new frontend for all of you; new back end for me – which will allow collaborations from now on… r-echos has been updated and the url changed: you can now reach it through http://www.anti-chambre.net/r-echos/. there is also a new suggest box from which you can drop me a line suggesting a website… more details soon.

Originally from anti-chambre on January 26, 2006, 12:39pm

A fresh update to Reblog 2.0 has been released. Be first on your block to install it from http://reblog.org/#download.

This release includes a raft of enhancements, including better documentation for plug-in developers, slightly modified tag behavior that makes it easier to navigate your extensiv feed collection, experimental plug-ins for automatically publishing entries to WordPress, TypePad, Blogger and Del.icio.us accounts, and minor usability improvements too numerous to mention.

This BETA version has been extensively tested, and is recommended for most users. (0 comments)

Originally from SourceForge.net: SF.net Project News: reblog (including full news text) on February 8, 2006, 7:20pm

RSS feeds as art; the bastard child of Eyebeam’s ReBlog and Cameron Marlowe’s Blogdex with a bricolage old newspaper graphic feel.
… this introduction is inspired by the earliest comment on the first version of r-echos (which at that time used to reside on anti-chambre, laboratory 01, in a folder called /feedonfeeds) and it pretty well resumed the idea behind. Now with the future versions of this online reader’s digest
we are heading towards a semantic informationnal hub.

There are a couple of location where to look at for more information about this ongoing project. One of the main page where i try to maintain a certain regular flow is on anti-chambre.blogspot.com assembling it was mainly intended to monitor the progress of the first laboratory on anti-chambre.net which has recently exploded in kyriels of projects/websites considered sufficiently self-sustainable.

r-echos in its actual form is the third version of the experiment; all began in March 2004 after a disussion with christophe guignard form fabric.ch. He then sent me the link to one of the software we spoke about, and i simply started to hack around. It was in the middle of my master, and has been one of the main side project for the examination. The purpose was to investigate in the newly appaering phenomenon of feeds and syndications. It then kept a very specific place in my activities – i started to consider it as a reader’s digest, and then like a very personnal magazine.

On a technical point of view it started with the software developed by Steve Manutillo, called FeedOnFeeds. The database was enough simply designed for me to start hacking into it almost immediately, the clearness of the code (clearer than expected ) helped a lot as well. A simple additional checkbox allowed me during months to copy selected articles in a second database – used on the other side (the front end) to re-publish those articles. At exactly the same time the term reblog made its own apparition, and other experiments were popping all around – especially i have to mention Reblog from Eyebeam NY which was already on the niche before. We were using the same software (feedonfeeds) and i kept an eye on what they were publishing (a kind of retroactive loop) with my own solution. They even republished an article about my experiments, which of course stayed on the top of my republished articles’ list for a few days – producing a second stage into the retroactive loop. The article was describing r-echos as an evil bastard in between reblog and blogdex – i quite liked the term and started to be more and more radical in the choice of the republished articles, mixing influences and sources.

At a certain point i started to be a bit frustrated with my archival solution – i only had access to the data trough a search query. That was the time of the emergence of the tagging meme. I started again to hack in the database structure and inside manutillo’s wonderful FeedOnFeeds. Quickly done, i was rapidly expanding my tags database with each article.

Until the rupture point.

I had something like 850 different tags and needed some additional tools to take care of my newly born tag farm: INFO_HUB was born. INFO_HUB is still nowadays an ongoing experiment in the fields of semantic uses of databases, taxonomy and tagging systems, and online publishing. Now r-echos is (proudly) powered by a Word Press engine, slightly customized to feet my needs; i also installed a couple of softwares and plugins as others did better than i could do with the reduced spared time i had at the moment (starting my own studio, working for clients, …)

At some point as well, the number of feeds inside the feedonfeeds software made it impossible to update the rss feeds Рtoo much data Рit was taking hours to refresh the whole db. I was dreaming about a perfect solution which would organise the article depending on some criteria Рlike most of the desktop software do. At that time, i was starting my own studio and activity as independent designer, and consequently had way less time than during my MA in ̩cal. I needed an efficient solution to stay on track on many different points, it was mainly about a kind of information overflow.

- keeping archive online and offline
- updating the feeds without too much hassle
- filtering the informations throuh keywords
- a performant system to archive and browse republished articles on line
- an evolutive system which would allow me to build step by step the whole system i imagined

So far sounds pretty like a personnally crafted 2.0 solution. Having designed quite a few projects from scratch i was already quite conscious of my own limits.
Seeking for a better alternative i tried quite a lot of cms/blog engine.

