Be neo-nomad! Find an incredible experiment communicated by a friend and following an ongoing discussion about the "my body is a hypertext" project... Please look at a screen under the skin in this online article published by the Fing, and Inist / Cnrs.

Excerpt: "L’idée de tatouages électroniques n’est pas nouvelle, mais la représentation qu’en a imaginé une jeune designer est assez stupéfiante pour faire actuellement le tour de l’internet. S’inspirant des travaux de Robert A. Freitas Jr, chercheur à l’Institut de fabrication moléculaire (Institute for Molecular Manufacturing), qui, dans l’un de ses derniers livres, Nanomedicine, Volume I: Basic Capabilities, a émis l’idée qu’il serait possible d’insérer un mince écran sous la peau, visible à travers elle, la graphiste Gina Miller en a donné une description frappante (images et vidéos). Son “Afficheur cutané programmable” (Programmable Dermal Display), permettrait d’indiquer sa température ou sa pression sanguine à l’aide de senseurs incorporés, mais qui dit qu’il ne vous permettra pas un jour peut-être de regarder un film ?"

I remember writing that "space has shrunk to the skin", that maybe the skin/envelop was our last private space... I think now that it is the notion of boundary itself that disappears.

London 2005, South Bank, from the City Hall designed by Foster, and accessed an "open architecture" day. Photographs by g o r d o b i a...
Archigram pops to my mind: sure we are on their turf! Though what we are looking at is a rather traditional conception of "ephemeral city", with houses on wheels. FYI find a very interesting Ford Foundation article: Home Sweet (Manufactured) Home

Do not miss even if you are not there!

Below, the extract from the V2_Institute for the Unstable Media newsmail:

Variable Media: lecture by Lev Manovich

date: Thursday 3 November, 19:00 CET
Location: V2_, Eendrachtsstraat 10, 3012 XL Rotterdam
Admission: free
Live webcast: http://www.v2.nl/

On Thursday 3 November, Lev Manovich will give a lecture at V2_ on
'variable media generation', the new cultural and media paradigm of the
21st century. Manovich argues that this new paradigm as a whole is
destined to replace the older paradigm of standardized mass production
that we inherited from an extinct industrial era.

Lev Manovich is the author of 'Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database' (The MIT Press, 2005), and 'The Language of New Media' (The MIT Press, 2001), which was hailed as "the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan." He is a Professor of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego, and a Director of The Lab for Cultural Analysis at California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. This Fall he is a researcher in residence at Piet Zwart Institute | Willem de Kooning Academy | Hogeschool Rotterdam.

This lecture will be streamed live through http://www.v2.nl/

Sachez... le festival des pocket films... c'était la première édition, à Paris... info un peu tardive... mais le phénomène force à réflexion : les téléphones mobiles nous encourageraient-ils à apercevoir, regarder, enregistrer, et traduire nos environnements de manière non indifférente ?

Lu dans Le Monde:

"Les films réalisés sur téléphone font leur festival à Paris

Article publié le 09 Octobre 2005
Par Isabelle Regnier
Source : LE MONDE
Taille de l'article : 521 mots

Extrait : Du 7 au 9 octobre, s'est tenue la première édition du Pocket Films au Forum des images. DÉSORMAIS intégrées aux téléphones portables, les petites caméras sont-elles des gadgets ou recèlent-elles un potentiel inédit de création artistique ? Pour répondre à ces questions, le Forum des images présente la première édition du festival Pocket Films, qui se tient à Paris du 7 au 9 octobre. Les organisateurs ont contacté cent artistes, leur ont distribué à chacun un téléphone portable. Sur près de quatre cents films réalisés, quatre-vingt-cinq ont été sélectionnés pour être diffusés sur grand écran pendant le festival."

En cherchant dans mes vieux dossiers je retrouve le projet d'un collectif du Québec : les territoires nomades, 1994
Je cite : "A manoeuvre from Quebec across Europe was planned, with events taking place in a series of, predominately art, centres in a variety of different cities. A passport bearing the colours and emblem of the Nomad Territories was issued in each place. These events, composed as they were of exhibitions, installations and performances, both generated and attracted a great deal of political, social, artistic and media interest."
En effet, ce projet m'avait intrigué. Si vous en savez plus sur ce projet, avez des photos ou possédez un passeport, n'hésitez pas à me le faire savoir.

Part of my contribution to CI'Num, the text of my presentation:

Aliens in Spaces

Neo-nomads move from automats to hotel rooms, and transit in these “non-places” defined by Marc Augé. For someone always on the move, changing cultural setting every now and then, even if the hotel room is the same everywhere, definitely affects the way he/she relates to his community of friend and family, and the way he or she “Adheres”—using the word of George Amar—to space.

As mobile infrastructures expand, and ubiquitous computing proliferates, the transit of what Asher calls PIG, “People, Information and Goods” accelerates, globalization propagates, and spaces acquire a monotonous aspect, relegate traditional urban settings, and denies access to whom does not possess the information.

Because of these increasingly happening scenarios and as technologies puncture bodies and space different problems of identities arise. First the schizophrenic self learns to detach from any belonging to a specific nation, or paradoxically exacerbate an invented identity. Then the chip encapsulating personal information and implanted under the skin reattaches the neo-nomad to space, as he/she is, all of a sudden, traceable in the urban environment. Yet, the two dimensional codes tattooed on his or her skin surface ties him or her to virtual spaces and selves...

One can at length invent and reinvent an identity, thus escape control. However, body wear, portable and connecting devices enable neo-nomads to belong to many communities, sometime overlapping. Hence mental geographies couple physical territories. The same wear, portable and connecting devices link people and building skins together. Experiments like the Vectorial Elevation, Relational Architecture 4 by Raphael Lozano-Hemmer (users could log in and change via the web the lighting configuration of the plaza) and the Kunsthaus building of the architect Peter Cook are strongly demonstrating how technologies extends the skin of the building, that it is not people who adapt to space anymore but very much the contrary.

These are examples of the role people could play in the making of public space and architecture. Beyond the skin of the building, the inserted automat has a depth and rely on heavy infrastructure, be it information about stocks or road access and back room for maintenance. Hence the inflated space of the building skin relates to another layer of architecture, an meta-architecture of storage space.

Did show work in progress the FLASHback digital wallpaper to be applied in conjonction with my Hotel Room project.

CI'Num was a succes and is scheduled to be continued! So keep the event in mind. How did it particularly go? Local: "It is a Grand Cru Classé, shall age well." Global: "Let Information travels."

Business Week online | NEWS ANALYSIS By Sarah Lacy: Help for Info Age Have-Nots

Excerpts from the online article: "A few days back, tech guru John Seely Brown found himself facing the unthinkable: He was caught for 40 hours without his Treo. The former director of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center travels most of the year to board meetings, research projects, and speaking gigs around the world, and he makes it a point never to be separated from the one device that delivers e-mail and houses his address book, calendar, and mobile phone. "I felt naked," he says. "I hadn't recognized how much this device was integrated into every single thing I do or think about. It was a wake-up call that my life has fundamentally morphed.""

[John Seely brown conducted the wired coffee pots experiments!]

CI'Num has started! (writing from my hotel room)