Tricky Small print

sorry about the lack of a top. Something screwy happened when Google 'upgraded' blogger. Google, by the way, is starting to creep me out a bit. They own everything....everything I do....at least they don't own Wikipedia yet, right? Gol, I hope that stays independent. I was just reading the fine print for a loan, and I encounted this sentence in tiny writing;

"I will not sign this Note before reading the entire Note, even if I am told that I am not required to read it."

Wait.

Wait, this is the best Catch 22 I've ever found! Wow. I'm starting to see how greasy salesmen amuse themselves...

Help the Database get Started! Add photos!

PHOTOGRAPHS:
1) Take a "master closeup" and a "context shot" (unless the closeup does both jobs).
2) I recommend you take "clue" photographs of nearby businesses and addresses. This is the easy way to find the locations of google Earth later.

IMPORTING: I use a separate iPhoto database, but use whatever system you like, as long as you can rename the photos.

TITLES: (letterletter#)
1) Choose a one or two letter initial that isn't already taken (I am "A". You could be "PU" if you like).
2) Number the photographed graffiti.
Ex: K212, K212 Context, K213, K213 Context,
For Closeups: K214.1, K214.2, K214 Context
3) When Context includes several pieces:
K314-315-318 Context (just three included)
K314=320 Context (those seven included)

GEOTAGGING
1) My method:
A) use free Google Earth to find the places. I search business/names addresses and hone in to as close to accurate place as possible. (This program makes it possible to find specific parking meters.)
B) Once you find the location, placemark it with the photo title (A21 would include A21.1, A21.2, A21 Context, etc).
C) Once the photos are uploaded to Flickr, use Trippermap geotagging to assign them that exact location.
2) You can also tag places on Flickr map. Don't do this. It sucks.
3) Other ways to tag: using a GPS, lat/long automatically assigned to ESif data. Not an expert on this. Sounds handy, though.
4) Google maps.

UPLOADING

2) Good upload tools:
a) For MacosX, upload 1001. Download this program, and you can give bulk tags before they enter the system. Very handy. Other tools here

b) (Right now the community is on Flickr. I apologize for this; the free account gives you only 20 mb upload limit per month, which means that if you want to upload numerous pictures, you need to shrink them down into the kb sizes. (you can do this by "exporting" in iphoto." I was forced to by a pro account halfway through my upload. It is a nice thing to have, if you want to fork it out through paypal. Otherwise, shrink! (If people have ideas on bringing in other photo servers (a tricky mashup map?), I will paint your name on my door.)

PRE-TAGGING
I pretagged and organized my photos in iPhoto. It's just fun to do this, and a helluva lot faster than Flickr. I still have to retype them on Flickr, but I already know what is what.

iPhoto Help:
1) The circled i in the bottom left opens information. Change the title.
2) The key opens keywords (which you can alter and reorder in "file-preferences".
3) Create smart albums to see tags in action.

FLICKR TAGGING
1) There are several "master tags" for each photograph. (bulk tags)
1) GDP (graffiti database project)
2) GRAFFITI
3) CITY (or nearest big city)
4) GRAFFITI TYPE (one or more)
a) MURAL (aka filled in)
b) STICKER
c) WHEATPASTE
d) PICTORAL (smily faces, pen or paint)
e) STENCIL
f) QUOTE
g) TAG (words/names)
5) MASTER (if a master closeup)
6) Artists/keywords* (must be linked to more than one photograph/case to be an official tag).

Example:
GDP GRAFFITI CHICAGO MURAL TAG MASTER Kaz* Oase* HorseWithHelmets*

About artist tags: Explore the group to see if other people have tagged the same artist. Use that tag, or if you don't like it, tell them and you guys can change it.
(don't forget the * please)

DESCRIPTIONS (don't bother for context)
Keywords:
(add notes if you like, it's your photo)

(keywords are the extra tags that haven't been officially accepted as lables. So just type out all the different words you see in the photo (hell, you can even try and decipher the mural graffiti), or write "smily face", etc. Over time, we should be able to search those tags and discover new artists).

BULK UPLOADING SHORTCUTS
Tags: GDP GRAFFITI (city?)
Description: Keywords:

Sweet. I know it's soooo complicated. I'm doing the best I can to simplify. Learning to use these programs cold turkey is the biggest hassle, but once conquered, the archiving becomes extremely fun.

Please: take one or two pictures and test this system out? Maybe you already have some photos that don't need a context shot. Rename them, tag them, and put it on the map just t test all this out. Yay prototype.

Graffiti Database Project

Finally; here is the update that has been pending for a good two weeks. My loyal followers (aka roadtrippers, my mom, and some random person in Olympia) have no doubt been wondering at my lack of bloggy presence, and it's because I've dedicated a disgusting amount of time to my Graffiti Database Project. Originally I had cleverly named it Urban Scrawl, but this name was already existent on the web. So what have I been doing?


If you go through my blog archives, you will see a growing obsession with urban graffiti, starting with our adventures in Brooklyn. I began to notice that the graffiti wasn't just "gang tags", which the general population naively assumes makes up the bulk of spray paint. What we saw was absolutely gorgeous, clever, skilled, humorous, smart ass, or just thoughtful. More than that, it gave life back to a city that was crumbling cement walls and austere blocks of gray.

