What is art?

The other day I was at a presentation of David Armengol, commisionair of "Espai Montcada". He gave an interesting lecture about the development of Art proyects. Also he asisted in several (contemporary) art proyects in Barcelona. The most interesting part of his presentation was however his final question: What is art? Do we think the concept art has gone or changed severely over the last decades?

Of course it is obvious that the concept of Art has changed, because of the way of thinking and because of the technology involved. If art could be difined as an well-thought expression of the artist to the receiver in a creative way and with controlling the techniques involved, than yes: Art has made a mayor change.

Globalizacion, the internet, are two developments (first one is a state of mind and de other technological) which have changed the world. A more commun thought, freedom of thought, contact with other cultures and freedom of traveling. One of the obvious examples is students going on internship. Now the one who says that these developments not have lead to a better understanding of humanity in general did probably not think verywell. The basic of understanding lies in better communication. Moreover communication, as we now know, is not only text and speach but experiencing as well.

The last one is the most important. Once experienced you can understand others, was you understand you can understand life in general better. So this leads to a reunion of art, and a globalizazion and standarization of art. I think the ancient concept is fading away untill everything merges together again: Art, technology, media, entertainment, teaching, politics will all be more in commun, rather than individual things...

Jahfed.com

Worldpeace, Ciberactivism in the Web and AI

Collaboration is a great thing in the world and towards World Peace. It is the greatest power of mankind. Create collaboration got us to the point where we are right now. Technical and social development. Share documents, knowledge, art and so much more for free. Create a knowledge database together (Wikipedia), solve math together (WikiMath), live in a virtual world together (2nd life, Sims online), create the whole world together!

Making this huge collaborative thinking together and more understanding for eachother will make a shift towards worldpeace, if only we could suppress these damn human basic needs (will to survive and their developments like, urge to create status, urge to have sex, urge to use violence to reach your goal). So what do we do: strive to create intelligent like the Bible or the Coran told us and play God (or Allah) ourselves. The need to create worldpeace has driven us towards understanding and recreating ourselves in a more perfect form: Artificial Intelligence.

Will we ever reach this point? I don’t thinks so, since human nature and nature always will be stronger than the human intelligence. Will we go more towards it? Big possibility.

Jahfed.com

The digital erruption and psychological problems

Only the fact that the Sims, 2nd Life and World of Warcraft addicts are adopted by the same rehabilitation centers as drugsaddicts in Argentine and the BBC made a showprogram about the effect on children by taking away the TV and the Computer for one day, worries me (and a lot more people) about the effect of the digital era on the people.

Well at first it are of course the parents and close friends who can spot grave addiction to the digital media. But the best warning would be if you, yourself could life with the fact that we are not that dependend at all of technology (Are we?). Image a powershutdown for one day or a week. It caused loads of trouble in America. People robbed the stores and streets were unsafe. Imagine living in an orthodix camp with no electricity. No telephones, no computers, no electric light, no laptops, no printers, no recorded music, no movies. What would realy happen? Would we go mad? Would we return to our core basic human needs?

I don’t know, only by observing the human being in occasions where it did happen gives us some clues to the answers.

Psychological problems as we know them, or even more how Americans and Canadians know them, are an evolution of technical development. You wouldn’t find them in the poor African countries, because their still concerned about food and safety. That means they can not worry about other problems yet, unless they develop.

Giving lectures in future in college about the dangers of the media will give them more awareness of what is hapening. Social awarens classes so to say. Would be a plausible solution to be considered by the gouvernment. However someone who studies the effects should make a study program that is effective to the pupils.

Jahfed.com

2nd Life, The Sims and World of Warcraft

Ever dreamed of a second oportunity??!?? Here is your chance! Start your life over again, and do it better! The way you always wanted it. And the best thing is: Get a new own (virtual) identity!
The Sims, World of Warcraft and 2nd Life are just some of the phenomenons of our time. People can create their own Avatar (digital representation of a real person like your foto in MSN Messenger) and wander around in their favourite virtual world. Do everything they can’t do in real life. And the best thing: anonimously.

Take the fat kid with spots all over his face making a 3D digital representation of himself in the form of Brat Pitt and like this he can get all the virtual girls! Better than spending all the money and energy to plastic surgery and doing sports and diets.

