fisharepeopletoo

New Knowledge for Old

Aisha Jilani with her first poster explaining her research.

Aisha has just started her PHD in the Informatics Research Group at the University here, sponsored by myself and Ben Childs at Common.

The areas of research as outlined on Aisha's poster are below, specified by Ben and I, and supervised by Professor Lee McCluskey.

The language of computer science is still a bit strange to me, but I understand exactly what I want Aisha's research to do, and why, based on 8 years of experience and insights, and so far everything is going along very happily indeed.

I'm ridiculously proud of sponsoring a PHD, and looking back, the steps that got us here seem like the only ones to take, but I'd never have foreseen it for second when setting off.

The Chairs from the Dancing School

Newly reassembled chairs for We Love Technology next week.

They were second hand from a dancing school in Derbyshire, so if you find yourself rocking merrily from buttock to buttock from the pure joy of the presentations, that'll be why.

Either that or I didn't put them back together very well.

Just don't rock back on them too far in your joy, that's all I'll say.

Voice of America

"And to all those watching tonight
from beyond our shores,
from parliaments and palaces
to those who are huddled around radios
in the forgotten corners of our world
– our stories are singular,
but our destiny is shared"

from Obama's acceptance speech in The Guardian.

more and more amazing!

"to those who are huddled around radios"

that and the "forgotten corners" are almost a cliche, but because of what the whole world now knows about his background, he said, "I'm one of you as well."

We'll see whether he means it or not, but it's quite a flourish.

And where have we heard the word "huddled" before, in the context of America and the world?

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"

Make a Piano in Spain

I've noticed a few pieces of work recently which use questions to draw responses from participants.

Make a Piano in Spain asked 500 people ‘What do you do to make yourself feel better?’ (May 2008)

As part of Fred, American artist Dee Hibbert-Jones asked "What's your method of escape?" (June 2008) and used The Secret Life of Cumbria to collect some of the answers, including:

"I set off a rocket and imagine I'm in it or watch for a satellite and imagine the same. X Jan"

"letting myself be held and kissed by a man there's no future with."

and this, which sounds bloody brilliant:

"i go into the woods, remove my clothing, sit in a stream, light a cigarette, close my eyes and listen. "

And our own work in which we put posters at bus stops, among other places, in Manchester, asking questions like "Where were you happiest to arrive and why?" (October 2006).

I don't know if there is anything more than coincidence in me noticing this, and I'm sure there are other and older examples.

But maybe we are at a moment in which we understand that if we find the right structures to welcome people who don't consider themselves to be writers or artists to say something in their own voice, they'll come up with funnier/ more surprising/strange/beautiful/poetic/sadder responses than we could ever have managed as writers or artists, and which taken together create archives of life with real depth and reach.

A Politician Who Doesn't Have Tin Ears

"Lately,
they've been calling me a socialist
and they found evidence
that when I was in kindergarten
I used to share my toys,
and in the fourth grade
I split my peanut butter sandwich
and they said
look, he's a redistributionist ...

There's nothing wrong with looking out for other people."

from an Obama speech reported in today's Guardian (my line breaks).

Isn't it great?

"Lately [comma pause] they've..."

It's wry, belittling his enemies, weary of trivial things and above such foolishness all at once.

And who are "they"? - people with nothing better to do, while he's ready to get on with running the country.

Then the evidence from his infant school days - again it's mocking - "look how much time they're wasting digging around, and so stupid and obsessed are they with trying to find skeletons in the closet they've even gone back as far as when I was five years old!"

But at the same time the picture he paints of himself is as a noble child, already thoughtful enough to share his toys and wholesome all-american food with those less fortunate than himself.

You just know he stood up to the bullies!

Using imagery he casts himself as Huck Finn without having to say it in so many words.

He's not doing anything so cheesy as to claim it about himself - he's not even having to describe his real childhood - no, it's the "evidence" that "they" have dug up against him while they were rooting around for smears and upsetting an innocent class of kindergarten children. They should be ashamed of themselves! (The idiots!)

So what is his tax policy?

Well, "they" say he's a "redistributionist", which is the only long, abstract word in the passage.

No one will really know what that means, but it's exactly the sort of word "they" would use, wouldn't they, because they're out of touch.

No, his philosophy is a lot more simple:

"There's nothing wrong with looking out for other people."

Who wouldn't agree with that? And who wouldn't put it in exactly those words? It's the kind of thing that you, me or anyone could say and believe in.

And it's a really well balanced line.

Say it out loud.

The stresses fall like this, one every other syllable:

"There's nothing wrong with looking out for other people."

You can imaging him stopping, looking out at the audience, emphasising it, but not too much: this is who I am, with a simple philosophy for doing right, just the same as you.

Obama probably didn't write it, but he knows how to find someone who can write.

And how much better is it than the wordy, abstract, disappear-up-its-own-arse Oxbridge phrasing that our lot come out with?

Can you imagine Peter Mandelson even being able to think like that, let alone say it?

They have got no idea how to talk to the people they are meant to represent because they never listen to them speak.

But anyway, fingers crossed for Tuesday.

Come on Americans, do the right thing!

Mobile X - Using Mobile Phone Film Making to Engage with Museum Collections

Doesn't that sound dry?

What I'm really happy about is that I think there is something to be learned about the success of the process from watching the films themselves, rather than just from observation reports and feedback questionnaires.