I also started to notice trends in the graffiti. First I found squids and UFOS on every block, and forests of poles covered in "Hello, My Name Is" sticky notes. The tag Kuma started falling out of the woodwork, and bizarre Goya stick figures. More than that, I watched the searches that brought people to my blog (yes, I know statcounter is creepy, please forgive me), and the majority were for graffiti. So I'm not alone in my interest.

Hence my project. When we reached Amsterdam, I climbed a nice tree and just thought for awhile, I realized what I wanted to do with my time. On Google Map and Earth, you can search categories and see the territories of categorized waypoints. Why not graffiti? It is infinitely more complex and fascinating than plotting the territories of coffee shops, and it would help record this art form on a whole new level. There are numerous websites out there that record graffiti, but they are limited to anonymous photographs. People have also started geotagging graffiti on Flickr maps, but the tagging system changes with every account, and it is impossible to search for artists on a large scale.

What needs to appear is an internet mapping community that has structure to it, and with that structure, can grow like a virus. So I set about making a prototype.

In Amsterdam, I began documenting almost all the graffiti I could find. I now have a database of 400 master closeups, organized by city, tag, etc. Getting these photographs was an incredible experience. I would just start walking the streets for five hour stretches, and almost every day I would get miserably lost. Fortunately, the more lost I got, the more graffiti I would find, so I found a helluva lot of graffiti. And then this strange world of scribbles began to give me its secrets. I found a funny diglet looking sketch early on, and boom, I found a similar sketch in a different part of the city. And then another. And then another. These diglets are everywhere....so are those funny cats, and the square faced stickers, the P. characters, and the gorgeous wheatpaste horses. I felt like I was in an easter egg hunt.

I had to develop an archival system pretty quickly to keep up with myseIf, and it seems to be working. I always took a "master closeup" and a "context shot", and I feel that the latter is crucial if this database can actually take hold. For the future, it is important to establish the physical prescense of the graffiti. Is it a tiny sticker or a huge mural? On a truck or a wall? The run down part of town or the nice part? The context shot would also allow people to find the graffiti later, or document places over time.

To create a database, I made a separate account on my Powerbook and started a fresh iPhoto library. I titled all the pictures with an A (for Amsterdam) and then a number (A1, A2). Context was A1 Context, A2 Context, etc., and closeups of the same wall were A1.1, A1.2, etc. I began making up artist names to tag the different pictures, and iPhoto lets you make "smart albums" that automatically collect all the photos with particular tags.


The hard part was geotagging the photos. I still haven't completed this task, but stick with me. I would take "clue" photographs for all the closeups, and then use the businesses and street names to find exact locations in Google Earth. By placemarking all of these locations with the photo titles, a very neat map of graffiti materializes.

Next step; uploading 700 photographs to Flickr. Fun. But I did it, and I'm now in the process of tagging them all in an orderly fashion. Geotagging is next on the priority list. The Flickr map is a pain because it can't zoom in all the way, and even when I export the map to Trippermap, you still can't search for category tags. After I have the prototype database up and running, I am going to need tons of help setting up a working community map, where you can actually zoom in and see the territories of tags. There are some brilliant folks out there making maps with Mashup and API map keys, and I'm hoping I can contact them. I've gone far in understanding it myself, but not to the point that these folks do.

MAP PICTURE BAD ZOOM

I hope I'll be able to contact all you graffiti folks out there for help. The grounding idea behind this project is that there will be a structured system of tagging, with one huge "wikimap" that will fill up with the graffiti of the world. If you read this and want it to become a reality as much as I do, please contact me or something. I'm a fledgling college kid with an idea, but this will only work if people help my ass.

Mappers:
I finally decided to upload my pictures on Flickr, because it has the largest community of graffiti and group map lets you search for tags and categories. But Yahoo maps are awful! Trippermap is still too young and simplistic to be much help, but I have a dream that a bloggermap mashup might work. I'll be chugging away at this problem; if a genius is out there, I need a mapper in shining armor.


Graffiti folks:
Here's the thing. This project needs first and foremost geotagged pictures of the graffiti and larger context. From there we can start tagging with city, artist name, type of graffiti, etc. Anything goes. A hint; take a picture of a nearby business, and use that to find the spot on Google earth. Anyone up for helping? Graffiti Artists in particular; if anyone knows where this stuff is, it's the folks who made it. Lame Face crew, I'm talking to you. (Right now Flickr is the upload place. Hopefully that can change or be more flexible later.)

For now, I'm still making the prototype database on Flickr, and the next step is the Flickr Group that allows for a group map. I have created the group Database Graffiti Project, but I'm ignoring it until I have a stronger system for tagging. For now, my Flickr name is Sloggerbum, and I highly recommend you go on the account and have fun mucking through the tags. It is amazing to see how prolific these artists are.

I'm praying that this project doesn't fall under, because I feel something needs to happen to document graffiti for the future. Graffiti disappears and changes so quickly, and there is no system to capture the images. If some version of the GDP works, it would allow people in the future to click on their house and see the graffiti of the past ten years. And I'm excited at the idea of being able to see graffiti in different places. Like, what is being written on the walls in Baghdad? Israel? The pictures are out there, but they are scattered.

So as I work my fingers off trying to geotag 300 pictures, I'd love people to jump in. I think we can make this work.

