There are sensible reasons why information on who funds political parties or what taxes people pay should be public. I can’t think of any reasons it needs to be quite so in-your-face accessible though: funding of US presidential candidates/the taxable income of […]

This autumn I’m teaching a graduate course on Digital Media Aesthetics, and I’m going to make it about emergence, memes and viral art and narrative. I got the idea reading William Gibson’s latest novel, Pattern Recognition, which for the first half circles […]

I love walking to work in springtime, walking through birdsong and sunlight, walking past lawns growing greener, the first azaleas in bloom and gardeners clearing away last year’s empty brown stalks. Now I’ll spend an hour writing, then I’ll plan teaching and […]

From Rhizome’s net art news (subscription, free on Fridays): agoraXchange is a collaborative online game project devised by artist Natalie Bookchin and political theorist Jacqueline Stevens. After two years of soliciting global input, a panel will assess the contributions and develop three […]

Newsgaming has posted a game that’s a homage to the victims in Madrid. And elsewhere.

I’m taking a break from working – and probably, blogging – for a week. See ya!

Symbolism and patterns combined really get to me. I’d already noted that March 11 was exactly 2 1/2 years after September 11, but when the front page of the paper this morning said it was also exactly 911 days after 911, I […]

I took a dozen closeups of the crocuses but they were all wrong. Giving up I stepped outside the fence, leaving them to their sunny hill, but leaving, took one last picture from the other side of the fence, through the leafless […]

There are more people dead in Madrid every time you reload a newspaper.

Norwegians with Windows98se or newer, certain other software, a broadband net connection and a library card at Deichmanske bibliotek in Oslo or at Bergen Public Library can now “borrow” music from Phonofile’s collection of music with Norwegian copyright holders. The music is […]