ubik2.comubiquity in time and space

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Simimobile, a Transnational Temps art project for your mobile

Digital Jungle Simiomobile invites telecommunication companies to show leadership and commit to preserving biodiversity.

The Simiomobile kit is composed by one hardware modification module to custom the looking of the telephone and a software module with a set of applications. The Simiomobile user get acces to a series of extra services, related to the species you choose to sponsor, like reception of SMS text messages when news arises that’s relevant to the survival of the species, web access to your profile, and networking services for finding others with similar interests and other tools that insure communications between the users of the Digital Jungle like free messages within each animal sponsor group by bluetooth.

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Sit-in Rings on Google Earth ?

Thanks to the collaboration with google company dpt. in Madrid, we will launch a new digital dream in 2011. Based on the “sit-in” spirit from the 70th, you will be able to create some sit-in rings on Google Earth. We are the children of May 68. Lets occupy the digital maps on earth and make some “sit-in” in the strategic places where we should focus our attention.

This screenshot of f the prototype is showing the first sit-in ring we made in Spain in the Google Laboratories, focusing on the contamination of the mouth of the Mississippi river. We invited five experts in marine biodiversity
to participate to the sit-in ring. A earthworm memory base has been sowed at the relative geodesic coordinates.

Well, this is still a fiction ;-) !

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Galaxia Triunfo, a Universe simulator for the mass culture ?

In 2003, we wrote a proposal for a TV show called “Operación Triunfo”, a international TV concept, a singers academy where people can vote for their favorite new talent. I was very interested by the fact that we call a famous singer a “star” and wrote a creative idea, a concept of web community of users voting for their stars in a online 3D universe. But in this case, the singers were not stars but galaxies and each people voting for them, are a star in their favorite singer galaxy.

Users can vote in real time during the show and create a density of stars. All this looks a little bit “commercial” but the most interesting aspect of the project was to build a multi-realities online software based on a true universe simulator. People can connect to the web community and use their created star as a avatar and chat with others stars from the same galaxy, or move to another galaxy whenever they want. The trick is that if the users want to stop chatting they can use the online software as a classical 3D universe simulator and learn about the last theories. Through a simple TV show we virtually propel a high number of people in the online Universe simulator. A interesting idea was to create some crossing between the trajectories of different galaxies  and let people know the user profile of each others crossing their orbit, and break the duality between galaxies. 

The concept of multi-realities software is based on the use of a metaphor to build a navigable interface. Using a metaphor let us build a model based on a knowledge from physics, biology, cosmology…etc and use this as a digital architecture for whatever we want. Do you think we could connect the masses to the knowledge about the Universe ?,perhaps this type of softwares could help to do it ;-) !!

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Tejer circuitos de conciencia medioambiental

