Waterfall on Venus
Taking a refreshing acid rain bath in one of the waterfalls on Kimika Ying’s Sister Planet at LEA29.
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Vanessa
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Christa Forster
Book Machine Houston
I’m gonna be taking “What’s on [My] Mind?” to Book Machine Houston tomorrow — Sunday, September 7, 2014. I’ve got 3.5 hours with a graphic designer to make an artist’s book. Drinking fake wine and getting my shit together!
Trying to represent the breadth of what it was. We’ll see how I do.
http://www.blafferartmuseum.org/book-machine-houston-texas-contemporary/
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Ciara
Christa, this sounds fantastic! Good luck and have fun working with the designer:-)
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Vanessa Blaylock
Oooh, this does sound fantastic! You’ll be staying for the discussion after?
The Book will be a glorious tactile experience. I’m also interested in this new “World Wide Web” thing I’ve been hearing about. I wonder if they’d give you files so you could put some or all of your book online?
I’ve been wondering a lot (without much progress) about how to create more immersive experiences in cyberspace: Books, Narrative Storytelling, yes, Cornel Boxes, etc.
Cyberspace has more serendipity than just about anything in human history. Its unboundedness lets you create your own adventures, but it makes it hard to craft anything for others to experience. When you have a Book be it a book with words or images, on paper or eReader, it seems to be an agreement between artist and reader to spend some chunk of time, large or small, focused on a specific story or experience, narrative or game.
See what a nice job I did of making your project about meeee! haha. Anyway, have a great time, I’m sure we’re all excited to see what results! 😀
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Vanessa Blaylock
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Christa Forster
LOL. So true, Ikea!! Funny.
Van, you say “Cyberspace has more serendipity than just about anything in human history. Its unboundedness lets you create your own adventures, but it makes it hard to craft anything for others to experience.”
William Blake, also speaking of boundaries, says “The want of a determinate and bounding form evidences the want of idea in the artist’s mind.” I wonder how Blake’s idea speaks to the artists crafting in cyberspace?
What intrigues me about performance is that while it does have a “determinate and bounding form,” that form is temporal, by nature diffused in the audience’s and the creator’s imaginations.
Blake championed what he called Eternal Truth, which was visible through these determinate and bounding forms. Most of his contemporaries’ work appealed to the senses rather than the intellect, resulting in mere “blurs and blots,” as he said.
I think your active searching to figure out how to “bound” something in the “unboundedness” of cyberspace, Van, is awesome, an odyssey toward what Blake would have called an Eternal Truth. The irony is that the serendipity that you mention is transitory, but it’s within this bizarre space where supposedly nothing every disappears (the www). How does this condition affect the imagination? individual and cultural?
IDK!!
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Ciara
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Emma
just met another Emma.. i can’t believe other Emma’s are cool too!!
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Vanessa Blaylock
OMG! September is Emmaplosia month!
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Vanessa
Farm Animals
Next door to Kimika Ying’s Sister Planet is Lisa Asynja, Lor Asynja & Maxje Constantine’s Jomsborg which just had its grand opening on Saturday! Meanwhile, here’s me hanging out with the farm animals.
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Monerda Skute
Hola!
Hey y’all. Great password you gave me Vanessa 😀 Penny asked me to pass along that she had a blast at DragonCon VR and the circulation is slowly returning to her arms ^^
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Vanessa Blaylock
Hey Moni! Thanks for joining us here @WN! OMG what a trooper Penny was on Saturday! And what crazy timing on the event too – apparently Facebook has launched another round of Avatar purges:
http://joyardley.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/facebook-is-deleting-avatar-profiles-again/BTW if Penny’d like to post here on WN, just give a shout and we’ll add her – everyone is welcome! 😀
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Emma
just hanging.. with a drink.. turned the radio up so i can hear it on the porch..
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Vanessa Blaylock
Oh hey Emma1, thanks for joining us here! And what a sweet photo. Love that afternoon haze in the air. What’s in the ice bucket? And WHEN did you go blonde!? — Emma2
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Vanessa
DragonCon VR Edition!
EFF, io9, The Harry Potter Alliance, Southeastern Browncoats, The Baker Street Babes, Wattpad, & The Organization for Transformative Works all supported Project Secret Identity at DragonCon this weekend! They took photos on site, and VBCO participated remotely via a VR March on Saturday 30 August. We all had a lot of fun and made at least a small statement about basic human rights here in the 21st century.
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Ciara, 
Christa Forster, and 
Vanessa
## Semi Factual A while back we were…
Semi-Factual
A while back we were talking about ideas like Counterfactual History and Creative NonFiction and blurring of fact and fiction. Christa really liked the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.
Today Madeline Raynor over at Mashable.com has written about “15 Captivating Autobiographical Books That Mix Fact and Fiction,” including O’Brien’s book.
http://mashable.com/2014/09/01/autobiographical-fiction/
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xtaforster
Thanks for this list, VB! I can use it with my 10th grade class, where I teach not only O’Brien’s semi-autobiographical book, but also Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, too. xo
Vanessa
Sister Planet
Kimika Ying (of Oceania Planetary Park where Virtual Ysidora danced last year) is working on a new installation, Sister Planet. It’s Venus. But not 2014 Venus. More like 1950 Venus with carnivorous plants and other mid-century fantasies. Ying’s also interested in taking the 19th century Steampunk sensibility and moving it forward to the 20th. Kind of like 1880 Steampunk & 2014 Planetary Science meeting in an alternative middle of the 20th century.
Anyway, Emma Pleyel-Maybe and I were hanging out there this week. We’re sitting on the rim of a surprisingly genteel, if active, volcano.
Vanessa Blaylock & Emma Pleyel-Maybe @ Kimika Ying’s “Sister Planet.”
Vanessa
DragonCon!
Project Secret Identity
Exciting News! EFF, io9, The Harry Potter Alliance, Southeastern Browncoats, The Baker Street Babes, Wattpad, & The Organization for Transformative Works are all supporting Project Secret Identity at DragonCon this weekend! If you’re there at Dragon Con in Atlanta, 29 August – 1 September, you can visit photo stations at the convention: EFF (Second floor at the Hilton) or Southeastern Browncoats (Table #1000 at AmericasMart).
VBCO Invites You 2 March!
For those of us who aren’t we can take our own pix and add them to the Project Secret Identity website. And for those who like to march, we can get together at 10am SLT on Saturday 30 August to carry our signs, march, and take pix. We’ll provide signs, or you can use our sign with pose and apply your own slogan (texture)
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Vanessa
Avatar Hangouts!
Photo: Bloom Girls by Thelma Felix.
Meetup! Hangout!
Kind of like Google Video Hangouts. But since you’re already in-world, you don’t actually need “Google Video.” Still, a great chance to catch up with old friends and make new ones. Kind of like a dance place without the dancing. But you can dance if you want to. Kind of like a philosophy discussion group without the philosophy. But you can talk philosophy if you want to.
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Ravanel
This looks cool! I missed the first hangouts… is this still happening?
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Vanessa Blaylock
OMG, it’s alive!?
The “first” one was pretty fun:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/vaneeesab/sets/72157647595830605/I guess I wound up deciding to focus on “Other Projects” rather than do repeated hangouts… although it would be cool to do one in LOTRO!!
Last weekend I streamed for 24 hours straight!
http://virtualpublicart.com/vaneeesacamAnd next month we’re doing “Dawn” — it’d be really cool if you wanted to join in for that! We could all admire your pretty SL hair! 😀
http://virtualpublicart.com/events/activities/12/Long time no see! Hope all is well with You, Tiger, and the Laptops!
xo
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Vanessa
Hello Worlds
Worlds Ninja!
In a Virtual World you’re already chatting with your logged-in, in-world friends. But we don’t chat so often with offline friends. Or friends who frequent other worlds. Worlds Ninja is a quick, easy & asynchronous place to keep up with your peeps, where & when-ever they may be!
