Boba Fett Playing Zelda's "Lost Woods" Song in the NYC Subway

Some things must be blogged. This gem, filmed by New York City Filmmaker and Illustrator Shariar Shadab is one example of zeitgeist art in ordinary spaces.

Via Jeff Newelt.

Josh Fox at TEDxVancouver: "Water on Fire"

In the above video, 2011 Academy Award-nominee Josh Fox, the producer and star of the amazing documentary Gasland tells the story of the making of the film at TEDxVancouver. It's both moving and fun to watch, since Josh plays the Banjo throughout (evocative of great dramatic Banjo players Pete Seeger and Steve Martin).

I've watched Gasland a number of times now and each time I learn something new and more frightening about the ways that big corporations can manipulate laws and individuals to the detriment of our safety and environment. It's also the people's fault. This film is a reminder how individuals too easily give up their rights to coporations without considering the implications of these actions.

This film deserves the Oscar for Best Documentary tomorrow.

WSJ's Culture City Online: "Maps for Artistic Cheapskates, Jetsetters"

The Wall Street Journal arts reporter Pia Catton who writes the Culture City Online blog just wrote about the project DIP did with Battery Dance Company telling their cultural relations story through transmedia storytelling in an article called, "Maps for Artistic Cheapskates, Jetsetters." Rita J. King blogged about it earlier on this blog in her post, "Battery Dance Company: A Global Movement".

Here's an excerpt from Pia's article:

Gathering information has been a global affair for Battery Dance Company artistic director Jonathan Hollander, who has taken his dancers around the world for performances and workshops in support of cultural exchange.

To help other arts institutions that want to do the same, he has created the Battery Dance Company Cultural Diplomacy Toolkit with the design help of Dancing Ink Productions and funding from the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation.

“We sense that there are people who want to do work like this,” said Hollander. “We’ve always been community-spirited rather than proprietary.”

In his international work, Hollander has taken his TriBeCa-based company to Swaziland, Mongolia, Taiwan and a great many points in between. The information he shares ranges from advice on dealing with the U.S. State Department to making programming choices in specific locations.

[The Wall Street Journal: Culture City Online: Maps for Artistic Cheapskates, Jetsetters]

Also see:
[The Imagination Age: Battery Dance Company: A Global Movement]

New Chapter on Social Media, Immersive Worlds and International Place Branding

I have a chapter called "Social Media and Immersive Worlds: Why International Place Branding Doesn’t Get Weekends Off" in the just-published International Place Branding Yearbook 2010: Place Branding in the New Age of Innovation published by Palgrave Macmillan and edited by Robert Govers and Frank Go.

My chapter explores how Israel responded to grassroots transmedia and social media movements across the digital spectrum from virtual worlds to Twitter, in opposition to the December 2008 conflict in Gaza. Rita J. King and I documented some of that on this blog here, here, and here.

Unfortunately, the chapter does not have an online presence.

[International Place Branding Yearbook 2010: Place Branding in the Age of Innovation]

Parag Khanna: Why WikiLeaks Is Great for Diplomacy

Parag Khanna has an interesting video up on BigThink explaining why he thinks Wikileaks is good for diplomacy. It's a fascinating piece on the decentralization of information.

[Big Think: Why Wikileaks is Great for Diplomacy]

Behind the Video Game Industry Machine and the Need for Better Writers

Game Theory magazine has an interesting video report, about 12 minutes long, interviewing some of the most senior game designers and writers and analysts about what the real costs and expectations are behind the creation of video games today. Their feeling: There is no room for mediocrity.

This video is discussed thoughtfully in The Guardian in an article called "Virtual Reality Needs Real Writers":

So why do so few writers from other mediums take on gaming? And why is most of the writing in computer games – as even the ardent gameheads in the Game Theory Online film say openly – so bad? Part of the problem is clearly to do with priorities. As the game writer and former critic Rhianna Pratchett says in the film: "Story is often the last thing thought about and the first thing pulled apart." So much effort goes into making spectacular worlds, tackling the technical logistics and ensuring the playing experience is enjoyable that decent plot and dialogue fall by the wayside.