Businessmen TeeterTotters

I've noticed a new trend of making public art installations into games. We first encountered this idea in New York, when we took part in the Conflux "Urban Games". Included; high tec versions of tag, pong, golf, and spying. And no; when it comes down to it, there was nothing separating these games from the original versions, except GPS handhelds

And then in London, we found giant "art slides", where we saw forty year old men shooting out and literally bouncing on their asses for a good four feet. A slide is a slide by any other name...but some trickery was afoot here. By camaflouging the playground under "modern art", there was no shame attached to engaging in playground activities. Men in business suits going down a slide. What a sight. And it wasn't a bad sight, but rather a refreshing one. When it comes down to it, we never "grow up". Some of us might mature, of course, but that is something completely different from childish playfulness.

I saw artsy trickery again in Berlin, and this particular project made me even happier. A dude tried to install a rather bombastic art piece in a public Berlin square. He took pictures of ordinary people and projected them onto a massive wall, and then shined a huge projector on top of the photographs. It created a special effect where pedestrians walking through the square could match their shadows to the pictures, and reveal the hidden figures behind the white light. We sat and watched a documentary on the event, and it was one of most hilarious artistic disasters I've ever seen. The pedestrians didn't give a rats ass about finding dull figures behind the light, but rather turned the wall into a giant shadow play. Complete strangers began interacting with each on a level of hilarity I've only seen in professional productions. Better yet, the projector was so far away from the wall that depending on where they were standing, there were huge size differences. Big giants could poke the shadows of offended little people, or pour water bottles down their mouths. Naturally, a lot of people exposed themselves, (what a forum for it), but the crude humor didn't detract from the overall play. Improv acting is something that people pay to watch on a stage, but now people could finally return it to real life. I honestly wish that this had been permanent installation, just because it was such a stage for the people. If I had a really big wall, I would try to make one myself.

And then today, when we were sitting in the Berlin collosseum (aka soccer game), I overhead Andrea say "my butt still hurts from the teeter totter". So I asked what on earth she was talking about, and apparently giant see saws have been installed in downtown Berlin as modern art. See Saw "art"...aka See Saw "not embarressing for adults".

All in all, I fully approve of this new trend. It would be hypocritical not to, because I really want to go find those see saws before we leave Berlin.

GraffitiLand

Welcome to GraffitiLand! The only board game where the spaces are city streets, there is always a new card to draw! Jenny and I had quite the adventure on our “mis-walk”; we used graffiti tags to guide us through the city as if it were a board game, and we created a whole set of rules and guidelines before we ever hit the pavement. For my project I’ve been creating a database of Amsterdam graffiti, and so we had an idea of what tags would be most common. The rules are outlined below:

*****
Supplies—A map of Amsterdam, preferably of the center city, and a pen to mark your way!

In GraffitiLand, graffiti triggers dictate your path. Your team will have two hours to find as many graffiti triggers as they can. In this game, there are eleven kinds of graffiti that serve as triggers. Each trigger provides different directions (see below). These triggers are divided into four categories, pervasive, common, barely common, and rare:
THE RULES

Pervasive—
1) Jewel: Walk to the next intersection, then take a right.






2) TB: Walk to the next intersection,then take a left.






3) Stencils (frogs, sharks, sperm,people): Walk to the nearest canal, cross it, and continue in that direction.






Common—
1) Surs: Follow (discreetly!) nearest moving pedestrian for one block.



2) Again: Follow (discreetly!) nearest moving pedestrian for two blocks.






3) Oase: Follow (discreetly!) nearest moving pedestrian for three blocks.





Barely Common—
1) Diglet: Return to last Jewel or TB and take the opposite direction.






2) Alien Man: Return to last Jewel or TB and take the opposite direction.






3) Laser: Return to last Jewel or TB and take the opposite direction.







Rare—
1) Horses: Go to the nearest welcoming store and follow (discreetly!) for two blocks the first customer(s) that leaves.






2) P-Man: Spin (with eyes closed) and point to determine a direction. Walk in that direction until you encounter a strong smell (pleasant or unpleasant). If you see no triggers at that spot, continue in the same direction.







The triggers you see determine your direction. Begin the game next to a Jewel or TB trigger and pick a direction to begin walking. Be sure to mark your path on the map—you might need to retrace your steps! The goal is to mark down more triggers in two hours than the other team(s).

If you do not see any triggers once you have competed your directions, continue walking straight until you find a new trigger.

If you see multiple game triggers, always choose the rarest trigger. If you find two triggers in the same category, choose the largest.

When you are following the instructions of your last trigger, ignore all new triggers until you complete the last trigger’s directions. Exception: The rare triggers void previous instructions—if you see a rare trigger, follow its instructions instead.

Creative License: If at any time you feel uncomfortable, feel like you aren’t having fun, or are confused about a path to take, you may invoke the creative license clause, which states that, “you may take matters into your own hands so long as you remain true to the spirit of the game.”

If you encounter an obstacle, continue as straight as you can. However, you must stay within the confines of your map. If you are approaching an edge, engage your creative license to stay inside the limits.
******

I apologize if you are totally confused at this point, and I'll quickly fill you in. The Roadtrip Crew glomped into pairs and created "miswalks", where various cues or guidelines led you through the city. Our long-term cube project with Patrick Kelley came into play, and we each documented our walks in eight 3-D photo cubes. Jenny and I banded together to create GraffitiLand with the intent to create a walk that was triggered by the physical city, as compared to an unrelated random system. Graffiti tags are omnipresent are territorial, so they were the perfect things to use as triggers. To paint a picture of the Amsterdam trends, Horse Guy wheatpastes on maintenance box sized “walls”, which are often near canals or major roads. Laser 3.14 tends to leave his mark on impermanent construction sites. T.B. and Jewel just scribble their names on every available surface, but are less common in the richer residential areas. Our hope was that these and other overlapping territories would guide you through the city in unusual ways, and that the thrill of finding a recurring tag would make the game fun. We were lucky that it worked out even better than we had expected.

