To be exact, we want you to print out the attached PDF with a color printer, attach it to something torch-like (a stick, handle, pole), and make a video of yourself running with it. If you don’t have a color printer, try to get something close to the same color. Your video should be no longer than 1 minute. The video should start with you entering the frame from the left, and end with you handing off the torch to an unseen person out of the frame to the right. This is important because we will edit the videos together so that the relay (handing off the torch) looks more or less continuous. But beyond that, it’s pretty much up to you what you do. The crazier the better.

Oh, and we also need your location (latitude and longitude). We will connect all of the videos together, superimpose animated GIFs of fire onto your torch, and animate the torch route onto a map of the world (think Indiana Jones). The video will culminate in a torch lighting ceremony at MIXER: OLYMPIAD on March 12.

The goal is to have some geographic diversity here, so the further you are from NY, the better. If you have any friends in far-off places that might be interested, please pass this along to them. Right now we are just looking for a head count if people who might be interested. We can provide a very small materials budget if you need it (I’m talking like $10-$20).

Of course, everyone who makes a video will be an honored guest at the MIXER: OLYMPIAD, you will receive credit on the Eyebeam website, and you will earn our gratitude. So please, pass this along. Post it on your FaceTweeter. And if you are interested in making a video, please contact me ASAP.

Chair: Vagner Whitehead
Panelists: Barbara DeGenevieve, Doug Ischar, Stephanie Rothenberg & Jeff Crouse

Saturday 2/13/10 from 2pm – 3:30pm
Columbia College Chicago – 916 S. Wabash Ave, Room 150

Panel Abstract: While it is arguable that looking at pornography online equates actual sexual acts performed with the aid of computer communication technologies, the connection between mediated visual stimulation with desire exists. It is possible that a percentage of the people looking at porn and partaking on cybersex (from the traditional chatroom text, to emailed pictures, cam2cam, MUVEs, etc), consists of artists. Their interaction with these technologies and other beings interested in similar activities could potentially inform/influence their artistic endeavors. This panel aims to examine the varied form in which artists explore and present sexuality and the Internet in their works.

While on the subject, Aaron and I are still looking for an intern to help us with the super-exciting new version of World Series of ‘Tubing.  We have tentatively scheduled a performance at a super hip new venue in Brooklyn.  So, if I may horrifically mix some metaphors, the time is right to get on this bus on the ground floor.

For all of you listeners out there who just can’t wait for ep1 to drop:  have patience!  It will arrive soon!

• Go to Craigslist
• Do a search
• Copy the URL
• Go to Earthify Beta
• Paste the URL
• GO!

The one problem is that it doesn’t remember the location and zoom level of the Google Map when you bookmark a search. This is annoying because part of what makes Housingmaps great is that you can zoom in to see only the location you are interested in.

WELL NOT ANYMORE! I fixed it! http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/65745

This little Greasemonkey script will add the lat, lon, and zoom to the “Link” element of the page.  Then, when you come back, it will move and zoom the map.

Yeah, it’s kind of a very specific need.  But there it is.

Facebook event

Date: Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Location: The Change You Want to See
Street: 84 Havemeyer Street
City/Town: Brooklyn, NY

Upgrade! NY continues its series on open source as it relates to activism and creative practice.

Within activist and creative practice there is a range of models for mobilizing the labor and creativity of the crowd (aka “crowdsourcing”). Both practices experiment with a spectrum of autonomy and control within those models. From distributed design to distributed fundraising, MoveOn to Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcer issues a call and creates structure for participation.

What role do individual motivations and collective goals play within these structures? What are the ethical, social and political implications of distributed labor?

Panelists include xtine, artist, educator and creator of the Mechanical Olympics; Jeff Crouse, Eyebeam senior fellow, artist, technologist and co-creator (with Stephanie Rothenberg) of the Invisible Threads virtual jeans factory; and Beka Economopoulos, online organizer, consultant and curator at The Change You Want To See Gallery.

This event will take place at The Change You Want to See, 84 Havemeyer Street, Brooklyn.

Upgrade! NY is co-produced by Eyebeam and Not An Alternative.

This is a prelude event to the conference, The Internet as Playground and Factory: a conference on digital labor at the Eugene Lang College, The New School, New York, NY, November 12-14.