Yet there are trickier issues involved. As a few people say in the film, gaming presents a unique challenge in terms of linear narrative. Or rather, the general lack of it. All the variant paths and possibilities relating to moving through a game offer plenty of potential for creativity – but thinking about wrapping it all together is so brain-ache-making and frequently needs such mathematical precision that it's small wonder game writers are less able to concentrate on things such as dialogue. There's also the continuing problem of working that dialogue properly into the game narrative. At the moment, even the most innovative and otherwise thoroughly entertaining games such as the Grand Theft Auto series rely on cut scenes that interrupt the action. Invariably, the dialogue is an annoyance getting in the way of the action rather than the thing that drives it.

New Issue of the Journal CyberOrient Looks Good

Vit Sisler the editor of Digital Islam who we first met during our research for the Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds emails with the announcement that a new issue of the journal CyberOrient is out. It looks really interesting, covering topics from the internal turmoil at IslamOnline.net to Faith and Identity in Muslim Women’s Online Matchmaking.

CyberOrient presents original, peer-reviewed articles and books
reviews on the online representation of any aspect of Middle Eastern
cultures, Islam, the imagined "Orient" and the use and impact of the
internet in the Middle East and Islamic countries.

The Islam-Online Crisis: A Battle of Wasatiyya vs. Salafi Ideologies?
Mona Abdel-Fadil

Islam Online has been one of the most prominent and stable Islamic websites since it was founded in 1997. However, in March 2010 Islam Online suffered a major crisis, which has come to be known as 'the IOL-Crisis'. This is a suitable case for exploring whether multiple layers of authority are at play in online religious communities. At the time of the crisis, I was conducting fieldwork with the social team of IOL-Arabic. This article provides rich ethnographic detail about the time before, during, and after the crisis – as experienced by the social team. I outline how the social team made sense of the crisis through producing crisis-narratives that draw on Islam Online's institutional narrative. Moreover, I illustrate how narratives about the crisis gradually shift to alternate explanations, in tact with new developments of the crisis. I conclude with reflections on what types of authority were drawn on during the IOL-Crisis.

Overcoming the Digital Divide: The Internet and Political Mobilization in Egypt and Tunisia
Johanne Kuebler

Comparing the patterns of Internet use for political mobilization in Egypt and in Tunisia, this article shows how the Internet as a relative free space can be a vital factor in opening windows and expanding the realm of what can be said in public. However, the Internet as such appears not to be sufficient to radically transform
the society as a whole. Instead, the case of Egypt shows how traditional media such as the press can serve as a bridge to the general public sphere, helping to operate results of discussions online and to transform the newly acquired space of discussion into actual power on the street.

Beyond the Traditional-Modern Binary: Faith and Identity in Muslim Women’s Online Matchmaking Profiles
Anna Piela

Finding a suitable partner in both diasporic and non-diasporic settings proves increasingly challenging for young Muslims, especially those unable or not wanting to search within their kinship networks. At the same time, religious matchmaking websites are becoming increasingly common especially among Muslim women. As studies of Muslim matchmaking sites tend to focus on the ever-popular topic of the headscarf and its associations in the matchmaking context, a much more comprehensive study of the specificity of the online religious identities and self-representation is required. This paper examines a number of profiles of young Muslim women using online matchmaking sites and discusses broad themes of faith, ethnicity and identity that
emerge in the analysis.

New Media and Social-political Change in Iran
Mohammad Hadi Sohrabi-Haghighat

The increasing penetration of new communication technologies into everyday life has attracted a growing interest in the social, economic and political implications of these technologies. Most studies have looked at Western democratic societies and the literature on the developing countries is unfortunately small in comparison. In 2009
Iran witnessed a political upheaval in the aftermath of the presidential election in which the Internet was utilized effectively by the political opposition. News and videos of police brutality and repression were uploaded online, including onto social networking sites, in what was called the ‘Twitter Revolution’. Expectations rose on the capacity of new media to bring about democratic change in Iran. Later developments, however, showed that ‘mouse clicks’ alone do not produce profound political changes. In this article we look at the role of the new media and the social and political functions it took on in the post election period.

e-Islam: the Spanish Public Virtual Sphere
Arturo Guerrero Enterría

The increasing presence of Islamic content in cyberspace has made it possible for an ever-expanding Muslim public space to be established. In Spain, institutionalised Islam has found new routes for communication, information and visibilisation with these new technologies. However, as this paper will show, its strategy is based on traditional mass media models of communication, namely the one-way and one-to-many communication models. This leaves room for other types of actors to use strategies based on different communication models: two-way and many-to-many, taking better advantage of the potential in new information and communication technologies to more easily find a niche in Spanish Muslim cyberspace.

