Great News! The next CyborgCamp will be in early May of 2010. That means its time to start planning!

This meeting is everyone’s chance to brainstorm on location ideas, sponsors and speakers. What kinds of topics are of interest to you? How has the idea of Cyborg evolved over the last year? What new kinds of technologies have arrived on the scene?

We’ll discuss volunteers and the wiki too. Come along, especially if you helped make CyborgCamp PDX ‘08 so excellent in the first place. Bring snacks and drinks to share with others.

This planning meeting will most likely be followed by general networking and fun at a local haunt.

RSVP on Upcoming.org

Where:

AboutUs.org

107 SE Washington Street, Suite 520
Portland Oregon 97214
United States

When:

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 from 7–9pm

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What is CyborgCamp?

CyborgCamp is an unconference about the future of the relationship between humans and technology. We’ll discuss topics such as social media, design, code, inventions, web 2.0, twitter, the future of communication, cyborg technology, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy.

CyborgCamp’s aim is to have many communication channels, such as Twitter, Flickr, UstreamTV, Video and Audio recordings and live chats displayed on the screen.
Why May 2010? In March 2010, CyborgCamp will make its way to Brazil and back before landing again in Portland, Oregon for its second year.

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Questions? Contact Amber Case @caseorganic or MJ @mama_j.

You can also follow @cyborgcamp on Twitter for updates.

Fictional character creation is a useful tool in creating an intriguing narrative that captures attention, especially since the character can be easily adapted to fit different digital spaces, such as Video, Microblogging, and Image sharing sites. Media diversity  is also useful in building and unifying online communities that access with media in separate channels.

Creating a consistent brand all through many all social sites one of the best ways to maximize the value of a character or brand campaign.

Ryan Summers and I created a presentation on how to track users across various social media sites using mostly free tools. It was given at Web Analytics Wednesday in Portland, Oregon.

History

A few weeks before the MITX awards ceremony, ISITE Design created a short video called “El Consultador” as an introduction to other agencies.

The El Consultador campaign generated diverse social data. This created issues with tracking data from multiple social media sites across problems with social media is that these is no singular way to gather and rank all of the data over time. Tools like Radian6 and Trucast are in use by larger agencies and businesses, but there exist an increasing amount of free tools for data visualization and engagement reporting that are available online.

This Powerpoint was made for an audible presentation. I collaborated with Ryan Summers of ISITE design on it and presented it at Web Analytics Wednesday. I will attempt to explain the results/processes in a textual manner here.

Profiles Created for the El Consultador Campaign

We used analytic data from Flickr, Youtube, Vimeo and Twitter to determine the most successful aspects of the campaign.

On Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/2309025

On YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz6jt_aSFg0

On Flickr:
http://flickr.com/photos/elconsultador/
(Workers at ISITE design superimposed the Consultador face onto a variety of characters in pop culture).

On Twitter:
http://twitter.com/elconsultador

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Key Performance Indicators

We determined a number of Key Performance Indicators of the social media campaign.

-Direct awareness of ISITE design agency
-3rd part mentions
-Social media followers (number of Twitter followers, comments on YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr).
-Direct communication

YouTube Reports

We used YouTube reports to track the engagement with the video campaign.

Data tracked included:

-Age Demograpics
-Gender Demograpics
-Discovery Sources
-Timeline Trends

The campaign was viewed predominately by 26-45 year old males and mostly during and around the date of the MITX awards. This is the demographic it was aimed at.

Vimeo Stats

Vimeo is a high-quality Video sharing site with a limited but very engaged traffic demographic. We used Vimeo data to find more about who engaged with the campaign and compared it to YouTube data.

Flickr Reports

Flickr has a reporting tool for image views over time for every image. The data can be accessed with a premium Flickr account. We used this data to determine the most viewed (strongest/most impactful) pictures associated with El Consutador on the El Consultador account, and which images should be associated with the campaign on other sites (if future campaigns needed to be implemented).

Google Analytics

We used data from Google Analytics for the page on which El Consultador existed on the ISISTE Webpage. Data was tracked from the “El Consultator” and “MITX” keywords. New visitors and direct traffic were also analyzed.

Social Nodes

The campaign was picked up by three prominent bloggers, including Chris Brogan, Davaid Armano (VP of Experience Design with Critical Mass), and C.C. Chapman (Prominent figure in the community of podcasting, new media, cofounder of the Advanced Guard, a marketing company which focuses on utilizing social media and other emerging technologies).

Blogs linking to the campaigns were not found via inlink searches in Yahoo! Site Explorer, but with an intelligence feed created in Yahoo! Pipes (see below)

Tracking Overall Data

Custom intelligence feeds are useful for checking overall propagation of data. Yahoo! Pipes provides a free custom way to aggregate data across Google blog search, Google news, Technorati, Flickr, and Twitter.

