OMDS Article

TECTONIC: How will you consume your open media?
Michael Sharon has written a nice article summarizing the Open Media Developers Summit.
From the article:
Two weeks ago, on a rainy Friday and Saturday in October, 65 programmers and developers debated these and many other questions at the first Open Media Developer’s Summit held at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) in down-town Manhattan.

NYU ITP Spring Show, Thesis Week, Performances and Screenings

ITP Spring Show 2005
All of the events are worthwhile but be sure not to miss the show:
Tuesday, May 10th, 5 – 9pm
Wednesday, May 11th, 5 – 9pm
ITP – 721 Broadway, 4th Floor
An exhibition of innovative student work including multimedia installations, physical computing and interaction design, sound and video design projects. All projects on display at ITP.

Phasors Built My Hot Rod

NIME documentary, ‘Phasors Built My Hot Rod” Fall 2003
NIME, New Interfaces for Musical Expression, is a class at ITP taught by Gideon D’Arcangelo. NIME2 is an offshoot of people from that class and anyone else that is interested. They have been playing individually and as a group around world. Evan did a great documentary about some of the instruments, performances and the concepts of NIME in general.

ITP Winter Show 2004

ITP Winter Show 2004
Sunday, December 19 from 2 to 6pm
Monday, December 20 from 5 to 9pm

A two-day explosion of interactive sight, sound and technology from the student artists and innovators at ITP.

An oversized Greenwich Village loft houses the computer labs, rotating exhibitions, and production workshops that are ITP — the Interactive Telecommunications Program. Founded in 1979 as the first graduate education program in alternative media, ITP has grown into a living community of technologists, theorists, engineers, designers, and artists uniquely dedicated to pushing the boundaries of interactivity in the real and digital worlds. A hands-on approach to experimentation, production and risk-taking make this hi-tech fun house a creative home not only to its 230 students, but also to an extended network of the technology industry’s most daring and prolific practitioners.

Interactive Telecommunications Program
Tisch School of the Arts
New York University
721 Broadway, 4th Floor South
New York NY 10003

Take the left elevators to the 4th Floor
This event is free and open to the public

No need to RSVP

For questions: 212-998-1880
email: itp.inquiries@nyu.edu
http://itp.nyu.edu/show

Hillary support’s The INDUCE Act

I was dismayed to learn that Senator Hillary Clinton has come out and in fact co-sponsored Senator Hatch’s Induce Act. What follows is a draft of a letter that I am writing to Sen. Clinton to express my concern. I hope that others will do the same.

Here is some background material:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.2560:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64315,00.html
http://techlawadvisor.com/induce/
http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/004563.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20040618-3906.html
http://www.futureofmusic.org/articles/INDUCEanalysis.cfm
http://action.eff.org/site/pp.asp?c=esJNJ5OWF&b=164928

Like your iPod, read this:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Apple_Complaint.php

Please comment on the letter as you see fit.

Dear Senator Clinton,

I was dismayed to learn that you have come out in support of Senator Hatch’s Induce Act. I hope that on further consideration of the issues that this bill covers that you change your stance to better reflect the opinions of your constituents and for the betterment of our society.

The Induce act as it currently is written does much to stifle free-speech, artistic and fair uses of media. Imposing legal responsibility on the makers of devices and software for illegal use such device or software will create a burden so great on manufacturers and creators of such programs that they will not develop or offer products that have potential for misuse.

I fear that by trying to curb the theft of copyrighted material you will instead be curbing the ability for individuals and groups with legitimate uses for the technology that enables such to use it. Being thoroughly immersed in an academic and artistic atmosphere, I am witness every day to fair uses of technology that would not exist today were such a law in existence. In fact I feel that the software that I am using to write this letter would not have been developed simply because it includes the ability to cut and paste text from any source into the document.

I believe that should this Bill become law that it will undo much of the progress of free-speech and alternative media creation that has been enabled by the internet, personal electronic devices, computers, tape recorders and so on. Furthermore it will be a giant step backwards and lead to increased power by the media and further relegate citizens to the role of consumer without a voice.

I hope that you will reconsider your position on this matter.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Shawn Van Every

The empty black cube

On Tele-absence
Elliott has a nice write up on the concept and ideas behind Tele-absence (the opposite of Tele-Presence, something I have been spending the majority of my time on).
From the site:
I recently, along with Anees Assali, created a large black cube that sits motionless and visually impenetrable in a gallery space. Beyond its simple physical structure, the cube is also a web server with a fixed address. When viewers choose to visit the web site broadcast from the cube, they see a live video stream of its interior, which is empty. The cube does nothing other than serve up an empty space

Clay writes about “Situated Software”

Shirky: Situated Software

From the article:
Part of the future I believe I’m seeing is a change in the software ecosystem which, for the moment, I’m calling situated software. This is software designed in and for a particular social situation or context. This way of making software is in contrast with what I’ll call the Web School (the paradigm I learned to program in), where scalability, generality, and completeness were the key virtues.