Carolina Maya's List: ProyectoCiudadesInvisibles

• Pendente DESCARGAR HERREMIENTA DE ESTA PAGINA - Carolina Maya on 2008-03-23

• Pixel   - Graph:   a   graffiti that takes its form from internet pixel fonts

   

  Pixel   fonts online are best exemplified by the custom font for the k10k.net   site:

• Multi-Sticker ASCII Graffiti Install:

• PixelRoller
• PixelRoller is a paint roller that paints pixels, designed as a rapid response printing tool specifically to print digital information such as imagery or text onto a great range of surfaces. The content is applied in continuous strokes by the user. PixelRoller can be seen as a handheld “printer”, based around the ergonomics of a paintroller, that lets you create the images by your own hand
• Ever increasing technological boundaries have removed the user from the creativity of the printing process. This separation diminishes the possibility of creative and live input during output.

• Conventional Printing is usually bound to a certain location, output method and process. Each printing process is very specific for each single application and the technology has become less adaptable and inflexible for the end user.

    
• Alternatively manual painting requires certain skills, time and is limited in accuracy. However the ability to print manually has advantages in terms of influencing the output, engaging with the medium and the freedom of not being limited to one substrate.

• In the past year at the RCA we have created a tool which, when further developed, will allow for creative and flexible fast- response printing on a great number of different surfaces.

    

  Combining the advantages of both disciplines described above offers the flexibility of manual printing with accurate reproduction of digital information on any surface, allowing the user to influence the output in real-time.

    

• The option to print anywhere, onto anything, is an important factor which will provide the users with the ability to print digital content onto floors, walls and ceilings, both indoors and outdoors. Further substrates will include surfaces such as paper, brick, concrete, glass, and grass. And all of them will be printed onto in one stroke, without the need of changing the process in which to print.

    

  The PixelRoller project creatively combines existing technologies that have surrounded us for years to create a series of products specific to certain applications, such as signage, fast response imagery or simply allow the ability for the user to change the pattern of their wall paper.
• The software for the first PixelRoller prototype was created using processing which proved invaluable to the development process.

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• Importante:
  Proyecto Ciudades Invisibles - Carolina Maya on 2008-03-23

• The StreetWriter project expands on the research   gained from the successes of the Robotic GraffitiWriter project.   The system consists of a custom built, computer controlled industrial   spray painting unit that is built into an extended-body cargo van.   The vehicle prints text messages onto the pavement in a manner much   like a dot-matrix printer. The expanded width of StreetWriter allows   for messages and simple graphics that are legible from tall buildings   and low flying aircraft and is capable of rendering messages that   are several hundred feet in length.

• New!   A radical redesign of StreetWriter has taken place. The new machine,   tentatively called SWX, recently infiltrated the   finish line festivities of the DARPA Grand Challenge. The earlier   version of StreetWriter has been officially decomissioned.

   

• Proyecto Ciudades Invisibles + 360 - Carolina Maya on 2008-03-23

• What is Grafedia?
  
  Grafedia is hyperlinked text, written by hand onto physical surfaces and linking to rich media content - images, video, sound files, and so forth. It can be written anywhere - on walls, in the streets, or on sidewalks. Grafedia can also be written in letters or postcards, on the body as tattoos, or anywhere you feel like putting it. Viewers "click" on these grafedia hyperlinks with their cell phones by sending a message addressed to the word + "@grafedia.net" to get the content behind the link. 
  
• What Kinds of Things Can I Do With Grafedia?
  
   You can make street art with grafedia, or just leave behind simple calling cards for others wherever you go. You can have running dialogues between authors, or create interactive narratives or poetry in public spaces. Grafedia is a boundless, interactive publishing platform, base, cheap, and easy to use. <!-- It allows you to link tangible things to digital media, with written text serving as the interface. --> It is an open system - the places and ways to use it are limitless. With grafedia, every surface becomes potentially a web page, and the entire physical world can be joined with the Internet.  
  
• How is Grafedia Made?
  
