This Saturday, April 28th from noon to 5pm, Marcus Haraldsson and I will be previewing the first version of our Project Borders web and exhibition interface at Columbia Journalism School’s Innovation Showcase.

Our aim in this project is to present stories of transnational migration and travel against the stories of the borders we cross every day. In this early version of the project, cameras were lent to first generation immigrants in Queens who returned to their countries of birth for the winter holidays.

If you are able to join us for the event, please do. It is free and open to the public. Details at towcenter.org/innovation-showcase/

I’ll be joining Alexander Chaparro Farah Momin, Danielle Fichera, and Susanne Wagner on a panel for Critical Themes in Media Studies 2012 this Saturday at The New School. Critical Themes is a graduate student conference. It is free and open to the public. Join us!

Here’s the abstract for my presentation. I’ll be shifting the discussion a little more toward my current focus with open data: how it can be used to develop participatory public data networks.

Graffiti in New York City plays the part in a well defined administrative feedback loop. After the street art is illegally applied to an urban surface, city administrators begin the process of recording, tracking, and removing it. This process supports efficient administration and maintains a record of measurable results for improving a quality of life issue, all in the fashion of today’s “Smart City”.

This multi-modal project attempts to evaluate the production of graffiti removal through an information system supported Situationist practice of dérive and détournement. Through data warehousing, mining, and mapping of the City’s graffiti removal data set, we can cook up a tactic to evaluate graffiti removal as a mode of urban management and communication.

The project considers graffiti removal through the lens of Friedrich Kittler’s computer metaphor for the city. Graffiti and its removal is a write-rewrite process with a textuality beyond the urban surface. Rather than focus on the cultural history of graffiti – its practitioners and their methods – we will foreground this write-rewrite information system. A system that operates on a unit of cultural expression that is tagged to a physical location, yet also extended to exist in a mappable, virtual location. The unique opportunity here is to evaluate this system with current data on graffiti. An opportunity to do a kind of digital video recorder like capture of the city in process: to record, rewind, and replay a write-rewrite drama between the city and its people.

Video sketch of “Decentral Eyes” – a public space interface for city data.

Produced with Jane Friedhoff and Richard Angus Duff / our process documentation

for the Participatory City Workshop 
with IBM City Forward, Empire Projects, New School Univ, & Columbia Univ GSAPP
Friday, March 9 – Saturday March 17, 2012

Jane describes our project:

“Decentral Eyes” was a proposal designed for an IBM intensive centered around City Forward and the question of how publicly-accessible data will shape spaces and citizens. Our site was 125th St. and Broadway, in Manhattan. Our project addressed issues of contested space/conflicting interests in the area, as well as the prevalence of broken-down information interfaces. We decided to use the elevated subway station as an inversion of the current paradigm of smart cities, turning it into a kind of “people’s control tower” in which citizens could see data laid over their city and make serendipitous data correlations that others might not see. Through actions that are both implicit (e.g. gestural/eye-tracking) and explicit (e.g. texting the system to notify concered parties), our system is one that uses public space and public data to encourage critical thinking and closing the loop between citizen concern and action.

more on our process at psi-weftwerk.tumblr.com

The everyday street changes with alarming suddenness. There is a new restaurant, a store you haven’t seen before, the people and they way they walk is unfamiliar, new construction shifts movement of light and sound.

It is a suggestive scene. An illusion – that all things can change without material effect. I’m a new person. All things past are erased. the cutoff is clean. Only the core of an aesthetic consciousness, of discovery, remains.

Unprecedented amounts of media and data were generated during the Occupy Wall Street protests last fall and continue to emerge through the ongoing movement. Join us for a 2-day collaborative Hackathon to explore, visualize and learn from such this living data archive.

During the 2-day event, we will be connecting and collaborating with other such Hackathons taking place in Cambridge, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and Washington D.C.

This event is not only for designers and hackers, but for anyone interested in the Occupy movement with experience in media production, journalism and research. Bring your ideas, skills, creativity, questions and critical perspectives as we look for ways to transform media and data collected from Occupy Wall Street into visualizations and data driven interventions!

Some of the data sets we will have access to include survey research data, twitter activity, user contributed audio/video footage online, as well as data on privately owned public spaces in New York City. Final outcomes will be showcased in the gallery as well as online in various forums.

The event is being jointly organized with OccupyResearch, DataCenter, R-Shief Labs, and the MIT Center for Civic Media.

For more information visit: http://bit.ly/occupyhackathon

To sign-up please register for the event here: http://goo.gl/7nm58

12pm – 6pm on March 23 and 24th, 2012

Arnold and Sheila Aronson Gallery
Sheila C Johnson Design Center
66 Fifth Ave., New York, NY

Eyes on the street or
eyes over the street?

A balance between liberty and security.

Gargoyles kept evil spirits away from the sanctuary. CCTV extended their mission, expanding the list of sanctuaries.

But liberty looks over the harbor with invitation. She looks over the street with confidence.

Breathe freely.

End is At Hand, Jesus Music Vol. 1
Maraqopa – Damien Jurado
and a lot of other great music on Aquarium Drunkard and !!crescere!!

My sister’s new old play will be running for three nights in February. From what I gather, it is going to be a rave party pulsing with the performance of a greek tragedy. Go see it.

From the show’s website:

The 2011-12 McGill Classics Play will be a new English version of Euripides’ Hippolytos, directed by Carina de Klerk, translated by McGill Classics students, with original electronic music by Virek. Hippolytos will take place at the La Sala Rossa, 4848 Boulevard Saint Laurent, on the 1, 6 and 7 of February, 2012. Performances 8 pm/ doors 7 pm. 12$/8$ students.

Live DJ set to follow each performance by Jason oS and Joey Mnemonic.

To reserve tickets, please email lynn.kozak@mcgill.ca.

Black Up – Shabazz Palaces
Burst Apart – The Antlers
Creep On Creepin’ On – Timber Timbre
Glowing Mouth – Milagres
Go-Go Boots – Drive-By Truckers
Let England Shake – PJ Harvey
Lumiere – Dustin O’Halloran
Smoke Ring For My Halo – Kurt Vile
Space Is Only Noise – Nicolas Jaar
We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves – John Maus