The teenagers who took part have taught me how it should be done through what they've done!

(spot the X in here!)

Word of Warcraft

The Arts Council have asked me to give a talk to the people who work in literature in our region - publishers, writers and so on - about technology and literature.

So I'm going to talk about World of Warcraft, Superstruct and Five Trees Forest

That's sort of "Fictional Worlds, CrowdFiction and The World as Fiction".

Well, they said I could talk about anything I wanted, and that's the presentation that I'd like to hear.

The Guardian's YouTube film making competition

The Guardian have launched a film making competition, that at least on the surface is for amateurs (people who do things for love), rather than professionals.

What they've got right is to create a structure in which people who don't consider themselves to be writesr/artists/filmmakers can get started, in this case a very productive-feeling story about the youth and young manhood of a settee, which participants have got to interpret however they like in no more than five minutes worth of anything that can be uploaded to YouTube.

What is less good is the prize - a week working in the proper media - and the judges, who are the usual type of suspect.

Those two things are going to encourage just the wrong sort of people to enter, and since a book is only as good as its readers, the winner will be a usual type of suspect as well.

And so, I predict the winner to be a young advertising creative from East London.

The closing date isn't until December, but I will faithfully report back here when the results come out, no matter how wrong I'm proved.

Watchmen and V for Vendetta writer Alan Moore the local history buff

Watchmen and V for Vendetta writer Alan Moore turns out to be a local history buff, and appears in the fantastic short documentary "X Marks the Spot", made by young people in Northampton, where he lives, about the history of their town.

I used to be the short film programmer for a big film festival, so I've watched thousands of short films, and X Marks the Spot is one of the two best "community" films* I've ever seen (and believe me, I've seen a few). I'd happily have programmed it alongside proper shorts made by grown up filmmakers without expecting it be be granted any special favours at all.

As Alan Moore himself says: "I loved it. It is the most exciting thing to come out of the Boroughs since the Great Fire."

I came across X Marks the Spot through Lee Hutchinson of Northampton Museums, who got the film going in the first place, and Lee and I have since been working on a very happy project called Mobile X, to see if we could push the DIY feel of X Marks the Spot further.

We've been trying to find a structure for using the fact that all teenagers carry video cameras around with them all the time as a way to get them to have a look at museum collections.

More on that soon, but I really put my heart into Mobile X, despite there being no money, just because I felt the pressure not to let down the X Marks the Spot legacy!

And speaking as a participation nerd, if you are interested in structures that open up and welcome participation, just marvel at the genius of the "x marks the spot" device, which came from the teenagers themselves - you could use that device absolutely anywhere.

On top of everything else, the lead presenter, one of the youths, is a natural, miles better than any of the day-glo idiots you see on kids TV. I think he's working in a warehouse now, which I guess is what happens to your talents when you're from Northampton not Hampstead.

* the other best community film I've ever seen was a spoof horror film made by a group of disabled teenagers from Middlesborough who cast themselves as zombies in wheel chairs, trying to infect the straight walking world and turn everyone into cripples. Piss funny and in the worst possible taste at every turn. It went in the festival programme with no added explanation, and the audience did it justice, though you could sense them wondering at first "Are we really allowed to laugh at this?"

This is Part 1 of X Marks the Spot. Alan Moore (those are his feet on the X) is on at about 3.40 and very good he is too, but do the film justice and watch it all, you know Alan would be disappointed if you don't:

World Turned Upside Down

"For 30 years, greedy, callow, ignorant financiers, supported by no less callow politicians from all the political parties, have proclaimed the wonders of financial innovation and how proud we all should be of the City of London. The price tag for their behaviour is an economic calamity. We should never have bought such snake oil."

Will Hutton in the Observer yesterday

The feel of England is just about to flip over.

The present circumstances are bound to lead to a bit of soul searching: if we're not The City, what are we?

If you have ever even asked that question, let alone have an answer, the tide is now running in your direction at a ferocious pace.

So we had better make the most of the chance.

We Love Technology 08

We Love Technology 08 is on Thursday 20th November 2008.

If you are interested in games, mobiles, physical computing, computers_everywhere, stories, fun, writing, misuse and most importantly participation, this really is where it's at.

If you do make the trip you'll find that We Love Technology talks about those subjects in a modest and welcoming but unique voice that can't be heard clearly anywhere else.

That voice is modest, in part, because it comes from Lisa's amazing ability to find the people who share it, ask them to talk about what they enjoy, and allow the meaning to emerge from that.

This year the event is presented by the clan alone, and all the better for it.

Umm. Err. Umm. Err...

Over the last fifteen or twenty years British culture (certainly English culture, that might be a bit unfair on Scotland and Wales) has been a derivative of London's position as a command and control centre of globalisation.*

You don't think so? Come on, what is English culture?

Property, expensive restaurants (TV chefs, for example, are a derivative of a derivative, a sort of sub prime cut) and contemporary fine art.

Just the sort of one-off experiences and objects, with infinitely inflatable prices, that you need if you've made a fortune nudging 1s and 0s up and down wires and are looking for something to spend it on.

So. Umm. Err. Umm. Err. What now?

Maybe we can have a new culture? With a different sense of value?

But maybe after 20 years, there is nothing (and nowhere) left to support those other values?

*The Global City, Saskia Sasson, Princeton University Press, 1991