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Data Visualization and Tracking for Twitter

I presented an extended set of tools and data visualization methods for Twitter. Links for all of them are here:

Reports/Demographic Research:
Summize
http://tweetstats.com/

TweetVolume
http://tweetvolume.com/

Twitter Mobile (vs. Twitter in browser)
http://m.twitter.com/home

Neoformix Twitter Stream Graphs
http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterStreamGraphs/view.php (I provided a live demo of this).

Twitter Stream Graphs are a simple way to rsearch keyword volume associated with a brand or campaign. Neoformix also tracks keywords over time, meaning that one can see when a certain keyword became popular.
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Future Suggestions:
More Flickr photos could be linked to all of the other accounts, such as Flickr, Youtube, and Vimeo. Linking together social media campaigns in a more robust fashion will affect CTR’s by making the campaign spreadable across various demographic profiles and types of social media users.

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Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist who studies new media and the relationship between humans and computers. She enjoys data visualization (click for more info on conference tracking), search engine optimization (ask), and how marketing works in the online ecosystem.

She graduated from Lewis & Clark College in May 2008 with a degree in Sociology/Anthropology and wrote her thesis on cell phones and the effect of technology on cultural constructions of space and privacy.

You can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic, or drop her an E-mail at caseorganic[at]gmai[dot]com. She’s spoken at various conferences including MIT’s Futures of Entertainment 3, Inverge: The Interactive Convergence Conferece, Ignite Portland, and Ignite Boulder.

She also blogs at Nerdabout.com and http://www.blog.makerlab.org, a Portland new media incubator. She founded CyborgCamp, an unconference on the future of humans and technology. She is also involved with building and studying electronics with DorkbotPDX.

While doing research for my thesis on cell phones, I came across a report prepared by Anthropologist Sadie Plant called “On the Mobile”. It was extremely well written, and very enjoyable to read. [You can download a .pdf of it from Motorola here] But recently, I found this video of another lecture on cell phones at MIT.

In the past, people lived in zones: you live at home, do other stuff at work, or while traveling. That’s changing now. Things are continuous. There’s no difference between work, home and travel. You want to have the same things with you. We believe people don’t live in categories anymore. As we’re moving around, we want seamless transitions to occur in life.

We’re living as low tech cyborgs now. It is only going to get more interesting in the future.

I’m posting this video to get everyone into the mindset for CyborgCamp this weekend [Dec 6th, 2008 at Cubespace from 9-6 Pm [Get a Ticket] [Preparty at Vidoop, 8:30 Pm Dec 5th, 2008 [RSVP] ]. The world around us is changing, but I’ll let Padmasree Warrior, now CTO at Cisco (and @padmarsee on Twitter [thanks, @nelking] tell you her story:

Nancy King / nelking

Warrior describes how thousands of Motorola engineers are trying to create a transparent network so that individuals can take their music, video, pictures —virtually any kind of data with them — wherever they go. “Mobile devices have become the remote control for life. Let us do things we have not thought about before,” says Warrior. For 75 years, Motorola has specialized in what Warrior describes as “preemptive innovation.” This means not just enabling new ways to communicate (for example, creating the two-way radio and cell phone), but giving customers new reasons to communicate. Within technological view are cars that can download information about a driver’s preferences, from seat height to mirror settings, and homes that can broadcast a favorite radio show from room to room, so the listener misses nothing.

Thanks to MITWorld for the video.
April 27, 2004
Running Time: 46:22

About the Speaker

Padmasree Warrior
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer,
Motorola Incorporated

Padmasree Warrior has worked at Motorola since 1984. She currently leads a global team of 4,600 technologists, guiding creative research from innovation through the first stages of marketing. She also serves as a technology advisor to the office of the chairman and to the board’s technology and design steering committee.

Before assuming her current role in January 2003, Warrior was corporate vice president and general manager of Motorola’s energy systems group. Warrior was corporate vice president and chief technology officer for Motorola’s Semiconductor Products Sector. She was appointed vice president in 1999 and was elected a corporate officer in 2000.

Warrior received an M.S. degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University, and a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi, India.

Warrior served on the Texas Governor’s Council for Digital Economy, and is a member of the Texas Higher Education Board review panel. She was one of six women nationwide selected to receive the “Women Elevating Science and Technology” award from Working Woman magazine in 2001. She also is a director of Ferro Corporation.

———–

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist from Portland, Oregon. You can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic, see also the Makerlab blog, as well as coverage of local Portland tech events at Nerdabout.com.

Dear Everyone,

Here are a lot of events. I’ll be at most of them this time, as I will not be in Boston. Be sure to check out DorkBot, Beer and Blog, Web Innovators and CyborgCamp. Happy event going!