En la actualidad, hay un interés cada vez mayor en temas medioambientales por parte de la sociedad. La psicosis catastrófista de los finales de los anos 90 deja poco a poco paso a una visión mas bucólica y digerida de los retos para el planeta. Las grandes companias aprovechan el filón emocional del ecomarketing para afirmarse como sostenibles y cada cual, con toda su buena voluntad, intenta ser mas ‘ECO’. Pero cual es la efectividad de este supuesto movimiento de conciencia global de las sociedades capitalistas, hay efectividad ? Existe una manera bastante interesante desde las prácticas artísticas para comprobarlo, y es lo que me gustaría presentar aquí. Debemos llevar la mirada hacia el encuentro entre el arte, el activismo ecologista y el mercado. Cómo colectivo artístico desarrollando proyectos de arte electrónico en colaboración con organizaciones ecologistas ( transnationaltemps.net) estamos explorando en primer plano la eficiencia del activismo cultural medioambiental en nuestra propia red artística y en las redes de organizaciones ecologistas. Estas dos esferas están básicamente incomunicadas. Las razones son múltiples, una de ellas es que la red de organizaciones ecologista no quieren cazarse con las instituciones públicas y en general, el arte medioambiental visible se encuentra en un circuito de instituciones. Otro factor, es que a su vez los artistas consideran su trabajo como ‘obra’ que no necesita especialmente de una relación con el activismo de terreno. También muchos artistas y críticos se involucraron desde los 90 en lo que llamamos Arte y Ciencia, relación que a prevalecido sobre cuestiones claramente medioambientales. Arte y Ciencia es paradójicamente un freno para llegar al público y tener un impacto en la sociedad porque no teje raíces con la sociedad y ademas creo que muchos llegamos a la conclusión que en este terreno, finalmente es el científico que se convierte en el verdadero artista, siendo el, el creador final de lo procesos. Sin extenderme mucho, creo que la ciencia es un entorno demasiado comprometido con las patentes y sumiso a los ordenes de la industria de consumo y por lo tanto puede ser contraproducente de cara al público quedarse en un modelo exclusivo arte/ciencia sin integrar la vertiente activista ecologista que es fundamental para crear una apertura eficiente.  Quiero afirmar en mi nombre personal que es de primera importancia buscar este diálogo art / activismo medioambiental a partir del momento en el que se plantea tratar de conciencia medioambiental desde el arte. Uno de los grandes papeles del las actividades artísticas contemporáneas es de restablecer pasarelas con las organizaciones ecologistas y la sociedad, el arte es un vector estratégico para ello. Es importante porque creo que las organizaciones ecologistas están profundamente separadas de la sociedad, tachados de individuos que dan mas valor a un mono que a un ser humano ( dixit web de PGS proyectogransimio.org ). Las organizaciones como PGS están en un profundo aislamiento comunicacional fuera de su red de colaboradores y de las pocas revistas medioambientales. Otro factor tremendamente grave es la incomunicación de este tejido de bellas personas, voluntarios trabajando día y noche, gritando en el desierto mediático a mas no poder. No hay comunicación entre esta gente, sus organizaciones y el mercado. El greenwashing no se lava las manos con ellos si no a base de spots publicitarios. Leer una revista ecologista es patético al nivel de eficiencia mediática, porque no hay estrategias de comunicación para intentar contrarrestar el marketing de masas. Debemos ayudar a elaborar estrategias creativas para crear los circuitos de concienciación individuo / sociedad / tierra. Es una labor que las grandes marcas están destruyendo permanentemente, virtualizando lo real en productos de consumo, el Snow Leopard de apple, el puma de ‘Puma’..etc. Desde la creatividad, hijos de Mayo del 68, del situacionismo y del arte social, estamos preparados para inventar nuevas formas de vivir en la sociedad. Nuestro último proyecto ‘Statistickers’ consiste sencillamente en pegar pegatinas sobre el estado real de las especies en peligro de extinción que podemos encontrar en los embalajes de los productos de consumo como los zumos o los cereales. Son etiquetas a pegar en los supermercados y que se refieren a la clasificación internacional sobre especies IUCN. Son básicamente proyectos nacidos de arte que mutan en estrategias de comunicación para la organización que trabaja realmente para el tigre de Frosties. Ahora bien, también los ecoactivistas tienen su responsabilidad por el tremendo complejo de inferioridad que tienen con las corporaciones que explotan comercialmente lo que ellos intentan justamente preservar de manera desinteresada. Felidaefund.org esta trabajando 24/24h para que la marca ‘PUMA’ pueda seguir justificando tranquilamente su logotipo como real en el espacio natural. Las organizaciones deben ante todo crear una red fuerte que va en el mismo sentido y reforzar su  estructura  jurídica para poder llevar a cabo estrategias mediáticas fuertes en el espacio público que les saquen del anonimato y de una imagen pública totalmente caduca. Este retrato del arte, del mercado y de las organizaciones ecologistas es revelador de un acondicionamiento total de los individuos manipulados por los mecanismos de control de masas. Cada cual, que sea el artista o el voluntario ecologista, tienen una capacidad muy limitada para influir sobre la mirada de la sociedad. Creo en las prácticas artísticas como puertas abiertas hacia la transdisciplinaridad  intentando hilar circuitos para una conciencia global renovada. Como bien explica Critical Art Ensemble, se trata de poner en marcha conjuntamente estrategias de Tactical Media, somos quien somos según el contexto en el que estamos. Esta claro que la concienciación medioambiental es superficial, es una versión edulcorada y homeopática dispensada por la cultura de masa y los media. Tejer conjuntamente desde las prácticas artísticas y el activismo medioambiental hacia el espacio público y el mercado es una via esencial que debemos emprender.

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Nokia is loosing the battle against the iphones, how could they escape from the defeat ?

Regarding to the evolution of the market of mobile phones and the big success of the iphone, it seems that Nokia is not finding a convincing way to preserve their pole position in the mobile phones market. We can suppose that Nokia will loose the leadership because the mobile phones are now small computers and Apple is building computers since the 70th. It can be one of the major reasons and that’s why Nokia starts to build computers this year, but this is not the “big” reason. Visiting the Nokia company web page, we can feel a sort of desire to offer new services and attract consumers with such “moblogging” services like ” OVI “. They have a specific section called ” Beta Labs ” and we can imagine they are preparing a super flexible mobile phone, soon arriving in the market, to be the new reference. But where is this device and their last contracts with Microsoft are really transmitting an idea of renewal ? But i think the problem is not really the software and the hardware, in fact the Symbian S60 firmware is a powerful operating system with a lot of features. The interface is perhaps not so intuitive than the iphone but we can do more or less the same stuff with a Nokia N97 and a iphone. Some specifications on various Nokia devices are better, like connecting your Nokia N95 8GB to a TV and a bluetooth keyboard to make your e.mails and blogs pictures and videos for example, two good features that the iphone can’t do at this moment. Basically the problem of Nokia company is the lack of creativity to make the difference with Apple. They can’t try to win the market in some terrains like selling online music, who can do it better than apple and itunes ? The salvation of Nokia is learning to do very well what Apple is doing very bad. The Achille’s heel from apple is their really bad relation with the environment, they don’t care about ecology and it is so evident. Who can explain how it is possible to integrate the batteries on the iphone in the way that you can’t replace it because it is fixed inside the device and no way to recycle millons of batteries. Another fact, it is a irony to see how Apple is calling their operating system with the name of endangered species like Tigers and Snow Leopards without helping the organizations working for the preservation of these endangered species. Are we prepared to explain to the children of our children why the majority of the species disappeared in the wild in a time-lapse of a few decades of a global economic happiness in the western world ?

