more mechanization that allowed for ever-more rapid printing methods.  From the beginning, the availability of cheaply printed  books and newspapers had a lot of people very worried--including Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.  Both worried that a new U.S. ideal of representative democracy would turn to anarchy if the "rabble" had all that unfettered popular culture  without a preacher at the ready to tell them how to interpret the text and keep them on track.  Being doers, not whiners, Jefferson and Adams both, in different ways, set about thinking through what institutions needed to change if, in fact, a new technology had put books into middle- and working class people's hands for the first time.  They thought about the concept of universal public schooling, for example, since you needed not only to educate people to read but to educate them in how to read wisely and sanely.  

We are fifteen years into the commercialization of the Internet.  We have all made tremendous adjustments to these new forms of technology and social media.  I don't know about you but I do not need a new "study" to tell me my life has been changed by email, texting, blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, Wikipedia, eBay, Amazon.com, my iPad, my Blackberry, and on and on and on.  It's NOT the Technology, Stupid!  I hear James Carville shouting.  It's about all of the ways life is changing and how technology facilitates, reshapes, redistributes the everyday patterns, facts, and habits of life. And it is about us figuring out the best ways to live given these rapid and continuing changes.

We all think we know what "work" is and we all think we know what "school" is but we really only know about the ways that leisure, home, learning, and living were reorganized by the Industrial Revolution for the last couple hundred years (a blink in the timeline of human history). Like Jefferson and Adams figuring out what had to change for a new democratic populace that suddenly had access to all that print, our contemporary leaders like New York Times executive editor Bill Keller need to take their role as cultural arbiters a lot more seriously and think about what needs to come next for our society.  It's NOT the technology.  We need to reconceive new possiblities for living, learning, and working together well.  It is about finding the best ways to change our institutions to support our new ways of living, learning, and working.  We need new institutions to support our digital ways of living, working, and learning just as the industrial era needed its institutions to support its ways. 

Here's an example:  The industrial age worked hard to separate "work" from "home."  Everything about the common or public schools started in the mid-nineteenth century reinforced that division:  from the school bell ringing for each child at the same time of day, to each child entering school at age 6 whether they were ready or not, about sitting in tidy rows, and, then, later, in the early twentieth-century, all the new ways of measuring success:  IQ tests, multiple choice tests.  Around the same time came specialization of disciplines, the "two cultures" divide of arts and humanities versus science and technology, professional schools, and on and on.  All these metrics and institutions put an emphasis on standardization over standards, uniformity over idiosyncratic creativity, and working in a linear pattern towards a goal.  Everything about work (beginning with the physical structure of the office building or the assembly line and going to Human Resources departments that structure and enforce uniform regulations) was structured to maintain those separations. 

We now live in a world where work and leisure are impossibly intermixed and conjoined, at our desktops, on planes, in airports, at picnics, over the dinner table.  We need new rules and new norms and new standards for the world we live in now.  What we do not need is nostalgia for the practices developed 150 years ago for a world that no longer is relevant to the way we live now.

Please, Mr. Keller.  We need you.  We need you and "Nicholas Carr,  Jaron Lanier, Gary Small, Gigi Vorgan, William Powers, et al" (as you cite them) and other researchers in this field to stop whining and start thinking in creative and innovative ways about how we can remake and redesign our habits and practices, our schools and workplaces, for the world we inhabit now--not the one that some of us, of a certain age, were born into.  The world has changed.  We have changed.  Like Jefferson and Adams, we need to think about what we need to maximize the opportunities of the world we live in, not the old one we remember, often in a far more golden and glowy way than is deserved.  IT'S NOT THE TECHNOLOGY, STUPID!  It's about us, you and me, and how we can learn to live, work, and learn together, not just for our future and our kids' future, but for the world that, all of us, together, very much live in right now, today.

--------

Cathy N. Davidson is co-founder of HASTAC, and author of The Future of Thinking:  Learning Institutions for a Digital Age (with HASTAC co-founder David Theo Goldberg), and the forthcoming Now You See It:  How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn (publication date, Viking Press, August 18, 2011).   For more information, visit www.nowyouseeit.net or order on Amazon.com by clicking on the book below. For an early, prepublication review of Now You See It in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, click


 

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Game On!: Fans Crack Twitter Code for Sneak Peek at New Batman Film. The Dark Knight Rises ARG begins...

Media_http8mshcdncomw_jsdcs

follow the hashtag #TheFireRises ......

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Wow! Major Gift! MUBI is Screening a Retrospective of Cannes' Films for Month of June!

Like Like Like Like...Official google.org Blog: Mining patterns in search data with Google Correlate

Media_http4bpblogspot_intxk

From the site:

"It all started with the flu. In 2008, we found that the activity of certain search terms are good indicators of actual flu activity. Based on this finding, we launched Google Flu Trends to provide timely estimates of flu activity in 28 countries. Since then, we’ve seen a number of other researchers—including our very own—use search activity data to estimate other real world activities.

However, tools that provide access to search data, such as Google Trends or Google Insights for Search, weren’t designed with this type of research in mind. Those systems allow you to enter a search term and see the trend; but researchers told us they want to enter the trend of some real world activity and see which search terms best match that trend. In other words, they wanted a system that was like Google Trends but in reverse.

This is now possible with Google Correlate, which we’re launching today on Google Labs. Using Correlate, you can upload your own data series and see a list of search terms whose popularity best corresponds with that real world trend. In the example below, we uploaded official flu activity data from the U.S. CDC over the last several years and found that people search for terms like [cold or flu] in a similar pattern to actual flu rates. Finding out these correlated terms is how we built Google Flu Trends (above)..."

read the full post for more deets

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales