The Moment mini site

These days I and three fellow students (Inari Porkka, Reza Mosavian and Maiada Aboud Salfiti) are putting our MA projects together as a joint exhibition. This exhibition has ended up with the name "Moment" and have now got it's own mini site: http://art-moment.co.uk (now to be found at http://moment.typelus.com)

Enjoy =)

Memeplicity

Memeplicity is about the evolution of culture in a limited artificial environment. A meme encoded in a shadow entity brings on a fragment of intra cultural evolution. The visitors reaction to the shadows action, is the agent which lets the developing meme travel through time. The visitor becomes a part of this evolutionary process and are essential to it's progress. As long as there is an observer, or someone being subject to the meme, it will continue it's indefinite evolution.
A meme is the inherited culture which is being transfered from generation to generation in all living things.
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The process of developing this project is a process on several levels. How does it relate to the world in which we live. Why is it significant and how will it present itself to whoever perceive it? I am finally starting to find answers to some of these questions and the process of developing Memeplicity. A project based around the concept of inherited memory/culture in a minimalistic/simplified wrapping is starting to come together as a finalized project.

http://art-moment.co.uk/memeplicity.html

The joy of IR

Long time, no blogpost so here it is =)

Today I have been experimenting with my newly created IR filter for glowing lamps. By directing the regular cheap Ikea lamp towards my wall and putting my hand in front of it a shadow gets cast on the wall. No surprise. By inserting the IR filter in front of the lamp it blocks out most of the visible light. The hand in front of it now cast no visible shadow at all. A camera with the IR cut-off filter removed and a IR filter in front of it clearly see this invisible shadow. Spooky.

SoundScape

Preparing for my thursday experimental practice presentation I found myself in need of a tool for presenting my bits and pieces of sound.

The Concept: The soundscape is built around a thought of three separate sound layers.
The Sound Substrates: These sounds are low level sounds that are to be the canvas on which the soundscape is painted.
The Sound Grain: These sounds have some more detail in them, are more noticeable and makes things "happen" in the soundscape.
The Sound Details: These sounds are short bursts of sounds that are the frontmost layer of sounds. The sound details may not be looped unlike the substrates and grains.

http://basslines.typelus.com

To get it "active" you have to clicky on the blackness (to make it register keypresses) and then:
R-Toggle random sound triggers
L-Toggle loopmode
A/Z-Change between four different sound sets
M-Toggle "Mashup Mode" where all the soundsets are mixed
1-Trigger one sound substrate
2-Trigger one sound grain
3-Trigger one sound detail
Tab-Enter fullscreen mode (the soundscape will unfortunately not recognize keypresses when in fullscreen mode)

Well that's it really. I do recommend using this with a set of good headphones or even better, proper woofers with lots of oumph. This due to the sounds being mostly really low frequenzy goodness =)

Images from Venice!

Finally, the images from my and Therese's trip to Venice are now posted on Facebook.

Album 1: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=110609&l=a2b25&id=860595301

Album 2: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=110623&l=73da7&id=860595301

Therese has publshed a few albums herself, but I don't have the public links for those just now =)

Blocked on MSN? <- Fraud!

Right, during the last week, I have now gotten three mails from people in my msn-list. The mail contained a link to a website http://www. blockccheckert. org/ (do not visit this address). This website asks for your msn address and password, has a "I agree to the terms" checkbocks without having any linked terms at all and is alltogether _not credible_. Please be cautious about which websites you do trust with your credentials and passwords. Why would you care who has blocked you on msn anyway? If somebody have blocked you, you probably don't want to talk to this person anyway =)

I have not found any information about this site, just another blog post regarding this same topic (Warning: it has embeded music). For you folks out there on a pc, this site (the blockccheckert one) supposedly contains some snax virus for you as well. Hooray.

If you have visited this site and given away your msn password I do reccomend you change it as fast as possible.

Twitter?

Why bother with long blog-posts when you've got short Twitter micro-blog-posts limited to 140 characters?

I can not really answer this question myself yet. But I just joined Twitter a few days ago, and if anyone else out there has done or consider doing the same my Twitter is at http://twitter.com/arnstein =)

Feature "enhancements"

I define the simple life as the life where all my gadgets and whatnots happily communicate with eachother and helps me have my updated contacts, calendar items and to-do-lists with me wherever I go. So far, the gadget with me at most times are my phone. A Nokia N73 which I've had for nearly two years now. Up til now it has been happily exchanging information with my mac and been updated with the touch of a button. Up til last week.

I decided to upgrade the firmware on the phone. This I had just done once before when the phone still was quite new and this was a good experience as the phone become faster an d more reliable. The newest firmware version last week was 4.0735.3.0.2 (the version-numbering scheme is astounding in itself) whereas my phones firmware identified itself as 3.0649.0.0.1. More than a whole version in difference! I really looked forward to seeing this renewed piece of software possess my phone.

After the upgrade I was a bit unimpressed by finding the phone in more or less the exact same condition as before the upgrade. No speed boost was apparent, the snake game was gone (I have not played it in more than a year) and I had gotten the new Nokia Maps application installed. Well, at least I new my phone had some updated software on it and A2DP Bluetooth support for some fancy cordless headset I don't possess. Things seemed fine until I figured I wanted to synchronize it with my mac. It did not work! Nor could I browse my phones content from my mac, or transfer files between the two or even use Bluephone Elite for sending txt's via my phone or use Salling Clicker as a remote control.

After doing some research via Google online I found that this issue was well known with this newest Nokia firmware and Macos 10.5 Leopard. The issue has existed since september 2007 and Nokia is not accepting responsibility regarding the issue. After sending them a bug-report via their feedback form I got a mail in reply telling me to tell Apple to fix this as every new version of the firmware only consists of "enhancements" to existing features. Well, I don't consider bluetooth not working as it should an enhancement and still have faith in the issue being resolved in one way or another.

I have done some packet logging of the bluetooth traffic generated of the phone and the mac to make it possible to find the culprit and of this maybe find a workaround via forum-threads on Nokia's and Apple's web sites. So if you know some bluetooth feel free to chip in (the packet logs are available in both threads linked just above here). Hopefully a solution will present itself shortly. I have found myself able to do some basic synching via an old school cable lying around in my drawer :P

Chess og ufine metoder?

Tre-fire år tilbake valgte jeg å gå fra mobiloperatøren Telenor til Chess. Chess tilbød da et ganske gunstig abonnement kallt Chess King. Tilbudet gikk ut på at første år betalte man ca 900,- i årsavgift, andre året ble dette halvert og fra og med tredje år skulle ingen årsavgift finne sted.
Vel og bra, jeg inngikk kontrakt, fikk sim-kort, betalte mine kroner i årsavgift + pris på samtale, sms og gprs. Dette har jeg nå gjort i disse 3-4 år og dette abonnementet har vært gunstig når jeg nå har vært student i England i et halvt år. Jeg har fått meg et "pay as you go"-abonnement her i England ettersom Chess ringepriser i England er stive, og det ikke er aktuelt å bli belastet både for å ringe og ta i mot samtaler over 12 måneder. Uansett er det gunstig å ha telefonen med mitt norske abonnement liggende for å kunne ta i mot sms fra familie, venner og kjente i Norge i denne tiden.
11. februar fikk jeg en mail fra Chess. De opplyser om lavere ringepriser og: "Minimumsforbruk på faktura blir nå likt for alle abonnement med kr 69,- pr. måned.*  Det innebærer at om du ringer og sender meldinger innen Norge for mindre enn kr 69 en måned, vil du bli fakturert kr 69.
Denne ordningen trer i kraft fra og med fakturaen som sendes ut i mars 2008."
10. mars kom så da denne første fakturaen etter denne endringen. Jeg hadde tenkt meg at denne minsteprisen på 69 kroner var grei nok, en utgift på 70 kroner i måneden har jeg råd til, og jeg regner ikke med å bruke mer enn det uansett, så utgiften er fin og stabil.
Etter å ha sjekket min spesifiserte faktura for 1.2.-29.2 fant jeg følgende. Jeg har et gprs forbruk på 1,37, samtaler fra utland på 14,65, samtaler mottatt i utland på 7,16 og sms sendt i utland på 15,-. Totalt 38,18, godt under grensen på 69,-. Den totale regningen er derimot pålydende 107,18 og "Minimusdebitering" pålydende 69,- kommer _i tillegg_ (Totalt 828 i året, altså nesten samme beløp jeg betalte første året). Dette er ikke hvordan jeg definerer en minimumsgrense, men derimot ligner dette på det jeg kaller "Månedsavgift", som igjen ikke er en del av Chess King-abonnementet jeg har inngått avtale om.
I løpet av de neste dager blir jeg å ta en telefonsamtale til Forbrukerrådet og deretter til Chess for å høre hva det er de driver med. (Antakelig er det det de kaller "butikk". Jeg kaller det kontraktsbrudd og dårlig kundebehandling).
Finnes det i det hele tatt noen teleoperatører som ikke prøver å lure kundene sine i Norge igjen? Tips om operatør og abonnement mottas med stor takk. =)

Earthquake

Nothing to wake you up in the middle of the night as an earthquake. I was soundly sleeping at 00.58 as I found myself bouncing in the bed. Still drowsy from my sleep I did not realise what was going on as I have never experienced an earthquake before. Now, half an hour later, I'm still awake. Guess I got a little upset by my new experience as I realised it really is not much one can do as the earth shivers. Looking forward to check the news tomorrow to find the strenght of it. My bet would be around 3.5 on the richter scale =)

Edit: According to the British Geological Survey, the quake had a magnitude of 5.2 on the richter scale which . The epicenter of it was approximately 137 km from Coventry and it was the most powerful uk earthquake since 1984. Stories about it from BBC and IC Coventry.

Numberpedia

A co-student of mine (Inari from Finland) is collecting numbers and "counted things" for a piece of contemporary art. If you know of a number-fact involving the numbers from 10 to 100 then please contribute to this Wiki'ish webpage. You edit the page and contribute your number-fact by pressing the "Edit this page" button in the upper left corner.

Runar, Einar? :P

Photo Gallery

Finally! For two years have my web portfolio been online, and for two years have the tab "Photo" said something like "I will be publishing some of my photos at this page some day".

So, now I have developed a conceptual experimental photo gallery to showcase some of my photos and published a few pictures on it for now. Please enjoy! =) 

Pork Scratchings

I have finally started getting used to buying products I really would not consider buying in Norway (with the presented product names anyway). Latest now is "Pork Scratchings" which is quite similar to the Norwegian "Bacon Crisps". These taste salty and are not as crispy as the Norwegian ones. I guess to much of these will shorten the life span of the customer and I will not be having these to often.