Book Review: Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Islamic Discourses in Cyberspace
Vit Sisler

With growing Internet penetration rates and the proliferation of new media outlets in the Muslim world there is a simultaneously growing academic interest in possible social and political changes endorsed by these media. A recent contribution to this rapidly expanding body of research has been provided by Mohammed El-Nawawy and Sahar Khamis. They have co-authored a book called Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Islamic Discourses in Cyberspace, which deals with the virtual Muslim public sphere and the contestation of and deliberation over religious authority and Muslim identity online.

[CyberOrient]

Artist Inserts Himself Into Wikipedia Photo Entries

Brooklyn artist David Horvitz did an interesting guerrilla art project on Wikipedia between December 2010 and January 2011. He took pictures of himself at various parks and beaches on the US West Coast and then uploaded them to relevant Wikipedia entries. Only the pictures weren't that great and kind of confused the Wikipedia editors. Flavorwire has a good write-up.

[Flavorwire: Artist Conquers Wikipedia, One Image At A Time]

Via Ryan Chapman

New Essay in the Journal, Continent: Technologies of the Imagination

Continent a new journal "devoted to mapping a topology of unstable confluences and ranges across new thinking, traversing interstices and alternate directions in culture, theory, biopolitics and art" has just published its inaugural issue, featuring a new essay co-authored by Rita J. King and me called "Technologies of the Imagination." Continent's board of advisers includes Clay Shirky, Lucia Santaella and Simon Critchly. Thanks to contributing editor Renata Lemos, São Paulo-based Brazilian social media scholar and part of the consulting firm Nomadesign for inviting us to write the piece.

[Continent: Technologies of the Imagination]

RoboCop in Detroit

A few days ago I went down with a bug, and when I came to I learned that $50,000 in funding had been secured by the Imagination Station, a project on which I sit as a board member, to build a giant RoboCop statue in Detroit after the mayor of the city tweeted that the statue won't be erected. RoboCop, the movie, was set in a futuristic, crime ridden Detroit.

As a board member, I was quite surprised by this turn of events, so you're all reading my reaction in real time along with my colleagues over at the Imagination Station. As such, please consider what you're about to read my personal views and not those of the project as a collective.

While some are jumping for joy at how fast the funds for massive statue were raised on Kickstarter, others are furious that the funds aren't being put to "better use." This is always the idea behind slashed funding for art--there's always something more important in someone's eyes than art. But let's take a step back. Some don't even see this as art. They see it as a hideous joke, a monstrosity poking fun at the city.

But is it?

The story behind RoboCop centers on a police officer who is brutally murdered and subsequently re-created as a super-human cyborg. This massive statue wouldn't work in any other city but Detroit, but it does work there. Sometimes art's only purpose is to provoke, and sometimes that's exactly what's needed to get a dialogue going.

On Facebook, Dan Austin posted twelve ways Detroit can be helped without RoboCop (a list he wouldn't have made and I wouldn't have read had the RoboCop statue not been funded). Austin, who "hopes the statue gets scrapped by crackheads," came up with his twelve ideas "just off the top of my head and done in 5 minutes. Given 10 minutes, I could easily come up with a dozen more," he says.

And the ideas, so hastily concocted, are in fact quite good:

1) $50,000 to feed thousands of people in this city who are starving.
2) $50,000 to shelter thousands of people in this city who are homeless.
3) $50,000 to buy computers and Internet access and/or books for students in this city who are struggling to compete and being left behind.
4) $50,000 to help start a business incubator to help unemployed and/or dreamers who believe in this city start their own small business.
5) $50,000 to Greening of Detroit or some other organization to help beautify our city.
6) $50,000 to establish an endowment at MOCAD.
7) $50,000 to build/renovate several decrepit playgrounds in our city so kids have a nice, safe place to play.
8) $50,000 to help tear down burned-out/blighted/dangerous buildings in our city that are havens for crime and depress already depressed property values in our neighborhoods.
9) $50,000 to send two underprivileged-but-striving Detroit high schoolers to college so they can escape an often vicious cycle.
10) $50,000 to raise money to help turn Cass Tech High into an artist co-op/living space/art incubator.
11) $50,000 to Focus: HOPE or similar group to help train homeless Detroiters and give them skills they need to get a job and get off the streets.
12) $50,000 to turn the former Tiger Stadium site from a barren wasteland detracting from a thriving neighborhood into a youth baseball field/park.