Image: Ninja by Dani VR
Xue
Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
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Mr WordPress
Hi, this is a comment.
To delete a comment, just log in and view the post's comments. There you will have the option to edit or delete them.
Andrea Foenander
Symposium
Firstly, my sincerest apologies for being unable to join last weeks hangout. Now that the issue has been resolved I hope to join you next time. I’d also like to extend an open invitation;
At the beginning of September I will chair a discussion on a paper by Michael Masucci on the role of women in digital art. It is going to be a ten day asynchronous discussion with the comments featured alongside the paper. The format is like a Q&A session, intended to be a medium to add questions and perspectives on Michael’s ideas.
Following the symposium I would like to publish the proceedings and attract writers to produce new essays that will form a book. The book will be launched at a later date within an exhibition featuring works by digital women artists.
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Vanessa Blaylock
The topic of Michael’s paper is, of course, very interesting. And the format of your discussion will also be interesting to watch unfold.
Send us links etc when it’s time to participate!
Ciara Finnegan
Vanessa
## Comments on Re search You may have…
Comments on .Re/search
You may have noticed over the months that the comments on .Re/search often put the wrong person’s face with the comment. We haven’t been able to resolve this and have now switched to “Disqus” comments for .Re/search.
It should pretty much function the same. New comments should avoid the wrong face issue. I’m not certain if it will be importing faces for the old comments or not, but at least they won’t be the wrong images. And it looks like it cleans everything up going forward. 🙂
Mke, and -
xtaforster
I tried commenting (I have a disqus), but I don’t see the comment yet. I’ll check again later.
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Vanessa Blaylock
Oh gosh, it’s always something! I don’t see your comment on .Re/search OR in the “moderation cue”… can you try another one?
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Mke
I haven’t done much coding of comments, but I have done some with avatars and bbpress.
My first thought would be to check if/how the site is cached.
Next step is to check a plugin conflict – minify, CDN, or something associated with Javascript.
Or if the site uses a comment related plugin check that.
The WP Codex says the avatar function is pluggable which means functions are easily overridden.
Outlier possibilities: document structure issue (open element tag), php loop error.
It is most likely a small problem.-
Vanessa Blaylock
thanks Mike! We had a comment issue here on .Re/act in the past, that your comment would go under the wrong post! That turned out to be some issue with Jetpack Comments & this Houston / P2 theme. Turning Jetpack Comments off solved that.
Meanwhile, over on .Re/search we’ve always had a “wrong icon / avatar” issue. It’s intermittent. I’m thinking it might use the right avatar if the commenter is logged in to the website, and if not, it uses the author’s avatar for the commenter!? As far as I can tell, that’s an issue with .Re/search’s “Diablo” theme. Moving to Disqus may have been overkill, but it seems like it’s resolved (or driven over) that issue.
TY!
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Vanessa Blaylock
Since the “existing” comments have been “imported” to Disqus, your name and comments are still there, but it doesn’t automatically have your Icon / Avatar. (it will on any future comments)
If you go:
disqus.com > edit profile > mergingand “merge” your comments, then, voila! Your icon will “populate” all over .Re/search!
Vanessa
Kimika Ying: Sister Planet
Christa asked me for a link to Kimika Ying’s new installation
Sister Planet
Adventures on the world of Venus as it might have been.
Kimika Ying: Sister Planet
She’s actually just received her 5-month land grant and only started work here, but it’s a pretty compelling environment already. With the Site Dance course coming around again, I’m sure I’d like to do some work here!
• In-world SL-URL: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LEA29/166/121/22
• Website: venus-sisterplanet.blogspot.com
• Previous Installation: Oceania Planetary Park: oceaniaplanetarypark.blogspot.com
Vanessa
No Hangout with Andrea
Sadly we couldn’t get Andrea Foenander in our Google Video Hangout today. I tried to Text Hangout and it would let me 1-to-1 “hangout” with her, but it rejected her plus anyone else. IDK what the issue was. Perhaps a firewall at her university? I’ll try to “Hangout” with her from her Home/studio sometime and see if that was it.