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3716 – James Chimpton (with Steve Lambert)
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3715 – openFrameworks (with Zach Lieberman)

I know I’m an Eyebeam whore.  Don’t worry.  It’s been brought to my attention.

Come for the lulz.  Stay for the $2 beer.

What you can’t see is the crowd of heathens standing and laughing at me as I was knelt down on my kneeler.

Here’s the full set

If you are in the area next Wednesday at 8, stop by and watch a few of them.

All Hail Jesus’ Name:

All Things are Thine

Crown Royal

Jesus Loves Me

My Faith Looks Up to Thee

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

Onward Christian Soldier

Prelude and Fugue in G Major – Fugue

Prelude and Fugue in G Majog – Prelude 

Paslm 19

Savior, Like a Shepard Lead Us 

St. Annes Prelude

Trio Sonata No. 1 in E major

Trop Sonata No. 5 in C major

Trio Sonata No. 6 in G Major

or Download the whole thing!

download | more here

you-tube-and-the-accidental-videoart-monica-ponzini

Crowded is an montage audio program similar to radio shows like This American Life, The Moth, or the productions of Joe Frank.  What makes it unique is that all of the material is is made up of segments of audio requested from and submitted by workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk site in return for payment.  I have made one incomplete episode as a test.  You can listen to it here:

Crowded – Episode 0 – (beta)
(I apologize for the audio quality of the first story – you have to listen very closely to hear what he is saying.  I will fix it eventually, but this was fine for this proof of concept)

Each episode has a mechanism or a theme.  For the test episode, I asked workers to listen to a collection of songs.  After listening, they picked one that reminded them of an important event in their life, and then recorded themselves telling that story.  You can see the HIT (Human Intelligence Task – the instructions given to the workers) at the bottom of this page.  The tentative list of future themes are all listed below in the prouction timeline.  Some of them have nothing to do with labor or MT.  Some are very self-conscious.

The workers are given around $5-$10 to follow the directions like the ones below, depending on the complexity of the task. The jobs usually involve recording some audio. Depending on the assignment, they will use either a custom-built recording applet or a commercial conference call service.  When I receive the audio, I (with the help of Graham Reznick, an audio engineer) organize and edit the results into a professionally produced radio show.  Although it would be interesting to keep these results as raw as possible and strive for objectivity, I have decided that I would rather focus on creating an intriguing show.  Except where the theme specifically calls for it, I will not give up editorial privileges.

Why?

After doing several projects using crowdsourcing (Dirt Party, Invisible Threads, You’re So VIP) that essentially use workers as a faceless labor force only slightly better than a computer, I wanted to do a project that was about the actual people who are doing these tasks.  Who are they?  Where do they come from?  Why do they do these jobs?  The dynamics of “buying” a story via Mechanical Turk are interesting to me.  Do I own the story?  What kind of stories do you get from workers  who are ultimately looking at the estimated time vs. payment bottom line?   You could argue that I am still not humanizing them – that I am simply exploiting their willingness to tell personal stories for a few bucks.  But this project isn’t really taking a position in terms of the ethics of online labor markets.  It’s simply the MT system – which most believe is a kind of foreshadowing of a labor paradigm that will inevitably become much more common in the future – in a way that I think is more interesting and rewarding than most of what I have seen.  Most of the workers who respond to my requests are very excited to have been asked to do something that requires a little more creativity and thought.  The trick will be to bring out something unique about the kind of people who do this kind of work.  The average person doesn’t know what crowdsourcing is, and especially doesn’t care to hear strangers talking about uninteresting topics.  So the concept alone won’t make this project successful.  The tentative themes below are intentionally being left somewhat vague so that, when I gain a better understanding of the workers , I will be able to craft a show scenario that will coax better material out of them.

The end result will be a CD of these shows along with a small pamphlet or booklet about the workers who contributed, and any thoughts or research that I accumulate over the course of the show.  Because I don’t want people who wouldn’t normally be on MT to accept the tasks, I will release the entire collection after the project is done.   I will also release the MP3s of the shows and all of the source audio on the web.  With the help of Rhizome, I hope to one day hope to pitch this to WNYC as a series that they can play on air.

Project Budget & Timeline

I would like to make 1 episode per month for 1 year, starting in September of 2010.