I loved the way wordpress got ready in the minute, plus all its plugin functionnalities.
In the meantime Eyebeam produced a rework on the feedonfeeds with the reblog software.
Despite, I decided to switch to a desktop software solution as i came across Net News Wire, bundled with Mars Edit. With NNW i had the possibility to create filters (smartlist as they call it) like i do with iTunes. I’m now in the quest for an auto generative solution which combining my tags’ bookmarks on del.icio.us would, trough applescript, produce automatically the filters.
Also i’m completely found of the google mashups – and mapping articles would be quite a nice features (geoloc.info_hub).

What is amazing so far, is that the system can always be developped, streched, combined, altered, connected… I’m still wandering where it will lead me.

[more to come soon, still aggregating and glueing stuff]

Brand new r-echos here since we transfered from the anti-chambre.net server, a few new thing and lots to come for the interface, process, etc.

Public Production of etoy – Visit the MISSION ETERNITY PRODUCTION PLANT
at Kaserne/Kunstraum Walcheturm in Zurich.

On Feb 21 2006, 2 etoy.TANKS coming from Berlin and China landed in Zurich
to launch a two-month public production period visible and open to the public.
etoy.AGENTS produce hardware and software for the MISSION ETERNITY project,
launched by etoy.

MISSION ETERNITY is a technology-driven cult of the dead, an interactive work
of art that crosses the ultimate boundary. The production of this long-term,
multi-faceted community sarcophagus offers a unique point-of-entry into the
processes that drive media art today. Art consumers, etoy.INVESTORS, friends,
and the public are invited to join the production and engage in an active
exchange with the etoy.CREW .

From March 2 to April 28, 2006, the etoy.CREW works at Kasernenareal/Walcheturm
in Zurich. For scheduled events, please consult www.etoy.com/blog.

the Art of DeTouch

The Art of DeTouch explores the manipulation of images related to the human form. Drawing photographs from existing online portfolio sites of professional re-touch artists, this application allows a user to explore precisely how the images were altered. Using Processing, an open source programming language and environment, before and after images are compared algorithmically pixel by pixel to generate visualizations of the alterations.

(Via NetArtNews.)

[tags]animation,modification,retouch,photography,fashion,visualisation[/tags]

Cyborg Rats vs. Rescue Robots posted by aisling to cyborgapplication… bookmark this

(Via del.icio.us/tag/cyborg.)

John K. Chapin’s LabThe brain works through the joint action of large networks of neurons, yet traditional neurophysiological investigations typically sample from only one neuron at a time. The major focus of the lab has been to develop and utilize techniques for simultaneously recording the activity of large numbers of neurons in the brain of awake behaving animals. Use of these techniques to detect signals coded by populations of neurons will be important not only for elucidating mechanisms of brain function, and for alleviating medical problems such as paralysis. Since this sort of work may also guide development of intelligent machines it is being used to provide data for computer simulations of brain activity.
Rats’ brain waves could find trapped peoplRats equipped with radios that transmit their brainwaves could soon be helping to locate earthquake survivors buried in the wreckage of collapsed buildings.
Rats have an exquisitely sensitive sense of smell and can crawl just about anywhere. This combination makes them ideal candidates for sniffing out buried survivors. For that, the animals need to be taught to home in on people, and they must also signal their position to rescuers on the surface.
In a project funded by DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, Linda and Ray Hermer-Vazquez of the University of Florida in Gainesville have worked out a way to achieve this.
First the researchers identified the neural signals rats generate when they have found a scent that they are looking for. “When a dog is sniffing a bomb, he makes a unique movement that the handler recognises,� says John Chapin, a neuroscientist at the State University of New York in Brooklyn who is collaborating on the project. “Instead of the rat making a conditioned response, we pick up the response immediately from the brain.�

[tags]robot,animal,brain[/tags]

Swarms of microrobots with big goalsIn “Mini robots to undertake major tasks?,”IST Results describes a EU-funded project which allowed to build several kinds of microrobots in the last three years. These robots are very small (about 1.5 cm by 3 cm), have limited on-board intelligence and are wirelessly controlled by a central robot control system. A follow-on project has already started, with an even more ambitious goal: deploy “real” swarms of up to 1,000 robot clients. Such robot swarms are expected to perform “a variety of applications, including micro assembly, biological, medical or cleaning tasks.”

(Via Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends.)

[tags]robot,ai,self organising system[/tags]

A Picture Says 1000 Words About Google’s Censorship In China

[tags]language, redefinning-words, censorship, image, search engine, politics[/tags]

Proboscis | Social Tapestries | Feral Robots

Outline
The Fellowship aims to bridge the experimental robotics field with that of pervasive location based public authoring. The collaboration is intended to investigate the possibilities for artists and
engineers to develop compelling new forms of social and cultural intervention that can
be adopted and adapted by ordinary people, using the tools and materials available to them. Its objectives are: