Claude Closky Net Artist

Net art by Claude Closky, I liked Pedagogy, U and his free wallpapers aren't bad either. And he's blogging too.

Paper Rad

Installation view of the Paper Rad exhibition at the Green on Red gallery, Dublin. The exhibition continues until the 19th of November.
More images here

Night of Bush Capturing

An interesting article from the Washington Post about the propaganda war being waged in gaming as Islamogaming companies respond in kind to the inherent propaganda of American war games. From the ridiculous Night of Bush Capturing (aka Quest for Bush modded from Quest for Saddam) to the more substantial Afkar Media's Under Ash.

On a related note a Salon article on Joseph deLappe's Dead in Iraq intervention in America's Army online game

Via From Sun Tzu to XBox

Psss buy a PC all the cool kids are doing it

This apple ad confuses me, the guy on the left is that funny guy from the Daily Show and the guy on the left is one of those ugly guys that ad agencies have decided are koool and stuff beer ads with. Decoding ads is a tricky business at the best of times but I think it all revolves around aspirational figures. So I can understand the ugly guy in beer ads - which are all pitched at 14-16 year olds and drunk kids probably aspire to being ugly geeks, they are drunk after all ...and kids. But I'm the market for computers and I don't identify with him because I'm not ugly - and being a ugly-ist is the last OK prejudice- but I do like the Daily Show guy so that does that mean PCs are cooler then macs? Or maybe it just means that advertising is made by morons.

John Maeda's advice to students

When you're younger: Do More. Think Less.
When you're older: Do Less. Think More.

via Maeda's simplicity

What they think of us

Thanks to TCAL for this gem,right wing US blogger Debbie Schlussel takes issue with the Ploughshares acquital and decides that the growth of Islam is the cause. Does this mean we're next to be invaded? She's been on Fox News, doesn't Fox decide US military strategy these days? The comments are particularly hilarious, still we have our own version who has an obsession with Mary Robinson (still our best loved President ever, why does he hate Ireland so?) and alarmingly teaches at UCC.

Blackletter.ie Irish art portal launched

Blackletter.ie is a new collaborative workspace for Irish contemporary art created by Alan Butler, Cliona Harmey and Niall Flaherty the site features news, articles, an art calender with a self publishing feature but their opening project a google maps mashup showing ephermal, temporary and location based artworks around Dublin shows that this is going to be a lot more clued in then art.ie for example. Of course the success of projects like this rely on users so go sign up now!

Interview in the Sunday Tribune

While I was gone Eimear McKeith interviewed me about the Net Art Open for The Sunday Tribune and the article (which was excellent) appeared last Sunday (23rd July. I'll scan it and put on the site shortly. The Net Art Open also featured in Italian paper L'Unita and on two of my daily reads Rhizome and Random Magazine. Needless to say traffic to the Net Art Open has been pretty crazy since.

I'm back

I'm back, anything happen while I was gone?

Summer Plans

I'm going to be taking a break from blogging until August.

I won't be completely offline though as I'm participating as a guest in the - empyre - soft-skinned space discussion on 'Bare Life' as part of the Document 12 magazine project, maybe you can join me there. Full details below

July 2006 on -empyre- soft-skinned space: "Bare Life"
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Please join guests Jordan Crandall (US), Tina Gonsalves (AU), GH
Hovagimyan (US), Conor McGarrigle (IR), Susana Mendes Silva (PT), and
Michele White (US) as we address
a question posed by the upcoming Documenta 12:

"What is bare life?"
This second question underscores the sheer vulnerability and complete exposure of being. Bare life deals with that part of our existence from which no measure of security will ever protect us. But as in sexuality, absolute exposure is intricately connected with infinite pleasure. There is an apocalyptic and obviously political
dimension to bare life (brought out by torture and the concentration
camp). There is, however, also a lyrical or even ecstatic dimension
to it – a freedom for new and unexpected possibilities (in human
relations as well as in our relationship to nature or, more generally, the world in which we live). Here and there, art dissolves the radical separation between painful subjection and joyous liberation. But what does that mean for its audiences?"

