Dear only reader of this blog,

I am off for the longer holiday break I had in many many years: 12 days!!! in a row!!!
It doesn't mean that I won't be posting here, no worries, you won't miss me. It just that I am overexcited about the prospects.

I will be here:

doing this:

and eating this:

and drinking this:

and missing you all :))

Program to be released next Sunday. Amazing visualisations of different human activities over the country.

Specially interesting the images of the mobile phone usage.

See the video:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7539529.stm

via: Information Aestetics

via Brand 3.0, thanks Cristian

A few interesting concepts:

- the "invisible browser".
- The mobile device used to carry with you the online data.
- The "semantic" clusters.
- The spacial organisation of data in the desktop.

I don't understand the insistence on the data visualisation trick.

Hi only reader of this blog, how are you?

Today our coleague and friend Sian has added a new and exciting webjam to the family:

http://www.poppycockney.com/

Real Life London in a Fictional World.

enjoy

Dear reader,

The page background for this summer weeks is based on Gerard Richter's 180 colours (1971)

hope you like it

Dear 1 or 2 readers of my fascinating blog, here is a message from Webjam to you.

Invite a few friends and we'll give you a great gift, it's easy, fast and your webjam will be more popular than ever.

Please follow this link:

http://about.webjam.com/webjam/blog/$webjam_blog/2008/07/29/its_easy_to_win_with_the_invite_promotion

or click on the image:

and let me know how does it work for you,

thanks!!

I recently discovered Bill Hicks, an american stand-up comedy genius who sadly died very young, as some kind of martyr in the name of art and common sense.

I am reading  "Love all the People", a compilation of his routines and other documents (thanks Marcus). Among them there's this amazing letter he wrote as a personal response to one complaint of one Christian viewer, after a bitter satirical speech about religion.

The viewer defines comedy as some of escape to the "daily grind of reality to jusy kick back and don't think for a while".
This is part of Bill's answer:

" Dear Mr. Christian,

... If comedy is a escape from anything, it is a escape from the illusions. The comic by using the Voice of Reason, reminds us of our True Reality, and in that moment of recognition, we laugh, and the 'reality of the daily grind in shown for what it is - unreal ... a joke. True comedy turns circles into spirals. What before seemed a tiresome, frightening or frustrating wall, the comic deftly and fearlessly steps through, proving the absurdity of it all. The audience is relieved to know they're not alone thinking. 'This bullshit we hear and see all day makes no sense. Surely I'm not the only one who thinks so. And surely there must be an answer... ' Good comedy helps people know they're not alone. Great comedy provides an answer.

It is a most rarified air in the air that the great comics must breathe, who've trascended their own preconcieved notions as well as the audiences at the same time. Here the comic is one with the audience. He is a vesel, empty of himself, yet full of wonder and joy and creation - for these are the fruits of the Voice of Reason bears. The Voice of Reason is in us all, and it is the same voice that is in us all. And when it is voiced, it is heard by all and everyone can recognize it, because it makes sense, and everyone benefits from it ... equally. There's no downside. There's no other shoe.

It is, and has been, and will forever be, this world of ours, a fucking joke. The real world lies beyond its veil, and the Artist, all Artist, have lifted that veil for themselves, and therefore for all, because we really are All One".

It's one of the best descriptions of Art I've ever read, seating aside Duchamp's "Creative Act". Both of which are very very similar in thesis and conclussion: the artist, the comedian as a shaman.

"The comic as a shaman? Now there's a fucking unifying theme"

Bill Hicks, June 1993.

"I have a lot of respect for humour, it’s a kind of safety-net enabling us to pass through all mirrors.”
Marcel Duchamp.

My friend Carmen told me something this weekend about the endemic broken flow in human communication.
We live in a world full of messages competing to get to the receptor, maybe as an evolutive reaction against this excess we have also learnt how to filter those messages. We had learn how not to see, how not to listen.
We are involved in a accelerating and never ending race between the media and the recipients, they talk louder as we become deafer.
And that is ultimately reflected in the way we communicate with each other.
Maybe it’s just some kind of misconception of what communication is what causes the problem.
Our classic view of the flow is unidirectional:
Sender → [medium] message [medium] → Recipient

But, taking the idea from the art, the technology and the common sense, we should consider the disposition of the recipient as an active element, which is key for the success of the transmission of a message. Listening or viewing play an active part in the communication flow and feeds back to the very core of the message.
Sender → [medium] message [medium]  ← Recipient

Basically, my point is… don’t scream, don’t abuse the opportunities of sending your messages around, don’t overdue your shocking tactics, just create the right context for people to listen to you by listening to them, sit them down and offer them a nice drink.

Cristian, you are the expert, what do you think?

Let me share some enthusiasm about what I am listening to right now.

Sun Kill Moon, the last band of Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters), a w e s o m e stuff!
I've got already 2 tickets for his gig in London some time in September, one is for me, the other for one of you, dear 2 or 3 readers of this blog.
To win the ticket you have to make me laught or something.

As I can't find an MP3 of his latest work, I let you enjoy this one, it's called Gentle Moon:

Dear 3 or 4 readers,
Some more thoughts about Quantum Aesthetics.

A few years ago, with the help of my old friend Jeremy Bosher,  I created a little tool to produce images. Some of those images were presented in an exhibition in the shape of large glossy printouts.

The tool mixes frames from films into a single image:
i.e. I rip  a few seconds of a video scene and separate all the frames in my computer. Each frame corresponds to a different time of the scene.
The tool takes random lines or dots from those images and places them together into a single image.
The only constrain I put was that the lines or dots have to stay in the exact physical place than the original.
It’s a quite simple idea but it has interesting consequences.

It came back to my mind after thinking on the topic of quantum physics and the existence of particles in different possible simultaneous stages (a particle