Episode Budget

• $100 for stories (roughly 5-10 workers @ $10/job to get enough usable content)
• $200 audio editing
• $50 audio/hosting services (conference call lines, media server, etc.)
• TOTAL: 1 episode costs around $350

Main Budget

• 12 Episodes: $4,200
• Jingle composition: $800
• Printing booklet: $300
• TOTAL: $5500

Timeline

I will complete one episode each month and send it out to a small list of people for comments.  The following are the tentative themes for each month.

1. September Listen to a series of songs, choose one that reminds you of an event in your life, and then tell that story.  The stories will be collected and played on top of the song that you choose. (11 calls @ $8)
2. October Answer the following questions (20 calls @ $4)
   1. describe your immediate environment
   2. how/when did you working on MT?
   3. how do you plan on using the money that you receive for this work?
   4. record 2 minutes of ambient audio from somewhere nearby
3. November Call me and have an argument about a topic I give you.  I will edit myself out, leaving only your side of the argument. (5 calls at $12)
4. December Call this conference line.  You will be joined by 2 other workers.  Your character is [fill in a character].  During the course of this call, you must [plot point 1], [plot point 2], [plot point 3].(I’m not quite sure how I will orchestrate this one yet, so it is very tentative – 6 calls @ $15)
5. January Use the recorder below to record yourself answering the following questions:
   1. Who do you think I (the Requester) am?
   2. Do you ever think about the people who give you the tasks that you do on MT?
6. February Use the recorder below to record yourself reading from your favorite book. (12 calls @ $5)
7. March Use the recorder below to record yourself talking about previous jobs that you have had. (10 calls @ $8)
8. April Use the recorder below to record your first name, your last initial, and where you live.  (This show will focus on quantity rather than quality.  250 calls @ $0.5)
9. May TBD
10. June TBD
11. July TBD
12. August The ubiquitous “best of” show.

Resume or Curriculum Vitae

Please see my CV here.

Work Samples

Invisible Threads

Dirt Party

Praying@Home

You3b

Sample MT HIT

Tell me a story

I am working on a radio show called This Mechanical Life where all of the material comes from Mechanical Turk workers.  And I need your help!  Just follow the 6 steps below.

• Listen to the songs below.
• Think of an event in your life that reminds you of that song.  This could be any story, but it should be important to you, or something that you think other people would enjoy hearing.
• Find a quiet room where you won’t be disturbed
• Tell me your story! Follow the instructions below to record the story. Some tips:
  • Please dont mention the song that you chose while telling your story, or even that the story you are telling was inspired by a song.  Just tick the circle below and the song will play underneath your story.
  • You can use either your computer microphone or a telephone.
  • The story should be between 8 and 15 mins.  Please try to stay on topic and don’t ramble.  That being said, just relax and don’t rush through it.
  • Speak up, speak slowly, and speak clearly.  No bonus will be given if I can’t understand what you are saying.
  • Do not play the song while you are recording.
• Tell me how you recorded it here.
  • if you called the phone number, put the number from which you called here.
  • If you used YouTube, put the URL here
  • If you used HoundBite, put the URL in here
• If you wish to be credited in the final production, please enter your information here.  I cannot guarantee that your story will be used, or that it will not be edited or re-told.  But don’t let this dissuade you!  If you have a problem with any of this, let me know and I will work with it.

The Songs (also available at http://4u.jeffcrouse.info/mt/)

	This text will be replaced	Freescha – Holiday Frost
	This text will be replaced	The Dead Texan – Girth Rides a (Horse)
	This text will be replaced	DNTEL – Last Songs
	This text will be replaced	Julian Fane – Exit New Year
	This text will be replaced	Microstoria – Edu
	This text will be replaced	The Octopus Project – What They Found
	This text will be replaced	Secede – Big Day Out
	This text will be replaced	Am-Boy – Turning Of Season
	This text will be replaced	Neoangin – Trippy Disco
	This text will be replaced	Ratatat – Brule
	This text will be replaced	Ratatat – Bird Priest

Recording Options

• Leave me a message. The maximum length is 3 minutes. You will have to call back a few times.
• Use YouTube QuickCapture.  You don’t have to even be in the frame as long as the audio is clear.  The maximum length is 10 minutes.
• HoundBite is like YouTube for audio.  So if you really don’t want to record a video, this is your solution. The maximum length is 15 minutes.

