Taipei: City-wide public WLAN: by 2006, the city of Taipei will complete its public WLAN. "In this city, you can sit on a speeding MRT train, talking on a mobile phone, and—plip!—send an e-mail to your mother. We will soon complete a wireless network by which you can access the Net anywhere, anytime. Welcome to Taipei, the City of Convenience."
Citizens now face the fact that WLAN only works up to 60 km/h - if moving in a car, for example. So mobile phone companies still don't have to fear...
Creating an intelligent city: Link Background/challenge/stragegy (pdf): Link Chinese cities face toxic spills: Following explosions at two chemical plants in China, large amounts of toxic compounds have leaked into rivers that supply local populations with drinking water.
Link Interview with Neo-Geisha author Hillary Raphael: Quote: "Starting with Shining Prince Genji -- who fucked his step-mother and boy pages, among others -- and going all down the line through Mishima's perverse anti-heroes, the J-novel has always been, and will always be, god willing, based on the depravity of the human spirit."
Link Interview with Edward Teller: A final interview with the most controversial father of the atomic age, Edward Teller. The results of his work are still being played out in history. Will the future view him as a genuine titan or as the ultimate terminator?
Link Hollywood's Disappointing Fall Box Office: Hollywood has not had a good fall. "The North American box-office total for the fall was $1.34-billion, down nearly 4 per cent from the $1.39-billion registered in 2004. The latest tally was down 18 per cent from the record-shattering $1.63 billion collected in 2003. Because ticket prices have increased slightly, estimated admissions for the fall presented an even bleaker picture of the season. Estimated ticket units were 208.1 million, down nearly 8 per cent from the 223 million reported a year earlier and well shy of the record 268.3 million rung up in 2003."
Link The Zabul triangle: By Michael Griffin. Free passage in and out of what is almost a no-go area for the US military helps Afghan insurgents implement the more efficient tactics they have learned from Iraqi resistance groups.
Link Earliest Animals Had Human-like Genes: Species evolve at very different rates, and the evolutionary line that produced humans seems to be among the slowest. The result, according to a new study by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), is that our species has retained characteristics of a very ancient ancestor that have been lost in more quickly-evolving animals. This overturns a commonly-held view of the nature of genes in the first animals. The work appears in the current issue of the journal Science.
Link Greenhouse-gas levels highest for 650,000 years: Climate record highlights extent of man-made change.
Link BitTorrent Caves To Movie Studios: Owners of the popular downloading software BitTorrent have settled with major movie studios over downloading policies. Quote: "The agreement requires 30-year-old software designer Bram Cohen to prevent his Web site, bittorrent.com, from locating pirated versions of popular movies, effectively frustrating people who search for illegal copies of films. BitTorrent must remove Web links leading to illegal content owned by the seven studios that are members of the Motion Picture Association of America."
Link New monochrom content // "Flowers" / Flower Currency MP3 online: We are proud to announce that Matthias Kertal finalized his musical adaptation of the "flower song", a song created for the "flower currency" project in spring 2005. The experiment was started to explore a value exchange system, created and owned by children, to enable artists to collaborate on the creation of interdisciplinary art works. Work in progress.
 Link Parasitic insects recruited to collect blood samples:
 Quote: "Meet the latest discovery in high-tech syringes. It's the bloodsucking insect Dipetalogaster maximus, and it can take up to 4 millilitres of blood in one meal. What's more, the donor doesn't feel a thing, because it injects an anaesthetic. The insects are being put to work by Christian Voigt of the Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin. He is breeding them as a way to get blood samples from wild animals that are difficult to sample in any other way." Link Bolivia: The Chequered Rainbow: As tensions mount on the eve of national elections in Bolivia, a study of the longest insurrectionary cycle of any Latin American country, stretching from the late eighteenth century to the present day. The explosive fusion of ethnic and class aspirations in the newest round of risings, overthrowing two presidents in as many years.
