Life as an Artificial Lifeform

Arte Television – known for its high class documentaries expecially of the art sector – will air a documentary about where the VJ scene will go onward into the future. There are interviews with multiple groups of VJs all going a different route. They do have an interview and a little introduction to narrative VJing and me myself at the forefront of this part. They did very indepth research into the whole VJing concept and from my perspective I think this might give us the "art" label at last... Other Vjs in the program are: visomat, jutojo und cinemix. props to Uta Goertzen to take the time and try to fully understand the VJ szene in its complexity of today).
The program will air on the German-French joint venture Arte as part of the monthly "Kurzschluss" on Wednesday November 3rd around 12:00 pm (0:00).

Posted by fALk at 11:57 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Through an interview with the Power5 chip designer Pratap Pattnaik by arstechnica it becomes clear that IBMs next PowerPC for the AppleDesktops will be dual core.

Nonetheless, he was very explicit about on one thing: a single-core POWER5 derivative for the workstation market will not happen, because single-core for any market but laptops is pointless from here on out. The entire industry is going dual-core across all market segments, so there is no possibility that POWER5 will be stripped of one core in order to be sold as workstation chip. Any workstation-oriented derivative of POWER5 would be dual-core from the get-go.

That is the closest you will get to get insight on whats going on at IBM right now. So we can expect to see prototypes of dual core G6s this time next year.

Posted by fALk at 10:42 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A team cgtalk.com forum members is taking on the grand city of Minas Tirith as seen and read in Tolkins Lord of the Rings. They want to voluntary rebuild the city in all detail as a 3d model. Right now they fight over what to do with it once its finished. Raise you ideas. I would say its a typical open source project to be released to the public to reuse remodel and do whatever if credit to the original modelers are given. Creative Common anyone?

Posted by fALk at 10:40 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The maximum transmission power a person can have in the US without breaking the law is one Watt. That is enough to transmit a radio program to the people in one living block in bigger city. The usual transmission rate of a commercial radio station is 100.000 Watt. What gives? If you hand out 100.000 radio transmitters to 100.000 people in one city you theoretically reach the same audience without being tied to FCC regulations or monopolistic powers. That is what the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis thought. They started radio revolt to give the power back to the individuals. On their website is a map where you can see how many transmitters are already in the city (and where). Sounds like a great idea for individual freedom of unregulated speech. Great job!

Posted by fALk at 10:34 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A collaboration to explore technology, community and VJ art, together the hacking, open source and VJ worlds.

The world of VJs has always been defined by the available technology and the possibilities it offers to make a new form of visual art and entertainment. The world of hackers has always been about altering current and future technology and adjust it to ones need. Both meet at the point of finding creative ways to use the tools available. So on the 27|28|29 December 2004 AVIT will hit Alexanderplatz, Berlin to hold an in-depth festival as part of the 21st Chaos Communication Congress (21C3) and conclude with a clubnight in Berlin's legendary music scene.

The possibility of the AVIT conferences - the largest colloborative gathering of VJs – taking part at the Chaos Communication Congress - one of the most important annual hacker conferences - has been proven to be a great source of inspiration to both sides for the first time with the OpenAirVIT in 2003 at the Chaos Communication Camp near Berlin.

Staged at the center point of the 'art and beauty' exhibits hall and with access to the conference and workshop rooms AVIT will be producing a programme drawn from the vj community's input - such as showcases, vj to vj talks, technique and technology sessions, experimental labs - and will host special contextual projects such as a collaboration with the famous Blinkenlights project (blinkenlights.de).

Call for papers and participation

AVIT^C3 will be defined by what the VJs and visual artists have to offer each other. If you think you want to hold a talk, have a special offer for workshops, be part of a discussion round or just want to showcase your work have some special programm to show want to work with the Blinkenlights crew on a video to Blinkenlights software - we need your vision for involvement in electronic written form by 1st of November 2004. We are open for all possibilities and ideas - we need your help.

The speeches are bound to a maximum of one hour. The overall theme is "Pixels want to be free" - that is free from corporate pressure, copyrightss, ideologies of the past and free from technologic constrains. The nature of this theme is meant to provoke and you are free to fit your idea for a talk into this through content, philosophies, politics or technics. All talks to be held in english.

The workshops can be as long as 2 hours. It should revolve around production, hardware, software or technics themes.

The length of the showcases will depend on numerous factors. There are the "normal" showcases if you just want to show your current work to an interested audience. This will happen in the Art and Beauty Area and the outside screens. The "special" showcase that offers an advanced concept of VJing in general and optionally has a discussion round or a speech attached will be held in one of the conference rooms during night. Both kind of showcases will run through the first two nights of the conference.