We began our walk at Central Station, and the first tag we found (which happened to be a T.B.) was “START”. This trigger directed us to go “up/left”, and we ended up walking the same path we use to get to IES. We found a semi-rare diglet along the way, and after taking a cube at the spot, we backtracked to our starting point. Going that direction we quickly found our next trigger, and the game continued until we had walked two hours and eight “turns”. I was surprised at how many “rare” tags we found, and even more surprised at much fun it added to the game. We found a P. Man figure, and I felt like a third grader who had just found the ultimate Easter egg.

Jenny made a cube at each of the different triggers, and I made cubes documenting the path between them. The board game had a neat result in that it made us focus on familiar places we had ignored before. For the first time, we walked on the other side of the major thorougfare, and it looked completely different. A trigger told us to follow a couple, and we ended up in an American style department store, complete with Lancome makeup stalls. It felt like home, until we saw the row of unearthly confectionary cakes. Overall, our path circled the Carnival, which is where I took my most memorable cube. A young dutch guy saw I was taking a picture, and so he walked into the center of my frame and stared out me. He didn’t disrupt my cube; he made it. We also ended up traveling down a drug lane of sorts, and I doubt I’ll ever again see cocaine kits displayed in glass cases. When we had completed eight turns, we treated ourselves to Dutch apple pie.

GraffitiLand was extremely fun because it really does have the feel of an Easteregg hunt. We couldn’t help thinking that Graffitiland would make a wonderful urban game. No matter where you end up in a city, you can find tags, and the game is tailor made for team competition. Different tags could equal different points, with the upper edge given to the team with the keenest observational skills. Most importantly, the game makes you explore the city in a new way, and you find yourself in places that you would otherwise pass over or ignore. I would be up for playing a Berlin version, if anyone is interested. Whoever ends up in the weirdest place wins!

Several Observations I've Made About Amsterdam

1) The majority of dogs are not on leashes. They simply tag along with their owners, into stores, parks, and across streets (obeying street laws, of course, even waiting to pee on the other side). I think this says a lot about the Dutch urbanites, and people. Their dogs have been carefully trained, and seem almost more like working companions than pets. The breeds are not froo froo dogs, but rather many varieties of wiener dogs (aka any dog with such short legs it has trouble keeping up) and larger, more mutt looking dogs. Of the few dogs I have seen on leashes, one was running alongside its masters bike, and doing a noble job of it. Here is a picture of a dog I encountered in a Saturday market. Just chilling. I also think this is a trend because unlike New York, your rat dog can't get run over by taxi stampedes or semi trucks. And no one in London had furry companions, except some of the young homeless people. You would find the mutts curled up with their owners in doorways and subway stops, the two keeping each other warm. This really touched me somehow.
2) Noise travels through walls like nothing else. Right now I hear a dog barking, people yelling at the dog, a baby crying, talking, birds, things banging, a fire crackling, children yelling, and earlier someone was playing violin. And boy did they need to practice, which they were unfortunately doing.
3) Old people must live on the bottom floors or something, because the only way to go up is to be pulled up by rope from the hooks on the top floor, or climbing the stairs of death. (see picture)
4) People here love cheese. Like, you don't even know. They REALLY love cheese.
5) All the Amsterdam stereotypes about coffeeshops and the red light district? They are true.
6) This was the holy land that the flowerpeople thronged to in the Great Hippie Migration of '69. Peace, and long live Bob Marley.
7) The dutch were great at making canals, but not so good at keeping their buildings straight.

Paying Artists to Art?

Amsterdam has a radically different system of governmental support than the United States, particularly where its art are concerned. A few days ago we visited the Waag Society, which is a group of New Media artists that have somehow shacked up in Amsterdam's oldest non-religious building, the Waag Castle. That's right, a castle, complete with winding staircases, strange rooms, and a terrific history. For all that is holy in art, Rembrandt did his sketches on the exact spot where these computer gurus have their work studio, and they can point out the wall where his paintings hung for hundreds of years. Seeing new media living in a mecha of old media made me feel that our generation of art isn't just a floating upstart with no august ancestors. It was a wonderful thing to see; new media is worthy enough to live here!
At one time the castle was also the home of a dissection colloquium, and we saw the charming spot where they chopped open the bodies of criminals to hordes of medical onlookers. And this, naturally, is where Rembrandt painted his famous dissection painting, and which some of us tried to recreate in this completely awesome picture. awesome picture. There is even a room where the masons guild had it's headquarters, and completed their masterpieces in the form of twirly columns and a strangely angled window. Cool! And the Waag society just has meetings in this room and drinks tea.
Now how on earth did a new media group of 47 people get the permission to hang out in a historical castle? American artists everywhere hold your breath; they have almost unconditional funding from the government. This ancient little society supports their artists with not just grants, but government wages of sorts. Can you imagine having the establishment paying your bills and giving you funding for creation? No starving artists here....well, unless you suck. We picked their brains about how the government selects artists, and to be honest, we all expected a twisted system where some sinister despot was choosing what qualified as "good" and worthy of funding. Well, they actually have a group of art experts that pick the good from bad, and they operate independent of the government funders. This is great for all new media, as many political folk are thrown for a loop by what the artists are making. It's so new, that compared to Rembrandt, it is easy to qualify it as "lesser art", or "weird". But experts are assigned, and the Waag Society gets money and gets to work. They did admit that they worry about what the government wants a bit, which was strangely at odds with their other comment, that the government doesn't determine what they artist will create in the least. Hmmm. You can easily see the downside of this system, where artists become dependent on the funding and/or cater to what they perceive their big backer is looking for. I suppose that that is little different than an artist being backed by a longterm, independent patron.

