Tag: internet

  • Ergotopography

    “The art of writing symbols that say where you’re working from.” The original was WFH, Working From Home. Following that pattern, then, you might get:

    WF(O<-<)
    Working from a bath

    WFgl___/
    Working from a boat (with an outboard motor)

    WF§-__/
    Working from a boat (with a more serious motor)

    “WF ”
    Working from space

    WF=====
    Working in a linear accelerator

    (Via New Scientist and Language Log, which has an interesting discussion of trying to work out what the best neologism for these ASCII art variations should be)

  • The So Called Mother of All Demos the

    The so-called “Mother of All Demos”, the technology presentation given by Doug Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute, which introduced to the world a number of useful developments: hypertext, the computer mouse, timesharing, email, video conferencing… And this was a bit over forty years ago, just before the ARPANET went online. Pretty amazing times.

    The videos are available in more digestible chunks over on Stanford’s MouseSite.

  • ANSI Art Generator from Drastic

    Rad, there’s an online ANSI art generator! Relive the glory days of BBSes and dodgy w4r3z nfo files right in your browser. I remember wasting a lot of time back in junior high making colorful DOS menus using ansi.sys and batch files. Better than launching Windows 3.1!

    Check it out, make some art: ansi.drastic.net (The drawing program seems to be broken for me under Firefox 3.5.1, but your mileage may vary)

    (Via Waxy)

  • Db We Used to Say Pirating I Mean the Term

    DB: We used to say “pirating.” I mean, the term pirating was used for my early work.

    CA: Was it really?

    DB: Yeah. For example, when I started, there were no home-recording units. There was no TiVo. There was nothing like that.

    CA: I must have been very difficult for you to get that footage.

    DB: It was. There was no way to get the footage I needed directly. I had to find people inside the industry who believed in my artwork and were willing to get images out to me. So they called me a “pirateer” of imagery. That had a very romantic sound to it: “Oh, she’s the one who pirated imagery from television.”

    Maybe this is the real difference between our generations. In pirating, originally, there was no way to talk back to the media. That’s why I did it. The stuff was coming one way at you, and there was no way to arrest it, stop the action, divert it, alter the vocabulary, or change the syntax.

    From Do It 2, a conversation between Dara Birnbaum and Cory Arcangel. Artforum International XLVII, No. 7, p198
  • Slot Machines Are Indeed a Software Chimera the

    [Slot machines] are indeed a software chimera, the tail of a serpent attached to the head of a lion. It combines business graphics with the Internet, cinematic memory, remote-control systems – and banking, franchise capitalism at your fingertips. Norman M. Klein, in The Electronic Baroque: 1955-2050. From The Vatican to Vegas, 2004 p341.