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Jadie and I presented freeFormed at the Electronic Social Club Mixer at Hunter College organized by their Integrated Media Department this past Thursday. It was a pretty good experience, although I had to run directly to present in urban computing, which was not all that fun. We received a few new users thanks to the presentation on the freeformed.net site so it was definitely worth it.
I finally figured out the easiest way to structure my website so that i will actually maintain it (which thus far has not happened). I am using a wordpress install with the K2 theme format. Many of the pages are still under construction but you can get the general idea by going here.. I don't know enough about wordpress yet to make it perfect. And despite initial thoughts, I don't think I will migrate this blog to the wordpress format. But after working within wordpress while I was in New Orleans, I realized that it is a really good way to maintain a web site with very little effort, which is exactly what I need. Now if only I could have the wonderful version that Shawn created for the ny2no project, I would be all set.
So to reiterate, this blog is not going anywhere, the wordpress stuff will just be a way for me to archive and organize. I would've done it within the moveable type structure, but that just proved to be way to difficult.
Last night I returned from my one week trip to New Orleans. As aforementioned, I traveled down there as part of a grant obtained by ITP to work with Xavier University and community groups in the area. Our goal was two-fold. First, we wanted to be able, through workshops taught at the Xavier Art Department in their new digital lab, to teach as many Xavier students as possible about video and audio capture, editing, compression and upload. Our other goal was to teach the students about blogging and set-up websites for the various community groups that were working with students from the university so that their goals, projects and information could be available in an online forum. In preparation for the trip, Shawn Van Every created a multi-user wordpress platform that would make it very easy for members of these various organizations to create their own blog, podcast their video and audio material and update information regarding their projects and progress. A good portion of time was spent teaching about the platform and blogging in general and attempting to document and organize previous documentation of the various projects the groups had already conducted or were conducting during the week we were there. This multi-user platform can be found here.
Personally, I worked closely with two of the community groups, The Porch and the Lower 9th Ward Homeowner's association. The Porch is a group working within the Seventh Ward, a neighborhood significantly destroyed by the storm. Through community projects and theater workshops they are attempting to facilitate re-development of their neighborhood and help the children within the neighborhood to deal with the effects and aftermath of the storm. Megan MacMurray and I attended one of their theater workshops where they use a particular kind of theater to encourage the children to deal with their experiences through story telling and expressive movement.
The Lower 9th Ward Homeowner's Association is an organization founded by local 9th Ward resident Linda Jackson, who also co-founded NENA, the Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association. Linda lost her home and dry cleaning/laundry business in the storm. Her primary goal with the Homeowner's Association is to prevent the residents of the Lower 9th Ward, the hardest hit neighborhood in New Orleans, from losing their land to investors and to facilitate the return of senior citizens and other residents to the Lower 9th Ward by constructing temporary residences and paying off the property taxes for residents who want to return home but don't have the means to prevent their land from being seized. Megan MacMurray and I are currently attempting to install a donate button within the Homeowner's Association blog so that visitors to the site can donate money to the cause through paypal. We are also researching the best ways to get the message out about the association's goals and needs through communication with several well known organizations and video blogs.
I also participated in teaching during my stay, mostly focused on the power of mobile media and technology but I also explained and taught about the blogging platform. I also worked with Xavier student Ashley Thomas on the Voices of New Orleans circle. We discussed how the circle could be of use and Ashley came up with several pertinent areas of discussion that she felt could encourage conversation. The three that are now present within the circle are the Road Home project, crime and discussion from teenagers. Ashley also re-recorded the introduction to the production and is going to pass cards around her neighborhood. Ashley also works at a local New Orleans radio station which has a relationship with the mayor. Once the circle is populated she hopes to present the project to the mayor so that he can listen to the concerns within the community.
The trip to New Orleans was an amazing and emotionally draining experience. I had not expected to be so affected by the city, both positively and negatively. The condition of the city in general and the Lower 9th Ward in particular is reprehensible. And the lack of adequate assistance, funding and nationwide attention is criminal. It is both an artifact of a corrupt and inept city government and lack of a responsible federal response. The saddest part is, and I had no expected to feel this way, New Orleans is truly and completely the epitome of a real American city. The soul that is present, even today as half the city still stands in ruins, is palpable. It is place that feels more untouched by commercialism then almost any large city I have ever been to. And yet the very undercurrent of deep rooted cultural experience which makes New Orleans an essential historical aspect of this country are in trouble. The city is barely functioning and its people, which make it the place that it is, are either dispersed with little hope of being able to return, or just barely getting by. It is unacceptable to me that in a country where we have enough money to rage meaningless wars thousands of miles away, we don not have the means or the sense of responsibility to help our own people. This is not simply concerning the response after the storm, or lack thereof, but the current level of interest in reviving the city and assisting those who do not have the means to help themselves. Words cannot even explain the sense of urgency, sadness and struggle that I saw when I was there. Yet despite this, the people I met, like Linda Jackson, most of whom are homeless, living in trailers outside their broken homes or just barely able to get by, are determined to do everything they can. They are fighting, working long hours and exhausted. In my opinion, it is the responsibility of every decent human being in this country to recognize what has happened and what continues to happen in New Orleans. And I firmly believe that it is also all of our responsibility to help if we can.
I don't know what the solution is to this complex and difficult situation. My personal goal is to get as much attention for the situation as possible; to reopen the national conversation, to get people with influence angry and to continue to maintain the relationships that I personally developed within the city. I plan to return to New Orleans after graduation to assist in whatever way possible. This is my blog within the ny2no platform that I am currently constructing to more accurately depict my experience while in New Orleans. More updates to come as they become available.
freeFormed has been invited to present at the electronic social club mixer:
Thursday, March 22.2007
7 - 10p
Hunter College
695 Park Avenue
Black Box / Hunter North Room 543
The electronic social club mixer is formed around a common interest, activity or location. We bring together MFA students from across New York City to meet and showcase their graduate art work, and to form a common network around the theme of creating social dialogue through art and media.
Given the recent trip to New Orleans, from which we three members of freeformed just returned last night, I think we will present freeformed within its current working context, which is a social and media exchange between New York City and New Orleans, as well as presenting the various features and aspects of the project as a whole. Fellow ITP students Dan Phiffer and Mushon Zer-Aviv will be presenting their project Shift Space as well. More on this to come.
For the last three days I have been in New Orleans with 12 other students and two faculty members from ITP. We are down here thanks to a grant that ITP secured to work with Xavier University. At first I don't think any of us knew exactly what to expect. We had met the Xavier students and had researched some of the community groups that we were going to be meeting with, but I don't think any of us had a concept of what it was going to be like to actually be in New Orleans. I don't have time to fully explain what has happened so far, as we have been working non-stop since arriving here. However, I can say that this experience has been unlike any I have ever had. Yesterday, the longest and most difficult day so far, we went to the Lower 9th Ward, a neighborhood virtually destroyed by hurricane Katrina.
This neighborhood borders the Industrial Canal, the site of one of the breached levees. It is eighteen months later and the neighborhood is still painfully broken.
Site of the levee breach:
I am completely horrified at the lack of compassion and assistance afforded to these people who have lost everything, not simply their homes, but their community as a whole. It is heartbreaking and indescribable what it is like to stand on the street where the levees broke and look around at the weed and debris ridden fields that was once home to a community that boasted 80% home ownership. Especially knowing that many of them who want to come back are unable to because of financial obstacles and lack of any form of government assistance. And its not just in this neighborhood. I drove through mid-city a couple days ago, a reasonably middle class neighborhood it seemed, where the water line was still visible more then three quarters up the side of every house on Tulane Ave. But what has been especially hard to see is the markings on the houses that the various rescue teams used to let others know that a house had been searched. These markings are readily visible in almost every neighborhood.