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Andrea Foenander
Very disappointing to have missed today, my sincere apologies. I hope that I can rectify this before the next discussion. In the meantime I would like to send some info about the proposed event for September and invite all to participate in the discussion
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Vanessa Blaylock
So sorry we missed you today Andrea! Yes, perhaps we can work out the tech details on the Hangout.
And YES, your “September Event” sounds intriguing… I’m eager to see how it goes!
(maybe work on another name besides “September Event”? 😀
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Vanessa Blaylock
PS: I’m sure we’ll sort out the Google Hangout issue… but if all else fails, we do have a chat engine over on .Re/search:
http://practicebased.re/search/chat/
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Vanessa
Stop Me B4 I MOOC Again!
Hi Guys, I’ve somehow enlisted myself in 2 MOOCs starting in September.
From Stanford:
OpenKnowledge Changing the global course of learning
2 Sep – 12 Dec 2014
From CalArts / Coursera:
Creating Site-Specific Dance and Performance Works
29 Sep – 14 Nov 2014
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Xue
Color Posts Test
Photo: Cho Balanced by Luminis Kanto
This is only a test!
The “Color Post” plugin sets a coordinating background for your post.
I don’t think there are any choices / settings.
Results may vary depending on your theme. In .Re/act’s case, you won’t see it on the home feed, but you will see it on any individual post that has at least 1 image.
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Edie Sedgwick
It’s so cool!
Vanessa
Andrea Foenander
Michael’s invited Andrea Foenander to join us on Monday! Here’s the talk she gave at EZTV in April!
She’s got a lot of compelling ideas as well as an exciting upcoming project to tell us about. Ideas like
How would contemporary culture & art historical discourse be different if Charles Saatchi liked riding a bicycle through a virtual landscape instead of plopping formaldehyde sharks on gallery floors?
Michael has asked similar questions when he’s talked about all that art history has failed to include in recent times. For myself, I’ve felt that work with Virtual Reality & Virtual Worlds has existed in a space separate from the object production & commodity culture of the main art historical narrative.
An event like Burning Man exists largely off the art historical grid. It’s not much talked about in museums, galleries, art fairs. Yeah it’s had impact in so many ways, including inspiring Philip Rosedale to create his Virtual World. Famously, one of the key reasons Larry Page & Sergey Brin allowed Eric Schmidt to be CEO of Google, was because he’d been to Burning Man.
Does New Media want/need validation from Old Media? Or does it create its own independent cultural narratives?
Vanessa
Mixed Berry Shake hangouts 2014
Hangouts 2014
2nd Monday of the Month
• Aug 11 – facilitator: Michael
• Sep 8 – facilitator: Ciara
• Oct 13 – facilitator: Hugh
• Nov 10 – facilitator: Kate
• Dec 8 – facilitator: Vanessa
Nobody has to be a facilitator. Everybody is welcome to facilitate. You don’t have to do a lot, but you could pick a few topics and help juggle the hour.
Open Timetable in Google Drive
Pix
• Raspberries Macro by Liz West
• Reward for work: Blueberries by @rsseattle
• Kiwi by Sergiu Bacioiu
• Berries by Matt Becker
Michael J Masuci are discussing. -
Michael J Masuci
I will be sending out some topic ideas very soon. A scholar in London is creating an online seminar event that I’d like to try to get the Bluberry Shakers involved in doing a collaboartion for. I’ll give details at the Aug. 11 Blueberry Shake hangout.
See you all at the ‘shake’.
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Christa Forster
Ciara Finnegan
The Auld Sod*
Skipping through the lashing rain (yes, summer in Ireland…), not at all confident that I was going the right direction (I wasn’t), I couldn’t help but feel a little thrill of excitement at the prospect of meeting a “Berry” in Real Life – the fact of this meeting, somehow, an affirmation of a commitment to and belief in the importance of .re/act/The Berries (to use the prevailing term;-)).
