Brooklyn is a likewise an abstraction. What it meant in the nineties, defined by Spike Lee and Biggie, has been pushed aside by a host of hipsters and posturers. Finding New York necessary but uninhabitable, they settled on the island off-island, and began writing careers leading them (hpefully) towards Malcolm Gladwell or Jonathan Lethem or n+1 semi-notoriety.

They revel in the semi-obscurity of Brooklyn, which Brooklyn being the second borough, gladly revels back in.

I went to Brooklyn for an art show. Not a Brooklyn art show mind you. This was not an arts organization’s tribute to the chetto through found photography. This was something proven and contemporary, an arts movement in the true sense of the term: it wants to go somewhere.

Digital art has been ill-defined since its inception. This is because it’s characteristics are only its media, which are themselves far too unconstrained to suggest any mission or impetus. Digital art, from my understanding, is that which unmasks, re-invents, exploits, advances, celebrates, and critiques digital technology. It is an offering of what will come and what we have already forgotten. Digital art is a media critique offered in the truest manner: through the media itself.

Two years ago, sitting on the steps of the Ars Electronica pavilion in Linz, Austria, I confronted a microcosm that had rendered digital art cohesive. The Europeans, being ever enlightened, had found a way to make the One Laptop Per Child project, WikiLeaks, Processing, Pixar, and Graffiti Research Lab into a single movement. Their technique was curation. It you hail it, it loosely coheres.

But in the wilds of culture, particularly in the feral cultural landscapes of New York, digital art willfully resists such unity. It’s bits, after all, share little in terms of agenda or belief. Only aestheticians can overlook ideology for effect, bringing disparate elements together.  So this Brooklyn art show, called Nuit Blanche, after European precedents, focused on a single digital art form: light art.

Light art, or more formally projection art, reinvents the night as a found opportunity for intervention. It follows a certain modern assumption: that the night is chaos, and that light is order and narration. It finds the built environment as a playful forum for re-invention, much like the space-hacking principles of skateboarding, graffiti, or parkour. Light art is marked by its mobility, its powerful reach, and its transience. The art will not be there in the morning. It may not even remain consistent for a few instants. Light art is unheavy. Light art is fundamentally about the strangeness of living spaces made into cinematic and into televisual receptacles.

At Nuit Blanche, I wandered with Colleen through hordes of awed and amazed visitors. It was the most successful art show I had ever attended in that it

•  required no introduction, no wall text, no rsvp, no explanation
•   it’s transience was self-evident in the art itself, one had to savor each piece because it was clear one could never return
•  it immediately indicted the very technologies that produced its effects, begging one to look for the projector or shadow maker, or computer rigging
•  it’s relationship with it’s space was direct and essential, most unlike the one-size fits all attitude of white wall gallery art
•  it’s strangeness felt like the future, and simultaneously like an unconsidered present

Projection art does best what all digital art should do: it asks us to reconsider the present as an ideal permutation of the cultures and technologies we have available.

Re-purposing Brooklyn, playing on its abstraction and imagining its projection, this art show proved a moment equally surreal and lucid. It is a dream of art made public and practical, contributing to the public good a vision and a hope that no (Richard Serra) corporate sculpture can ever accomplish in the name of purpose and idealism.

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org knows and understands what Brand was talking about. His site has not only become world (in)famous, it is done so by dealing in information. It makes “free” what others believe is quite “expensive.” It makes public what was private, problematicizing privacy in the already slippery age of cloud computing and trust in computer networks. So much of what was once physically kept personal has bee electronically made ubiquitous, and in the process privacy itself as become as easy to sneak around as the familiar command “copy-paste.”

Julian Assange has become a sort of villain. He does not photograph well, looking at once sad, sickly, and sinister. His motives unclear, most Americans take his actions at face value: in releasing hundreds of thousands of secret American documents, Assange alienates a fundamental American right to … what is it actually that he’s done illegally?

Remember Watergate? That was this historical episode when an American president tried to conceal illegal actions with intimidation, money, and aspirations to American patriotism. Two journalists stuck to the case and in the process became American heroes, far more patriotic than the “patriots” who had tried to protect the president with lies and threats. These men would be played by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in a film that made their dogged sense of “freeing information” into a sort of patriotic virtue. The implications of the film and the event itself were that there is nothing to fear about the truth if you are among the just and responsible. Nixon wasn’t.

I met Julian Assange in Austria, at a digital festival in an opera house overlooking the Danube. It was the fall of 2009, and he was in Austria to receive an award from the Ars Electronica Festival for his contributions to public discourse. Assange gave a speech in which he never smiled and never laughed, but talked instead about the need to give people around the world a safe way to share information that the world needed to know. He saw himself and his organization as more of a technology of protecting those who would share secrets than a political statement on secrets.

But his ideology was powerful and unmistakable. A former journalist, inspired by Woodward and Bernstein, Assange had begun WikiLeaks to protect the “deep throats” of today and tomorrow. He expressed a hope that the information that wanted to be free could be. And of couse, that it should be. He was prepared to go to all lengths for this conviction.

A year later, we now know that Assange has gone to all lengths for this conviction. He has been labeled a “terrorist,” has been criticized by world governments, has been implicated in several court cases, and most sadly, attacked by journalists and news organizations themselves. Assange’s dour disposition is nothing more than the frank understanding that despite the freedom he has given information, we refuse to be liberated by it.

Zachary McCune will not stand for the witch trial of a man who actually forces accountability in the golden age of the unaccountable.

[ Printed in this week's Newport Mercury ]

In technology, the Manchester (UK) police tweeted all of their incidents for a day in an effort share the quality and quantity of their work.

In sociology news, Sweden may be the best place to be a woman. Or at least, it used to be…

and Here in Cambridge, the big news is that recent road repairs have revealed mysterious underground chamber near Emmanuel College. The newspaper is calling it a “Chamber of Secrets” and the rumors are that it may have been used for student social activities (I mean, obviously).

“You can’t win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi

The book has not, and will not, die. But it will shift forms. This is because a book is not wood pulp glued together or something that resides exclusively in leather clad coverings. The book is not the codex, for it has been the scroll, the manuscript, and the tablet far before it opened right to left (or left to right) in convenient sequential pagination. The codex, to be clear, has always been merely an avatar or a permutation of the book idea. The book is greater than the form it takes. The book is (or ought to be) defined as an object of boundaries, which is no doubt why books must always be “bound.”

At its most abstracted, the book is very much akin to the Saussurean sign. It is everything that it is not. It is this writing and not that writing, these maps not those charts, this writer not those writers, it is these ideas and not those ones. The book has always been defined by its aspiration to be discrete and differentiated from other objects, most importantly other books. This emphasizes the book’s boundaries (both conceptually and literally) as definitive of what the book is, or what it does/is about.

A book is bound, bounded, and bound up. It is made complete physically, complete in its arguments (discursive binding if you will), and complete in its existence as a discrete object in a world of objects/things. Because it is bounded in all of these ways, readers have learned to consume it in a certain way: they enter the book expecting that it is not a intellectual black hole from which there is not escape. They expect to move through it, as sojourners perhaps, or detectives on a case. The metaphors for reading always treat the book as a subject that somehow, somewhere has limits. And inventiveness and exploration within the limits define the pleasure of reading and writing as invention and play. Roland Barthes famously advocated for the re-invention of the “readerly” as a type of play activity. Like the playing fields of a sport, the limits of books are not to their detriment, but just the opposite: the boundaries beget a marked-off space of inquiry and play. Books are their own worlds and territories as we have celebrated for hundreds of years.

Now we have been incorrectly drawn into a great debate about books defined too narrowly. We have been warned of the death of books, by people who see books only as the codex, the woodpulp tome, the paperback novel. We have been led to see books as publishers see them. In the process, we have forgotten the “book idea” – the idea of binding a discourse or several discourses together, such that they become a bounded object.

People have not stopped writing. They may write differently and in new electronic environments, but they are still fundamentally attempting to produce the same sort of semi-permanent scribblings that form the “content,” which is to say, purpose of books. Born into electronic environments, “digital” writing proves flexible and fast. It can cross massive geographic gaps quickly, and can be manipulated/adjusted/truncated/distorted/improved with equal ease. Electronic writing seems to have no boundaries. It exists in a vast web of connections and discursive vectors. Movement is so easy between electronic texts that one can become lost in them, and can lose sight of the purpose or initiative. The readers of electronic/digital writing are accustomed to be sidetracked, misdirected, and lost. Electronic writing, in short, begs for binding. Not just to arrest and preserve digital content that can be easily lost, but also to chart a path through content. To curate and select and bind material together such that it becomes a new discrete object. Electronic writing, the loosest form of the book idea, can be given more defined edges.

Which is why the world needs Anthologize now. Anthologize, a new, FREE WordPress plugin, is fundamentally about binding that which has become unbound and unbounded: the shifting electronic content of the world wide web. Anthologize was created by a handful of scholars, librarians, and archivists who were gathered for just one week in Northern Virginia to develop a tool for work in the digital humanities (full disclosure here: I was one of the them).

It is not surprising that a publication tool that makes an intervention into the scattered world of digital writing should be the conclusion of such a gathering and such a fast-paced collaborative process. In fact, it is incredibly telling and significant that at this moment in history of literary, intellectual and cultural work, twelve humanists should motivated to build a thing they would call Anthologize. Motivated in equal parts by fears over digital decay (data loss), the need for light free and flexible book publishing interfaces, and the eternal need to actually curate and bind material together into anthologies, Anthologize must be read as a celebration and not a detournment of the book idea. Indeed, even while Anthologize promises new life to electronic writing, and progresses the coming age of the ebooks and ebook reader culture, Anthologize is fundamentally about binding. It is about allowing individuals to create their own boundaries and bindings, to delimit a world that has grown overcrowded with information. It is about marking out, if only for ourselves, the boundaries of what we know, want to know, and hope to know.

Stop cheaping out on the young ambitious people of the world by offering only “unpaid internships.” It’s class warfare anyway you cut it, and unless you are quite literally a mom and pop establishment, I think you can afford to shell out $3,000 for a summer of exploitative work.

Don’t even try to defend yourselves. You are the Museum of Modern Art. The cost of an intern doesn’t even equal the cost of mounting a single painting. What do you expect me to do? Live in New York City for a summer without even my housing costs covered? Perhaps in your cushy life as a curator you’ve forgotten how expensive your fair island is. Imagine trying to live here, eat here, all in o

rder to simply work here. I will be that reminder: its f***ing expensive.

And we’re just talking about costs. We’re not talking about students who need to make enough money to cover tuition, or school housing, or books. No, we’re just talking about being able to make an internship in New York City, or Boston, or San Francisco, or Chicago a reality.

The unpaid internship is everywhere. It’s become a common facet of the student workplace. And I can see the attraction to employers. A whole summer/fall/winter/spring or even a year of work provided at no cost? All you need to offer is a place for someone to work? Perhaps a letter of recommendation somewhere after the fact?

What a deal indeed. From an employer perspective it’s a steal.

Yes, truly it is theft. It steals opportunities from all students or workers and gives it only to the students who can afford it. Students or workers from secure financial backgrounds. Students or workers with private wealth. Which means that the unpaid internship always acts a social filter, reinforcing the idea that jobs in the arts, in print, in museums, in broadcasting are continually reserved for those in the middle class who can afford them. And students from other backgrounds are kept from even considering these positions.

Employers of the world, stop being socially thrifty. Stop confusing saving money with preserving the class-orientation of higher employment.

It may be true that merit is considered among an applicant pool for unpaid internships. No doubt, the most qualified applicant is selected for the job. But what can be said for the applicants who are not present because they cannot afford to even consider such a position? Their merits have not even been considered. Their perspectives, talents, and qualifications have been erased by a financial bottom line. Your financial bottom line.

So what can you do? It’s quite simple: fund your internships. Here’s the minimum equation: find the average cost of housing in your immediate (10 mile) vicinity for a summer. Add $100 for food a week for the duration of the internship. Then add the cost of a monthly pass for local public transportation. You know have a working idea of how much an internship should promise in terms of funding. It’s probably around $3,000.

If you are charitable soul, consider adding money for tuition/books. It may be a small thing for you, but it will mean the world to your intern. S/he will work harder, and think higher of you.

As will we all.

Such a moment in the history of the video game offers a wonderful opportunity: why not begin an initiative to get people to think critically about games. By critical, I mean think about games as society expects us to think about films or books: to ask questions about how they are made, why they are successful (or fail), and what the reflect about us as players and society as a whole.

This “critical gaming” is hardly new, or even novel. Fantastic scholars exist in the United States (such as Ian Bogost at Georgia Tech, or Nick Montfort at MIT) and from around the world (McKenzie Wark and Jesper Juul) who have pushed the academic world to accept the vitality of games as spaces for study. But I am really trying to advocate for a more broad consideration of criticality in games. I am hopeful that gamers around the world could consider becoming “critical gamers” by committing themselves to thinking about games as exciting social texts.

What should a critical gamer do? Well, s/he should enjoy video games, and enjoy thinking about what they have to say and how they say it. The critical gamer should not be afraid to “think” about games, they should not fear “academizing” the activity of game play for fear of losing some sense of innocence, escapism and distraction. To the contrary, the “critical gamer” will love the conversation of games and the analysis of game texts. Which does not mean they have to write papers or read theory or have degrees in video games (though that might be nice) but rather that they communicate in language comfortable for him/her.

The Critical Gamer wants to play and think about play.

This midnight idea wants to change how people think about games, and how gamers think about themselves. I’ve chosen to call this a “critical gamer initiative” because it is about people not institutions, its founded on gamers not colleges or consoles or even countries. It is an international idea for individuals to be united under a common commitment to play games critically. So if you fancy yourself a critical gamer, link to this article, and/or send me an email, and let’s see what we can build together.

Anyone finished Mass Effect 2 yet? Thoughts?

here is a story about stories; with a question about whether stories are still stories and whether we are beginning to live in a post-story age.

the already cool mit media lab has founded a “center for future storytelling.” the purpose of this “labette” as the initiative is described, is to engage in studying and possibly saving the narrative.

or as the official press release states:

to revolutionize how we tell our stories, from major motion pictures to peer-to-peer multimedia sharing. By applying leading-edge technologies to make stories more interactive, improvisational and social, researchers will seek to transform audiences into active participants in the storytelling process, bridging the real and virtual worlds, and allowing everyone to make their own unique stories with user-generated content on the Web.

in the recent new york times article on the center’s founding, the proposition is posited that the narrative is danger amongst the flood of new technologies, and patterns of cultural storytelling that are disrupted by them. but of course, disruption is really re-direction, if not re-intrepretation, so while some might cry wolf and see the founding of the c.f.f.s as a sign of the academy overreaching its aims, i think that the project should actually have great implications for current, future, and past narrative-producers. not because it will develop an essentialist theory of the narrative (though there is CERTAINLY a danger that this is how the initiative will begin, or be misconstrued by the public) nor because the narrative is really in need of rescuing. rather, i think narrative studies are entirely under-represented in media & cultural research, and if our unique technological moment is indeed as seismic as has been suggested, then the inflection we stand upon needs thorough, and engaged interaction.

it’s a story i can’t wait to read.

especially if i get a chance to help write.

in other (BAAAAAAAD!!!!) news. i cracked the screen for my macbook last night. and i’d alreay been thinking that i needed a little hyper portable cloud computing device. just to manage my blogging, wiki notes, and email. the cracked screen is gonna cost like $200. which totally sucks.

then, again, the olpc is simply not a blogger’s machine. sorry cute globalization assistant you can take your pint size imperialism somewhere else.

but here i am, on the floor in the auditorium of international house (what a beautiful building!) listening to lawrence lessig speak, after years of hearing him in youtube clips and reading his books.

it’s a little like seeing a concert with your favorite artist after years of listening to their albums and proslytizing their music.

as lessig starts, sitting on stage with fred benenson (arguably the hub of sfc), he tells the crowd that he could not be more thrilled and proud to be at a meeting with this many people. he recalls what it was like when he wrote the book, and the student organization started.

fred corrects him for sounding optimistic, when he’ well known for being a pessimist.

“that’s why i had to get out of this movement” lessig explains “because I needed to be pessimistic”

hybrid economies

despite his pessimism, lessig argues that we are living/entering an Interesting new economy, a hybrid economy. in this dualistic economy, there is a captilastic sphere, and communist sphere (if you forgive the political re-reading) wherein there is both business (amazon) and sharing/volunteering (reader reviews) working in tandem.

there are two possible forms of hybrids:

type 1: “darth vader-type”

inspired by george lucas’ sharecropping mash-up forum, where users can mash-up star wars footage, but lucas will own it.

type 2: “nine inch nails-type”

where the recombination of media allows the recombinateur owns the work. they don’t own the elements, but they own their approach/curation of media.

lessig begins talking about valenti, the MPAA head he debated several times throughout the last decade, and how valenti inspired him with his claims that we were raising an entire generation of people living against the law. he thinks that we do need to consider how we live, not against the law, but changing the law. live within rules, but rules you help set.

lessig reported in june 2007, that he was moving on from issues of intellectual property in the digital age. now, he is moving on to political reform, something he claims is both more academic interest

“9% of Americans polled thought that congress members were doing a good job. More people supported the british crown at the outbreak of the Revolution.”

change congress, the group that lessig has started to campaign for poltical reform, has faced interesting pressure, and had interesting solicitation from groups who want to convene a new constitutional convention.

the future of students for free culture

“five years from now, ten years from now, what is students for free culture?” benenson asks.

“sfc needs to pick some fights” lessig says. he remembers the successful drm campaign and hopes that can be the norm for further fights. lessig thinks that the “low hanging fruit” fight is making university publications (at institutions around the country) open access. force top flight educational institutions to open up the work of their faculty’s work for the rest of the world who can’t afford to pay for access otherwise.

“it’s fun to rally around fights, they’re lots of parties involved with fights….”

drawing the line in the sand/defining free culture

“we have to come to recognize the principles that will guide us” lessig says, “it’s about whats defining for our culture”