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Wednesday November 26, 2008

Beer and Blog - Turkey Day at the Green Dragon

4:00pm - 6:00pm
Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub
928 SE 9th Ave
Portland, Oregon 97214

Since this Friday is one that most will be spending with family, we’re going to make this week’s Beer and Blog a Wednesday affair (that’s tomorrow as of this post’s publish date).

Official Beer and Blog website

RSVP on Upcoming.

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Sunday, November 30, 2008

Dorkbot Series: Making Noise with the Arduino

1:00pm - 5:00pm
Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA)
1241 NW Johnson Street
Portland, Oregon 97209

As a part of the ongoing Arduino Cult Induction workshop series, this month we will be focusing on sound.

In particular Don will be going over creating sound using the Arduino’s built in Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) and Direct Digital Synthesis using resistive ladders. We will investigate using the Piezo element
as both a simple speaker and an input trigger. We will review the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) from a hardware and software perspective, and look at a couple of useful integrated circuits (the lm324 and the lm368).

The workshop will cost $25 and participants will recieve a complete midi interface board for the dorkboard/arduino and a piezo element which will be used to create a midi drum trigger. Participants will also take with them parts for an r2r ladder, an op amp and an audio amp capable of driving small speakers or headphones.

Ticket Info: $25 Buy Tickets (scroll to the bottom of the page to get to the ticket purchasing information).

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Monday, December 1, 2008

Morning Meeting: Legal (Weekly Series)

9:00am - 10:00am

CubeSpace
622 SE Grand Ave
Portland, Oregon 97214
Category: Education
Website: http://www.cubespacepdx.com/entrepreneurial
Come into CubeSpace between 9 and 10 a.m. on weekdays to chat with the professional-in-residence about your needs. The Monday topic is Legal issues, including questions about incorporation and doing business in Oregon.

The Morning Meetings are free and open to the public. They are part of our Entrepreneurial Series. To learn more, visit the Entrepreneurial Series’ website.

———————-

Wednesday, December 3rd

PNCA Noontime Chat: Louis Marchesano

12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
PNCA Swigert Commons
Pacific NW College of Art
1241 NW Johnson St.
Portland, OR 97209

Louis Marchesano is the Collections Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University, where he worked on 17th Century Italian prints, a topic on which he has published.

His recent exhibition, Drawn to Rome, was a groundbreaking work on the remarkably rich sketchbooks of young French artists who trained in Rome in the 18th Century. Louis’ upcoming exhibitions include two collaborative projects with the Getty Museum, one on the prints and painting of James Ensor, and the other on the drawings and related prints of Peter Paul Rubens. Part of Contemporary Curatorial Issues Series.

Ticket info: Free and open to the public.

Official description on the PNCA website.

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Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Web Analytics Wednesday

Host: Ryan Summers

5:30 PM
McFaddens Restaurant & Saloon in Portland
107 NW Couch St, Portland OR (Venue | Map | Group)

Sponsor:
Event sponsored by ISITE Design, Inc.

Please join your web analytics colleagues on Wednesday, December 3rd on the west side of McFaddens in the upper bar area. An assortment of food will be provided by McFaddens, courtesy of ISITE Design Inc.

Share:

Invite friends to join you at this event

Link to this event

Attendees: 16 people plan to attend, including Ryan Summers, allison, amclaughlin, ben, bohlgren, dsprick, eric.peterson, hallie, jesse, jturner, kent, labbott, mmellor, ritchiem, skemper, tyson

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Wednesday, December 3rd

State of Portland Tech - Web Innovators

7:00pm
CubeSpace
622 SE Grand Ave
Portland, Oregon 97214

Silicon Florist’s Rick Turoczy will lead a discussion about the Portland tech scene heading into 2009. Where are we now, how did we get here and where do we want to go?

Join us for the monthly Portland Web Innovators meeting — the first Wednesday of every month.

RSVP on Upcoming

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Friday, December 5th, 2008

PNCA+Five Series Presents Design Futuring, Culture and the Coming Age of Unsettlement

Pacific Northwest College of Art welcomes Australian designer and design theorist Tony Fry in two upcoming events centered on the sustainment of arts education and the reinvention of design. A design consultant and theorist, Fry is also an international leader in sustainable design theory and practice. His lecture, “Design Futuring, Culture and the Coming Age of Unsettlement” will unpack two crucial and linked questions: how can design, as a positive force for change, be made to happen?

12:30-1:30 Pm
Gerding Theatre at the Armory
128 NW Eleventh Avenue
Portland, OR 97209

Free and open to the public.

Official details at PNCA website.

———————-

Friday, December 5th

CyborgCamp Re-Party at Vidoop

Time TBA
Vidoop
117 NW 5th Ave, ste 210
Portland, OR 97209

Come to the official CyborgCamp pre-party! Special guests Cami and Mike Kaos will be live-broadcasting Strange Love Live. There will be drinks and festivities before the conference in the morning. Details forthcoming. Expect a 8 or 9 Pm start time.