Making what Apple doesn’t care, focusing on the preservation of earth.

It’s time to wake up and invite the companies to help to preserve life on earth. It is necessary to change the mechanism of the market and stop to virtualize the earth, stop green washing and act. And the mobile phone companies have a great paper to do here because the mobiles are building the digital network of tomorrow, soon we will stop to navigate “in” internet and will say that we are “inside” internet thanks to the intelligent devices like the interconnected mobile phones generating networks of information all around us. The telecommunication market has the power to generate consciousness through their products and reach the human networks using their devices. We have to ask to Apple, “can you explain why you use the image of a Snow Leopard to sell your last operating system when you do nothing to preserve the environment ?”. This is a good terrain for Nokia to make a better product than Apple, and they started to do it, giving precise information about the components of their mobile phones and the ways to recycle their devices. Nokia has to make various significative step forwards now and find a way to link people to their environment through a new set of telecommunication facilities making the bridge between the network of users and their environment. As Transnational Temps art collective, we made a mobile phone project called “Simiomobile” with the international organization PGS (Proyecto Gran Simio) working for the preservation of great apes. It is important to know that the gorillas, Orangutans and Bonobos are at few step to disappear from their natural environment. We proposed to create a suite of small mobile phones softwares for people to create communities of users and building virtual networks of species and at the same time collaborating for the preservation of the real species ( www.simiomobile.com ). If Nokia wants to continue to be a leader in the mobile phones market, they should create a new consumer attitude, helping to generate networks of consciousness around ecology, offering some “open minds” softwares to their community of users. I am looking around in the street, People are ready to receive such products.

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Electro Aimants

Electro-Aimants is a software showing the flux of e.mail exchange between one user and his network. Based on the metaphore of magnets and their magnetic fields, more intense is a comunication with a user, closer is the contact from the user magnet. This visualization let people see how closed they are from their contacts.

Electro-Aimants is organizing your contacts through the groups created in the agenda, a interesting tool let you create a string of contacts and create a mailing list graphically. If you are sharing information with another user, you can login to the magnet with another ID and discover your friend’s network.

A “Stats” screen let you see your relation with your network in a single view.

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What is “Cloud Thinking” ?

Generally, all the posts uploaded by people on their blogs are dead in the past just after pressing “publish” because they don’t really think about the coordinates of their thoughts and don’t situate them adequately. Our words die in the coordinates of the false present. We should define better the coordinates of our thoughts. I propose to practice now the “Cloud Thinking” in various spaces and times, situating our words in a deepest way. The thought is based on two inner coordinates that are “the place I’m thinking when i formulate the thought” (looking for the moon from the small fishing harbor) and the time i am thinking for this thought (11.09.1979). The 2 coordinates are the coordinates of my thoughts on the web. Why not searching in a web engine for posts from 1979 and create storms of thoughts in space and time ? I hope you will build too your own clouds and meet you tomorrow in another place and time perhaps in 2054 in Kyoto, but this is another story…

The tools to create some new “Cloud Thinking” nodes.

The best tool to create a new “Cloud Thinking” node is the mobile phone. Yes, the mobile phones give us the GPS coordinates and give us the power to be connected online and in the street at the same time. But these coordinates are the basic ones, the coordinates of the machines. But our real coordinates are really more subtle. As human being we can travel through space and time, locating our “being” in another centuries and places. Looking for the moon tonight, i can be with Galileo in 1602.

A web engine for the “Cloud Thinking” nodes.

This web engine is a serie of concentric spheres, like a onion skin all around the planet earth. Each level of this skin is a date. Each days, a new skin is growing from the surface of earth to the exosphere, pushing the other skins in the cosmos. We can travel through the nodes crossing the layers and coordinates. Well, this looks like a digital 3D Encyclopedia of the Humanity, a sort of Wikipedia of history and geography. It is true, the knowledge nodes are there, millions of capsules of information, forming the basic grid of the digital structure of the engine. This engine is Geocentric, that’s the starting point to the discover of the digital cosmos.

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The structure of the Universe is reflected in the structure of the brain

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Multi-Realities Games

This is a future way for a hybridation between games and digital databases. We are at a few steps to understand that the interconectivity between diferents paradigms can offer to “basic” users the posibility to dive in the explanation of this billions of insignificant 3D models. A sensitive golfer’s game could be a way to connect to the geological, ecological, political referencies of this peace of simulation. Suddenly the player is sending the ball at a few thousand milles of the green. The game is not over, it is really starting.

What happens when The video-game the “SIMS” is directly connected to the real weather ?