Quote: "If Latin America has been the site of the most radical opposition to neoliberal restructuring over the past five years, Bolivia has been its insurrectionary frontline. Popular mobilizations on a broad geographical scale, uniting a wide range of class and ethnic forces, have now brought down two presidents—Sánchez de Lozada in October 2003; Mesa in July 2005—and vetoed the constitutionally prescribed accession of a third, Senate leader Vaca Díez, in July 2005. With elections approaching in December 2005, these forces stand poised to exert a continuing influence on the country’s future political and economic development." Link The bomb proliferates: By Georges Le Guelte. The original intention in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons was less the preservation of the world from nuclear destruction than the retention of military supremacy for those states that had it already, plus a few chosen allies. What will happen now?
Link China -- 'Second Wives' Are Back: Concubines were status items in imperial China. Even Mao kept his own harem, and with China’s boom economy it’s all coming back.
Link When Jazz And Hiphop Got Together: Quote: "The jazz/hip-hop nexus is simply a cultural and genealogical fact. Turntablists, MCs, and jazz musicians are collaborating every day. And yet the impact of hip-hop on some of the best new acoustic jazz still isn't widely understood."
Link Bulletproof Monks: "Separatists in southern Thailand—a region that up until Thailand's annexation in 1902 was semi-autonomous, Malay, and largely Muslim—have increased violence against the Thai Buddhist majority in recent years, targeting more and more Buddhist monks and teachers".
 "As a result, new products are being developed to protect Buddhist monks, from bulletproof vests in the traditional saffron hue to motorcycle sidecars—dubbed "monkmobiles"— encased in protective glass and outfitted with a small window for receiving alms." Link Philosophical thoughts about bullshit: Petter Naessan examines Harry Frankfurt's famous little book "On Bullshit".
Link Star Wars as Postmodern Art Epic: Thanks to metaphilm for pointing out this fascinating interpretation of the Star Wars corpus from Aidan Wasley at Slate: "Looking at these familiar films with fresh eyes, unfiltered by the lens of nostalgia and sentiment ... we start to see just how deeply weird they really are. Three decades on, the kids who grew up playing with Luke Skywalker action figures and carrying Princess Leia lunchboxes may be startled to discover that Star Wars is really just one big elephantine postmodern art film."
Link "I Hadn't the Slightest Idea of the Scale of Genocide": Sixty years ago on Sunday, the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial got under way to bring leading Nazis to justice. Whitney Harris was one of the principle figures for the prosecution.
Link 'The Phantom of the Opera' To Break Longest-Running Record: On January 9, Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera" will become the longest running show in Broadway history. "The performance will be number 7,486 -- surpassing the current champion Cats, which held at 7,485 shows and was also written by Webber."
Link Can Going To Art Galleries Cure Binge Drinking? That's what a London report suggests. "Offering the public more varied night-time entertainment, not geared solely towards young drinkers, is the key to avoiding a surge of antisocial behaviour in the wake of this week's extension of pub opening hours, according to the London Assembly."
Link The Cracked Ambience: new and recommended sounds for your personal space
 TAKUMA ITOI - quietitude (karate joe) MIMI SECUE - naila (karate joe) PLAINS - into tone (scarcelight) SKULLLIKE - eggs on equators (scarcelight) THE TRUST RIOTS - dead heaven / ampland (scarcelight) MATSUTAKE - nine & seventeen (Nexsound) New monochrom content // Cthulhu Goatse: Out of the black void of the bloated net I received a hideous JPEG attachment, a single glimpse of forbidden eons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it. That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed out from this godless email I received. If I live, I shall never knowingly supply a link in so hideous a thing.
Link New monochrom content // Farewell to Overhead: Our melancholic electro disco song about a dead projection medium and adolescence.
