Moïse Apporte les Nouvelles Tables de la Loi: Google Books And The Ten Commandments

This image is from the google book Musée Religieux ou Choix des plus beaux tableaux inspirés par l'histoire sainte aux peintres les plus célèbres; first tome, published in 1836 by Hivert Libraire in Paris by "Etienne Achille Réveil, un ecclésiastiques du clergé de Paris".* The actual book is part of the Oxford University's history library collection.

Pursuing its mission to archive everything for everything to be accessible to everyone, in Google Books Google scanned library collections for printed knowledge to be preserved and made more available to more people and over more time. The resulting scans, the google books, generally look like books but simultaneously aren't simple visual reproductions of books either. And while the possible affects of this venture on knowledge are unsure, what is certain is that these digital formats are new vessels of knowledge; new mediums that necessarily carry new messages.

Sometimes these virtual books' new messages are very clear and this particular Musée Religieux google book is one such extraordinary example. As the scan above shows, the Google employee's hands covered with pink mini-finger condoms caught scanning chapter 52 reminds us of the mediation that occurs between the book and the google book (or even the physical labor that any medium necessitates to carry its idea). This meta-narration was created during the scanning/mediating gesture and is only present in the new platform. The original book from 1836 never intended to suggest such a notion, nor does the present-day copy in Oxford Library.

Even more amazingly these fingers were caught while scanning "Moïse Apporte les nouvelles tables de la loi" (Moses brings the new tablets of law). According to the first testament Moses spent 80 days and nights to get these tablets (and their message) to his people (the etching on the left side of the fingers represents Moses telling his people where to place the heavy tablets). He had to climb and descend the Mount Sinai, survive up there, wait for God to communicate and inscribe the principles in stone and all this twice, because after having gotten really upset at his brother's pagan ways he smashed the first two tablets. However all this activity is said to have resulted in the 10 commandments which set some the fundamental ethical principles of Judaism and Christianity.

Relative to Moses' approach, Google seems to have something slightly more efficient happening (although not tested on the long-run), but makes one wonder: are google books and the knowledge that they make available today's stone tablets and commandments? are Google employees today's prophets? And of course are those Moses' fingers?

* which more or less translates as Religious Museum or Choice of the most beautiful paintings inspired by the history of saints to the most celebrated painters, by Etienne Achille Réveil, an ecclesiastic from the clergy of Paris. For more of those fingers go to http://books.google.ca/books?id=pDwGAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&redir_esc=y#v=twopage&q&f=false

Swallowing in 1951

A cineradiograph of a typical normal barium swallow. The semi-solid meal passes over the back of the tongue, past the epiglottis and into the pharynx. Found at Wellcome Collection

www.yourdomain.xxx

"After ICANN initially approved the domain in 2005, .xxx faced six years of legal and procedural hurdles before getting the final go-ahead in March 2011. Since then the ICM Registry (which polices the domain) hosted an initial closed sale for some .xxx domains. (...) While many have opposed the creation of .xxx over the years, the fact is it’s here, with domains for sale at $60 each from GoDaddy and others." - mashable

"Take The Kids Off The Streets": Jane Jacobs vs. The Modern Urban Aspiration

Love: The Medium is the Message

Notes from an Ethnography on Post-Modern Labor: Ludo-Capitalism or Computer Feudalism?

Last week the American Anthropological Association kicked off its 109th meeting in Montreal’s Palais des Congrès. As the 5000 speakers shuffled papers and cleared their throats, I was among the happy anthro-devotees going through the 632 page program to decide which panels to attend during the five days: Mobile Phones in Papua New Guinea? Favela Tourism in Pre-Olympic Rio? Breastfeeding in a Time of Post-Feminism? The Aesthetics of Egyptian Political Pop Music Videos? The Soundscape of 9/11's Heritage?... Some panels I wish I attended others I am so glad I did.

For example David Hakken from Indiana University presented his talk “From Labor to Playbor: Business Anthropology In the Time of Social Networking.” As a labor anthropologist he discussed the role – from an evolutionary perspective – of computerization on work. Today, similarly to technology breaking down the traditional lines between the private and public, computers are changing how we work, where we work, why we work and what qualifies as work.