I HAVE A COLD (and I found a human jawbone)

In fact, I don't think there is single person in our crew right now that doesn't have a cold. Well, maybe John Schott, but he is staying in a hotel far far away, which essentially means that he is safe from our group sniffle plague. You could say we are in a quarantine house of sorts. Yesterday I felt the need to compensate for the bug, so I bought a huge bag of oranges, sugar snaps, and a giant bunch of leafy carrots. They are currently hanging on our door, because it didn't occur to me that eating 15 half foot carrots in one sitting isn't feasible. Oh well.

And guess what else happened! Terin found a staple in his Falafel wrap.

Which for some reason reminds me of jaws, which reminds me of an event in London. We were spending the day exploring Oxford, (roll call: Kristin, Joe, Jeremy, Rachel, Andy, Tom, Jenny, Stacy), and we decided to eat chocolate pastries in an ancient cemetery. Well, I'd acted fairly normal up to this point, but then I got really interested in how fast the tombstones were weathering (I think they were limestone, but some looked slatish, and those were fading faster), which led me to find a mushroom (I think it was a button mushroom), and pretty soon I was leaning over with my butt in the air trying to look at the gills on the bottom of a fungus. We're getting to the good part. The gang started to head out and cross the street, but I was still rooting around under a bush, when I found a very strange looking mushroom. I poked it with a stick, found that it was hard, and picked it up to take a look at it....it was part of a HUMAN JAWBONE. That's right!! An honest to god piece of human skull, teeth attached. And don't bother questioning my judgement here; we had the scrutiny of all five of us, and we've all been watching the discover channel since birth. Joe took a picture, I threw it back over the stone wall, Kristin gave me hand sanitizer, and I came to conclusion that grave robbers must have pulled up the body a couple hundred years ago. After reading a Tale of Two Cities, that just seems like the most logical explanation to me.

Amsterdam: Where American hit songs retire

Can I just say that Amsterdam radio plays the most amazing songs? I'm currently listening to Billy Joel's "Goodnight Saigon", which I assumed was lost in the black hole of old hits. Even better, this is the second time I've heard it. All of the songs are American hits that have been forgotten in their homelands. Well, now Train's "Drops of Jupiter" is playing, which is a more current song. But who knows; the next song will likely be a love ballad from the 80's. I love this place.

A Waag Teacup Takes a Walk

Yesterday we visited the Waag, and each of us put together a quick response to "circling the Waag". This is my extremely literal stop-motion flik, with music from the N64 game Banjo and Kazooie. (Ah, the nostalgia...). This was a lot of fun to make, even though I had a very fuzzy idea of what I was doing at the time. I did get a lot of puzzled looks while I was taking the pictures, and a couple even came up to me to ask what I was doing. Unfortunately I didn't have a very good answer.

Old City Mop-Up

I photoshopped this image in London, and it's still very sloppy, particularly the line where the two sky lines meet. A good exercise in Adobe Photoshop, which still evades my understanding.

This is a collage I made of different albums from New York. There was some cool stuff in there, and while I don't know what constitutes rare or special records, these are the ones that caught my eye. See that all the Johnny Cash labels are signed.

Finally, a First Person Post

Hi! I'm finally going to write a real post. I've been really bad about it, and I blame my distraction to London. I feel like a bad traveler saying this, but everyone else on Roadtrip seems pretty much in agreement; London was the pits. We had just spent three weeks in crazy New York, to the point that tourists had even strarted asking us for subway directions (and of course, we proudly answered like locals), and it had such a wonderful vibe to it. I mean, the subways were an absolute mess, with rats skittering around everywhere, but they felt so lived in, and rich. We get to London, and the subways are glistening tubes where some omnisceint person blandly states "mind the gap" every time the door opens....as if people would forget. This same lady also appeared at every other door in London, I noticed. In the elevator to our classroom, it went something like this (with an upperclass accent)..."the door. is opening. The door is closing. We have reached floor two. Please exit the lift. The door is closing. We have reached floor five. The door is opening. The door is closing..." to the point that I found all of London a parody of itself, and I couldn't help thinking of Douglas Adams, and his self-satisfied doors. I know now that it wasn't just his imagination, but based on real life. London is a wonderful, wonderful place, and I have no right to say anything bad aobut it. But in the context of our trip, we really kind of lost steam. I only wrote like one blog post, on Comica, and then my headlines, of course. But London didn't inspire me as it should have.