 Link Intelligence and Representability: Essay by Louis Armand. Intro: >One of the prevailing assumptions about "artificial intelligence," as a project, is that it has proceeded upon the basis of a dream of analogy or translatability between human cognitive systems and a universalised "intelligence." This clearly has something to do with the fact that the project of "artificial intelligence" assumes as its necessary foundation an anthropocentric model -- a model that retains an intrinsic humanism consistent, to a significant degree, with the mechanistics of Descartes and of the Enlightenment generally -- whether dualist or materialist in conception. A particular expression of this predisposition to a cyber-humanism and the simulation of human thought is found in one of the foundational documents of modern cybernetics, described by what has come to be known as the Turing Test.<
Link The Flipbook Archive: An incredible collection of new and old flipbooks, along with history and a blog. In French.
 Link monochrom festival and exhibition // Roböxotica 2005 / monochrom residency links:
Francesca Birks blogs about Roböxotica. Link Jake Applebaum blogs about Roböxotica. Link Vienna Phil's First Time With A Woman: Australian conductor Simone Young became the first woman ever to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic last weekend. "Although the mixed-metaphor reviewers were underwhelmed, we have it on good authority that they were generally courteous and even deferential -- a signal perhaps that while Vienna's musical life is stuck in the 19th century, it has some grace, intelligence and dignity."
Link Google: How About Digital Books For Rent: Quote: "Apparently, the company pitched a plan to an unnamed publisher to offer short-term access (about a week) to book content for roughly 10% of the purchase price. Users could only read the book online -- they wouldn't be able to print or download the content. However, the publisher reportedly refused, saying the price was too low."
Link Imaging The Sun And Solar Wind In 3-D: The two Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft arrive at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. on Nov. 9 for major testing as they near completion. Set to launch in Spring 2006, STEREO is the first mission to image the sun and solar wind in 3-D. This new view is critical to improving our understanding of space weather and its impact to space and on Earth systems.
Link Robots of Arabia: The ideal camel jockey is the size and weight of a starving 4-year-old boy. Ancient tradition collides with new technology, atop a beast racing at 25 miles per hour in 112-degree heat.
Link The FBI's Top Ten Stolen Art: The FBI has released a list of its most wanted stolen art. "Heading the list were 7,000 to 10,000 Iraqi antiquities stolen from the Iraq National Museum and archaeological sites after the US invasion in 2003. A handful of cylindrical seals believed to be more than 4,500 years old have been recovered, but 5,000 remained missing. It also included the biggest art heist in history - the 1990 theft of an estimated $US300 million ($A409.72 million) in paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston."
Link monochrom festival and exhibition // Roböxotica 2005 / Links:
roböxotica @ boingboing link roböxotica @ laughing squid link roböxotica @ rhizome link roböxotica @ ctnow link roböxotica @ fm4 link monochrom festival and exhibition // Roböxotica 2005 / Vienna (16 November - 20 November): Roböxotica is the first and, inevitably, leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics. Until recently, no attempts were made to publically discuss the role of cocktail robotics as an index for the integration of technological innovations into the human Lebensraum, or to document the increasing occurrence of radical hedonism in man-machine communication. Roboexotica is an attempt to fill this vacuum. A micro mechanical change of paradigm in the age of borderless capital. Mr. Turing would without a doubt test this out.
Scientists, researchers, computer geeks and artists from all over the world participate to build cocktail robots and discuss about technological innovation, futurology and science fiction.
Roböxotica is a cooperation with Shifz and 'Bureau für Philosophie', Vienna.  Public Fiction: The topic of this year’s event is Public Fictions – Robots for (almost) everyone! The title public fictions refers to two different ways of collaboratively generating technical artefacts and cultural conventions: On the one hand it refers to the fact that society and technology are partly structured by fictions generated by the two of them together. It seems that certain technological developments have partly been defined by imaginariae derived from popular culture. For example, investigations on artificial intelligence have to a great extent been triggered by Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001 (1969); and our ideas about cyberspace were heavily influenced by the cyberpunk literature of the 1980s (William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, a.o.) Robots have especially always played a part in the inventory of popular imaginary and political utopia: they represent a fantasy about post humanism as well as our hopes for a better society through delegation of work (both physical and mental). Even though developers and financiers tend to claim the opposite, one often gets the impression that robotics – especially when trying to imitate the human body – develops more or less independent from the modern parameters of usefulness. According to the paradigm that complex processes cannot be simulated through linear logic, a new approach has developed during the last few years. This new approach is called ‘social robotics’ and it will be one of the main issues of this year’s Roboexotica. The focus of the symposium which will be held in this context is to demonstrate that the practices of technological progress are not isolated from society’s realm of imagination. Furthermore, public fictions have a normative function: they define what actually can be thought or done. Moreover, public fictions have a lot to do with developers’ intentions and funding requests: they define what developers are interested in as well as tendering and influence submission prose. One of the mightiest public fictions in this respect may well be the tale of the increase of prosperity due to technology. This tale has been the stimulus of technological progress for the last 200 years. The symposium is especially interested in the interaction of old tales and with their updated versions in various media formats, like novels, statistics, articles in magazines, movies, TV, and internet forums. A second aspect is the fact that digital networking technologies offer new possibilities for collaboratively producing texts and artefacts. The term ‘Public Fiction’ is used literally here: what kinds of cooperative fictions are generated through non-human entities (bots), and in what context? And what are the consequences for the concepts of the ‘work of art’ and the ‘author’, and for poetology? Link CryptoKids: Mark Cooley (on Rhizome Raw): >Check out CryptoKids, the National Security Administration's attempt at recruiting "America's future codemakers and codebreakers." I thought that military recruiting was sleazy going after teens - the NSA seems to be interested in elementary schoolers. You can't go wrong with trademarked characters like "Decipher Dog (D-Dog), Crypto Cat (C-Cat) and Rosetta Stone (you guessed it - language analyst) and more.<
Link Bush Declares War On Porn: Quote: "The Administration has launched a broad assault on sexual content that targets the entertainment industry from Hollywood producers to hotels. The offensive includes creation of a Justice Dept. Obscenity Prosecution Task Force and an anti-porn squad at the FBI, a crackdown on indecent programming by the new Federal Communications Commission chairman, and a wave of indecency legislation. The push aims to pressure companies involved in films such as Wedding Crashers, TV shows such as Hot Properties and Nip/Tuck, and soft-core cable porn to tone down or face a backlash. But while Christian conservatives cheer, business is gearing up to take on the Smut Squad."
Link Steve Garfield / New England Auto Show 2005: DaddyD writes: "Vlogging or video blogging, or video casting, or whatever they are calling it these days, has become the next hot thing. iTunes 6 put it on millions of desktops one night when no one was looking, making it just as easy to subscribe to a video blog as it is to subscribe to a podcast. This might just be a very good thing. Unless you don't like watching people pointing cameras at themselves while they do things like going shopping for a microwave with their mothers. Fortunately, one or two vloggers have managed to find a format that is watchable. Steve Garfield, a video producer from Boston who has his own vlog and also provides content for Rocketboom.com, has one post that really nails it. It's a quick and dirty piece covering his visit to the New England Autoshow. I can sooo relate. Well, except for his problems fitting into some of the cars. That's a problem I will never have..."
Link France Is Burning: Thierry Bardini: "How does it feel to see the country of your birth burning on television? Today it makes me feel like a migrant worker, watching the kids of other migrant workers rioting in the streets of cities you've probably have never heard of -- but that they have been cleaning for two generations. Today I am reminded of the same scenes I once witnessed first-hand in the streets of Caracas and Los Angeles. Today I am reminded by all these comparisons I read in the papers, Paris-Baghdad, Ile-de-France-Tchetchnia, that bring back images and feelings to my mind. Flashes of light, Carnival, riot. My neighbor, this insignificant dog-walking-little-man, breaking a window, shoplifting. Black uniforms on motorcycles with very long sticks and machine guns. Fires. Dionysian parties, tomorrow tears."