Up till this fall Google had a game - called ESP - to label their gazillion images into categories. This game transformed an intensive, repetitive and certainly costly archiving chore into a fun (addictive) activity resulting in a better Google service, and all this produced by free labor.

Could this virtual collaborative project be the demonstration that surpassing the barriers of face-to-face labour results in better, less costly, and funner systems of efficiency. A sort of Ludocapitalism fuelled by playbor? Or rather is this a form of post-modern Taylorism? A 21st century feudalism – computer feudalism – in which our free bug reports, tweeking of open source projects and fun Google tags feed empires we are never rewarded by?

Leaving the panel I started to think that if technology can enable us to game our way through labor, then workers most probably will start acting like players. It doesn’t seem entirely unlikely that Wall Street traders sell, buy, negotiate and think in a similar fashion to the questing, grinding, hating factions or joining guilds World of Warcraft avatars do.

Both just as removed from the impact of their labor on the ‘real’ world but getting the addictive high of success that industrial Taylorism most probably never provided its workers. 

Commodifying Rituals and Patterns at the American Anthropological Association Meeting!

 

  

The Phenomenology of Colour: What Happens When We See

From Always With Honor

Bad Urban Design and Public Art Installation: the MMFA's Homogeneous Plastic Yellow Poles and Night Guard Protect Their Failed Sidewalk

Last month the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts opened a new building, a new curatorial plan for its Canadian collection and a new sidewalk/sculpture garden (which, as the press release happily stresses makes it "one of the largest collection of public art in Montreal" - Montreal being really well known for its public art this is really thrilling).

Hence to enlarge its sculpture garden and create spaces to reflect and observe it, the Museum commissioned marble steps, platforms, columns and benches for its main sidewalks - on avenue du Musée and rue Sherbrooke. As the images show, today these designs are angular, of different hight and slanted (not totally unlike the ideal skatepark) and are meant to "create a high-quality urban environment for the Museum complex that is both distinctive and homogeneous, [as well as] improve the comfort and aesthetics of the outdoor spaces, integrate public artworks, [and] improve pedestrian safety in the vicinity of the Museum."

Well it seems like the Museum has been caught off guard by how much Montrealers have found these new urban props comfortable and safe. Skatboarders, in particular. But sadly these types of pedestrians are deemed unwelcome by the Museum and so the institution has hired a night guard to make sure only their ideal art lovers come enjoy their sculptures (with their eyes only). But this wasn't enough to deter the normal human pedestrian from touching and interacting with these public installations so the MMFA has added extra yellow plastic sticks to most marble corners making sure no one ever goes near their "high-quality urban environment". (I'm guessing this yellow plastic repetition is to maintain the aesthetic homogeneity mentioned in the press release.)

It seems obvious that the Museum and its favoring of what they wish their backyard looked like rather than what the reality of urban space is, are the only ones to blame for the sidewalks' current absurdity. And as a pedestrian it's hard not be saddened about 33 million dollars that were put into what the field of yellow poles is trying to protect, in particular while budgets in the arts throughout the country are being cut.

Update of 26/11/11: After the night-guard and the plastic yellow polls, the MMFA has now invested in the panoptican power of the surveillance camera to insure the peacefulness they intended for their newly developed sculpture park. Brilliant. 

The Colour of New York's Troubles

In this very very witty and pretty graph by artist Andrew Kuo one can read smart data with a New York City biased twist.

Finally Marina's Presence in a Game!!!

Closed for over a year now, Marina Abramovic's retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art and the amount of coverage, articles and commentary documenting it seem like a distant past.

At the time I remember being struck by the general uniformity of critical response which matched her audiences attitude: either utmost seriousness or profound awe (and a striking lack of humor). The constraints of the institution - the intense security (transgressors could be banned from the MoMA for life), the difficult acoustics, the bright neons - were probably the principle causes for this monotone outcome, but overall the artist's serious form of self-making in the show - with Abramovic replicating herself through her performance and reperformances - was like turning everyone that participated into her (too grim? too dramatic?) outlook.

