Machinima
Posted: 25 January 2006 Filed under: Critical Context, Ramblings | Tags: film, hack Leave a commentI’ve really started to get into machinima recently. I’ve seen a few episodes of Red vs Blue but that’s about it. During a talk given by Mike Salmond last week, he said he was interested in games as an art form and someone asked him what he thought about Machinima so I thought I’d have a look around. Machinima.com has loads listed as well as some tips on how to make them. World of Warcraft – Shutup and Dance! is well worth a look as is James Bond: No Licence but The Journey is just fantastic. It’s based on Unreal Tournament 2004 and couldn’t be more different. Then check out Person2184 which is also based on Unreal Tournament 2004.
Apart from them being visually stunning, I think I like them coz they match what I now consider to be the underlying idea of my project in that they’re following the true hacker’s remit that Wark talked about. They’re taking something, a finished product and building upon it to produce something else, something completely different to the original.
Whispers
Posted: 15 January 2006 Filed under: Critical Context, Ramblings | Tags: clothes, whispers Leave a commentWhispers is a really interesting project. It was put together by Kristina Anderson in collaboration with Thecla Schiphorst and Suzan Kozel. Whispers stands for Wearable Handheld Intimate Sensory Personal Expectant Response System and is a combination of textile and digital technology. It consists of clothing and wearable devices that collect data generated by the body and transmits them to other, nearby devices and a central server. They in turn provide feedback in the form of sound and tactile feedback devices that are also worn which lets the wearer interpret and react to their own and other people’s physiological data. Meanwhile, the server is projecting a representation of the data collected into the space. What I really like about this is the mixing of digital technology with clothing and the idea of using the body as an input device.
London
Posted: 10 January 2006 Filed under: Ramblings | Tags: tate Leave a commentI was up in London yesterday for a couple of meetings and had an hour to kill so went over to the Tate Modern to have a look round Embankment by Rachel Whiteread. She wanted to turn the Turbine Hall into a giant warehouse after becoming inspired by the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark when the camera pans out and the crate the Ark of the Covenant is in is just one of many in a warehouse.
Hacker Manifesto
Posted: 8 January 2006 Filed under: Critical Context, Ramblings | Tags: book, hack 1 CommentJust finished A Hacker Manifesto by McKenzie Wark. Really interesting book where he talks about hacking being a class stuggle between people who produce and the corporates who own the things that hackers produce. Something he writes which I think is very relevant to my project is “Hacking is the production of production. The hack produces a production of a new kind, which has as its result a singular and unique product.” In this, he’s talking about hacking in the truest sense of the word not the meaning given to it by the media of systems and databases broken into for gain or vandalism. But of seeing a thing and wanting to chance change it into something else, or improve upon it. To produce a new thing from it.