1. Twitter Weekly Updates for 2008-11-15

    November 15, 2008

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  2. Twitter Updates for 2008-11-13

    November 13, 2008

    Powered by Twitter Tools.

    EDIT: thank you Twitter Tools - it has been a fine mess with over 20 posts created overnight for a single tweets. let’s see how this will perform from now on.

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  3. Some notes on experimenting with the economics

    November 09, 2008

    A few weeks ago, we launched the &AMP, Ampersand Make Production, a project in which people are supporting the production of cultural products.
    This is an experiment in the economics of production. Our first issue is a poster and a text: AMP001. The content is clearly influenced by the practice we developped to maintain and develop R-Echos (http://r-echos.net) and we called the issue “R-Echos issue 1”.

    * Recently Charlotte from Manystuff asked us to give more details about the ideas around &AMP - below I’m translating in english our answer to her request:

    Financing and the notion of Crowd Sourcing
    Instead of using a single source of finance, grant or sponsoring -we are seeking to establish a principle of distributed funding, like a p2p network. This principle is applied as well to the distribution since each share-holder/participant own a certain percentage of the real thing produced, and each of them is able to decide individually or collectivelly of the future of his or her share of the production.
    A series of economic experiments
    This project is for us a laboratory. The poster and the text of AMP001 (the first issue) are a first test tube. We are just starting to be able to draw early conclusions, it is for us a little bit like a reduced scale LHC: we are launching something and looking at the results depending on the parameters of the launch.
    An extension of R-echos (http://r-echos.net)
    R-Echos is a website, a selection of whatever we find, see, read and collect online, it is our daily best picks; it is a reblog that we have been maintaining for some years now. The poster of this first issue shows tangible objects that belongs to our every day life ans surround us: things on our desks, books in the shelves, visuals references that inspired us for some reasons - we consider those objects as being the sources of the project we develop and realise (like in programmation); we really consider R-Echos like being one of the source-code of Electronest.

    french version:
    le financement et la notion de crowd sourcing
    au lieu de s’en remettre à une seule source de financement, ou à un principe de sponsoring - nous cherchons à mettre en place un financement distribuée comme un réseau p2p. Ce principe s’applique également à la distribution, puisque chaque Share Holder possede un certain pourcentage de notre production et est en mesure de decider individuellement (ou cellectiveemnt) du futur de sa part de la production.
    une serie d’expériences économiques
    ce projet est un laboratoire pour nous. Le poster et le texte de AMP001, c’est une première éprouvette. On commence tout juste à pouvoir tirer des conclusions. c’est un peu comme un micro-LHC pour nous: on lance un truc, et on regarde ce que ça produit en fonction des paramètres de lancement
    une extension de R-Echos — http://r-echos.net
    R-Echos est un site internet, une sélection de ce que l’on lis/trouve online, nos “best picks” quotidien; c’est un reblog que l’on fait depuis quelques années déjà. Ce poster contient les objets qui nos entourent et nous inspirent — c’est un peu comme un code-source des choses que l’on fait, on considère le site de R-Echos comme étant un des codes-source de Electronest.

    * Here is also a short text I put on the facebook group a little while ago, it links the ideas of &AMP and the ones of etoy.SHARE:

    obviously, there’s some sort of inspiration taken from etoy.SHARE.
    In the & Make Production project, shares are project based and they determine if the project is interesting enough to make it to the production step. if not shareholders will be able to decide how they want the money to be used: refund, re-investment in the next publication or in the structure itself, etc.
    Shareholders are sharing the destiny of the project which we don’t control anymore.

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  4. A couple of notes on the last interesting things i saw…

    November 08, 2008

    - went to Photographers’ Gallery (Soho archives, and Dryden Goodwin who remided me a lot of facial recognition graphs) and the Saatchi Exhibition (Revolution Continues - a very figurative selection of chinese artists - the piece in the “cellar” was the most exciting). Later in the day: went to the opening of the Royal Academy exhibition; saw (mainly and amongst other things) agrifashionista.tv and Urbania’s installation: a red room reporting on their various experiments about communal life and projects.