Link The Ontological Argument and the Sin of Hubris: Toni Vogel Carey's answer to the most argued-over argument for the existence of God.
Link Scientist Studies Link Between Felines and Mental Illness: Can your cat make you crazy? Dr. Fuller Torrey is studying whether a parasite in Fluffy's droppings causes schizophrenia, a mental illness that strikes 2.2 million Americans and is characterized by hallucinations, delusions and trouble regulating emotions.
Link Sony BMG sued over cloaking software on music CD: A lawsuit is filed as several of its music CDs are found to install anti-piracy software that hides on computers, and can be exploited by hackers.
Link Doped-Up Killer Blames Aliens: Roderick Nigel Martin was driving a stolen garbage truck when it collided head-on with a car in July 2003. Martin thought aliens had invaded Earth and he was the last surviving human on a collision course with Mars. The Martians he grappled with turned out to be police.
Link Scenes from a Revolution: DVD is killing CD - what will it do to the book? Quote: "The start of a cultural revolution is often imperceptible, and there is one taking place right now on your living-room shelves. In between the tattered paperbacks and last year's birthday cards a new format is demanding space, pushing at the party walls of categoric hierarchies. Digital Versatile Disc has invaded our homes and the cultural consequences are going to be considerable."
Link Looking For The Women Where are the women composers? Quote: "For centuries men have dominated the history, theory and politics of music. In addition to history books that glossed over women’s contributions, early music theory distinguished between harmonically weaker 'feminine' cadences and strong, resolute 'masculine' ones. It’s easy to see why a woman might find this offensive. Music itself is neither masculine nor feminine, Joan Towers argues. It’s either good or it’s bad. 'Everything in music goes counter to what we think of as feminine or masculine. It just doesn’t apply'."
Link The Cracked Ambience: new and recommended sounds for your personal space
ZAVOLOKA + KOTRA - live untitled (Nexsound Live Reports) VALINA - epode ep (trost/54°40' or fight!) VARIOUS - dis_patch: music from the belgrade festival 2002-2004 (rx-tx) VARIOUS - now.03 (underscan) RUSUDEN - warm human antennae (soho six) ROOM 204 / GI JOE - split 10" (interstellar) OMIT - tracer (the Helen Scarsdale Agency) monochrom on tour // monochrom @ Winterthur Short Film Festival 2005: From November, 10th to 13th 2005, Winterthur/Switzerland will become the centre of short films again.
Two monochrom video products (The Charcoal Burner, Fieldrecording in Sankt Wechselberg) are part of a special short film programme called "Facts? Facts? Facts?". Quote: "Can one really trust pictures and documentations? Mockumentaries work with the means of documentary filmmaking, but tell invented stories. The audience is left to decide for itself if the films shown in the two programmes are mocked or not." Additionally, monochrom's Johannes Grenzfurthner is scheduled to be part of a roundtable discussion entitled "Can we change the world with films? Forms of manipulation in documentary filmmaking". Filmmakers from the special program and Swiss documentary filmmakers will be discussing the demands and perspectives of documentary filmmaking. Link New monochrom content // The Last Frontier Of Tourism: The boundaries of space tourism, billionaire cosmonauts, terraforming at home, faked missions, interstellar trips with cryosleep radio, bedroom ars astronautica, lunar embassies, star spangled skins and a lot of space junk. An article by Stefan Tiron (monochrom artist-in-residence).
 Link Evolution in the bible, says Vatican: The Vatican has issued a stout defence of Charles Darwin, voicing strong criticism of Christian fundamentalists who reject his theory of evolution and interpret the biblical account of creation literally.
Link Britons are falling victim to drunken online shopping binges: A growing number of Britons are shopping online after one too many drinks, resulting in the spread of a new syndrome called BLOTO (Buying Loads Of Tat Online).