I hope that Dan and all of the others who commented on his post with ways that they could get better things done actually do what the Imagination Station did and take the initiative to get it done. RoboCop should be a lesson to everyone--there's nothing stopping you from doing the same. Dan, please let me know when you've taken steps to secure funding for your ideas--I know I'll do my best to support them. It is also important to note that members of the Imagination Station do many of the things on the list, such as feeding the homeless, rehabbing buildings, providing play spaces and art supplies to children who live in abandoned neighborhoods full of arson, drugs and squatters and incubating businesses.

And I appreciate that Dan said it's possible to adamantly disagree with a project and love the people behind it.

PopCap: Study Shows Casual Games Reduce Depression, Anxiety

Interesting study commissioned by the game company, Popcap Games, the makers of Peggle and Bejeweled. From the article on Huliq:

The lead research on the study, Dr. Carmen Russoniello, said afterwards that "the results of this study clearly demonstrate the intrinsic value of certain casual games in terms of significant, positive effects on the moods and anxiety levels of people suffering from any level of depression." In fact, the study authors were willing to go so far as to suggest casual video games can be an adjunct (or even a replacement for) to traditional medication-based therapy.

What potentially limits the long-reach impact of the study is the fact that it is the first of its kind. It also involves a relatively small research group (59). More importantly, it was sponsored by the very publisher of the games used, PopCap Games. In no way is this meant to suggest any type of fraud, but studies sponsored by a company with a vested interest in a certain conclusion must always be viewed with a certain degree of suspicion.

[Huliq: Casual video games are effective treatment for depression and anxiety]

[PopCap: Study Shows Casual Games Reduce Depression, Anxiety]

You can download the study here.

SlateV on the "backstory" of IBM's Watson Appearance on Jeopardy!

SlateV's funny take on the "backstory" of IBM Watson's preparation for his appearance on Jeopardy! this week.

[SlateV: IBM's Watson: The Untold Story]

NobelEgypt.com: Nominate the Egyptian People for the Nobel Peace Prize

Luke Fretwell, San Francisco's Government 2.0 maven and founder of the Government 2.0-style site "GovFresh" has launched a grassroots campaign to nominate the people of Egypt for a Nobel Peace Prize. Who knows, maybe the Norwegian Parliament, which selects the Nobel Peace Prize awardees will take note.

[NobelEgypt.com]

"Detroit Needs a RoboCop"

A group of artists in Detroit (including provocateur Jerry Paffendorf) have launched a campaign to crowdsource the creation of their own RoboCop, which is appropriate since the original Paul Verhoeven film starring Peter Weller takes place in Detroit. In fact, given the post-apocalyptic feel of Detroit these days, a RoboCop is more appropriate than ever.

[Kickstarter: Detroit Needs a RoboCop]

[DetroitNeedsRoboCop.com]

IBM's Watson: Imagine a Human Who Could Read All Documents ... and Retain Them

Next week US network television will air a series of Jeopardy! episodes in which, Watson, IBM's Super Computer, competes against human contestants. The above video contextualizes what IBM sees as Watson's value outside of being able to dynamically challenge other humans in a quiz show.

Rita J. King on Mashable

Rita J. King has a new essay up on Mashable about our work in Virtual Worlds and our Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project.

[Rita J. King: Why Virtual Worlds Play an Important Role in the Changing Arab World]

Science House: Creativity and the Imagination Age

James Jorasch is the founder of Science House, an organization dedicated to supporting science and making investments in high tech companies. James, a named inventor on more than 350 issued patents, is an intriguing individual with an impressive library that includes pictures of light cones, shown above.