    - went to the Friday’s DotDotDot lecture at Somerset House; link: DDD17 / talk.

      some quick notes:

    • William James ‘Pragmatism’ published in 1907
    • Naive Set of Theory DDD15 - “passing books with notes” (made me think about dogeared books; read below; I will probably add it later to the DBooks website)
    • the notions of Rationalism (w), Empirism (w), Pragmatism (w)
    • Gödel ‘On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia ’ published in 1931 in Vienna(google books)
    • Einstein said that “one of the most interesting thing of working in the university of (Berkeley?) was the discussion with Gödel on the way back home” - or something like this.
    • the notion of Naive, Intuition
    • Paul R Halmos ‘Naive Set Theory’

    - thought about making a website which like Dog Eared Books would list the films i like, quoting them; a sort of personnal memory. It comes from the fact that this year we have been increasingly watching more and more films every week (Amandine being back at university, we have access to the LCC’s library and their DVDs - just great!)

    - watched (amongst other DVDs) ‘A Pervert Guide to Cinema’ - an interresting documentary on perversion trough a couple of selected movies; more specially: this documentary is a very nice Republishing piece along with commentaries: trying to organise the Tlktlk discussion on the topic of republishing and to set a list of guests.

    - discovered about Edgser Dijkstra self re publication and Piet Schreuders’ Furore via Pierre.

    - went yesterday to the Social Pasta: Maki, Kajsa, Alex (the rich one), Bearen and Momoko were cooking while we watched 2 films: one 20 minutes documentary by les Blanks ‘Werner Herzog eats his shoes’ (YouTube 1, 2) and Errol Morris’ film: Gates of Heaven. Amazing combination and the food as usual was incredible!. And they all had really nice shoes…
    * the documentary is a beautiful support and encouragement at self initiated projects.

    - Werner Herzog: “I am more and more convinced that the only alternative to film making is cooking. Maybe there’s another alternative which is walking”.
    He also said “I don’t believe you have the guts (to make your film), but if you do it, I come to brooklyn eat my shoes when you show the film”.

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  5. The hackable invisible structures

    October 07, 2008

    This post is made of a few short connection in between 3 things; all of them are linked to notions like future proof, open source and hackability.

    hackable-structures.jpg
    (center picture: Nicolas Nova; left: Assembling, right: Miltos Manetas )

    * This morning i’ve read a very nice post by Nicolas (Pasta & Vinegar); titled buildings as flows and process, it shows a couple of pipes in the streets of North America which are depicting the infrastructure of the building itself.

    * Somehow it reminded me of that post i wrote on Assembling about ‘The beauty of designing the underlying structure’ which somehow linked a large biro drawing by Amandine, a carpet by Britta Boehne, a series of paintings by Milto Manetas and my reflections on my own practice.

    * This morning i was also dwelving in R-Echos archives and came across this post (original post is here): Social Networks Evil Twin Attacks which depicts an attack made on an individual using the social networks in vogue with the web 2.0, Markus the other day was speaking about this kind of concerns and issues with services like Facebook.

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  6. Internet or the internet?

    October 05, 2008

    The kind of ‘formal’ language interogations that makes a lot of sense to me or at least it draws my attention a lot lately - like how do you spell/capitalise/prefix the word internet:

    the internet
    internet
    Internet
    the Internet

    now i will wonder about two more parameters: in or on.

    * Via

    “i work in ubiquitous computing”
    Often bemused by the “on the internet” versus “in the internet” debate, it’s intriguing that the only person we can find who refers to “i work in ubiquitous computing” was late Mark Weiser (see on his website).

    ** Christophe Guignard from Fabric.ch during a talk by Eric Sadin (Times of the Signs) once noted the different spelling of connection (physically attached) and connexion (close but not touching eachother) in french and english.