Link World's Ugliest Animals? Well... I'm not sure about that... but some of them really aren't cute looking...
Link Crucial Dance Preservation Group Near Collapse: Quote: "Since it was founded in 1940, the Dance Notation Bureau has been at the forefront of dance preservation, and it has one of the most important collections of dance scores in the nation. But on Oct. 28, it laid off five of its six staff members, including its executive director, Ilene Fox... Dance notation, using a system of symbols called Labanotation and functioning much like a music score, enables dances to be recreated accurately long after a choreographer has died. The bureau's library houses more than 700 scores for dances by choreographers from George Balanchine and Doris Humphrey to Bill T. Jones and Mark Morris... For now, the library remains active and accessible. But the institution is on the ropes."
Link Protecting against the Next Katrina: Wetlands mitigate flooding, but are they too damaged in the gulf?
Link And For The Second Offense, They Cut Off Your Mouse-Clicking Finger: Quote: "A Hong Kong man has been jailed for three months for film piracy after he shared movie files over the internet. The authorities say he is the first person in the world to be prosecuted for passing on files using a popular file-sharing program called BitTorrent."
Link Floating islands gone wild: Or when islands attack: An ominous, mobile island in Massachusetts "has been floating for as long as anyone can remember, buoyed by a mat of sphagnum moss and gases from decomposing plants. It is a curiosity and sometimes a nuisance" – because it has quite a temper.
Link Sperm Bank: Actor Vincent Gallo is selling his sperm online, for $1,000,000 a pop (excuse the pun).
 "Sperm is 100% guaranteed to be donated by Mr. Gallo who is drug, alcohol and disease free. If the purchaser of the sperm chooses the option of natural insemination, there is an additional charge of $500,000. However, if after being presented detailed photographs of the purchaser, Mr. Gallo may be willing to waive the natural insemination fee and charge only for the sperm itself." Link New monochrom content // Fieldrecording in Sankt Wechselberg: Our short film about art, talk and discourse.
"Around one and a half years ago, the American experimental musician Jerry Zachary Adamski conceived one of the most unusual and exciting projects in recent music history."  Link Space Station Milestone: NASA Marks Five Years Of A Unique 'Room With A View': Break out the thermostabalized beef tips with mushrooms and rehydratable apple cider! NASA and the international space station partners are celebrating a major milestone, as the unique orbiting laboratory marks the fifth anniversary of continuous, onboard human presence. As of Nov. 2, crews have lived and worked on the station more than 1,826 consecutive days.
Link Battle for the digital bookshelf gains momentum: Separate announcements from Google, Amazon and Microsoft focus on digitising the world's bookshelves.
Link The Dress of Thought: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, by Nicholas Ostler (HarperCollins, 640 pp., $29.95).
Quote: "Most of us have, at one time or another, puzzled over such historical-linguistic conundrums as: Why did only Britain, of all the Roman provinces overrun by Germans, end up speaking a Germanic language? Why did the Portuguese language “take” in Brazil, but not in Africa, while Dutch “took” in Africa but not in Indonesia? If the Phoenicians were so important in Mediterranean history, how is it that they left not a single work of literature behind? Since we know of no nation named Aramaia, whence came Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth? What actually happened to Sumerian? Or Mongolian, the language of a vast medieval empire?" Link The Pesky Meddling Artist Who Can't Leave Well Enough Alone: The release of the complete Star Wars series on DVD has revived a "long-standing debate about the right of artists to alter their work. George Lucas, who never made a movie he couldn’t touch up years later, has become a living symbol of this debate since he seems unable to leave his creations alone."
Link New monochrom content // Georg Paul Thomann: Funeral Video: monochrom represented the Republic of Austria at the Sao Paulo Art Biennial, Sao Paulo (Brazil) in 2002 by creating the fictional artist Georg P. Thomann. Through the implementation of this ironic mechanism - even the catalogue includes the biography of the non-existent artist - we tried to solve with pure fiction the philosophical and bureaucratic dilemma usually attached to the system of representation. (More info.)
