From root at xname.cc  Tue Nov  4 13:58:40 2008
From: root at xname.cc (xname)
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 13:58:40 +0100 (CET)
Subject: [Dev] Haip: an open-source art festival
Message-ID: <9b0e68148835779ff968cca4ca5ec060.squirrel@tuxic.nl>

The idea of an open-source art festival emerged inside the multimedia
center Kiberpipa, and the first biennial event was held on 2004. Thematic
focus of the HAIP Festival 2008, Hacktopia tries to question the results
of the actual practice of opensource-technology-supported creative media
art and the dimensions of the freedom of expression inside it.The core
question is: hacktopia at the continuum of utopia and dystopia.


Where is the freedom of artistic expression in open source media?
How can we hack the paradigms of society?

It is with great pleasure that Virtual Entity is participating to such
event which brings together very interesting projects, collectives and
individual artists from all over. Focus of the presentation will be the
VE's Metadata structure and the division of the digital world of creations
in four substances.

Presentation is today Nov 4th at 17:00.

Best,
xname

http://haip.cc


-- 
E119 0FFE 447F DA7F DCE9  A703 36F6 AC68 [6DD4 2D4C]




From root at xname.cc  Tue Nov 11 22:54:14 2008
From: root at xname.cc (xname)
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:54:14 +0100 (CET)
Subject: [Dev] Ve - text for the Jan van Eyck catalogue
Message-ID: <6adad9ded7765b3d4be431f7cdb9eb61.squirrel@tuxic.nl>

For your info,
best, xname

---

Virtual Entity is a philosophical research starting from the assumption
that the concepts of authenticity, ownership, uniqueness and seriality
are, within the digital domain, no longer valid. In fact there is no
substantial difference between copy and original on the Web, and these two
categories are not relevant. Since any file can generate an infinite
number of entities identical to itself, there is no scarcity on the Net,
and any resource is indefinitely available. Assuming   possession is
related to the numerical proportion between resources (objects) and
potential owners (subjects), then, whereas resources are not limited, the
concept of ownership and the idea of property become superfluous.

If socialist and communist experiments in real world were limited by the
presence of state ownership, Virtual Entity is proposing the
implementation of a non-property system within the digital domain.

The practical method to achieve such result is a new radical software
being specifically developed to release, license, and catalogue digital
files. This system, transforming the traditional approach towards
metadata, is based on the idea that any file is an independent creation
living its own life and experiencing various levels of transformation and
progressive generation (of meaning, shape, and entities) in the course of
its virtual existence. This way digital resources, interpreted as cultural
units, are considered the main actors of the web.



-- 
E119 0FFE 447F DA7F DCE9  A703 36F6 AC68 [6DD4 2D4C]




From root at xname.cc  Mon Nov 24 01:02:55 2008
From: root at xname.cc (xname)
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 01:02:55 +0100 (CET)
Subject: [Dev] Reflections around substances after Haip
Message-ID: <78d15b0c4e1a15aad47e35041b14edb4.squirrel@tuxic.nl>

During the presentation at Haip festival Virtual Entity's digital world
division into four substances was put under question. Basically the whole
lecture was divided in two segments: from a general presentation of the
project and its current state, the focus went on substances as relevant
categories, including relative problems and possible solutions to those.
These four substances are, in the specific, Text, Audio, Video, and Image.
These are somewhat echoing Aristotle's four elements constituting earth,
and the celestial globe.
An interesting discussion started, here is a recording of the stream in
mp3 or ogg.

http://virtualentity.org/audio/Virtual_Entity_haip.mp3
http://virtualentity.org/audio/Virtual_Entity_haip.ogg

Some people argued that text is nothing else than a sub category of image,
because in fact any letter is a symbol, an a symbol is for sure an image.
Others declared anything to be open with vi (nerd text editor, lovely
application) is text. The problem of steganography came about as an
example of ambiguity. If I inject text data inside an image, what is the
substance of such image? If an image is representing a piece of text, lets
say the name 'xname', is this an image or a text? What is the Soul of such
digital entity, that is to say the picture of a name? And further, what
about the Midi protocol? Isn't this text to describe sound? If the basic
distinction between 'natural born analog' and 'natural born digital' was
commonly accepted, the 'assembly' stated the following: "not every single
file is to belong to a single substance", although it is true that the
entire digital world can be described as audio, video, text, image. This
division implies a certain approach from the technical back-end that was
basically triggering the whole philosophical discussion, although this
mean was not explicit for the most. The problem is, shall we ignore the
substances, while building the first Souls' pool, or shall we declare
these substances as concomitant possibilities? The right words to answer
this question came about tonight: all substances are immanent in Virtual
Entities. This is the basic conceptual achieve of my Haip experience
(other than this, I will not say). Thanks to all workshop participants and
many thanks to Megabug, who does not share my opinion on non randomizing
the approach to Metadata. The achievement, that was collectively generated
during an intense afternoon of a not yet cold Autumn in the South East,
appears at the end almost obvious: should an immaterial entity have a
single substance? Off course not. The substance depends (especially in
such cases) on the specific approach to content, rather than on a supposed
unique matter. More problems are arising, and I decided there must be a
limit to complexity to render this project actual: theory can lead until a
certain extent. The margin where theory dissipates practice, and ideas
become impossible to grasp, and elusive, and fragile such as leaves under
the wind of the same, now cold, season, this step towards dispersion, we
will not walk. And Virtual Entity stays a practical project, without
crossing the border addressing the void, but developing of theory an
actual demonstration, or zoo.