RSVP on Upcoming
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Saturday, December 6th

CyborgCamp PDX 2008

9:00 Am-6Pm
CubeSpace
622 SE Grand Ave
Portland, Oregon 97214

CyborgCamp is a hybrid conference/unconference about the future of human computer interaction, technology, and how we deal with it. Notable speakers will be Ward Cunningham (Inventor of the Wiki), Hideshi Hamaguchi (of Lunaar), and Bill DeRouchey (Ziba Design). Unconference sessions to occur throughout the day.

Additionally, the conference will be live streamed, so you can join in online.
To attend the event in person, you must register through CubeSpace. The $10 fee covers food and drink. Visit CyborgCamp.com for information and to get a ticket.

———————-

Sunday, December 7th

DorkbotPDX 0×02: DorkbotPDX brings you Collin Oldham, Shelly Farnham and Steve Davee

6:00Pm
AboutUs offices
107 SE Washington St., Suite 520,
Portland, Oregon 97214

Come join us for an evening of geek meets art. The fine folks at AboutUs will be hosting us for this event, which takes place December 7th at 6PM. AboutUs is located at 107 SE Washington St, Suite 520. Feel free to bring snacks and drinks to share. Please spread the word!

Collin Oldham: The RT (radio trowel) and The Cellomobo

Collin spent the 2005-2006 academic year at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) where began to develop the electronic musical instruments he is presenting today.

The RT (radio trowel) uses a capacitive sensor array based on Max Mathew’s radio baton to detect the position of the trowel on the playing surface. The trowel’s movements control sound synthesis parameters, including filters which process live sound from a contact mic attached to the trowel.

Shelly Farnham: Dorkbot Dorkbot Dorkbot + Seattle

I am that rare combination of geek, artist, and scientist and when I first met Dorkbot Seattle I felt like I’d *finally* found my people — where technology is artistic medium, science is art, and geeking out is just a whole lot of fun. My one complaint was that Seattle Dorkbots were not collaborating enough, and when I took over as Seattle’s “Dork Overlord” it was my main mission — to cultivate the creative geek community.

Steve Davee: Not to kill a thought: The impact of language on curiosity, creativity and scientific inquiry.

This talk explores how easy it is, even with the best of intentions, to stifle creative thought and true learning when it comes to working with children in the areas of science, math and engineering. We will investigate examples of simple but powerful changes in language, with the intention of provoking the best of creative potential and shared inquiry.

Steve Davee is a math and science teacher at Opal Charter School and a Media Specialist for the Center for Children’s Learning at the Portland Children’s Museum. He is a recovering Biochemist with a background in physics and over 20 years of volunteer and work experience in education.

Event is Free. RSVP on Upcoming.

———————-

Wednesday, December 8, 2008

Internet Marketing Conference

5:00pm-7:00pm
Internet Professionals SIG
Portland State University
Market Square Building Suite 1050
1515 SW 5th Avenue - Portland, OR
Cost:$55 for members $55 for non members

This event is with the Software Association of Oregon (SAO). Click here for more information and to register

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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

ThrivePDX (2nd Edition)

5:00pm-9:00pm
(Location to be announced).

The second Thrive PDX. Site says: “Join us for the second meeting of ThrivePDX! Details to follow… check back soon!”

Register…
Deadline
12/10/2008

ThrivePDX Event on Upcoming.

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Thursday, December 11, 2008

CubeSpace Holiday Party

4:00pm - 9:00pm
CubeSpace
622 SE Grand Ave
Portland, Oregon 97214

Come celebrate the holidays with us!

RSVP on Upcoming.

——————–

Feel free to contact me for more information on all of these events. Thanks to Yahoo’s! Upcoming, PNCA, Twitter, and Calagator for events. See you soon!

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist from Portland, Oregon. You can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic.

If you haven’t already, please purchase your ticket for CyborgCamp. This ticket covers food and lets us know you’ll be there.

It’s important that you register as early as possible, the ticket costs $10 person before Wednesday December 3rd, 2008, at Noon. If you register afterwards, the ticket before $20. The form is secure and accepts credit cards.

>>Click here to buy a ticket<<

• The $10 ticket is for food, and because we want to know how many people to order food for.
• Formal conference speakers (BIll Derouchey, Ward Cunningham, Hideshi Hamaguchi, and Lia Hollander) and Sponsors do not have to pay or register, but can if they can if they wish to contribute to the CyborgCamp fund/food items (if you’re a sponsor and have already purchased a ticket, I can refund you if you wish).
• All unconference session speakers must pay.
• 5 student tickets are available. If you’d like one, please contact me (see contact info below).
• The reason we’re charging $20 on the 3 days before the vent is simply to get you to register before then. We’d still like people to be able to register — but we want to know how many people are going to come to the event 3 days before we have the event.
• If you’re tuning into the live streaming, there is no need to register.
• If you’re not registered, you won’t be able to attend the event. Plus, we won’t have a badge for you. This will be sad. Registering on Upcoming is only for approximation purposes and does not count as real registration.

