Marcos Velasco, a 32-year-old Brazilian software developer, enjoys movies with special effects, maintains a vast collection of antique computers in his home and is the proud father of two young children and one mobile phone virus, which he named after himself: Velasco.
Mr. Velasco's creation is essentially a piece of computer code that takes advantage of the short-range radio frequency technology called Bluetooth, which is installed on many common handheld devices, especially cellphones. If a person carrying an infected phone passes someone carrying a Bluetooth phone on the street, Mr. Velasco's worm can jump the gap, infecting the second phone.
For Mr. Velasco - as with many virus enthusiasts who operate in a murky area of the law - the objective is not malice, but about testing theories, solving puzzles or just free expression.
A Virus Writer Tests the Limits in Cellphones The NY Times, January 24, 2005
Post-media Aesthetics
What makes a poem a poem? If a text is sung, does it become a song? When motion graphics are involved, does that make it animation? If the images are photographic, is it cinema?
In the age of "Post-media aesthetics," as Lev Manovitch has pointed out, the blurring of traditional media genres makes it difficult, if not impossible, to rigidly define media territories. Instead of struggling to draw these separations, we freely let the arts mingle in a space we still dare to draw a circle around and label "poetry."
Although we use the term "new media poetry" as a genre of "electronic literature" to describe the work included in Poems that Go, "literature" itself proves to be a pesky term. Indeed, we have been accused of devaluing the word at the expense of the image. Our goal here is not to elevate one art above the rest, but to seek an inclusive understanding of literature, one that goes beyond written text-based works, to include visual, aural and media literacy.
In this spirit, Poems that Go explores the intersections between motion, sound, image, text, and code. The work we feature explores how language is shaped in new media spaces, how interactivity can change the meaning of a sign, how an image can conflict with a sound, and how code exerts machine-order on a text.
Poems that Go
Self photography is the best photography
Morgan Adams, a recent college graduate, decided that her picture on her home page at MySpace.com had lingered a little too long, a full month. To snap a new one she called on the only photographer she thought she could trust: herself. The era of cheap, lightweight digital cameras — in cellphones, in computers, in hip pockets, even on key chains — has meant that people who did not consider themselves photography buffs as recently as five years ago are filling ever-larger hard drives with thousands of images from their lives.
And one particular kind of image has especially soared in popularity, particularly among the young: the self-portrait, which has become a kind of folk art for the digital age.
Here I Am Taking My Own Picture The NY Times, February 19, 2006
Hang Your Poster on the World
Inspired by graffiti, posters and the communal culture of the Web, stickers are gaining wide attention as an artistic phenomenon, academics and practitioners say. Hand-drawn, stenciled or screen-printed, the images float on the Internet, available for downloading, printing and pasting in ways that the creators could only have imagined. And as they make their way around the globe, from one e-mail in-box to the next, one cultural context to another, their meaning tends to morph. Now that broadband users can send large graphics files in an instant, stickers are a very fast-moving medium. A sticker can be created Monday morning in New York, e-mailed to a stranger in Paris and affixed to the back of a trash receptacle on the Champs-Élysées in the early afternoon.
Download, Peel and Stick, and All the World's a Gallery The NY Times, September 26, 2004
Your Home Movies Make You A Star
On the Internet, Jack is one well-known dog, the star of a minor motion picture called "Capt. Jack: The Movie." It's available on ClipShack, one of a new generation of video-sharing sites that offer camcorder Coppolas and cellphone Scorceses a place to upload videos and make them available to friends, family members and the world at large.
Sharing video on the Web is still a new notion. "A lot of people haven't really come to terms with the idea that they can publish their own video online," said Jakob Lodwick, the founder of Vimeo, based in Manhattan. "For the longest time, video has always been connected to a physical tape or a disc. There are still a lot of people who aren't even comfortable sharing their photos online yet."
