Some Police Futurists are right down to the ground

Police Futurist – 15

PFIer Bernard “Bud” Levin spoke of overreaction to the terrorist threat:

“We demolish relationships, waste resources, demoralize ourselves, and distort our economy, all in the name of protection.” Levin, commander of Policy and Planning in the Waynesboro, VA, Police Department and head of Social Studies at nearby Blue Ridge Community College, added: “In doing so, we give the terrorists a free (Continued on page 16)

PFI Panel Presentations
(Continued from page 7)
win—out of mindless fear, we damage ourselves far more than they can damage us.”
PFI Panel Presentations
(Continued from page 15)

Good conversation and real talk with real people

yes, that is still possible, thanks Annette and Enter team for putting such a productive meeting space togerher. For bricolabs I can say that we have made important conceptual bridges and have gained focus through talking with willing and generous minds.

That’s our kind of neighbourhood!

Usman Haque and Rob Davis at Montevideo, go to that workshop or be out of flow forever

Build your own neural processor with two international acclaimed special guests!

Workshop by Usman Haque and Robert Davis
FridayMay 11, 2007
10.00 – 17.00 h
euro 10,- (incl material costs + lunch)
Nederland Instituut voor Mediakunst/Montevideo
Keizersgracht 264, Amsterdam

www.montevideo.nl
Subscribe before April 25, 2007: anouk@montevideo.nl.

Usman Haque and Robert Davis are artists in residence at the Netherlands Media Art Institute from April -June 2007. Haque is an architect who specializes in reactive environments, interactive installations, digital interfaces and performances. Robert Davis is Systems Developer in the Psychology Department, Goldsmiths College. Their knowledge is expressed in both designing physical spaces and making software and systems that bring these spaces to life.

For more information about Usman Haque:

http://www.haque.co.uk/evolvingsonicenvironment.php

For more information about Robert Davis

http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/rdavis/

Workshop
Introduction to building neural nets with analog electronics

The purpose of the workshop will be to introduce participants to the
concepts of neural networks and how to build them using simple analog
electronics. Participants will be able to understand how
they might be applied in their own projects.

In the process, participants will be introduced to various types of
learning, types of neural networks and types of neurons (e.g. those
that are biologically plausible simulations and those that are not;
the differences between summation and integrate-and-fire models).

Participants will be provided with modular boards and analog
components and will build, neuron by neuron, their own simple neural
processor. At each stage they will be encouraged to understand exactly
what is happening in their circuit and how this relates (or doesn’t)
to biological models.

Finally, towards the end of the day, all the neural processors will be
connected, in order to create a much larger single neural net. At this
point a variety of sensors (e.g. thermistors, light dependent
resistors, buttons) and actuators (LEDs, motors, buzzers) will be
swapped around in order to speculate about how such a system might be
useful in participants’ own projects.

Participants should have some experience with electronics; if they
know what a resistor and op-amp are, know how to use a voltmeter, and
have soldered before then they will be OK. Those who don’t have
experience are welcome to join but will be paired with someone more
experienced.

Participants should bring their own:
- soldering iron & solder
- voltmeter
- any sensors/actuators they would like to use for their neural net
(some will be provided, so this is not compulsory)

Bronac Ferran on Enter Festival

HI everyone,

this is just to draw your attention to a spectacular new Festival and very interesting conference in Cambridge next week.

ENTER_UNKNOWN TERRITORIES
International Conference & Festival for New Technology Art
25-29 April 2007, Cambridge (UK)

The programme will combine experimental digital work created by artists – which will be open to all ages to play and experience in public spaces around the city, with a high profile conference that addresses important questions about society and technological innovation – the speakers list includes open source activitists, commercial games developers, academics working on social technology projects, media lab pioneers from across Europe, cultural theorists, social scientists, creative industries experts and bloggers from China, Cambridge and many other places. The programme will also see the Launch of an exciting new Anglo-Dutch publication called Uncommon Ground – which contains essays and case studies by Charlie Leadbetter, Garrick Jones, David Garcia, Anne Nigten, Sher Doruff, Matt Ratto, Rob Van Kranenburg, Anne Galloway and others on the challenges of artistic collaboration, cooperation and intervention within different disciplinary fields. The emerging Bricolabs phenomenon – which brings together various different interest groups around the world concerned with creating a generic infrastructure in relation to technological resources – is featured both within the conference and the publication. Further information is in Annette’s email below – hope to see you there.

all best wishes
Bronac
www.boundaryobject.org

Painting prototypes (think of rembrandt with a tool like this)

from tool-discuss, Liav Koren

“Is it possible to let a first sketch become an object, to design directly onto space? The four FRONT members have developed a method to materialise free hand sketches. They make it possible by using a unique method where two advanced techniques are combined.Pen strokes made in the air are recorded with Motion Capture and become 3D digital files; these are then materialised through Rapid Prototyping into real pieces of furniture.See the movie of the process of making a sketch into a piece of furniture in just one pen stroke.
The Swedish design group FRONT has been working in Japan since September. During this time they have developed and explored the technique they used in the making of Sketch Furniture which they showed in Art Basel Miami / Design with Barry Friedman Gallery Ltd ( New York ).
Front make design as a performance. During Tokyo Design week they will show the process of making Sketch Furniture and the final pieces of furniture at Tokyo Wonder Site 31 October – 5 November. www.tokyo-ws.org .
Motion Capture is a technique that translates motions into 3D-files. Motion capture is mostly used for animations in movies and computer games. Front have used the technique to simply record the tip of a pen when they draw pieces of furniture in the air.
Rapid Prototyping is a technique that materialises 3D-fi les. A laser beam builds the 3D-fi le layer by layer within a liquid plastic material. Every 0.1mm the liquid harden by a laser beam. After a few hours, the 3Dfiles come out as materialised pieces.”