If you just want to come along to learn or collaborate please drop us a line of your intention and personal interests so we can measure demand better and adjust the offers and timings.

for inquiries, proposals and questions:
mailto:avitc3@prototypen.com

more information about AVIT and the 21C3:
http://www.avit.info
http://www.ccc.de/congress/2004/

The Prototypen – collective for optophonic communication acting as regional coordination group will organize AVIT^C3 in full cooperation with the Chaos Compute Club and the AVIT UK crew.

Posted by fALk at 12:46 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Something the internet diehards do know themself but something that needs to be spelled out to the management of TV stations Telekom companies: Sooner or later the web WILL take over TV as a mass medium. There are numerous studies out there showing a decrease of overall TV watching time and an increase in Internet use. Those two yes are intertwined. A recent study shows the dramatic turn this is taking.

read it over at ars technica: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20041006-4279.html

Posted by fALk at 11:05 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Peercast catched my attention some time ago. Its an open source application (GNU) that enables peer to peer streaming. Yes the bittorrent/Gnutella way of streaming. Its simple: You make an Icecast/Shoutcast compatible stream and use peercast as relay. Then someone listens to your stream and ad hoc you have another relay to your stream. The more users listening the more relays available and in the end you are able to send out ONE good stream (over lousy DSl 128k) and all people out there get the good quality.
There is now a mac version available and its so easy that you can listen instantly (and relaying - always!). There is no need for big ass server boxes to control your own radio stations.
And it does video too but the problem only NVS or WMV (that is crappy windows media). No RTSP stream yet (real/quicktime) but they are planning on releasing a rtsp capable version soon.
The concept is great, since the internet companies can not figure out how to implement multicast on a grand scale this could come to the home TV network stations owners saviour.

http://www.peercast.org/

Posted by fALk at 18:05 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

i stumbled across something I have not heard about yet. Maybe by accident maybe on purpose. Maybe this is known all along but I have been sitting in the woods for too long.

http://answers.google.com/answers/

Is a paid webresearch. You ask a question and a certified researcher finds the answer for you. You say how much you want to pay for the research and the researcher figures out if he wants to go for it for the suggested price.

This seems to be a new revenue for google. go have a look. I was able to find the answers to questions without paying (so once its payed for it goes public domain? very cool).

Posted by fALk at 12:47 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In a recent open essay (to the world?) on FastCompany you can hear one mans opinion on the real revolution going on today. A reversal of the past when big scientists and big corporation with big budgets have overtaken all discoveries that formerly was the main domain of amateurs throughout the centuries. The Amateur Revolution (no tm) of small professional amateurs getting at the big guys, be it Linux taking on Microsoft, Amateur astronomers making the biggest discoveries, a romanian space craft a sure contender to the X-Prize underground HipHop overtaking the professional music bussines etcetc. And I can agree with him we here at the prototypen head quarter are exactly this: Amateur Professionals and we feel confident that we have a better take on some things than the big corporations surrounding us. We think that there is not much that can stop us and that even the economics of capitalism are no real boundary to the success of our vision.
Mr Charles Leadbeater who wrote the article concludes it that in the future all is open for re-negotiation science, politics, market and personal life. I encourage everyone to take this as optimism and hope for a brighter future maybe the last hope we have for not having the corporate controlled world that Mr. Orwell or Mr. Huxley imagined some decades ago.

Posted by fALk at 17:35 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tim Renner ones the head of Universal Music in Germany tries to get attention to a new projekt - namely getting a Radio Station that is independent from the majors. Mr. Renner was fired by the US heads of Universal because he was to enthusiastic with the Berlin Underground Bands and Independent Labels, something a US major does not like to see.
Now he fires back - or at least tries because the frequency 106,8 for which he applied for FM Motor his independent radio show has not yet been assigned to him. Mr. Renner has put a lot "famous" underground musicians of mostly the Berlin scene around him and has been transmitting on a temporary frequency for the Berlin Popkomm that is currently under the way.
With the new radio he tries to set a countermeasure to the failing copyright protectionism of the majors (something he already understood when he was at Universal) and wants to promote the german and international independent scene. We wish him good look with this endeavor but personally I fear that the majors have to much power (on the money side) to crush such a thing as they have done with all independent radio station in the US.

More Info: http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/musik/18459/1.html

Posted by fALk at 15:28 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the nicest crafted movies in a long time that talks about the project "American Century" has come to my notion. Its a must to look at the blend of 2000 style visuals with an appearance that reminds you of old film and the deep message within with a very nice use of graphical language throughout. Have a look.

http://www.knife-party.net/movs/barry.mov

Posted by fALk at 15:08 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)