Now Playing: Your Home Video The NY Times, October 27, 2005
Sing/Rap to the Whole World
IN the 18th century, songwriters responded to current events by writing new lyrics to existing melodies. "Benjamin Franklin used to write broadside ballads every time a disaster struck," said Elijah Wald, a music historian, and sell the printed lyrics in the street that afternoon. An unlicensed rap song describing the frustration of African-American evacuees has been made available free on the Internet. The song, "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People," by the Houston duo called the Legendary K.O., vividly recounts the plight of those who endured the hurricane, occasionally using crude language in the process. It has already been downloaded by as many as a half-million people. The videos have been seen by thousands.
Art Born of Outrage in the Internet Age The NY Times, September 25, 2005
Movies On Your CellPhone
In the past year, media companies have begun experimenting with broadcasting original programming made specifically for mobile phones to increase awareness of their television shows and movies. And interest in such programming may grow further: last week, Apple introduced a video iPod, which, while not a mobile phone, is another test of consumers' interest in portable entertainment. Indeed, many entertainment executives compare mobile's expanding market for video to the Internet five years ago - promising, but only if media companies figure out how to make money. It is unclear, too, how willing Americans will be to watch longer programs on a small device.
Now Playing on a Tiny Screen The NY Times, October 17, 2005
The [pornography] industry is booming, recording $12.6 billion in revenue in 2005 from distribution of sexually explicit content, and from other forms of entertainment, like strip clubs. A big reason for the growth is technology, with sales from Internet distribution hitting $2.5 billion in 2005, according to testimony given to the Senate on Thursday.
American Web sites that show explicit content get as many as 60 million visitors a day, according to testimony given to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation by Paul Cambria, general counsel for the Adult Freedom Foundation, an organization that represents the interests of the pornography industry.
Google Resists U.S. Subpoena of Search Data The NY Times, January 20, 2006
Social Drawing
About three months ago, Peter Edmunds, a 22-year-old communications student at the University of Canberra, in Australia, began SwarmSketch.com with the idea of producing a sketch of "the collective consciousness" every week.
Mr. Edmunds's Web site randomly selects one of the most popular search terms from a couple of major search engines and uses that word or phrase as the topic for a collaborative drawing project for the week. Anyone who wants to can peek at the latest stage of a drawing, add a tiny bit to it (about an inch's worth if you draw a straight line) and even erase other people's lines, or at least vote to lighten them. Best of all, you can watch an animated version showing how the picture has evolved.
A United Nations of Weird-Looking Sketches The NY Times, December 4, 2005
Comics Become Cave Paintings
A few years ago, Scott McCloud, well known in the comic book world for his theoretically minded comic book about comics, "Understanding Comics," wrote another comic book, "Reinventing Comics," in which he argued that the future of comics is on the Web. The digital revolution, he argued, would bring comics closer to their roots: cave paintings. Yes, cave paintings. "The ancestors of printed comics drew, painted and carved their time-paths from beginning to end, without interruption," Mr. McCloud wrote. And with the help of digital technology, he suggested, comics could break out of their boxes and get back to what he called "the infinite canvas."
Comics Escape a Paper Box, and Electronic Questions Pop Out The NY Times, August 17, 2005
Text (Fonts) as Art
The Internet is a nice place for font wonks to hang out. Why should you care? Because everything you read, every sign, book and logo, is in a font. Fonts are like the air: you don't notice them when they are fine, only when they are mucked up or obscure. When it comes to font rants, though, nothing is quite as bizarre as the Ban Comic Sans movement. Comic Sans is a jaunty-looking font, offered gratis to rebels and free spirits by a little outfit called Microsoft. According to the Ban Comic Sans Web site, the spread of this childish font in inappropriate places threatens "to erode the very foundations upon which centuries of typographic history are built."
What is to be done? The Ban Comic Sans manifesto summons "the proletariat around the globe to aid us in this revolution" and "to rise up in revolt against this evil of typographical ignorance."
Then there's Futura Bold Italic, which the artist Barbara Kruger made famous with her starkly graphic works like "I Shop Therefore I Am." Since the 1970's it has been linked with Kruger's feminist, anti-consumerist message. No one quite wants to get rid of it, but there is an advisory out for users: know where your fonts have been.
What They Talk About When They Talk About Fonts The NY Times, May 14, 2005
21st Century Information Literacy: Read and Write Media
Rick Herbst, now attending Yale Law School, may yet turn out to be the current decade's archetypal film major. Twenty-three years old, he graduated last year from the University of Notre Dame, where he studied filmmaking with no intention of becoming a filmmaker. Rather, he saw his major as a way to learn about power structures and how individuals influence each other.