   Grafedia authors can make hyperlinked text at any time in three easy steps. Simply: 1. Choose a word. 2. Send a media file from your cell phone to that chosen word plus '@grafedia.net', e.g. 'myword@grafedia.net'. 3. Write that word anywhere in the real world in blue with an underline. That word will then be linked to the media file the author sent to grafedia.net, and viewers will be able to retrieve the file. You can also upload media from your computer directly to the grafedia.net server here in order to create grafedia with more precise images.

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• ESTO ES LO MAXIMOOOOO
  PROYECTO CIUDADES INVISIBLES - Carolina Maya on 2008-03-23

• World of Warcraft Shines Light on Terror Tactics
• Virtual terrorists blowing themselves up and spreading disease inside World of Warcraft could provide counterterrorists with a window into real-world plots.
• Such activities in the massively multiplayer online game bear an eerie resemblance to actual terrorism, and analyzing terror tactics in Warcraft could prove more enlightening than current computer simulations used by counterterrorists.
• "People got really smart about figuring out how to cause the most damage to the largest number of people," said Robert Allen, a level-60 mage and self-admitted virtual bioterrorist who purposely spread an in-game contagion to kill other players.
• Scientists have already noted World of Warcraft's usefulness in studying how diseases spread. The game's network of 10 million players -- each capable of making decisions, either logical or illogical, rational or irrational -- gives scientists a ready-made virtual world to scrutinize that's not based on computer models or artificial intelligence. The game could be an invaluable tool not only for counterterrorists and epidemiologists but also sociologists and economists.
• Charles Blair, deputy director of the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies, said he thinks the game could provide a powerful new way to study how terrorist cells form and operate. His organization already uses computer models to study terrorists' tactical decision-making, but World of Warcraft's army of players adds a realistic dimension that might prove more enlightening than even the best baked-in artificial intelligence.
• "The main strength is that [Warcraft] involves 'real' people making real decisions in a world with some kind of [controllable] bounds," said Blair, who said studying players' actions could prove useful to military intelligence analysts. "To put it academically, you have both dependent and independent variables."
• Warcraft has a history of in-game terrorist activity. Early on, players found a curse in a high-level dungeon that would turn them into living bombs. They would then teleport to major cities and detonate themselves, killing nearby players. These suicide bombers gradually began to target areas where large number of players gathered, usually at auction houses or banks. Eventually, attacks occurred with enough frequency that some players simply avoided dangerous cities.
• Virtual bioterrorist Allen and his guild, domus fulminata, used a similar teleportation technique to spread an epidemic throughout in-game cities. Using a contagious curse called Corrupted Blood that could kill most players in seconds, Allen and his guild purposely infected other players and created a semi-permanent well of disease in cities' non-player characters. Allen and his group found the chaos caused by their actions humorous.
• "It's just funny to watch people run away screaming," he said.
• Such actions bear telltale signs of terrorism. Allen's small group blended in with the general population and waited for a weakness in the system to attack
• Just as in real life, such tactics can be effective in Warcraft
• "The advantage goes to the asymmetric actors who can operate under the radar," said Yale University terrorism expert Stuart Gottlieb
• Like the Department of Homeland Security, World of Warcraft operator Blizzard Entertainment tries to foresee vulnerabilities and address them as they become apparent. After the company's initial attempt to end the Corrupted Blood attacks, players found ways to circumvent new security measures by using in-game pets as vectors for disease
• Yet Blizzard is uncomfortable calling Warcraft players terrorists.
• "As we have always stated, World of Warcraft is first and foremost a game," said Blizzard representative Shon Damron. "It's never been designed to mirror reality or anything in the real world.
• Whether the game's operators want to admit it or not, Warcraft does mirror reality to some extent. Perhaps the game's biggest weakness as a model for studying terror tactics is that death in World of Warcraft is a nuisance at most
• Because the stakes for both terrorists and civilians are lower than they are in the real world, Yale's Gottlieb said he remains skeptical that the game could shed much light on the deeply complex social, political and cultural causes of terrorism
• "This is very interesting and relevant to the times," he said, "though I wouldn't base a new counterterrorism strategy on the nuances of a videogame

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• Make Love, Not War Games
• Military agents slip into an airplane hanger and hide behind boxes to shield themselves from terrorists who are holding a group of scientists hostage.

  Anticipating the attack, the terrorists had laid a trap, positioning snipers behind several barrels scattered throughout the room. When the agents make their move, storming the room, the terrorists pounce with ruthless efficiency and kill the agents and hostages.
• That's the way Counter-Strike, a wildly popular counter-terrorist shooter game, tends to work now. If Anne-Marie Schleiner were in charge, the scenario would unfold differently.
• nstead of mowing down the agents, the terrorists might lay down their weapons, team up with the military agents, release the hostages and maybe even go to a nearby bar to celebrate the happy ending.
• Schleiner is the programmer behind Velvet-Strike, an online protest modification that players can use to subvert the normally violent Counter-Strike game.
• Velvet-Strike replaces bullet-ridden body counts with peaceful protests, spray-painted anti-war messages and civil disobedience.
• Player protests have been a staple of text-based online games through the '80s and '90s. It's a way for players to make their voices heard and influence the virtual world they have paid to inhabit.
• Like the games themselves, the protests have gotten much more sophisticated than they were in 1997, when players would gather on the steps of Lord British's castle in Ultima Online, one of the first successful gaming worlds.
• Spearheaded by Schleiner, the college professor behind the

  Anime Noir game

  where successful sexual foreplay wins points, Velvet-Strike is the latest way for players to influence their online gaming environments. Velvet-Strike could launch as early as this month.
• Players can download spray-paint skins that have anti-war messages, which can be placed on the walls, ceilings or floors of the game environment. Schleiner has also put together a list of "intervention recipes" that outline specific tactics that protesters can use to undermine the traditional shoot-first, ask-questions-never mentality of shooter games.
• One recipe has players ask their enemy for help in planting a bomb, using that as a way to start a conversation. "I already tried (the friendship recipe) out on a server in Hawaii," Schleiner said. "I got my enemy to help show me how to plant the bomb in a bomb scenario."
• Not that Schleiner, who has a predilection for the AK-47s that terrorists get to carry in Counter-Strike, is completely against violence. She didn't try to make friends with her enemies until after she laid waste to eight other players, a fact she pointed out was very impressive since she's a relatively new player.
• Still, the Velvet-Strike protesters are part of a growing movement to bring a message of peace, love and happiness to online shooters by any means necessary. Graphical User Intervention, a more radical group of protesters, will go so far as to sacrifice their characters for the greater cause of getting out a message of non-violence. The group outlines strategies for suicide missions, among other things.
• "Our mission is to seek out those who would attempt to propagate the vile seeds of strife and division upon the burgeoning fields of online entertainment," the group's mission statement says. "Why are these gaming environments so savage and ruthless? We all exist within these virtual domains and as members we have a duty to each other to coexist in a Utopian world free of hate and struggle."
• Online protests are becoming more frequent these days, but they have a relatively simple history, dating to Ultima Online, a world created by Richard Garriott and Starr Long. During the beta testing, Garriott's Lord British, a supposedly invincible character, was killed by a player during a town meeting. Garriott forgot to click on his "immortality" switch, which led to his untimely death when he stepped into a fireball.
• What really irked the players was that Long, seeing his friend's character fall, called in a gaggle of demons who whomped the innocent bystanders.
• The beta testers began staging protests along the city's main drag, gathering in small groups to protest both the indiscriminate killing and the subsequent banning of the assassin.
• The event reverberated through the gaming world, giving players an unprecedented ability to change and influence the game. Scads of protests brought the phenomenon of player killing -- whereby experienced players prey on new gamers, killing them to collect points in the game and keep them from progressing to new levels -- to the attention of game designers.
• Sometimes the games became places for people to gather to make statements about events in the real world.
• After the terrorist attacks in New York City last September, players in Everquest and Anarchy Online brought their games to a halt,

  holding virtual candlelight vigils. Players scattered around the country found that the online gaming environment gave them a chance to deal with their grief.

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• Why let all of your ideas die with you? Current Copyright law prevents anyone from building upon your creativity for 70 years after your death. Live on in collaboration with others. Make an intellectual property donation. By donating your IP into the public domain you will "promote the progress of science and useful arts" (U.S. Constitution). Ensure that your creativity will live on after you are gone, make a donation today.