The Art of Vanishing

Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens for Legitimate Government
15 April 2007

http://www.legitgov.org/

“‘Disappearing people is a bad, bad practice.’ U.S. Holds 18,000 Prisoners in Iraq –Recent Security Crackdown in Baghdad Nets Another 1,000 15 Apr 2007 In the past month, as a new security crackdown in Baghdad began, U.S. forces arrested another 1,000 Iraqis, bringing to 18,000 the number of prisoners jailed in two U.S.-run [KBR-built] facilities in that country. On Feb. 13, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a martial-law decree supporting the Baghdad security crackdown. The decree gave military commanders authority to conduct warrantless searches and arrests, monitor private communications and restrict public gatherings.

Hives left ‘like Mary Celeste’ as bees mysteriously vanish 14 Apr 2007 Honey bees are suffering major declines in countries around the world in a mystery which threatens the future of ecosystems which are crucial to farming. Experts say thousands have vanished in Scotland, and there are reports of the mysterious disappearance of entire hives in countries including the United States, Spain, Italy, Poland, Greece, Portugal and France.”

Bees are the canaries of microsystems. They realize there is no more fun in this world. Electromagnetic fields and 3G keep interfering with their own transmissions. They are all probably deaf by now, if not all you can bet they all have tinnitus. They are invisible now, they never had any secrets to conceal. Go one you scientist slashers, why don’t you cut on more open, see what you can find? Then go and cut one open some more. But I tell you, I don’t want to see you lot on my doorstep. Go on now, get going and disappear like all the other species you spirited away in the name of your progress.

The Kitchen Budapest

(through yasmin list)

The formal major patron (Hungarian Telecom) of the Center for Culture and Communication (known as C3) decided to support a new type of business-wise research institution incubating 13 delicate, accurately chosen young talents recruited from technical and art schools having innovative visions and projects to work together in a digital kitchen. They are supposed to cook the next generation of services, interfaces, games or whatsoever. The principal goal of the Kitchen Budapest is to create ’something’ (project proposals will be public soon on the website) for the growing community of urban nomads using mobile technologies to live, to make business or being entertained. The Kitchen Budapest is supposed to be a collaborative working environment for young researchers to bring up new and interesting projects as soon as possible. The institution wants to emerge with excellent projects, interesting programs like exhibitions and lectures in front of the local and the international public. The concept emphasizes fast results, the rotation of the researchers and the possible business usage of the projects by creating spin offs with the help of the Telecom company, which has a buying preference for all business-wise prototypes developed in the Kitchen.

The concept of the new institution is built up by a group of young and successful people like Robin Nagy manager from T-Online, Adam Somlai-Fischer designer from Aether, Peter Halacsy information technologist, Attila Nemes communication adviser and a formal art gallery manager Eszter Bircsak. The Kitchen Budapest will open during May 2007, but the application for the research scholarships is already open.

Lets move to Ealing and be real clean

“Householders who keep putting out their bins on the wrong day could be caught out by secret spy cameras hidden in tin cans and bricks and branded “envirocriminals”. Ealing Council in west London is using the hidden cameras to catch people committing “major envirocrimes” such as graffiti and fly-tipping on main roads. However council tax payers who put out their bins on the wrong day could also be caught up in the push. The cameras, which cost around œ200 each, are triggered by built-in movement sensors. The council, which is Conservative controlled, said in a newsletter to local residents: “To catch vandals and envirocriminals, cameras disguised as anything from tin cans to house bricks will instantly email images to the council’s CCTV control centre.”

or whatever that means

“The quantization of conductance on the sensor side was achieved by having the current flow through a constriction that tapers down to the size of a single atom (see figure at www.aip.org/png), a passage which imposes quantum
conditions. According to Nebraska scientist Andrei Sokolov (asokol@unlserve.unl.edu), an atom-sized point contact makes the read-write process ever more compact in physical extent, allowing much greater data storage.” (Sokolov et al., Nature Nanotechnology, March 2007)

make generation goes local

“With national and international news now practically a commodity online, the value of local and regional papers, Rob Curley, recenrtly appointed Vice President of Product Development , Newsweek Interactive1 says, is in using the Web to cover not only “big-J journalism” but also “small-J journalism”–events that rarely make headlines but loom large in our everyday lives. “We can’t out-CNN CNN. But we can make sure that no one out-Naples us.”

A placeblog, a hyperlocal site, is “an act of sustained attention to a particular place over time It’s about the lived experience of a place:

“That experience may be news, or it may simply be about that part of our lives that isn’t news but creates the texture of our daily lives: our commute, where we eat, conversations with our neighbors, the irritations and delights of living in a particular place among particular people. However, when news happens in a community, placeblogs often cover those events in unique and nontraditional ways, and provide a community watercooler to discuss those events.”

Google Maps, Google Earth, What?Where? Live Local Search (Microsoft beta) provide a local layer of commercial local data. Map Tools.org is a resource for users and developers in the open source mapping community. Open Source GIS6 attempts to build a complete index of Open Source / Free GIS related software projects. OpenStreetMap aims to create and provide “free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them.” If you want to see friends or strangers in your area, download Plazes, “a service you can use to add location awareness to other applications you frequently use”.