Some 600 colleges and universities in the United States offer programs in film studies or related subjects, a number that has grown steadily over the years, even while professional employment opportunities in the film business remain minuscule.
At the University of Southern California, whose School of Cinema-Television is the nation's oldest film school (established in 1929), fully half of the university's 16,500 undergraduate students take at least one cinema/television class. That is possible because Elizabeth Daley, the school's dean, opened its classes to the university at large in 1998, in keeping with a new philosophy that says, in effect, filmic skills are too valuable to be confined to movie world professionals. "The greatest digital divide is between those who can read and write with media, and those who can't," Ms. Daley said. "Our core knowledge needs to belong to everybody."
Is a Cinema Studies Degree the New M.B.A.? The NY Times,March 6, 2005
Marcos Velasco, a 32-year-old Brazilian software developer, enjoys movies with special effects, maintains a vast collection of antique computers in his home and is the proud father of two young children and one mobile phone virus, which he named after himself: Velasco.
Mr. Velasco's creation is essentially a piece of computer code that takes advantage of the short-range radio frequency technology called Bluetooth, which is installed on many common handheld devices, especially cellphones. If a person carrying an infected phone passes someone carrying a Bluetooth phone on the street, Mr. Velasco's worm can jump the gap, infecting the second phone.
For Mr. Velasco - as with many virus enthusiasts who operate in a murky area of the law - the objective is not malice, but about testing theories, solving puzzles or just free expression.
Inspired by graffiti, posters and the communal culture of the Web, stickers are gaining wide attention as an artistic phenomenon, academics and practitioners say. Hand-drawn, stenciled or screen-printed, the images float on the Internet, available for downloading, printing and pasting in ways that the creators could only have imagined. And as they make their way around the globe, from one e-mail in-box to the next, one cultural context to another, their meaning tends to morph. Now that broadband users can send large graphics files in an instant, stickers are a very fast-moving medium. A sticker can be created Monday morning in New York, e-mailed to a stranger in Paris and affixed to the back of a trash receptacle on the Champs-Élysées in the early afternoon.
About three months ago, Peter Edmunds, a 22-year-old communications student at the University of Canberra, in Australia, began SwarmSketch.com with the idea of producing a sketch of "the collective consciousness" every week.
Mr. Edmunds's Web site randomly selects one of the most popular search terms from a couple of major search engines and uses that word or phrase as the topic for a collaborative drawing project for the week. Anyone who wants to can peek at the latest stage of a drawing, add a tiny bit to it (about an inch's worth if you draw a straight line) and even erase other people's lines, or at least vote to lighten them. Best of all, you can watch an animated version showing how the picture has evolved.
The Internet is a nice place for font wonks to hang out. Why should you care? Because everything you read, every sign, book and logo, is in a font. Fonts are like the air: you don't notice them when they are fine, only when they are mucked up or obscure. When it comes to font rants, though, nothing is quite as bizarre as the Ban Comic Sans movement. Comic Sans is a jaunty-looking font, offered gratis to rebels and free spirits by a little outfit called Microsoft. According to the Ban Comic Sans Web site, the spread of this childish font in inappropriate places threatens "to erode the very foundations upon which centuries of typographic history are built."
What is to be done? The Ban Comic Sans manifesto summons "the proletariat around the globe to aid us in this revolution" and "to rise up in revolt against this evil of typographical ignorance."
Then there's Futura Bold Italic, which the artist Barbara Kruger made famous with her starkly graphic works like "I Shop Therefore I Am." Since the 1970's it has been linked with Kruger's feminist, anti-consumerist message. No one quite wants to get rid of it, but there is an advisory out for users: know where your fonts have been.
Rick Herbst, now attending Yale Law School, may yet turn out to be the current decade's archetypal film major. Twenty-three years old, he graduated last year from the University of Notre Dame, where he studied filmmaking with no intention of becoming a filmmaker. Rather, he saw his major as a way to learn about power structures and how individuals influence each other.