The Sonic Antarctica videos are part of an exhibition in Austria put together by Klaus Schafler called Cooling Station. I just got images, turns out the exhibition was in this very cool looking tent:

Here’s part of the 3-channel video piece inside (on left)

UK-based artist Julian Broke-Evans contacted me to share this video of a project installed at Windless Bight in Antarctica in 2010. It’s a really moving project and his work brought back some nice memories from my time there in 2007/2008:

I am pleased to announce that with the leadership of the amazing Kim Stringfellow, the fantastic Greg Esser and our distinguished editorial board, ARID Journal’s first inaugural issue has launched today. Check out the diverse selection of articles and projects we have posted.

On another note, thanks to Kim we now have a wonderful publishing partnership with KCET Artbound [http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/]

Excerpt from the News Release concerning this publishing partnership:

ARID will co-publish an article at Artbound each bi-annual issue we publish. The article will feature an art or design related project reflecting our editorial mission with a focus on those within the Southern California region.
For our first collaboration ARID editor, Kim Stringfellow discusses photographer and educator, Paul Turounet’s extensive border project, Estamos Buscando A or We’re Looking For—where he attempts to document first-hand the undocumented immigrant experience at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Read Stringfellow’s Artbound article, “Under the Green Moon with Paul Turounet” at:
www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/san-diego/under-the-green-moon-with-paul-turounet.html.

Just got this:

…hacking of the website of the Moscow court where three members of the Pussy Riot band were sentenced to two years in prison Friday. Before the site was restored to its original form, it had been hacked to, among other things, automatically start playing a Pussy Riot song. A video featuring a Bulgarian gay singer was also reportedly uploaded to the site. Its original text had been replaced with slogans calling for Pussy Riot to be freed, as well as anti-Vladimir Putin sentiment. Pussy Riot was convicted of “hooliganism” after protesting the Russian president’s policies and the Russian Orthodox Church’s support of him. As the BBC reports, hacking group Anonymous has claimed responsibility for the hack attack on the court website. (Anonymous has also reportedly started hacking U.K. government sites in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, by the way.) Meanwhile, as police search for more band members, Pussy Riot — which has generated support from advocates of free speech worldwide — is expected to keep recording, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Link: http://eng-pussy-riot.livejournal.com/13534.html

Oliver Stone and Michael Moore have an op ed in the NY Times today about Julian Assange’s current asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

Russ and I have started discussions with UNM ECE professor and energy genius Olga Lavrova on possible interfaces for some energy harvesting devices her team will be developing over the next 4 years thanks to a recent NSF award. We’re excited about the possibilities and have been thinking about how these devices might also provide some kind physical, ambient remote communication. There have been some projects addressing this, one that seems to have some commercial interest despite its weirdness is a system for ‘remote hugs’ where you can give a ‘hug’ to a loved one even when far away. Here are two examples.

The Hugshirt:

Hug over a distance:

There’s also a pretty gross-looking remote kissing system created in Tokyo:

and this extra creepy one:

OK, I confess I secretly was happy about the Pussy Riot fiasco because I liked that an all-girl punk band was getting lots of international attention, I thought the home-made balaclavas were sexy and I liked what they said. (if you have been living in a cave and don’t know what I’m talking about, there are articles here, here and here)

But, now they have been sentenced to 2 years in prison for doing this:

And I’m not happy anymore.

I didn’t understand the religious connection, but an excerpt from band member Yekaterina Samutsevich’s closing statement provides and interesting perspective on the connection between religion and media control (read the whole thing here):

After all, we still have a secular state, and any intersection of the religious and political spheres should be dealt with severely by our vigilant and critically minded society, shouldn’t it? Here, apparently, the authorities took advantage of a certain deficit of the Orthodox aesthetic in Soviet times, when the Orthodox religion had an aura of lost history, of something that had been crushed and damaged by the Soviet totalitarian regime, and was thus an opposition culture…In our performance we dared, without the Patriarch’s blessing, to unite the visual imagery of Orthodox culture and that of protest culture, thus suggesting to smart people that Orthodox culture belongs not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch and Putin, that it could also ally itself with civic rebellion and the spirit of protest in Russia.

An anti-communication device designed by Kate for people in a dispute. Harsh words are lost within the soft felt tube while the users are forced into eye contact.

Although she could only stay for a short time, I had the great pleasure of a brief interaction with wearable computing expert Kate Hartman who was one of the presenters at the Cenart series here in Mexico City.

She brought some props for audience interaction in her inspiring presentation.

Kate is best known for the project Botanicalls, in which sensors on houseplants call plant owners asking for watering, sunlight, etc. Here is a fun video about the project:

After the initial phone project, Kate and her collaborators created a twitter kit with Sparkfun electronics that is still in distribution. She also was involved in the creation of the Lilypad, a version of the arduino board designed to be integrated into clothing using conductive thread. She’s working on a how to book that I am looking forward to getting. What I did really like about her work is that she doesn’t privilege work that uses electronics over good, simple ideas, and students in her wearable computing lab can make work using whatever technology is appropriate to the project.

At a lucheria (I think that’s the right word?) in Coyacan Mercado

Here is Kate’s inspiring TED talk:

Here is a recording I made inside the Coyacan Mercado (market). Starts loud.

Bryan Cera is a University of Wisconsin Milwaukee graduate student whose design work I really appreciate. I worked with him when he oversaw the design of the ISEA2012 website. His really cool latest project, Glove One has gone a little bit viral. Here’s an excerpt from what we says about it:

Glove One is…A cell phone which, in order to use, one must sacrifice their hand…the functionality of the device depends on the dysfunctionality of the wearer. Glove One is not an exercise in innovation, but rather this project asks the question “What are we willing to sacrifice in order to participate in technology and social media?”