Questions? Extraneous needs? Contact Amber Case at caseorganic@gmail.com, CyborgCamp on Twitter, or Caseorganic on Twitter. We’re really, really excited to have you there, and to have a super-live streamed event with amazing people at it.

During my last semester of college, I became obsessed with the idea that I would be able to somehow put my degree in sociology/anthropology to work in the real world. When I stumbled upon search engine optimization, I was elated. When I learned that Cyborg Anthropology applied there as well, I was even more excited. And when Todd Mintz encouraged me to write my first blog post ever on the SEM PDX blog, I was so nervous that I didn’t leave my friends house for 4 hours while I composed it.

Perfectionism was a difficult thing to get over. I gradually realized that I had to allow myself to suck in order to get anywhere. At Weiden+Kennedy, there’s a massive art piece on the wall that says “Fail Harder”. I knew I had to fail harder than ever before. Oakhazelnut.com was the silliest name for a website I could think of, and the early WordPress template I used was ugly, heavy and clunky. But I kept on it.

I also realized that I wasn’t going to have a community anymore when I graduated from college, so I searched hard for one in Portland. I attended meetups relating to pretty much everything until I found Legion of Tech and Beer and Blog. Some of the first people I ever met were Reid Beals, Bram Pitoyo, Dawn Foster and Rick Turoczy. It was the beginning of an exciting and busy journey into the heart of the tech scene. But it didn’t take long to get oriented. Everyone was filled with zest for their ideas, and it spread quickly to me. I began to take small risks and write more.

Up until now, I’ve been putting in 110 hour weeks trying to do anthropological studies, blogging (which as anyone who blogs knows — is much more difficult than it looks), attending events, and learning more about seo and Yahoo! Pipes. My learning curve is strange, so it has been a long process. I’ve been given great support from people who really know what they are doing. Focused, brilliant, fascinating people.

Now that I am blogging, writing and consulting full-time, I feel like I’ve been thrown directly into the open arms of the tech community. There’s more time for coffeeshops, events, and research now. I’m excited to be able to see more faces.

It was great to be able to walk into the local Backspace coffeeshop and get high fives from all of the great people there. Bram Pitoyo said, “welcome to the life of a Freelancer”. I wholeheartedly embrace it.

My last job was excellent, and I took it after graduating from college in May so that I would be able to learn a bunch of new skills. I learned so many new things I was ready to explode. Drupal was fun, E-mail marketing was great, and new seo tools were awesome. I look forward to how that company does in the future. It’s doing very well and has an excellent business model I was excited to learn more about.

Now I have time for CyborgCamp, MIT’s Futures of Entertainment Conference, Makerlab, Ignite Portland, Refresh Portland, blogging for the Discovery Channel at Nerdabout, AboutUs.org, Dorkbot, search engine optimization, Beer and Blog and of course, Cyborg Anthropology.

Thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick for the Discovery Channel write-up on Read Write Web. Marshall has been a tremendous help to me. In addition to showing me things like Skitch, he’s lent advice and support to me on numerous occasions.

I want to thank everyone in the Portland Tech community, but there are infinite people to thank. Perhaps I can thank an entire directory of great Tweeple at once (via AboutUs.org Portland Tech Twitter).

I think that’s about it. I am a little speechless at the support I’ve been given, and I can’t wait to share it with a wider audience.

Sincerely,

@caseorganic

Dorkbot PDX is a Portland group that brings together an eclectic group of geniuses with a love of hacking technology. It is probably my favorite group here because of the energy and excitement that everyone has. Every time I go I gain a new respect and excitement for all things electronic. Everyone is brilliant, welcoming and always has something to say or work on.

Dorkbot meets twice a month at Lucky Lab NW (1945 NW Quimby). This week, about thirty people showed up to exchange ideas, inventions, and electrionic hacks. Here, my friend Mario Landau-Holdsworth is testing out a makeshift synthesizer using a Benito [designed and built by Don from dorkbot]. Alex Norman tells me that, “the Benito uses some i2c io expanders to scan the buttons and talks to the computer via midi over USB. It is controlling a step sequencer that I wrote using Pure Data and pdlua. It is triggering one shot samples.. I’m currently using drum samples”.

