August 2003 Archives

My friend Maya has been on the road for the past three years, but her cell phone number still starts with 917. So does mine, and I moved to California four months ago. My friend Ellen lives in Berkeley and her phone number starts with 818, while Cathy's 319 is a relic of her grad school days in Iowa.

Even as the great day of number portability approaches, it's worth remembering what we're actually carrying with us is not just a number, but a record of our past: the city we lived in -- in some cases, even the neighborhood -- where we went mobile. What was it Buckaroo Banzai said? Oh, that's right: No matter where you go, there you are.

more googlism:

drift is a stochastic process
drift is the result of “sampling error
drift is actually nonlinear
drift is an evolutionary force that can alter populations through time
drift is sombre and mysterious; a study of winter light falling on the surface of water
drift is actually nonlinear but not as much as we thought
drift is a problem
drift is widely misunderstood
drift is obtained
drift is undesirable
drift is anecdotal and qualitative
drift is present
drift is illegal
drift is exactly what my attention did
drift is the movement of spray droplets by wind
drift is a slow misadjustment which is usually adaptively corrected by some feedback mechanism
drift is more dependent on the irregular movement of turbulent air than on gravity
drift is considered just as important as natural selection

Drift: accumulation (a snow drift)
Drift: motion (to drift away)
Drift: signification (do you catch my drift?)

Drift is an interesting idea, I think.

Strangely familiar

Crowds

Design

Architecture

Strangely Familiar is...
strangely familiar is art for the mind
strangely familiar is this unfamiliar domain which mysteriously mirrors our unconscious
strangely familiar is standing here
strangely familiar is sitting there reading a newsheet
strangely familiar is for telling stories about random encounters in everyday life
strangely familiar is a book about the unexpected
strangely familiar is that u emma???? ignor the idiots look at the door behind is that some kind of ghostly face????
strangely familiar is that a similar tragic event occured at the same club a few years ago

this is so genius. click through until you get to the very, very end. the instructions for young graffiti artists are amazing:

When explaining yourself to the Police its worth being as reasonable as possible. Graffiti writers are not real villains. I am always reminded of this by real villains who consider the idea of breaking in someplace, not stealing anything and then leaving behind a painting of your name in four foot high letters the most retarded thing they ever heard.

Remember crime against property is not real crime. People look at an oil painting and admire the use of brushstrokes to convey meaning. People look at a graffiti painting and admire the use of a drainpipe to gain access.

http://www.banksy.co.uk/menu.html

via Anne Galloway of course

Aware - a project from UIAH in Helsinki that uses mobile phones to collect and display images, text, and sounds based on cell id.

Personal memory gathers, shifts and adapts according to activity, event and journey. It may be associated to someone, or anonymous, and it may be of importance to someone else. Ups and downs, special occasions or everyday minutia; Fantastical obsession or critical reality, loves, frustrations and desires. Sometimes these experiences spill into the collective domain as story, rumour, history and scandal, documented in the media with vested interest. But rarely can you contribute to the collective domain, even though it happens to you.

Check out the great links section, which includes work by Mongrel, a classically British art collective.

via Anne Galloway

...Now combine that with dirty data and voila! mo-porn.