 In July we released a press info that "Austrian artist and writer Prof. Georg Paul Thomann died in a tragic accident at the tender age of 60". On July 29, 2005 we staged his funeral in Hall in Tirol. Thomann's gravesite remains in Hall. So far, Georg Paul Thomann's tombstone is world's only tombstone with an engraved URL. Finally, the video of the funeral is online. Link Aaron Koblin - Flight Patterns:
 "The following flight pattern visualizations are the result of experiments leading to the project Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne. FAA data was parsed and plotted using the Processing programming environment. The frames were composited with Adobe After Effects and/or Maya and the final piece was highlighted at SIGGRAPH 2005 in the NVIDIA Immersive Dome Experience." Link usedbooksearch.co.uk: A used books meta search engine for secondhand, rare, out of print books and text books. Search, browse and buy online from thousands of bookstores worldwide.
Link Is Conservation Killing Culture? Quote: "It's no secret that millions of native peoples around the world have been pushed off their land to make room for big oil, big metal, big timber, and big agriculture. But few people realize that the same thing has happened for a much nobler cause: land and wildlife conservation. Today the list of culture-wrecking institutions put forth by tribal leaders on almost every continent includes not only Shell, Texaco, Freeport, and Bechtel, but also more surprising names like Conservation International (CI), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)."
Link Einstein's Mistakes: Science sets itself apart from other paths to truth by recognizing that even its greatest practitioners sometimes err.
Link George Bush on why he went to war: >President George W Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals. In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday 10, Monday 17 and Monday 24 October), Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003. Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"<
Link Not for or Against. Quite the contrary: This is precisely the title of Cedric Klapisch's film. Neither for, nor against the war. "Quite the contrary" signifies that there is no difference between the war and the non-war, and that before deciding, it is necessary to be clear about the status of the event. However, this war is a nonevent, and it is absurd to come to a conclusion about a nonevent. It is first of all necessary to know what it masks, that which it holds in place, that which it exorcises. There is no need to search for long: the event that opposes the nonevent of the war is September 11. (Review by Jean Baudrillard.)
Link New monochrom content // The Charcoal Burner: Our short film about work, craftmanship and system theory.
 Link New Book Expands Biological Classifications To Account For 'Alien' Life: Quote: >What would you call an alien if you encountered it on the street tomorrow? What if that alien didn't come from another world but rather was created in a laboratory right here on Earth and functioned differently from other Earth life Either way, Peter Ward has the beginnings of an answer. In a new book, the University of Washington paleontologist puts forth an expanded "tree of life," or biological classification system, to account for a variety of life forms that would not fit in the current system.<
Link Venus Mission May Hold Surprises For Scientists And Public: University of Colorado at Boulder planetary scientist Larry Esposito, a member of the European Space Agency's Venus Express science team, believes the upcoming mission to Earth's "evil twin" planet should be full of surprises.
Link Beam Me Up, Godly Being: Why would those aliens travel thirty trillion miles across the galaxy just to abduct a few neurotic Californians? We’d like to know...
Link The Game To Expand Copyright: Quote: "Copyright holders have been batting a thousand at the Supreme Court over the last decade. So why the complaints? The Property Rights Alliance and its allies know the real copyright debate isn't about whether intellectual property should be protected (virtually everyone agrees that it should) but over recent attempts to expand copyright far beyond its traditional boundaries. Those expansions are hard to defend, so copyright hawks are doing their best to change the subject."