Now I'm sitting on a tiny balcony in Amsterdam, listening to birds, dogs, and a horrendous violin being played in the building across the way. Well, at least it's better than that clarinet thing being played last night. Here, everything is wonderfully lived in, and it has a rude life to it again. England was a little stiff. And their food was awful. I mean, who pays five dollars for a dry crouissant and beans on toast? We did visit Oxford for a day, and that was terrific, gorgeous beyond words. So maybe I just need to explore London from a different mindset or vantage point, but I still wouldnt' live there, unless I found a nice country hobbit hole. We did visit the Eagle and Child, famed pub of the Inklings and J.R. Tolkein, and that really got me excited. It felt like I was in the Shire.

I was also floored by the lack of graffiti in London. Frustrated me. But now, in Amsterdam, I'm in a type of graffiti revival. If graffiti interests you at all, please keep looking me up over the next month, because I'm planning a large scale graffiti project, where I document as much of it as I can and then link it to physical location. The idea is that you will be able to track trends and artists throughout Amsterdam and Berlin, and find their haunts, etc. It will take me a while to get a search system/google map system up and running, but hang with me, and you can explore the city same as me. At least in a graffitorial sense. (new word? sweet.)

A few quick pictorial updates are needed, first being funny british images. I've abandoned my funny bone blog a bit, partly because we are being encouraged to be serious. As an anonymous commentor reminded me on my last post, my serious side tends to be essay like, and I truly apologize for that. Frankly, I was amazed anyone was reading my blog at all. I mean, sweet. By the way, would you guys mind commenting on my new layout? It took me a long time, and it was part of the reason I didn't post for awhile. I'm learning HTML from scratch, and I'm also really bad with colors (thank you Alissa Pajer, for your endless assistance in that department). Any suggestions would be a godsend, either on what is interesting to read, (which blogs posts do you actually read/finish?), and color help, of course. If I had my way, I'd be making this a hub of wry, slightly immature humor, because that is who I am...but I'm going to need to find a different balance.

This poster from the subway epitomizes the British. It's an advertisement for "stool softener", because going to the loo can be so bloody unconfortable and painful. All in all, I found the British humor dryly funny or very immature. A series of museum adds had dinosaurs going, "I ate grass, and now I'm passing lots of gas." I just didn't get it.

I also was thrown for a loop by this sign. It was posted on a door that floated two floors above the street, and opened up to nothing. Can anyone offer an explanation? A logical one, that is.

Amsterdam is very gray, low to the ground, waterlogged, and ful of bizarre character. There are mushroom figurines everywhere, and cheese stores on every corner. Well, that and coffee shops wafting cannabis smoke. I plan on having adventures in this place, and I will actually keep the blog full of these stories. We have caught a second wind after London, and feet and fingers are going to be active.

Randomly; this is a neat cardboard creation from the Freize Art Festival in London.

And this is about the only sticker graffiti I could find. I very much like the Tree Spirit in the center.

Surveillance: the new social contract

Last Monday, we were lucky enough to find ourselves in the presence of a very influential man; Simon Davies, founder and president of Privacy International, and an important player in world law and politics. He founded Privacy International in 1990 in order to protect citizens from the new trend of omniscient surveillance, and while they have hardly been able to stop the flood, the group has made a difference.

Simon was a real character, and he talked with the experience of someone who spends his time talking sense (depending on your point of view) into stubborn people. This he does very well, and in his presentation, he bombarded us with facts and concepts concerning surveillance and privacy. This was fascinating to us, as we were fresh out of the Newark CCTV station, which is nothing if not the retina of Big Brother's all-seeing eyes. Now, CCTV and surveillance is obviously a complicated issue, and I feel that Simon painted it in a rather polarized light. However, we need the extremes to find the middle-ground, and so I appreciate what he does. I'll do my best to write a summary of his talk, as food for thought.

Privacy International works closely with over 250 rights organizations, particularly the ACLU, and it has a board of directors on every continent (excluding the poles, naturally). When CCTV first began to come into use, they predicted that it would become ingrained in society, which is most definitely coming true.

They fight against government and corporate policies that push for biometric (fingerprints), DNA, and iris scan databasing. Simon related several cases where this watchdog policy really saved the day. Apparantly, several years ago banks began selling or giving private records to the CIA and US government without informing their clients. 8000 banks in all countries were participating in this, and it was Simon's organization that busted their secret.

Simon portrayed the alliance between economics, politics, and CCTV as the "optical triangle". The media is starved for cheap and dramatic images (think Cops), the governments want to show citizens that they are taking action and getting results, and CCTV is just a self-propagating system, which conveniently earns quite a bit of money. The Newham CCTV center, for example, has a constant stream of guests and visitors, which has amounted to billions of dollars in free publicity. It is also a terrific economic and political promotion for the area. A common campaign stunt for ministers is to broadcast images of themselves in the CCTV control center, looking at all the different screens as if they themselves are looking out for the citizen's safety.

But does CCTV work? According to Simon, major criminologists have never been able to reach a consensus. James Ditton, for one, researched the matter for three years, only to find that all the pro-CCTV government reports manipulated the data and essentially lied. Specialists do agree that CCTV stops "opportunistic crime", or spur of the moment acts. But Simon pointed out that "crime is transformational", and so premeditated acts are simply moved out of camera range...or passionately committed despite the lens.

When we visited Newham, they mentioned a "face recognition program" that they had recently dropped. The program gave them billions of dollars in free publicity, but there was not one proven arrest that came as a result. They dropped it because it didn't work. Why did the government pour funds into such a poor program? As one politician said, "it's all about good feelings" for the people. That's reassuring, and a glorious way to spend public taxes. Simon claimed that 90% of crime prevention funds go into surveillance technology, but proven programs like key replacement and street lighting have essentially been abandoned.