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  7. Nice reading this morning

    October 04, 2008

    ● I quite like the final take on this matter; it emphasize a side of the  often criticised web2.0 not that often underlined: the recommandation principle where you trust your friend.

    Do we get the blogs we deserve? We vote by click, after all. Perhaps we shouldnt look at all those top 10 lists and Britney Spears photos. Successful blogs, such as Zen Habits, tend to balance the more fast-food type posts with longer, more complex ideas that will presumably keep readers coming back—although there are plenty of people who make a living posting dubious crap. Perhaps the escape route out of a hit-driven blogosphere is all of our newfound “friends.” The Internet has always been very good at counting page views but not so great at assigning value to whats actually in those pages. Facebook, FriendFeed, StumbleUpon, and the sharing feature of Google Reader have their annoying, nudgy aspects, but they allow us to rely on one another to sort out what is interesting and worthy. Put it on a T-shirt: Friends Dont Let Friends Read Bad Content.
    How do bloggers make money? - By Michael Agger - Slate Magazine

    (Via Design Notes)

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  8. Twitter & the information layers (you could peel)

    October 03, 2008

    this morning i received the newsletter of Twitter:

    Hacking The Debate

    Tonight we expect the most activity Twitter has ever seen as
    vice presidential hopefuls Sarah Palin and Joe Biden debate live
    from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The folks at
    Current TV are making history by broadcasting Twitter updates on
    live television during this debate. Will you see your updates on
    television? Be sure to tune in or watch the streaming version of
    Current TV’s “Hack The Debate II” at http://current.com/debate

    * it is really nice to see a web service based on short and unobstrusive discussions enabling the realtime comments on a Tv show (streamed) - it would be nice to see this happening on a larger TV show - could it be the rebirth of TV? You could select if you want to see BBC with or without comments… I wonder what it would be like.

    ** i also found (via a pingbacktracking) a link to a nice archive of McLuhan broadcasted speech and interview on CBC (via Art Writing / Gemma Parse)

    *** that’s another kind of Electronic Presence

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  9. 6 things I like

    October 03, 2008

    - People consciously refusing to express ideas/views on the internet and who eventually prefer a couple of pinte at the pub and a few friends for audience.

    - french silly expression that usually goes on my nerves but after all life wouldn’t be the same without them; like “tu vois ce que je veux dire?”, “oui mais non”, “ça ne casse pas quatre pattes à un canard”

    - VW minibus (but also Martino’s Volvo and the old Saab that Laetitia had in Switzerland)

    - Sweet cider, and red wine - but also a pint of Flowers

    - Woody perfumes

    - Walking by a school playground during kids’ school break around 10 in the morning - (a little bit of) sun and a cold and dry air.

    and you what are your favourites things this morning?
    * this list of 6 favourites things for this morning comes from this discussion

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  10. A nice discussion

    October 03, 2008

    * Yesterday, with Patrick we went to the George to work on the Butcher’s Project identity and website - Alex joined and we had fun discussing the incredibly serious design world; that was nice and a couple of interesting thoughts came out of the discussion. I’m trying to keep track of them below.

    - the Wrong Gallery in New York. (an entry door space of 1sq meter used as a gallery).
    [apparently they lost the space and they then relocated in London at the Tate Modern]

    - Andreas Slumski made an exhibition there; he requested the door to be sent to his studio in Hamburg, organised a diner party there using the door as a table, sent back the door/table to New York.

    - the connections in between the work of Richard Wentworth, Jason Evans (the Daily Nice, the New Scent) and Daniel Eatock [from which emerged the wish to make lists of nice or bad things; see next post: 6 things i like]

    - the difference in between visual communication and graphic design.

    - the interrests we share in design processes, and the fact that process (and process analysis) is the essence of design - and what it takes for design to be design.

    ** Yesterday, at the same time, it was Gina’s award from the Royal Society of Photography for her work in hospitals - Amandine, being her assistant, accompanied her, and came back with sparkling eyes; that was apparently quite nice as well :)

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