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the assumption that the concepts of authenticity, ownership, uniqueness and seriality are, within the digital domain, no longer valid.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/ "... it’s 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 don’t think she understood just how freaking impossible her system would be to implement. For it to really work the way she imagined, you’d 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 people’s computers. Even currently popular metadata systems are a mess of different, incompatible formats, so I don’t see how you’d 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: 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: 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] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: virtualentity_nmm_gold08.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 81139 bytes Desc: not available URL: