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Lovely article about maps and mapping in the BBC magazine
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Excellent insights. “The near that the network delivers is a slightly different near, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. […] But the point is to try to understand how the network mediates our understanding of the world…”
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Here is my channel on YouTube! More videos coming very soon.
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I’ve also uploaded some videos of my recently launched project “In-Site Montreal” to Year Zero One’s YouTube channel. Check it out!
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My article on the Makrolab mission to Nunavut has just launched on Studio XX’s online publication – check it out.
Author: MK
I do a fair bit of blog browsing, and discovered through various blogs that the Tokion conference organizers this year were unable to find any women to present. (In the end, and under some pressure, they found a couple.) My first question was: are they serious? I then learned (through further blog trawling) that they were. Jen at Personism started a list to aid these helpless conference programmers, so that they need only refer to this list to find several suitable choices for their content needs. Anne Galloway has also long maintained an excellent list of women researchers in culture and technology that would aid anyone seeking to augment their conference line-up.
For your convenience, here are those links again:
Jen’s list
Anne’s list
Coincidentally, in the same period of time that Tokion was having such difficulty finding women speakers, Studio XX, Montréal’s centre for women and technology, kicked off its 10th anniversary celebrations. It seems that Studio XX hasn’t had any trouble finding women to take part in its residencies, festivals, workshops, and online publication for a solid ten years.
It is certainly tempting to get lazy, and make safe speaker choices, presenting and re-presenting the tried-and-true. However, as a conference-goer I find I have begun to ask myself why I would want to attend Conference X, since I have seen Speaker X about a zillion times, and in various configurations (You liked him as a Panelist, and you will love him as a Keynote!). New/unknown talent is hard to sell, but the right mix of unknown elements/known elements might lead me to believe a conference is worth bothering with, since I know I will get the usual insightful commentary from so-and-so, and hmmm! might learn something new from New-to-me Speaker.
It’s sad to think that Tokion and many, many other groups still see women as too “chancy” or not known “enough” – certainly too unknown to carry keynote sessions, let alone be slipped in as a panelist or respondent.
So bonne fête Studio XX – and keep it up. Even after ten years, it’s clear that the work of carving out a space for women to discuss, cultivate, and celebrate their work is far from over.
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by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard. A very nice installation/performance at Liverpool Biennial
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Ha – my mate Joanna got Boing Boing’d.
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Will be interesting to watch this unfold.
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From the collection of “Dave”, a phone phreak who traversed the voice mailboxes in 1990, recording messages that flew by on momentarily-grabbed phone recording systems.
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A good resource about cultural institutions creating podcasts
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Normcasting! Middlesbrough has a backchannel to their CCTV, allowing officers to issue verbal correctives on the spot
Three organizations have joined forces to disseminate work made by young Canadian artists to a wider audience. The players are terminus1525, Ile Sans Fil, and Wireless Toronto. terminus1525 is a collaborative online studio where emerging artists can show their work, and find support, feedback and inspiration. Ile Sans Fil (ISF) and Wireless Toronto (WT) are volunteer-run non-profit organizations which develop, deploy and support wireless internet infrastructure, with a focus on serving their local communities.
The Wi-Fi hotspots that are installed and managed by ISF and WT are free to use, once users have registered for an account. After logging in to your local ISF or WT hotspot, users are directed to a website specific for each hotspot before they can surf the web. This opportunity is used to showcase local information or content, and in this case, art from terminus1525 users.
This project delivers incredible exposure for young Canadian artists. Their work is being displayed to 27,500+ users at 135 free hotspots operated by ISF and WT. This is a lot of potential eyeballs – take your average gallery opening and multiply it by a few hundred to get a sense of the scale. Better yet, take your average gallery opening, multiply it by a few hundred, and then imagine it being a much more diverse and varied group, since the users of the ISF and WT hotspots are not necessarily already art patrons.
Too often, the people who hold the content and the people with a tool that could disseminate that content fail to collaborate. The equation seems simple, but it takes people with vision to connect the dots and make it happen. It’s great to see it happening with some of my old colleagues and collaborators in Canada. Congrats Mike, Michael (and Gabe!), and Sophie!