Vanessa
## Alien Baby I was delighted to be…
Alien Baby?
I was delighted to be “friended” by a distant RL cousin on FB yesterday… and then quickly horrified by her (to me) extremist neocon values.
It’s kind of shocking just how few, short posts it takes to convince me that we’re diametrically opposed on just about every Social, Political, Ideological, Cosmological-Philosophical-Theological dimension I can think of.
Of course I think my cousin is insane. But since she seems to reflect the majority values of my family, perhaps it’s not that she’s insane, but that I’m… hmm… an alien baby??
And then… wow… Alien Baby! What a great performance work that’d be.
I wonder how that piece might go…
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xtaforster
Are you putting this out there for the group to ponder as a possible group performance?
xo
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Vanessa Blaylock
yes I said yes I will Yes
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Ciara Finnegan
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Vanessa Blaylock
OMG! That’s so cool! Have a great time! Post pix! Say hi to Molly Bloom!
Hopefully at the August hangout we can introduce Hugh to Edie’s friend Nasrene who’s up the road from him in Dubai.
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xtaforster
Did y’all take pics?
Vanessa
## Emoji Only Social Net If you use…
Emoji Only Social Net!
If you use this link to sign up, they’ll connect us when they launch! 🙂
http://emoj.li/#7aC97bGv7aC97bGT
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Ciara
Oh, thank you, Vanessa! This is great!! I updated my OS from snow leopard to mavericks last night, allowing me access a whole new world of pictograms and hieroglyphs 🙂
I’m an octopus on a bicycle (well, two bicycles, actually – so many limbs to arrange…)
This is the link I received in order to connect with friends: http://emoj.li/#7aC97bCZ7aC97bqy7aC97bqy-
Vanessa Blaylock
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Vanessa Blaylock
hey… how come my emoji’s not showin up? Oh no, we found .Re/act’s weakness!
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Ciara Finnegan
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Ciara Finnegan
Octopus-bike-bike not showing up for me either though it gives the illusion of display before posting in Safari whereas in Chrome the emoji display only as empty rectangles…Mysterious…
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Vanessa Blaylock
IDK… maybe it’s something about the text formatting of .Re/act’s “theme”… try Twitter! Works great there… I’ve sort of started my own Emoji only campaign on Twitter. Or, of course, anything on your mobile!
Hope 2CU on Emoj.li soon! 🙂
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Christa Forster
Mixed Berry Shake Hangout (unofficial) Minutes
Vanessa
Kate and Michael
Photos from today’s Mixed Berry Shake Hangout. In virtual attendance: Ciara Finnegan, Christa Forster, Michael Masucci, Kate Johnson, Vanessa Blaylock.Molly Ross and Rebecca Longworth chimed in by email but were not able to meet up with us today.
Items discussed:
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Ciara
Thank you for posting the minutes, Christa. It’s really helpful to have this record of our meeting and the links are great too. I enjoyed the Ant Farm documentary trailer – it was interesting to hear Doug Michaels speak of how they arrived at the name Ant Farm – (though I think “Chip, Chuck and Doug” has a catchy ring to it too and happy associations of chipping away at an idea, chucking out the stuff that doesn’t work and er…Doug…hm…dug, past tense of dig and…eh…erm…well, okay, just Doug then!)
I think I conveyed a slightly wrong impression about the name issue in our hangout – it was not so much the name itself that I struggled with (I’m fond of “The Berries”) but rather more that felt uncertain about the identity of the group to which the name refers. This only really became a problem for me when I tried to describe us in an email to Sher Doruff. I’d grown to think of us as a sort of online artist collective/artist-led initiative but I wasn’t quite sure if this was a view held by the other members. I didn’t feel entitled to make such assumptions about the identity of the group, particularly as I wasn’t “with the band” at the beginning 😉
Anyway, I absolutely love Christa’s idea of doing an action or performance together that celebrates our commitment to the group, opens it to further participation and, in some way, serves as a little signatory act.