Again, I do not have time at this moment to fully describe what we are trying to accomplish with this large scale project. However, I can say that I am dedicated to helping out in any way I can for as long as I have to. What has been done to many of the citizens of New Orleans is disgusting and reprehensible. And the worst part is, we have all forgotten. I hope that any who reads this will visit the New York to New Orleans blog and and visit the site daily for updates. Megan MacMurray and I are working on a specific site to help the Lower 9th Ward Homeowner's Association, which is trying to raise money to pay the taxes on the land of former residents so that investors, like Donald Trump, will not buy it up and prevent the former residents from ever returning. With the help of Caleb, we are teaching Xavier student Mary Hill how to use the wordpress blogging software so that she can assist the association with updates and changes. IT IS THEIR LAND!!!! Soon we will have a donate button that will allow people who visit their blog to give money with their credit card. My donation will be the first. Hopefully, many more will follow.
More on all of this to come....
Analyzing an Online Group: Craigslist forum on Philosophy
Not exactly the group I would've chosen, my other group members suggested it. But it ended up being a very interesting experiment.
Read the full pdf here.
From the article:
> By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service for reporting on it.
>
> March 06, 2007
>
> The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.
>
> The council chose an unfortunate anniversary to publish its decision approving the law, which came exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday in the night of March 3, 1991. The officers' acquittal at the end on April 29, 1992 sparked riots in Los Angeles.
>
> If Holliday were to film a similar scene of violence in France today, he could end up in prison as a result of the new law, said Pascal Cohet, a spokesman for French online civil liberties group Odebi. And anyone publishing such images could face up to five years in prison and a fine of €75,000 ($98,537), potentially a harsher sentence than that for committing the violent act.
>
> Senators and members of the National Assembly had asked the council to rule on the constitutionality of six articles of the Law relating to the prevention of delinquency. The articles dealt with information sharing by social workers, and reduced sentences for minors. The council recommended one minor change, to reconcile conflicting amendments voted in parliament.
>
> The law, proposed by Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy, is intended to clamp down on a wide range of public order offenses. During parliamentary debate of the law, government representatives said the offense of filming or distributing films of acts of violence targets the practice of "happy slapping," in which a violent attack is filmed by an accomplice, typically with a camera phone, for the amusement of the attacker's friends.
>
> The broad drafting of the law so as to criminalize the activities of citizen journalists unrelated to the perpetrators of violent acts is no accident, but rather a deliberate decision by the authorities, said Cohet. He is concerned that the law, and others still being debated, will lead to the creation of a parallel judicial system controlling the publication of information on the Internet.
>
> The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers, identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they adhere to certain rules. The journalists' organization Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for a free press, has warned that such a system could lead to excessive self censorship as organizations worried about losing their certification suppress certain stories.
>
As a creator of a web site that focuses on mobile posting, and as someone who has worked directly with organizations whose aim was to find ways to broadcast citizen journalism online, this ruling is incredibly frightening. There is no question that the situation of 'happy slapping' is a huge problem but, as in many situations, attempts to end certain behavior out of fear cause ruptures in the system of free speech. I wonder if the ruling will hold up.
Read the Times article here.. As much as I dislikeYouTube, more for its lack of searchability then anything else, this article is frightening, particularly because it was expressly carried out, not because of YouTube's blatant disregard for copyright law (which is what the site is most often faulted for) but because of the government's dislike of a growing argument between Greek and Turkish users of the site and their trading of video insults. I have not personally seen any of the videos that were the source of this exchange, although I suspect that many of them are probably the typical childish reactions that can run rampant in any site that allows people to talk to each other. The bottom line is, when having discussion of any sort in an online forum, disagreement is what brings people back and engages them. If you always agree with everything you see or that is said in an online conversation, what would bring you back? It is human nature to eventually resort to these kind of tactics.
But none of this is actually the point. The fact that an entire website was blocked because of the behavior of some people is obviously a disturbing indication that the internet is not the 'free' place that many people would like to believe it is. Not that this is a new phenomenon at all. But something about this particular case is just so absurd that it brings the discussion around these acts of censorship into real prospective. Somehow we have to develop a language to discuss the gravity of this kind of situation so that there are ways to prevent it (not sure if that is ever possible). Censorship never works, in fact it often works in reverse. Now everyone not in Turkey who knew nothing of these videos before will seek them out.