1. March 20th-23rd Washington DC – visit the ‘rents
2. March 29th – April 4th Chicago - Chiacgo Roadshow
3. April 8th – 14th Liverpool – FACT Climate for Change
   1. Denmark – quick trip while in Liverpool for EnterAction conference
4. April 23rd-26th Austin – visit my brother
5. April 29 – May 1st New Mexico – visiting the IFDM program at UNM
6. July 10-22 (ish) Gijón, Spain – Invisible Threads will be a part of the upcoming exhibition called FEEDFORWARD – The Angel of History curated by Steve Dietz, Christiane Paul. The show will run from July 17th through January 11th, 2010 at LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón, Spain with an opening reception and symposium during the opening weekend.

Eyebeam presents an alternate “World’s Fair” with airborne surveillance balloons, guerilla media towers, and computerized prayer booths

A temporary village occupi

ed by a dozen creatively engineered pavilions, performances, and DJ sets by Tim Sweeney and Juan Maclean.

Friday, March 6 & Saturday, March 7, 2009

9PM – 2AM

Tickets: $15 per night in advance; $30 for both nights in advance at www.eyebeam.org; $20 per night at the door.

Eyebeam 540 W. 21^st St. (btw 10^th and 11^th Aves.)

DATE: February 24, 2009
TIME: 7:00-9:00 pm
VENUE: North 181 – entrance on Evans Way [map],
Massachusetts College of Art + Design
621 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts.
Follow the signs posted on the outside of the Tower Building (black glass)
[Green Line "E"]

:: Jeff Crouse ::

Jeff Crouse creates software and installations that highlight the absurdity of technology in culture. Along with Andrew Mahon and Steve Lambert, he recently launched ABSML (commissioned by Turbulence.org). ABSML is a new markup language that enables the creation of complex sentence formulas for 21st century automatic writing. Jeff’s previous work includes YouThreebe, a YouTube triptych creator; Invisible Threads, a virtual jeans factory in Second Life; and James Chimpton, a robotic monkey that interviewed the artists of the 2008 Whitney Biennial. He is currently developing BoozBot, a bar tending robot / puppet; and DeleteCity, a Wordpress plug-in that finds and republishes content that has been taken down from sites such as Flickr and YouTube. His work has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, the Futuresonic festival in Manchester, UK, the DC FilmFest, and the Come Out and Play Festival in Amsterdam. More >>

::: Mark Skwarek + Joseph Hocking :::

Mark Skwarek and Joseph Hocking will present Children of Arcadia, a real-time virtual ecosystem which undergoes the stress test of apocalypse to expose the moral fibers of its inhabitants and the flaws in their idealized utopia. Virtual reality and augmented reality are used to combine the physical world of downtown Manhattan with a virtual environment called Arcadia. The work gathers real-time information from the Internet related to the American economy and society and translates this data into either a utopia or apocalypse. These changes create a living 17th-century Baroque painting that shifts between a representation of apocalyptic ruin and one of an idealized utopia. More >>

:::: Up Next ::::

Ursula Endlicher – March 17, 2009

PLAN AHEAD: Calendar

::::: About Upgrade! Boston :::::

Upgrade! Boston is curated by Jo-Anne Green for Turbulence.org in partnership with the Studio for Interrelated Media at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. It is one of 32 nodes currently active in Upgrade! International, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. If you would like to present your work or get involved, please email jo at turbulence dot org.

Date:
February 9th, 2009, 12pm – 2pm

Address:
520 Broadway, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10012 (map)

The trip went very well overall, and I hope to do it again soon.  The wonderful Christina Kral is currently working on a video about the trip, and here is a small preview.  Stay tuned for the full version.

draft from christina kral on Vimeo.

Also, all semester I have been keeping track of the hits that my students have been getting on their blog posts. The highest scorers got a little extra credit. The winners were:

1. Jennifer Jacobs with 12 hits
2. Da-Hye Lee with 11 hits

Looks like next semester we’re going to have to focus on drawing hits a little more.

Video triptychs involve three simultaneous video loops projected side by side on the gallery wall.  While formally simple, the effect of the looping sequences, overlapping sounds and awkward  juxtapositions is uncanny and unsettling. This is due to the slippery dis-harmonization of clip lengths,  and the conceptual layering of the elements within the videos.

For this 2nd youtube video show at Postmasters Gallery, the curators Thomas Hutchison, Maria Joao, Salema and James Andrews have selected dozens of examples of original U3B triptychs created by members of Artists Meeting.

I’d love to see you there!