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Vanessa Blaylock
It’s so interesting that Christa & Ciara & Michael & Kate all seemed to be bring up ideas that I thought fit well together. I agree with all of it! Or at least whatever I thought the zeitgeist of it all was! 😀
I’d love to move on these compelling ideas right away! However for myself, I think July & August are just too buried in other responsibilities. But you all certainly don’t have to wait for me! You can totally run with any of this in whatever form(s) make sense.
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xtaforster
I never thought I’d hear Vanessa say she was buried under too much work! She IS mortal, after all. xoxoxo
Here’s a name I’ll throw out there — ARACHNET (did you remember my mentioning that spiders are my spirit animals?) Anyway…definitely has a stronger bite than berries. I do love the anti-oxidant connotations of berries, though.
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Vanessa
## The Team is whoever comes to play…
The Team is whoever comes to play
Ciara made an interesting comment at the end of today’s hangout, that since she wasn’t one of the “Original Blueberries” she always felt a sort of “imposter complex” (my word not hers) about her participation.
It reminded me of why Richard Stallman left his beloved MIT AI lab and founded the Free Software movement. It all started the day Passwords arrived at the MIT AI lab. He hated the idea that someone who sat at the computer yesterday could have control over what someone who sat there today could do with it.
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Christa Forster
Interesting, Vanessa. Ownership is a very powerful force in the American experience, isn’t it?
Christa Forster
Some Mixed Berries rolled into Los Angeles
and had a physical meet up. It happened today at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Michael Masucci, Kate Johnson and I — Christa Forster — lunched at the outdoor cafe and loitered in the “Becoming Los Angeles” exhibit.
Michael Masucci, Christa Forster, Kate Johnson, July 13, 2014, Los Angeles
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Ciara
Ah, Christa, what a good idea to point one another toward residencies in our respective “hometowns”…
This Dutch website offers a fairly comprehensive list of residency opportunities in Europe and beyond:
http://www.transartists.org/And, off the top of my head, a few others that spring to mind:
In Amsterdam:
http://www.de-ateliers.nl/en/and a super one here:
http://www.rijksakademie.nl/NL/residency/another great one in the southern part of the Netherlands:
http://www.janvaneyck.nl/en/home/A really nice one in Belfast, N. Ireland:
http://flaxartstudios.com/international-residency/and one in Dubin, Ireland:
http://www.imma.ie/en/subnav_13.htm -
Christa Forster
Thanks, Ciara! Great to have these resource links. xo
Vanessa
ONE Night Video
Michael just sent over a video from our mixed reality collaboration with EZTV & Donna Sternberg & Dancers. TY!!
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Monerda Skute
Wow! The live dancers were wonderful. And they had a freaking drone flying around! How cool is that!?! Congrats to everyone involved in the production!
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Vanessa Blaylock
Yessy! Which color were you?? 🙂
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Aero Bigboots
AlexandreLois1
Ananda Crystal
Andrea Foenander
astrid
Aunt Renie
Aurelia Scheppers
Christa Forster
Ciara Finnegan
Bird on a Cyber Twig
Diptheria
Donnie Archer
Edie
Elle
Emma
Elizabeth Taylor Swift
Fanny
FeelsEmpty
Glad Kidd
Izzy
Jade Ravenheart
Kate Nova
Ken Doll
Mary Anning
Meg O'Ryan
Michael Masucci
Mireille
Molly Ross
Monerda Skute
Myra
Neeva
Newton
Michel Nostradamus
Oona
Oscar
Owen
Patrick J. Sweetman
Paypabak Writer
Pearl Grey
Rebecca Narum
rmarie
Ryan
Scarlett Luv
Sello Tape
Serra Qendra
Teresa of Avila
The Knight
Tiffany Mosienko
TrilbyM
Tullia Aragona
Vanessa
veyot
wendz tempest
Xue
Yellow Fever
Ysidora Pico
Yves
Zsophia
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