Pippin Barr recently came up with "The Artist is Present" game, which embodies quite well the qualms mentioned above as well as the weird steps involved in the Marina art experience (although I feel like the art experience in general to a certain extent too).

Pigeons Are Our Friends: Bernice's Move

Published: Dirt and Pigeons

I'm happy to say my passion for pigeons has finally seen its first material manifestation in this multi-faceted, pleasantly deep and particularly clean issue of On-Site dedicated to dirt.

Coloured Water, Tape and Glass Cups: NPR Explains Seven Billion Humans

Found at flowingdata

Tichkematse a Scout, an Early Smithsonian Institution Employee, a Cheyenne and an Illustrator

Browsing the tiny subsections of the American Natural History Museum's website is incredible.

It's a window into all these lost details and individual destinies and moments that, combined, have shaped the "New World." The 19th century in North America was mostly a time of grimness and doom for the Native tribes, and Squint Eyes's Cheyenne people weren't excluded from the genocide; but his drawings and destiny illustrate the grey zones of when the white men met the North American's land.

Tichkematse (Squint Eyes) was a Cheyenne Indian, raised to a life based on buffalo hunting in the southern Plains. Caught by the United States government between 1875-1878, he was imprisoned and learned to read and write English. Once released he attended school in Virginia before coming to the Smithsonian, as one of the institution's earliest employees between 1879 and 1881, to conserve and display bird and mammal specimens.

In July 1885 and for three years, Squint Eyes enlisted in the USA Army's newly formed companies of scouts. The scouts provided assistance to regular Army troops in patrolling the Cheyenne and Arapaho Reservation and the Cherokee Outlet. It was there that Squint Eyes completed drawings that depict Army officers, civilians and Cheyenne scouts engaged in hunting - an important part of Cheyenne cultural heritage and a favorite pastime of officers and enlisted men.

During his life he also accompanied a government expedition traveling in the remote Florida waterways to the Seminole tribe. And worked with anthropologist and linguist Frank Hamilton Cushing on Indian sign language (there were many languages spoken on the Plains so the various tribes had developed a shared language based on gestures).

source:

http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/squint_eyes/squint_eyes.htm

http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/scout/

A Little Technology History and a Little Apple Ode

found at http://blog.oliverphillips91.co.uk/

Extinction: The Last of Vietnam's Rhinoceros Sondaicus Annamiticus Was Officially Killed

Embroidering Socialite: Mourir Auprès de Toi

Olympia Le-Tan has created an enterprise, called Olympia Le-Tan, that embroiders and sows with ribbon, string and felt some of the most beautiful clutches I've seen. Following the 'return' of the done-by-hand-with-love movement, all the embroidering is done by a cute Japanese girl in the 2nd arrondissement in Paris, and results in products selling for a month's worth of the legal minimun wage in France (SMIC).

She's also a great extroverted socialite, so if you want any information about  her date of birth, who her parents are, when she's in New York or Paris, what she looked like when she was 6, or who her favorite manga character is, just go check out her blog.

In any case earlier this year she worked with Spike Jonze and Simon Cahn on a felt embroidered-based short. Since the clutches' designs are reproductions of vintage book covers and their success based on a lot of socialite hyping, the filming was done in the setting of most Litt majors' and other American tourists's wet dreams, Shakespeare and Co. Like the clutches, while the result is remarkable by its aesthetic and required manual labor, Olympia's unabashing use of her person, socialite connections and stereotypes make it hard for me not to think of this as a marketing strategy more than an honest creation.