Link KF Cafe: On the Romanian border, near Hungary lies Arad City. It is a small town with an interesting history concerning the latest developments in local alternative culture. The pioneers of Romanian 1970s experimental video - "kinema ikon" - came from Arad. Now, KF – the cafe in mid-town is garnering for all the creative energies that come from Bucharest, Timisoara and Cluj. Comic book workshops, alternative comics releases, 2d and 3d animation, experimental music, steet art, indie zines, contemporary art and alternative graphics – you name it – everything is available over there. If you are interested in a collaboration or exchange contact them at kf_arad (AT) yahoo.com.
monochrom info // Team! Francesca Birks (monochrom artist-in-residence from Toronto, Canada), Stefan Tiron (monochrom artist-in-residence from Bucharest, Romania) and Roland Gratzer (FH Joanneum Graz, beloved intern) working in our (recently cleaned up) office. What a thrill!
 AC:Collabortive is a forum and peer-reviewed journal online and in print. It is a non-profit free art resource. Collaborative art projects in all media are linked, as well as discussed. Submissions--comments, interviews, and articles--are on going.
Link The Cracked Ambience: new and recommended sounds for your personal space
1BOMB<1TARGET - s/t (Hirntrust Grind Media) 27 / BUG - split 12" (Interstellar / Noise Appeal) BIG NURSE - american waste (High Density Headache) BULBUL - s/t aka 5 (?) HERMANO - live at W2 (suburban) TAKUMA ITOI - quietitude (karate joe) NATE DENVER'S NECK - no one is coming to help you (rock is hell) University Educated Women More Likely To Have Low Sex Drives: In some cases, ignorance truly is bliss.
"It may well be that highly educated women are different from less-educated women in many respects. Maybe they have higher standards . . . higher expectations and legitimately lower evaluations. They may be living much busier, much more stressful lives," said William Fisher, a professor of psychology and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Western Ontario who is a co-author of the paper. Link [The Archives] 
. . . . . |
. . monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993.
[more] Booking monochrom: [Europe] [USA] External monochrom links: [monochrom Wikipedia] [monochrom Flickr] [monochrom blip.tv] [monochrom GV] [monochrom Youtube] [monochrom Facebook] [monochrom iTunes] [monochrom Twitter] 
[ P r o j e c t s ] Soviet Unterzoegersdorf / Sector 2 / The Adventure Game Krach der Roboter: Hello World! Slacking is killing the DIY industry (T-Shirt) Carefully Selected Moments / CD, LP Freedom is a whore of a word (T-Shirt) International Year of Polytheism 2007 Santa Claus Vs. Christkindl: A Mobster Battle Kiki and Bubu and The Shift / Short film Kiki and Bubu and The Privilege / Short film Kiki and Bubu and The Self / Short film Kiki and Bubu and The Good Plan / Short film Kiki and Bubu and The Feelings / Short film / Short film Soviet Unterzoegersdorf / Sector 1 / The Adventure Game I was a copyright infringement in a previous life (T-Shirt) Firing Squad Euro2008 Intervention I can count every star in the heavens above -- The image of computers in popular music All Tomorrow's Condensations / Puppet show The Redro Loitzl Story / Short film Law and Second Order (T-Shirt) They really kicked you out of the Situationist International? When I was asked to write about new economy Arse Elektronika 2007, 2008, 2009 etc. The Void's Foaming Ebb / Short film The Charcoal Burner / Short film Fieldrecording in Sankt Wechselberg / Short film Campaign For The Abolition Of Personal Pronouns Entertainment (Unterhaltung) / Short film Nicholas Negroponte Memorial Cable Experience the Experience! (West Coast USA/Canada Tour 2005) A Holiday in Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Massive Multiplayer Thumb-Wrestling Network Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Metroblogging Every Five Seconds an Inkjet Printer Dies Somewhere 452 x 157 cm² global durability Blattoptera / Art for Cockroaches An attempt to emulate an attempt The Department for Criticism against Globalisation Disney vs. Chrusov / Short film Turning Threshold Countries Into Plows Roböxotica // Festival for Cocktail-Robotics Cracked Foundation For The Fine Arts Oh my God, they use a history which repeats itself! (T-Shirt) Administrating:  . . . . . |
|||