COMiCA

Greetings from the heart of London! I'm about to embark on a topic both near and new to my heart; Western and Japanese comics, as inspired by a recent event. This past Sunday the ICA, (Institute of Contemporary Art) hosted Comica, a one day expo that brought together speakers, demos, and various workshops on Sequential Artwork, or comics. I've never been able to resist events that cater to my peculiar interests (see 9th grade, when I attended a seminar on the roaming patterns of Lutra canadensis), so I forked out the 8 bucks and trotted over to Lord Nelson.

The event was held on the top floor of the ICA, and I was somewhat disappointed at the small turnout. The first talk, entitled "Manga: not Made in Japan," had a panel of seven individuals, including world-renowed comic artist Ilya, who was promoting his new book, Mammoth Book of Best New Manga. Ilya spent months perusing manga from all over the world, even from the Middle and Far East. If he found qualities rooted in the style of Japanese manga, a comic was considered for the compilation (see Michiru Morikawa, Asia Alfasi, Andi Watson, and Craig Conlan).

Four of the panel members had their work included in this compliation. One young Japanese woman, who looked for all the world like an anime character herself, contributed a story about a hedgehog and rabbit living in the forest, while a burly Brit was responsible for a humor comic featuring a panda. Selina Dean published "Snails Don't Have Friends".

Ms. Dean is a member of Sweatdrop Studios, a coalition of twenty or so UK artists that create manga and manga-styled comics. They had the most visible presence at the event (which sadly isn't saying much), and after the panel I found two two tables covered in their different publications. They weren't free, otherwise I would have taken some. British manga-ka Sonia Leong is also a member of Sweatdrop, and she talked about her involvement in a project creating manga based on Shakespearian plays. This Shakespeare Manga retells the stories of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet in a futuristic setting.

Now you have the background; let's get to the actual talk. I'll try to cover the points that they discussed, because their roles as the producers of comics made their thoughts particularly valid. As you may be aware, the stylistic and stylistic divide between manga and Western comics has been closing at an astonishing rate. The unique Japanese style of drawing; large watery eyes, colorful hair, extreme cuteness, (we all know the characteristics) has been distributed worldwide thanks largely in part to the popularity of anime (think Speedracer). But more than simply being exported, the style has soaked into the comic art of other cultures.

Ilya's editorial monstrosity is the epitome of that. The title says manga, but the manga-ka are not necessarily Japanese, and instead of being stylistic mimics, they incorporate many different comic traditions. Ilya talked quite a bit about the invisible line between manga and comics. In popular terms, manga are japanese-made comics, while manga written in english are OEL manga (Original English-languge Manga, new version of "Animanga"). However, because manga is now being produced all over the world, this criteria is becoming inadequate. People have even tried to claim that only comics drawn from right to left can be classified as manga, but Ilya argued against this, pointing out that the native language of the artist has little bearing on the artistic value of a work. Exhibiting the same vein of cultural adoption, Selina Dean's new Shakespeare manga shows that Britain is now using "Japanese" manga to express its own history.

Before I continue, I think I need to define several terms for non-geeks. I heard most of these words used at least once at COMiCA.

**Japanese Phrases**
#Manga: japanese style comic
#OEL Manga: original english language comic
#Manga-ka: a comic artist
#La nouvelle manga: artistic comic movement that combines French and Japanese styles
#Doujinshi: self published Japanese works (original or fan-based)
#Shonen: manga written for young males
#Shoujo: manga written for young females

**English Phrases**
#Scanlation: manga translated into a different language by fans
#Fandom: subculture of aficionados (think "Trekdom", Star Trek fan universe)
#Canon: official literature/material of a series

We are at an interesting point in the development of comics; the melding of the American and Japanese traditions, and....the web. The web is having a HUGE affect, for the following reasons;
1) Any comic can now be distributed as data
2) Color: expensive to print on paper, cheap, brilliant, and free on the computer
3) Self-publishing and web-comics

Comics published exclusively to the internet have existed for some years, such as Megatokyo, a webcomic prodcued by Fred Gallagher in 2000. The history of "womics" is pretty interesting stuff, and along with the more professional comics, doujinshi and "amateur" works are being created and posted on the web at a ridiculous pace. Visit Witty Comics to see just how easy it is to share comics.

After the panel, two quick (free) demos took place in the same room, and both clarified just how large the web-revolution is. The developer of ComicBookLover gave an overview of his program and defended the new trend of online distribution. ComicBookLover is essentially a comic-viewing program that imitates iTunes. You can form playlists, etc., and database your comic collection as you see fit. It isn't free, but I downloaded the demo, and it is a pretty amazing program. Of the three audience members at the demo, one fellow mentioned that since the program is essentially iTunes, it wouldn't be hard to make it into a plugin upgrade. I expect we may be seeing this in due time.

This program is to comics as iTunes is to music. It allows for massive collections to be contained in a tiny space (the demo program contained over 500 graphic novels), and it opens the door for legal comic downloading sites. The iTunes store works because enough people have iPods and the iTunes program. I can't imagine that it will be long before this program spreads out among comic lovers, and an iComic store can open shop, complete with podcasts and free specials. And look at the other things iTunes has allowed; amateur artists can bypass the production companies and sell straight off the website, and rare out-of-print songs are once again accesible.

