Citizen_Engineer

“In the 21st century we should all know how to code” a young artist in Singapore

Next to media literacy, the web 2.0 generation and social network –  shouldn’t we bring into the picture social hardware ? My thoughts after watching this video are: “in the 21st century, shouldn’t we all become engineers?

Hackermedia – learning how to run in the 21 century

Citizen Engineer is an online video series about open source hardware, electronics, art and hacking by Limor (Ladyada) Fried of Adafruit Industries & Phillip (pt) Torrone of MAKE magazine.

Phones: SIM card & payphone hackingLearn how a SIM card works (the small card inside GSM cell phones) make a SIM card reader, view deleted messages, phone book entries and clone/crack a SIM card. Modify a “retired” payphone so it can be used as a home telephone and for VoIP (Skype). Then learn how to modify the hacked payphone so it accepts quarters – and lastly, use a Redbox to make “free phone” calls from the modified coin-accepting payphone.

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Rajasthan’s DIY engineers

In the middle of the deserted region of northern India – women engineers of the Barefoot college engage into an eco-development projects using solar energy. Working with local people and tools to electrify villages, the Barefoot engineers are demonstrating that they can use their skills and knowledge to strengthen their social position on one hand and empower community.

Annemie Maes (OKNO, Bruxelles) is currently making a video documentary about the project involving local women groups and their DIY approach to self-sufficiency. More about Annemie’s participation and involvement with the Barefoot project in her blog ThoughtsandTalk

Belarus Free theater

Living in a dictatorship regime, often unable to travel, performing in apartments and in vacant buildings throughout Minsk – using a phone number to communicate with their audience, who ventures to the outskirts of the city to watch the performances of the Belarus Free theater company. This description only scratches the surfaces of daily life of the theater makers. The technological encounter performs with a different form, not as consumer product, but that of activator, tactical spy, the feature of the global flow of information capital, often unrecognized.

This article is describing the state of urgency, the harsh existence and astonishment for such cases where limitations in the freedom of expression are daily routine in one of the most forgotten corners of Europe. Read the full article here

Red dawns Festival

I traveled to Ljubljana to attend the 9th edition of the feminist and queer festival Red Dawns where a mix of performances, acts, workshops and interventions were hosted in collaboration with the autonomous cultural space of Metelkova between march 5-9, 2008. I attended dance performances, storytelling evenings, workshops and music evenings, not only witty music and queer talk, not at all, but with a leading red thread of ecycling and education of/from technology, topics and machines that needs to be unpacked and divide of roles.

Donna Metzlar (Genderchangers) during the workshop presented how to reassemble hardware and discussed issues of internet privacy.

The poetry of e-waste addressed and opened during the workshop led by Gözüm opened with collective recyclin’ letter mis usage. A great tool, if you have already separate boxes with letters that helps you in your creativity. building a game of letters, on keyborads waste. a simple use of buttons, attached to a plastic frame, that which is considered only a sensor for the inputs on the screen, now transforms into a repository of meanings, metaphors and images. plain plastic. Thank you for such a great workshop.

Ksenija Glavc opened Natasa’s car and illustrated layers and dimensions of car-repair and Emeli Ronhdale showed how queered fashion can be, something that does not only reveal an attitude of dissent and confronts the fashion world, but also that opens a dialog with the intimate and the hidden. Using scars as simply attaching red marks for cloth decoration can be very subtile in action, but an exploration of terror and  violence.

Also a new book was launched by Marina Grzinic and Rosa Reitsamer (eds): “New feminism: worlds of feminism, queer and networking conditions” with 60 contributors intervening on radical issues about global capitalism, migration and the relation to representation – at the marginal level.

In addition a public action performance took place in the streets of Ljubljana inspired by Noha Ramadan’s work “the body as a site of action”.

air detritus

Coming back to the theme of this blog, I’ve imagined firstly how to led a way to link and to connect with the city, the landscape of the urban culture we are living in. the second red line was the necessity to research the recreation of spaces, definitions of physical embodiment, art and technological installations within media, that could somehow confront the theme of do it yourself, low cost and low tech tools employed as resources for energy detonators. In the spirit of rediscovering the mutuality of media techniques and their resource of electric tentacles, some sort of path emerge in observing how artists and media developers experimented in their own terms with technology – especially with their open circuits. Then, when observing such media objects and installations, their specificity was not that of the art for its sake, but instead was building on some sort of empowerment and eco-sensitivity. This has in some way transformed notions of media and the logic of mechanics as a cultural, economical or political necessity. The possibility of employment of such objects in everyday life deserves a reality momentum and attention. In this process I’ve rediscovered sound and desing as resources for creativity; Miya Masaoka‘s (musician, composer and sound artist) most recent intervention consists of recording sounds on a 2-way radio transmitter adapted on recycled material and tools, in a water pond located in Central Park, New York City. One of the main ideas of the project Air Detritus has been to synchronize the outcome of physical embodiment through its sensory sound effect using spatial movement, its perceptiveness to nature and external aural emotions. The engagement of Miya Masaoka sound installation helped create ideas in the quest for the development of objects and tools, which can trigger communication between organisms. See also her other project Pieces for plants, where with the help a midi and a synchronizer, she orientates the movement of plants causing them to psychologically respond to sounds.

Transmediale cancels Janez Jansa event

In summer 2007, three artists officially changed their name to Janez Jansa. The Signature event context for the Transmediale art event wanted to address the marking of the Holocaust memorials in Berlin in response to this years’ festival theme CONSPIRE, which seeks to, “question, subvert, undermine and bypass the unspoken rules, hidden codes of conduct and assumed truths entrenched within our information driven communication cultures and ideological belief structures.” The act of banning such a performance felt into the ground of what conspiracy really means and has suffered most definitely from an act of censorship.

Transmediale festival director Stephen Kovats has canceled the opening event of the artistic group Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa and Janez Jansa. Such most accurate reason for banning this performance should shed even more light on attaching signatures to public monuments as well as to artistic freedom of expression.

Their performance consisted in walking with a GPS device between the memorial corridor in Berlin, both virtually and physically marking the path of the murdered Jews in Berlin. Anticipating the opening of the Trandmediale and the impossibility to disclose officially their engagement, signature of memory and signature of freedom enter into controversy.

Click here to watch their their signature event context