Ward Cunningham’s Dial-a-Door

“AboutUs CTO Ward Cunningham and his college roommate Rick Wartzok, had better than average audio/visual and beverage capability in their dorm room, at least for 1968. While happy to share with fellow residents, they then faced a dilemma. What about keys? They wanted some kind of combination lock that had a shared code that could be selectively enabled, and a longer, master code for private use. The solution was Dial-a-Door. Now its 2008, forty years later, Ward has located the mechanical technology that decoded the combination, restored it to working order, and prepared a display which he will present at the bi-weekly DorkbotPDX at the Lucky Lab in Northwest Portland,” says Mark Dilley on the AboutUs.org Blog.

More about Dial-a-Door

“I’ve written a web page describing my original application, Dial-a-Door”, says Ward Cunningham on the Dorkbot PDX blog. I found the SECODER that I spoke about last meeting. It was in the bottom of the wrong junk box with old antenna equipment, not old telephone equipment. My mechanically inclined friends helped me get it working again”.  More information is available on Ward Cunningham’s website: http://c2.com/~ward/Dial-a-Door.

BittyBot

Along the way, I had the honor of meeting Monty Goodson of BittyBot. The name explains what he does — which is basically the manufacture of really tiny circuitboards that can be used to make really small robots. They were very, very small. The one pictured is actually larger than some of the others ones that he had with him.

If you like technology, I urge you to come out to Dorkbot and mingle with everyone. It’s a very low-key, wonderful environment where you can let your imagination and expertise run wild. And if you’re not familiar with what Dorkbot does, you might want to look into using the open source Arduino development and prototyping platform. There is an article on Arduino chips from Instructables here.

Dorkbot Resources

Thanks to Tempus Dictum and PNCA, Dorkbot has put together a series of workshops around the dorkbotpdx arduino kits (http://www.dorkbotpdx.org/wiki/dorkboard) called the “Arduino Cult Induction”.(http://www.dorkbotpdx.org/workshop/arduino/cult_induction_rev4).

We will have these workshops on the last Sunday of every month, probably alternating between the Cult Induction, a focused workshop and an Open Lab. The workshops cost ~$25 which includes the hardware being built. The open labs are free.

Schedule

30 NOV 2008 — Sound/Midi Workshop (~$25)

28 DEC 2008 — Open Lab (free)

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For more events, check out the AboutUs Portland Tech Events Page. You can also follow me on Twitter, or connect with other members of the Portland Tech Community on the AboutUs.org Portland Tech Twitter Page. You might also want to attend CyborgCamp, which will be happening on December 6th, 2008 at CubeSpace.

———

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist from Portland, Oregon. She likes attending events and studying the Portland Tech scene.

It was about 1:30 Pm when Paige and I arrived at PNCA+FIVE Idea Studios at Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Dr. Saul Ostrow sat at the front of the room and began reading from a small stack of paper in front of him. He had a pleasant, descriptive voice, and his face was illuminated by a small lamp.

Behind him was a projection screen displaying a series of disconnected abstract black and white scenes. Sometimes these scenes had muted scenes of people giving speeches. When Saul spoke, it sometimes looked like these ancient philosophers was coming back to life.

While he spoke, I attempted to write down every thing I could, but some of what he said may be unclear or missing. Please excuse this.

Transcript:

“Before I begin my speech on Models of Critical Production, one of the things that I tend to do is that I need definitions.

We all tend to say — even in the titling of this — we say ‘oh, I know what that means”

I need to clarify what I mean by it.

To model is to give form to or to display.

Critical is a moment of importance.

Practice is to perform with proficiency, or to exercise in order to gain proficiency.

To train in a systematic matter to a given end.

Therefore, what I am going to speak about gives form in a systematic manner to judgment.

System — a number of elements working together in concert, in an ordered manner, to create a whole, or to accomplish a task.

Obviously, we are talking not about something singular, but a complex network of interrelated relationships.

What does one need to make a judgment or to take a position? A position is something that one uses to locate themselves relative to another thing or person.

What are some of the terms of valuation -so that they may be a guide to one’s practice — to one’s performance. What are the standards, values and criteria are to be employed –and how might these come to be.

Standards and criteria are comparable and therefore quantitative .

Values are qualitative and therefore relative.

Criteria — the terms of evaluation or appraisal.
Desirability, or comparative quality. Obviously, these reflect a system.

Ideology –a series of imagined set of relationships that guide one’s actions and guides one’s subjectivity. A sense of self, or identity.

To model a critical practice is to give form or to display one’s sense of self, but what is this sense of self?

A sense of self is how we as individuals understand our individuality and collectivity. How we collectively and individually compare ourselves to each other

It is this self that is the emergent subject that enables us to act as well as inhibiting ourselves.

———–

Let us first clarify the notion of the emergent subject -that which moves under or moves something away

The emergent subject is one who acts, or orders.

One is not fixed. Our actions in the world move us .

We possess the ability to act in an ever new and reflexive way. In other ways we are always manifesting and an ever evolving awareness of ourselves.