Tweeting About an Earthquake: Techno-Cynic vs. Techno-Philosophically

The Twitter blog has two time-based mappings of the Tweet flows coming in and out of Japan, to and from the world around March 11th's earthquake. It makes for eloquent visuals on factual matters such as, where networks of information gather and exchange, how technology enables humans to decimate information in seconds and what areas are excluded from these connected hubs (large parts of Africa); or helps you draw more anecdotal multiple hypotheses such as Hawaiians use Twitter more than Alaskans, more Hawaiians have Twitter accounts than Alaskans, Hawaiians have more empathy towards earthquake victims than Alaskans, Hawaiians like Japanese people More than Alaskans,  there are more Hawaiians than Alaskans, etc...

But these maps also hint to the ways humans cope, even maybe internalize information in an age where 30% of humans are connected to the internet. In my mind there are two ways to see it: either as a techno-cynic, technology enables people to appropriate content without needing to process it, Twitter is a mean to brag about being part of networks of people in the know; or more techno-philosophically, technology is simply an extension of a 'natural' human trait, by which humans partake in collective trends and happenings rather superficially to simply be social humans. In either versions the information itself becomes second to the process of sharing - be it someone famous' death like Jobs's (6,049 tweets per second), a pregnancy (Beyoncé's baby got 8,868 tweets per second after her MTV video performance) or an earthquake, the actual occurrence matters less than the amount of people that could be interested in the news, and hence the amount of humans the tweeter could impress or connect (be) through.

 

Not So Failing Failures and Urban Art Interventions

This summer Barcelona-based production company, El Cangrejo, directed the adorable short "L'Equip Petit," about a soccer team that never scores. Here's the trailer of their latest creation, "The Last Ones," and what appears to be another beautiful looking documentary. The story isn't clear but it hints at their recurring interest in the ones society considers failures: in "L'Equip Petit" it was six to seven year olds that couldn't put a ball through the net, and here it may be a group of store owners that desperately need people to walk through their area (instead of malls and super stores?) - and use plastic bottles and communal imagination and work to do so. 

Commodifying "The Riots" Into Bad Fashion Spreads

On August 15th 2011 the New York Times' T published an interactive feature about the fashion of rioters (quote): "What do you wear when protest and mayhem rock your world? Reports from three epicenters of street style: London, Cairo and Tokyo." (already by this point you sense something deep).

The feature was, I'm guessing, an attempt at merging the glossiness of style with the heaviness of a political critic - an equation, that, although with high potential is difficult to pull; often ending by being neither one nor the other. 

In this case the glossy part failed because visually there is no common pattern, recurring theme, resembling aesthetic or conducting feeling: it simply brings together Paris Match-type imagery, celebrity spotting paparazzi pics and street photography with nail art, flag outfits, awkward pedestrians and Japanese women dressed like 17th century Louis the 14th court duchesses. 

And as for the political take, granted these three cities had a rough spring/summer 2011 season with unhappy people and civil unrest - Tokyo with its nuclear, Cairo with its ruler and London with its pissed off youth - but otherwise nothing really links them together. And if there was, it wouldn't be style.

Yet the T tied these violent, unreassuring and tumultuous events together, bundling them with random shots taken (we're guessing) during the 'riots' and by so doing draining all meaning from the motivations that caused them: they commodified the 'riots' into a really bad fashion spread. 

Recently, on the other hand, I discovered Lucifer Youth Film's music video for their song 'Dirt' that does a much better job at using, and in a sense, commodifying images of pissed off people rioting. I'm not sure  where the WU LYF stand with the Egyptians or the British rioters but in their music video at least it doesn't boil down to scarves and weddings celebrations, unlike in the T. 

Vitalic's Dogs in Slow-Motion + The 'Cats & Dogs 2's Narrative = A House Music Blockbuster

Vitalic is a pretty awesome electro musician. His song Poney Part 1's video with jumping dogs in slow motion gained a bit of fame back in the day - I think it would qualify as an indie success - and has had 2,131,300 views on youtube since its upload in January 2006. Swedish House Mafia's recent Save the World has gotten 29,755,208 views since May 20th, and qualifies - I think - as a Summer hit and house music phenomenon. Both videos abuse the incredibleness of dogs in slow motion although the latter has a little too much cheese in its visual (and musical?) mix for me.

All Together Now

Let's all email: rememberingsteve@apple.com

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