Subscribe at http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Net Art Open 2006 launched

I'm pleased to announce that the Stunned Net Art Open 2006 launched today. Now in it's fourth edition the Net Art Open takes a different approach to the curation of Net Art online. Rather then present a single event based exhibition selected by a curator or panel of selectors the Net Art Open is an ongoing blog based process which will unfold over the next six months. Curatorial bias has been removed by accepting all work which meets the criteria. The result is a true reflection of the state of Net Art now.

The emphasis in this edition will be bringing the exhibition to the audience, taking account of the changing way people access the net. With so much new work being produced all the time even with the best will in the world it's difficult to keep up so the Net Art Open will be blogged one work at a time with RSS feeds for newsfeed readers and blog aggregators, each entry will be tagged for technorati and del.icio.us and a flickr pool will be created. In addition each entry will feature on the front page of Stunned.

The net art open was started in 2002 by Conor McGarrigle and Arthur X. Doyle as part of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.com intervention, subsequent editions were in 2003 and 2004-5..

What you myspace will be held against you

The New Scientist reveals that the Pentagon's NSA in the form of ARDA (Advanced Research Development Activity) are interested in the information people post about themselves on social networking sites like myspace and are funding research into it's mass harvesting. A paper entitled Semantic Analytics on Social Networks presented at the W3C's WWW2006 conference revealing how data from online social networks and other databases can be combined to uncover facts about people was part-funded by ARDA. ARDA according to New Scientist is an organisation whose role is to spend NSA money on research that can solve some of the most critical problems facing the US intelligence community principally the problem of how to make sense of the massive amounts of data they collect.

Google Bono

Google Bono has been getting a spectacular amount of visitors since it was launched here last Tuesday thanks in no small part to all the sites that have carried it including (but not limited to) u2.com, u2star.com, U2twilight, rhizome.org, googlemapsmania, nitenichiryu.org, random-magazine, turbulence, pajamasmedia and updaters. A big thank you to all these and everyone else who helped spread the word.

1916

I was at the celebrations of the 90th anniversary of the 1916 rising in Dublin today and I thought this banner on Liberty Hall caught the true spirit of 1916.

myDeathSpace

I guess it had to happen, a directory of dead myspace members, ghoulish certainly but also an interesting sociological document which shows that american young people die from car accidents and guns or alternatively yet another example of the evils of myspace.

Why Technorati sucks

Last year I did the Bloomsday tagbomb which simply put was the full text of the first chapter of Ulysses with every word a technorati tag. Since then it's thrown up some interesting technorati tags. Some are kind of amusing such as

i want my tea now
who let the jews out
nothing to do with running
what is the secret
gay or running

but most are not very amusing at all (for obvious reasons I'm not to give examples) but they reveal a vast underside to Technorati consisting of thousands of specially created spam blogs tagged with every possible combination of spam keywords. I knew splogs existed but had no idea just how extensive the problem is. It makes you wonder just what proportion of Technorati tracked sites are splogs and just how long Google will put up with it.

The Net Art Open

I haven't posted in a while as I've been busy with the Net Art Open among other things. There has been a huge response to the call for entries (in no small part thanks to Rhizome who including it on their front page and in the Digest), from the quality of the work submitted so far this is going to be a really exciting exhibition.
The deadline for the first call is April 20th so there's still plenty of time to get your entry in.

That's it, Bush likes blogs - screw you guys ...

Time to pack it up, Bush has now personally endorsed blogs (and that after spoiling cocaine, drink and jesus for the rest of us)

Woman Asks Where People Can See Good Things In Iraq, Bush replies Blogs and the internet

I think this flickr photo is what he means.

via TCAL

Bebo madness

This Bebo thing's getting out of hand even the Minister for Justice Michael McDowell has a Bebo page now and I see Dave Fanning's trying to convince people that he's 26 years old on Myspace (use an old photo Dave!).

Google maps email traceroute

A very nice Google maps mashup which visualises the route of any email and the Google map builder automates putting a customised Google map on your website.

via coin operated

The Net Art Open 2006 call for entries

I have just launched the 2006 call for entries for the Net Art Open. The Net Art Open is an open submission exhibition for internet based artwork which accepts all valid entries. I first created it with Artie Doyle in 2002 as part of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.com intervention subsequent editions took place in 2003 and 2004-5

Click here for more information on how to participate

Wiley Wiggins blog

I watched Dazed and Confused again over the weekend and today came across Wiley Wiggins (Mitch) blog, and it's not bad either.