It is our awareness that allows us to act, and consequently, the modeling of a critical practice is the display of the awareness by which you experience the world. And how the world might be ordered to the evolving self.

The experience of the self is always for the self and the position of advancing the self — both individually and collectively –

Relative to the subject with this talk — at this point, I’ll remind you — I cannot tell you the whole of this with any certainty — because based on the position I have announced here — I do not know the whole of it.

What I do know that there is more to it.

There are three elements of this model of the self

• Self criticality.
• Ethicality
• The Aesthetic.

Neither a priority or inherent, self criticality is a fail safe as we cannot extract ourselves from our world view.

We cannot understand ourselves except for that which is done in the way of value.

That we invest in ourselves tin that that effort will render up an additional value — in that one believes one needs, or one believes the world needs.

This “putting” into the world requires an aesthetic. We must think of it as an inclusive -as well as a means by which we do things. Ourselves in the world - it is the terms by which we represent our terms of self and the ability to progress. It is the means by which the emergent sel.

The content of such a practice is always political — these politics being the economy of social power.

To revise or transform how it has come to understand. Essential to advancing its position within the world is an affirmation or a means of introduction.

—————-

Thinking of Objects Rather than Systems

This desire to categorize art as object rather than critical discourse

one ends up worrying about the market rather than the cultural effect of the things that are produced.

Art is free. It is in our galleries. We can see it.

If we choose to posses it then we worry about markets. And possessing an object rather than the art.

If all of those fields are the creation of distinctly different things, then how do these ever interact?

Answer: there is never (not any interaction - it’s omnipresent) it is the material conditions of our lives. We are born into this — there is no undoing of it?

Is there value in that? There is only value we subscribe to.

We have common projects — some of us participate in those projects and some of choose not to
And we’ve determined that some of s participate in these things that we deem ed best to me in that collective.
Tom Summer: How is the possibility of communication between this intersubjective space possible? It is by consensus forming one contour of collectivity.

What does it mean to “take care of yourself”?

The fixity of the subject is not attached as an image- - is a restless activity (reminds me of Erving Goffman’s seminal book on the understanding of human existence, ”
If one presents new terms - if one is constantly seeking to unfix something - that is illicit. Once it becomes fixed - put in its place- it ceases to become a critical practice. Constantly offering up new propositions. If that worked, will this work?

Do artists ever fall prey to being licit without knowing it?

Not every artist is involved critical practice — the constant reinvention and rexamination of one’s own thoughts, ideologies, self-presence (except perhaps maybe online?).

Very often we talk of things as a singularity –as an art–as a thing- a singular thing. rather than the notion that there are artists that have little or no interest in criticality, but still culturally produce.
Not any singular practice –

the question of dialogue and intersubjectivity . the clash of these practices makes culture still dynamic.

Entering into the same aesthetic and same assumptions we would have a very structured culture, in which the practices would all be subscribed. There are some of us that unsubscribe — for instance, to say, “Oh I know that position, and I’m not interested in believing that anymore”.

Critical practice is always for something; it is not against something.

If I do away with evil - good will remain.

Theory always moves towards practice. they are interrelated.

Practice without some grounding is habit. if it has no self reflexivity. if it has no affirmation -being informed - we end up engaging in something that is habitual . the notion of theory is that I put things into the world as proposition. even the objects that one makes are always grounded in some sort of theoretical position.

You construct a theory of intuition. theory is the propositions that guide us.

The notion of artificiality - as it is with objects it is with us. They are tremendously unstable objects.

A critical practice is always illicit, but never negative.
—

A theory , in a sense -

Do not pick a meaning inappropriate to the subject.
There are just some things you can’t make a painting out of.
Which need is stronger—to make a painting about that subject or to be a painter?

A person decides to paint a picture of mars and Venus. And so they must learn everything they can about Mars and Venus—the whole story—so they can find the perfect moment in which to it.

in depth research - and understanding of relationships - self reflexivity.

Then it becomes how to represent that appropriate moment.

When models of existing practices should exceed existing structures.

Thomas Zummer: We’re always negotiating conflict.

A system network is constantly in negotiation. Constantly in practice. Constantly informing who and where we are in our positions in the world.

On Human Expiration

Productivity is dependent on death and destruction.

Some argue that what makes our human is the knowledge of our mortality.

In that we attempt to constructs things to leave behind.
The fear of death - drives us to produce the social -drives us to produce civilization.

Death is not destruction. I don’t see death as destructive! You’re talking about violence and I see violence as something else.

—————–

@paigedestroy will be going on a two week retreat with Tom Summers and Saul Ostrow. I’m letting her borrow my tape recorder who can by in multiple places at once.

A formal ind of decay or destruction to be subdued in the destruction is to be consumed in that productively is to be consumed in those forms the the transstion or production of those forms.