Creators of these games and virtual worlds (2nd life reminds YOU however that it is NOT a game) see the new oportunity of earning money, but also virtual money which can be real money or not. Create your own store in a virtual world and earn real money. A lot of companies (to name a few small ones: Nike, Coca Cola, MacDonalds, Adidas) saw the value of this new extension of the business model and invested A LOT of money in 2nd life and other virtual worlds. Let’s add to the 7 marketing P’s the virtual P’s and you have a new oportunity to earn money. Sounds great!

Worldwide users of 2nd Life: 1.9 million users. But this is the number of who at least logged in one time (doesn’t matter if they ever returned). Take a 60% (exagerated but fair enough) gives us a number of 690.800 users who return. That means that the businesses who invested in the game spend loads of money on every single user who returns.

“One user, Anshe Chung, pays Linden Lab the equivalent of about $200,000 a year to buy land in Second Life.” (Source: SURVEY: NEW MEDIA; Wonders of the metaverse; 4/20/06; From The Economist print edition)

And this is only one of the investors. Do they believe in the power of Virtual worlds? Or are even the big companies living in their big fantasy virtual world? Was the autor of the Matrix right with his phylosofic view on the contemporary world? These are all questions which surge from the developments. But never forget the real question: Does the target group really need or is it just a few of the diehard worldescapers who will use this new virtual oportunity to start a 2nd life?

The motto is: CREATE YOUR OWN THRUTH!

Jahfed.com

E-Poetry

e-Poem by kewljafd@hotmail.com
(Inspired by the Semantic Web,
Interpretation contemporary of a poem by E. B. White)

The Spider's Web

The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.

And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.

Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In Spider's Web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.

-- E. B. White

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Interface and its development

Design schools, designers and design businesses are shooting out of the ground like wead. It seems like people found the value of communicating through design and interactivity. Where the interface used to be very static, new interfaces are adopting to fasion of their target group rapidly and interactivity plays more and more a role.

Lets take some point of critics in the usability of some interfaces. The point of critic knocks in when interactivity exceeds its goal of usebility. The same for design. What seperates the design from art is the mere usebility point of design. Of course there is the art of designing which is the art to make good functional designs. But since this statement causes a lot of doubts and complications we will just stay to the concept of> What is a good design?

Good design is a functional design. That means, a design which reaches the target group with the intented message. That’s it, nothing more nothing less. The design problem can be solved with many solutions, and it depends on the knowledge of the problem, techniques and target group how to solve it in a good way. Sounds simple, practice is a little bit harder.

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Sound in our (digital) life

Unless your deaf, sounds make up a great part of your perceivance in life. How familiar words may sound, in the end it is sound linked to a signification and understood by the repetitive hearing of the same or similar sound. Sounds a little bit complicated? No it isn’t. Imagine you listening to Chinese, and a Chinese person listing to English. They both perceive the same thing in the beginning> Sounds. While learning a lenguage you are going to link a signification to this sound (by experience) and you are able to communicate. That is how you learn every lenguage, verbally and spoken.

That we switch to music. How is music making part of our lifes? Music can influence or mood. If it are noises rapidly followed by eachother (e.g. Techno, House, Heavy-Metal) it can make us feel very uneasy and ready to dance, or throw out all our cropped up energy. On the other hand slow music (e.g. Regea, Easy-listening, Singer-Songwriter, Pop, Classical music) can make us feel very relaxed and willing to recharge our energy by doing nothing.

Than only rests to talk a little bit about sounds and ambient sounds. They are a crucial aspect in films to create confidence and a natural feeling to the film. Alfred Hitchcock used it a lot to create tension in his movies (telephone rining, birdsounds in a bad context). And we can’t sleep at night from a dropping crane, the wooshing wind or the always anoying ticking clock.

No wonder that we intergrated sound in our digital systems and it is used in the digital contemporary art to use it in a new context. For example artists that make music with things we use everyday and artists that use Sergi´s invention the Reactable (see the lifeclip on Youtube of Bjorks declare independence). Understanding sound, and ones reactions on sound, is one of the crucial aspects of understanding the human being and AI.

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