Irish Blog Awards - be me for a night

I'm not going to make it to the Irish Blog Awards this Saturday where Stunned has been shortlisted in arts and culture so if anyone is interested in representing (or better still pretend to be) me get in touch conor-at-stunned.org

Irish blog awards shortlist

I've been shortlisted for the Irishblog awards in the arts & culture category, thanks to everyone who voted for me and thanks for all the plugs to TCAL who should obviously win their category. There is a large cash prize, right?

Irish Blog Awards - vote early, vote often

I've been nominated for an Irish blog award in the arts and culture category, you can vote for me if you're bothered I'm a little ambivalent about blog awards in general but suppose it's nice to have an Irish one. I was surprised to see though that Indymedia.ie wasn't nominated, that seems like a major omission. If you're going to vote do vote for TCAL which is certainly my favourite Irish blog and Fifiefoefum which fights it's own shadow in great style.

On the 8th day

I don't normally go on about my amazing google ranking but I felt I had to mention that I am highly placed for on the 8th day god created Billy Corgan.

Still Langered

Ah technorati, the last refuge of a scoundrel. I started the technorati tag langer and had it all to myself until some skanger posted to it. Now I need a new one.

Guy de Maupassant on Blogging

The fashionable world is stirred up about the same nonsense; society is still concerned about Monsieur X's sleeping with Madame Z. The stupid political scene, manipulated by the same idiots, goes from rut to rut, and every day solemn-looking gentlemen write innumerable columns about the same subjects, which the simpleminded discuss heatedly, unaware that they have already read the same thing hundreds of times!
thanks Artrift

Billy Corgan online

Billy Pumpkin's rehabilitation continues online as he writes his autobiography chapter by chapter, and it's pretty interesting. He also has a great download page with many free MP3s and videos of live and rare recordings, guitar tabs, nintendo ROMs(Billy as Mario), fonts and some pretty scary wallpapers. Keep it up, Billy, and we may even forgive you those last few pumpkin's albums.

Free Music to download

Epitonic top mp3 free and legal downloads from a huge variety of music particularly strong on indie and electronic with a large 20th century composers section. In addition to the top download list if you browse the categories every band has at least one free sample mp3. Even better is the Epitonic Radio player which lets you select from 50 music categories and make a streaming playlist of 20-500 tracks or stream entire albums or even select a band and automatically generate a similar band playlist. I can't think of a better way to discover new music.

RSS feed (copy link) of the Amazon top 200 free MP3s

Hidden Beck track from his website via

Even more MP3s from the Hype Machine archive of blog audio

Friday Links

I haven't posted in a while so here's a bunch of interesting links I would have posted if I had got around to it.
The complete Calvin & Hobbes archive.
A nice tool to visualise your hard drive and see where all your space has gone
PixieDiscs $25 for 'authorised' Pixies bootlegs, this is what they invented filesharing for.
Thomas Hirschhorn Drift Topography (here's a very bad pic, you really need a video to do it justice) now compare that to Langlands and Bell's bit of warzone tourism
I recently saw (taped) yet another wonderful Storyville documentary as they follow Nokia's new 'ethical management consultant' on a trip to their factory in China. A fascinating insight into where all your high tech gear is coming from.

It's only blogging

A nice piece on blogging by Mark Dery which has a go at bloggers who take themselves too seriously.

David Byrne's Blog

David Byrne has an online journal - I'm kinda glad he didn't call it a blog I think I'm getting blogger fatigue -which is surprising because it's very personal and I'd always supposed him to be very private.
Artforum has also started a blog which isn't a blog with the launch of their online diary which might as well be the New York social diary except it has a slightly higher proportion of famous artists.

Some links

Jacques Derrida obituary from Liberation
Ireland's world cup qualifier 0-0 glorious victory over France as reported in France.
both links above in French
Masters of Liebowski via Memepool

Archives

Old Stunned weblog archives:

June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
May 2003
April 2003
March 2003
February 2003
January 2003
December 2002
November 2002
October 2002
September 2002
August 2002
July 2002
June 2002
May 2002