-- 
E119 0FFE 447F DA7F DCE9  A703 36F6 AC68 [6DD4 2D4C]




From root at xname.cc  Tue Nov 25 00:38:36 2008
From: root at xname.cc (xname)
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:38:36 +0100 (CET)
Subject: [Dev] withoutatraceroute blogging in ve
Message-ID: <70efaf415f92ae23853324fffb4a97cb.squirrel@tuxic.nl>

hello, i just found a review of the ve workshop at haip
i think this is that nice guy wearing the obama t-shirt ;p

http://www.withoutatraceroute.com/2008/11/haip-day-2/

"... its kind of a cool idea, and there are a lot of problems with
current metadata systems. But it seemed more like a thought-experiment
than a real project to me; I dont think she understood just how freaking
impossible her system would be to implement. For it to really work the way
she imagined, youd either have to add network-aware code to every
content-authoring and editing program in the world, or somehow convince
people to go to your website and manually update data all the time. Not to
mention the requirement for it to be decentralized would require a whole
bunch of different servers, or some sort of peer-to-peer component on
peoples computers. Even currently popular metadata systems are a mess of
different, incompatible formats, so I dont see how youd get people to
standardize on yours..."

xname*

-- 
E119 0FFE 447F DA7F DCE9  A703 36F6 AC68 [6DD4 2D4C]




From root at xname.cc  Tue Nov 25 02:03:54 2008
From: root at xname.cc (xname)
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:03:54 +0100 (CET)
Subject: [Dev] transmission metadata working group
Message-ID: <6a1dcbd270665addbf102b7fe71e306b.squirrel@tuxic.nl>


http://wiki.transmission.cc/index.php/Metadata_working_group

-- 
E119 0FFE 447F DA7F DCE9  A703 36F6 AC68 [6DD4 2D4C]




From root at xname.cc  Tue Nov 25 13:41:23 2008
From: root at xname.cc (xname)
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:41:23 +0100 (CET)
Subject: [Dev] polumetis software
Message-ID: <d149934fb0c91d9a629865dbcef42b22.squirrel@tuxic.nl>

what substance is software?

if source code can be defined as text, an executable is something more
malicious, composed, an 'organon' creating a different functioning.

logic and ontology reflect each other, Aristotle used to think.

be software a daemon, or a spirit, it is not a simple entity.

-- 
E119 0FFE 447F DA7F DCE9  A703 36F6 AC68 [6DD4 2D4C]




From root at xname.cc  Thu Nov 27 01:57:39 2008
From: root at xname.cc (xname)
Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 01:57:39 +0100 (CET)
Subject: [dev] new media meetings at goldsmiths
Message-ID: <c6cb745efe49e9f7436bafad0447f1aa.squirrel@tuxic.nl>

Every second Wednesday of the month, at Goldsmiths college in New Cross,
London, some people are meeting to discuss, around a table, different
projects and researches concerning media art and related fields of
inspection. On November 12th Gabriel Menotti presented a very interesting
text entitled 'Computation a dynamic topography', part of his research at
University of Sao Paulo. His approach is presenting computation as a
specif process that cannot be described as simple text, because, in short,
computation is a dynamic event happening inside a machine, thus it is not
text in itself, and probably software should not be defined as text at
all. Today November 26th the project Virtual Entity was presented and
discussed.
Lev Manovich, Matthew Fuller, and some very special phd students attended
the event, including Yuk Hui  who is researcher at Cultural Studies on
metadata.

Some interesting thoughts were raised, especially on Singularity.

Attached is the introductory text i produced for the event.
You can find it here as well:

http://virtualentity.org/text/virtualentity_nmm_gold08.pdf

All the best,

xname

-- 
E119 0FFE 447F DA7F DCE9  A703 36F6 AC68 [6DD4 2D4C]
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