I’d love to post more images, because her illustration style is really great, but I don’t want to give away any of her secrets, so you’ll just have to wait until we finish a piece and see it yourself.

For the last few weeks, I have been working with Friedrich Kirschner, Artem Titoulenko, and Sophie Dutton on this projects. To be honest, I had very little to do with the actual coding of the project, which is the impressive part. But I did put together the Finger Olympics website Wordpress Theme and make some videos with the Finger Olympics gang.

This time around, we decided to make a few key changes in our strategy, based on our experience at the Eyebeam benefit.

1. Simplify the output.
2. Simplify the system.
3. Have some backup plans if the tech fails.
4. Don’t have “roles” - that is, don’t separate the work of creating the “dirt”

So what we came up with was a system where we invited 3 groups of people to create LOLCat-style captioned photos of people at the party based on some very basic autobiographical information.

The first group was “the Insiders” - people who we had invited to use the futuresonic.dirtparty.org site and joined us in an AIM chat room. Dave and I would insert people into the system, and then tell the group to attack,

The second group was the people at Futuresonic. Once again, the trusty Eric Olson came through, creating some amazing kiosk software so that anyone at the party could walk up,

Source Code

As always, I haven’t really fully cleaned up and commented this code, but hopefully it will be of use to someone. If you do want to have your own Dirt Party, please let me know and we can work out how to make the software work for you.

In 2007, I was a finalist for a Rhizome grant for the project. Check out the proposal here.

The Finger Olympics started out asn an idea tossed around at Eyebeam between Friedrich Kirschner and Zach Lieberman, and eventually turned into a playable computer vision project.

For more information, go to fingerolympics.com

ABSML is a markup language that is used in a variety of problems incluing Inside the Artists Studio, Befriend a Recruiter and MadLibs Karaoke, and the winner of a 2008 Turbulence grant.

Here is an example of what some ABSML code looks like:

		<sentence id="q-art-14" >Have you considered <pickone>creating, making</pickone> <pickone>more, less</pickone> <library>modifier</library> <library plural="true"><get>medium</get>_outcome</library>?</sentence>

		<sentence id="q-art-15">You had an exhibition at <organization><source><get>website</get></source></organization>. Some say this was a turning point in your career. <pickone>Do you agree?, but I have my doubts, I'm curious what you think.</pickone></sentence>

		<sentence id="q-art-16">Do you ever <pickone>wonder if this is all, wonder if this could be considered </pickone> all just a big shaam?  and - why do you think so?</sentence>

		<sentence id="q-art-17">Tell <pickone>me, our listeners</pickone> about your exhibition last year at <organization><source><get>website</get></source></organization>.</sentence>

		<sentence id="q-art-17"><pickone>I will let Alfred know., Alfred sometimes makes mistakes., I will speak to Alfred about this.</pickone></sentence>

		<sentence id="q-art-18"><pickone>My youngest son - Alfred, Alfred- my youngest son</pickone> <pickone>is a fan of, enjoys </pickone> <pickone>your earlier work, early work, the work from the beginning of your career </pickone> in <city><source><get>website</get></source></city> <pickone>personally I am not a fan - however, but he is young and has childish tastes </pickone> - <pickone>for the benefit of our listeners, for the radio audience</pickone> <pickone>please tell us, do tell us</pickone> <pickone>about, of </pickone> your early career.</sentence>

		<sentence id="q-art-19"><pickone>Tell me more about, Let us discuss, Let us return to </pickone> your relationship to <city><source><get>website</get></source></city>, <pickone>which, which I must say </pickone> <pickone>is one of my favorite cities, holds a special place in my heart, is near and dear to me.</pickone>.  How do you feel about it?</sentence>

		<sentence id="q-art-20">What about your <pickone>most recent, latest</pickone> <library plural="false"><get>medium</get>_outcome</library>?</sentence>

		<sentence id="q-art-21" >But is that really art?<pickone> or something else entirely?, or a <library>modifier</library> fantasy?</pickone></sentence>

		<sentence id="q-art-22" >Tell me about your teaching practice at <organization with="University, College, Academy, Institute, school"><source striptags="true"><get>wesbite</get></source></organization>.</sentence>

Download the 2008 catalog to see what we are offering on the Roadshow this year.

2008 Eyebeam Roadshow Catalog

Delete City uses the ridiculous storage allotment of web hosting services like Dreamhost to cache large amounts of user generated content from sites like YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, etc. and then monitors to see if any of this content is subsequently taken down. When it finds removed content, it automatically posts the content to your WordPress blog. The nature of the content can be customized by the user by site, keyword, and other criteria. Devious? Maybe. But also one step in the fight against censorship.

The DeleteCity plugin is currently in development and should be released in November.

For about a year now, I have had this walking daydream in which I look down the street and watch other pedestrians step onto special squares on the sidewalk, squat down a bit, and suddenly launch up into an open window at their 2nd or 3rd, or maybe even 4th-floor destination. Yes, it would save the pedestrian quite a bit of time by cutting out the stair climbing or elevator waiting, but this obviously isn’t a proposal overly concerned with practicality.
Imagine how wondrous and futuristic it would look if businessmen, sous chefs, and fashion models were launching into the air all around you without a lick of warning, tracing beautiful arcs through the otherwise-unused low-altitude airspace of the city streets. Not to mention how fun it would be to do it yourself! Personally, I would like break down laughing on a daily basis. I would seriously never get tired of it.
Of course, the tough part isn’t the launching, but the landing. For this, you would need 1) a helmet 2) a carefully planned trajectory calculated using body weight, the angle of launch, the location of the window, and the force of the launching system, and 3) something soft to land on, but not too soft since you are not actually “falling” anywhere - none of which are terribly difficult to engineer.
My proposal is to build such a system using 2 (two!) adjacent parking spots - one for the launcher, and one for a building facade with a makeshift 2nd floor destination, but we could probably get by with 1 spot if necessary. By presenting these launching platforms as an earnest Alternative Vertical Transportation proposal with pamphlets, a petition, probably men in lab coats, and posters describing the physics, I hope to share my daydream with passers-by and hopefully inject some wonder into their daily commute while also providing a fun flying experience.
I would like to collaborate with an engineer who could help me build the launcher, which can probably be modeled after a stuntman-style launcher. If no engineers are available through the program, I know many at my current job (Eyebeam Art and Technology Center) who can fill this role.
On the subject of liability: I have no idea - I’m not a lawyer. But we can definitely build this in a safe way that would merely *suggest* higher and more dangerous launching technology instead of employing it ourselves.

Thanks for your time.
-Jeff