Those frameworks are always producing or always creating those decays.

We are dying every moment.

What I Took Away from the Lecture

Bordieu - that we are always reterritorializing things —-moving the boundaries of things. We only see it online because it is newer there – and disconnected. –
at one time you could not frame this with a new body

it is just more mechanical online, the reinvention of self — it does not mean that we do not do it in real life. the distance between spaces in which we do it online is just larger more granular — less resolution. we do not notice it in real life because it is so smooth and there are so many more systems at play — the granularity, the smoothness and the complexity of the system in real life compared to the systems online is so much more that we notice things more easily online. It is not “liquid” modernity” it is not fast and continual flux. it is slower online. much slower.

Moreover, as sociologist Emelie Durkheim said, as society matures and progresses, they flow from mechanical to organic.

We exist in space for a prolonged period and we call that time.
I’m more include to talk about entropy than decay.
These negotiations of certain processes. Things moving to a steady state.

I think its a society looking for its values and world view to be expressed and that it goes back to — reception. Those things we call artists are the agents by which we express something.

——-

I don’t believe in a Zeitgeist -because I don’t know when that time is.
if I could predict what would touch those million people. For instance, I could say, ‘what people really need right now is hope’ — but I don’t really know what hope looks like.

At the end, he pointed out something along the lines of the time cost of painting, adding “It’s better to work in film”.

And in similar vein of Artists are force carriers of culture.

—-

About PNCA+FIVE Idea Studio

————————
This lecture series was part of the PNCA + FIVE Idea Studio: Models of Critical Production
Saul Ostrow will be at Pacific Northwest College of Art from October 13–16.

————————

Event Schedule

Models of Critical Production
October 13 – 16
PNCA Campus
Free and open to the public

October 13
Tom Zummer workshop | Commons | 4 – 5:30 pm

October 14
Saul Ostrow lecture | Commons | 12:30 – 1:30pm
Tom Zummer workshop | Commons | 4 – 5:30pm

October 15
Tom Zummer lecture | Commons | 12:30 – 1:30pm

October 16
Saul Ostrow lecture | Commons | 12:30 – 1:30pm

More at PNCA Lectures occurring this week.

The date’s been set. Due to scheduling conflicts (including the event being really close to Thanksgiving) CyborgCamp Portland will be held on December 6th, 2008, at Portland’s CubeSpace, which is at 622 SE Grand Ave Portland, Oregon 97214

You can RSVP for CyborgCamp on Upcoming if you’d like to attend, but note that the formal registration will begin in a few weeks. If you follow @cyborgcamp or @caseorganic on Twitter, you’ll know when you can officially register for the event. If you don’t use Twitter, you can E-mail caseorganic at gmail.com and I’ll personally let you know when official registration is open. There will also be a link from the Upcoming page, so check back in a few weeks.

CyborgCamp is a conversation about the future of technology, and how humans fit in.

Want to help out? You can do it in 4 different ways!

1. Sponsor. E-mail Nate Angell at ixmati at gmail.com or Twitter @xolotl. See the sponsors page.
2. Blog, Tweet, write and broadcast the event (before, during and after.) See the Marketing Page Email Amber Case at caseorganic at gmail.com or Twitter @caseorganic
   

3. Volunteer before, during and after the event. Email Bram Pitoyo at brampitoyo at gmail.com or Twitter @brampitoyo We need 3 more volunteers for the morning set-up (7 Am) and take down (6-7Pm).

4. Attend. RSVP on Upcoming.org (Note that RSVP does not guarantee you a space if you’re not paid for register).

What to Expect at the Conference:

One room will be devoted to keynote sessions on various aspects of the cyborg (technological, health, spiritual, communication, humanity, etc.), and the other three rooms of the conference will be unconferences, done BarCamp-style

Who should come?

This is an educational mindsharing and networking event that encourages high-level interdisciplinary interaction.

Classrooms, individuals and businesses are encouraged to attend the event remotely. It will be livestreamed through multiple channels and will be archived and tagged for future viewing. Details on remote conference access will be available a week before the conference begins.

Tags

Flickr Tag: cyborgcamp

Twitter: @cyborgcamp or #cyborgcamp

All other social media: cyborgcamp

See you there!

 

 Hazelnut Tech Talk Episode 10 [29:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (398)

Click to Subscribe

Hazelnut Tech Talk is a collaboration between Amber Case and Bram Pitoyo

This episode features Reid Beels and Chris Pitzer, wherein we talked about abandonware, search engines with unique algorithms, Cyber Surfari-adorned T-shirt, getting free meals for reading books, and a potential CyborgCamp session composed of scientifically extrapolating claims in science fiction stories of the past to predict the future.

And if you listen to the end of the podcast, Reid’s and Chris’ Twitter username is @reidab and @chrispitzer, respectively.