Last night, at the invitation of Katelan Foisy I attended a dinner at Science House in NYC, where the topic of the evening’s discussion was the Imagination Age.

Many of the guests were first timers. Some of the scientists had been there before. The artists were connected through Science House’s special events manager Megan Kingery (a figure model who has posed for event attendees Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon of Teetering Bulb, an illustration duo from Brooklyn).

We arrived at 7 pm and shared some Indian food. I took a peek through powerful binoculars into windows all around Manhattan. Without the binoculars, the buildings were all just layered gray rectangles studded with light and dark windows, but with them I could actually see smeared colors on a painter’s palette several blocks away.

Jorasch is planning an expansion soon, but the conversation about the Imagination Age took place in his current midtown digs, cozily ringing a coffee table filled with Kingery’s spectacular grasshopper brownies and other delicacies. As people went around the room introducing themselves I wished I had an entire evening for each of them.

Alex Pasternak, George W. Hart, Michael Malice, Porter Fox and Paul Hoffman (whose work explores the relationship between genius, madness, obsession, and creativity) said a few words. The room was full of brilliant women including Ayesha Khanna, Elizabeth Stark, Laure Parsons, Michelle Edgar and Julia Fisherman.

Shane Hope may have been reading from the bio that got sent out in advance of the event when he introduced himself:

algorithmicracked-out crypto-junk-DNAnarch-keys to un-nanoblockonomic-lock fine jouler-bots-that-gots-watts-a-lots and freely power prescient peek-a-boo plunderware portraiture...

I took notes for three straight hours while the conversation flowed. The theme centered on the relationship between technology and the sense of self. I was most interested in the conversation about the relationship between creativity and freedom.

What is Creativity?
If 10,000 hours is a requirement for mastery, then extreme class division creates a nefarious secondary peril of preventing genuine diversity from infiltrating the global culture and economy, with only the wealthiest citizens able to devote that kind of time to a new endeavor and setting the agenda for everyone else.

The group tossed around a question: What is creativity? Is it reserved just for writers, musicians and artists of all stripes or is it the result of finding an unexpected solution that arises in relation to a specific problem? Is a machine being creative when it beats you at chess? Conversely, is a child who learns how to play chess like a machine being creative or just a masterful copycat? And really, what’s the difference?

Can machines write beautiful poems or is the human element necessary to truly capture the nuances of what it means to be alive, to experience the visceral wonder of an endless sky full of hazy galaxies and twinkling stars?

Is creativity just a sudden burst of novelty registered as unusual by a pattern-seeking human brain? Are people who work on assembly lines or in cubicles able to weave creativity into their monotonous routines, and if so, is it even desirable? You wouldn’t want a pilot getting creative when he’s supposed to be making a routine landing, but you would want him to be agile and creative if the plane needs to make an emergency landing on one wheel or in a river.

The question arose: Is creativity better served by freedom or discipline? And what if your discipline is giving yourself space to experience the new every day? If freedom means giving yourself the space to deviate from norms, then what about the billions of people around the world shackled by various factors from poverty to extreme disability who will never have the luxury of that pleasure?

If a “God Helmet” can stimulate the part of the brain that Buddhist monks and nuns activate through hours of meditation, is the resulting feeling truly a spiritual one? If software is good enough to help you make decisions, when will it be good enough to make decisions for you?

Maybe the only difference right now is that machines don’t yet mimic a sense of wonder when faced with the unexpected. As Khanna pointed out, millions of people are fans of the Japanese hologram rockstar Hatsune Miku who isn’t “real” but nevertheless seems real enough to evoke strong, growing emotion. Eventually, robots and digital creations might be capable of returning the affection.

Creativity is one of those concepts that barely translates from the intangible and poignant feeling it evokes, like Brazilian saudades. The inability to define authentic saudades doesn’t take away from the feeling. When you’ve got it, it’s like love or a broken heart: You just know, and you can’t explain it.

Creativity is no less powerful whether triggered by discipline, freedom, new experiences, sudden awareness, a snippet of overheard conversation, a sudden problem or something entirely unique to the moment. Creativity is an encounter.

Google Art Project

The Google Art Project is spectacular! Explore the floor plans of museums all over the world (Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum shown above), take a virtual tour and start your own art collection. Brilliant!