"iComic" stores will do the same, and the developer of ComicBookLover made a good point. In the collector world, the value of an old comic is its rarity, and all of these "rare" comics are shrinkwrapped in the garages of Idahoan packrack nerds. But now, the spread of a good comic isn't restricted to the 700 copies printed in 1986. "control c" "control v" is pretty instant, and our developer argued that in the near future, the value of a comic will be based on quality, not rarity, and forgotten works will be able to recirculate. In short, Big Comics (DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics) will still rule the world of printing, they will no longer have a monopoly on overall distribution.

The second demonstrator showed off his new publication; a book that helps you create your own comics on the web. the book comes with a disk of hundreds of duty-free sketches. The cartoons/images can be uploaded onto Adobe Photoshop and then manipulated and colored to crete simple comics. I actually found the product rather simplistic; someone with the savvy to navigate photoshop is a little more advanced than the book is written for. But the author did make a good point, that people without the ability to tell Picasso from Pollock can now put together nice looking strips. There are dozens of programs and websites out there, as well.

Just as the music and literary worlds are changing, so is the comic world. I don't think it will be long before you will be downloading all of you new comics from an iComic store, and sharing your own with the world.

London Headlines 2

The London Lite
*Scientists bid to create the Frankenbunny

*Doorstep gunman steals 12 snakes

*Celebrity knicker shortage worsens

*Granny who hammered the clampers

*Pastor goes to court to end softly, softly drugs policing

*Nike boots broke my leg

*McDonald's gun suspects held

*Frolicking by the fjord doesn't have to be a fashion faux-pas

*Extra celebs? That's weird

*Inspiring life with an insect

*Recruiter beats Australian drag

*Apple accounts glitch 'sorry'

The London News

* Rottweiler girl funeral held

London Headlines

From the "Metro":
*Teens smoke 'to have small baby.'
(I didn't read the article, so I apologize, but I can give you no enlightenment on the meaning of this phrase"

From the "Daily Star."
*When boobs EXPLODE
(hahahahaah)

Article from "London Lite".
*Cor blimey: Fascinating London facts you never knew you needed to know.
Does the Underground have its own mosquito? YES. A few years ago, British geneticists discovered a mosquito that only lives in the tunnels of the Underground and feeds on passengers. The culex molestus is closely related to a breed of mosquito that feeds on pigeons and lives above ground.
(cool)

*Amish forgive the killer of their girls ("They prayed and wept for their own kind...)
(Their own kind? Wow...*wince*)

*The hero tree doctors who turned into my baby's midwives
(So many ways to interpret the meaning of this. The most logical: Some heroic MD trees helped a woman deliver a child.)

*Should fare dodgers be throttled?
(Wow, I guess the Old Bailey hasn't moved on much from quartering convicts)

*"smoking cannabis"
(I guess the plant name is still used over here, instead of a Mexican slang phrase)

*150ft up, man's (live) high wire walk of death ("he scaled the towering structure with no safety rope...he did a series of balancing acts and chi-ups over five hours, all the time risking a 275,000-volt electric shock. BUT THIS WAS NO STUNTMAN. IT WAS A RUSSIAN.")

*Breast NOT best for child's IQ
(Breast must be a new dish. So guess fish is the best brain-food)

*Documentary: My Small Breasts And I

*Quote: "If I die before my cat, I want some of my ashes put in his food so I can live inside him"


From the "London News"

*Hijacker unarmed and alone, claims minister
(I thought they were all taken...)

*Bull chases man, 88, into a bush
(I can only laugh.)

*Sharks heading for Scotland
(Run for the hills, lads!)

*Geller ass-ists donkey charity
(clever. very clever)

*Fat livers with oysters? Yum..
(yes, yum...)

"An idle idol's life's ideal
(So clever, just so clever! The alliteration, and use of the same word twice! It just blows my mind, man. Too much.)

"How a blind man sees elephants
(How indeed.)

Sticky Note Graffiti

The Wilhelm Scream

Google is a wonderful, wonderful place. Yesterday, I was trying to find information of Centurian Helmets, and my search went like this:

Centurian Helmets -> Mandalorian Star Wars Culture -> Boba Fett -> The Wilhelm Scream.

You know when Boba Fett falls into the Sarlaac Pit in "Return of the Jedi"? His scream is apparently a Wilhelm scream, the in-joke of all movie sound guys. Now, for years I've thought that when the Stormtrooper falls off Cloud City, his scream was not quite right. I've also commented numerous times that, "hey, that scream the goon just made? Didnt that sound an awful lot like the stormtrooper who dies in The Empire Strikes Back? Google has now informed that it IS ALL ONE SCREAM. Yes. Long, long ago, a sound artist was looking through a sound library, and found a file titled "Man Being Eaten by An Alligator." Wilhelm was an actor that somehow utilized the scream, and ever since then, it has been an inside production joke. It can be found in: every Star Wars, Indiana Jones, King Kong, Space Balls, a Goofy Movie, etc.

And I just thought that LA voice actors all screamed the same.

Aaron and the Wheatpasting

Please excuse the explicit wheatpaste art, but this wall was a standout. And, of course, Aaron contemplating the meaning of it all.

New Weird Headlines

*Islamists Calm Somali Capital With Restraint

*As Children Suffer, Parents Agonize Over Spinach

*So Small a Town, So Many Patent Suits

*A Doughboy Killed in Action is Home at Last