*** Had meant to publish yesterday. Apparently I am a blogging slacker***

Today marks the two year anniversary of the day that hurricane Katrina made landfall and immersed eighty-percent of the city of New Orleans in water, as high as 20 feet in some areas. To mark the event, President Bush, in a disgustingly typical political move, went down to visit the city and even ventured to the still painfully devastated neighborhood of the Lower 9th Ward, touring The Ninth Ward charter school, which two years ago was under 18 feet of water. Full article from the New York Times.

The reality of this visit can be summed up by this passage from the article:

"To get to the school, the president’s motorcade crossed a canal with new white cement wall that had “Hindsight” painted in large red letters. Along the route, considerable damage was still visible, with boarded-up houses and lots strewn with debris."

However, President Bush was not the only politician that chose, two years later, to care about a city that has been virtually forgotten. Every hopeful presidential candidate seems to be jumping on the Katrina bad wagon, from Barack Obama to John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. As the Times Reports, New Orleans has become a 'new' element of the 2008 campaign.

Of course, despite my cynicism, this is good. Even Bush's little trek to the city puts New Orleans back in the news. At this stage, as suicide rates and crime skyrocket in the city and many people still have yet to see a dime of financial assistance from the federal government, any coverage of what is really happening is absolutely a godsend. But where have these 'interested parties' been for the last two years?

Posted by Cat at 02:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With a little over three weeks left until the Conflux Festival, Angela and I are pushing the further development of our project Under the Level into high gear. In addition to the functionality that has been part of the project since day one, we are creating an interactive map, based on source code for a wordpress plugin created by Steven Jackson (and with his assistance of course) and we are utilizing some audio and video footage taken by Scott Corrigan during the ITP visit to New Orleans this past March. We plan to include the audio (interviews with NO residents) as part of the interaction a user would experience with their phone and incorporate some of the video footage from the Lower 9th Ward on the web site (which is also getting a makeover). We also plan to start a blog, hopefully with other contributors, that not only will provide information about the current circumstances in New Orleans, but also discuss issues relating to climate change and natural disasters.

We are scheduled to give our workshop at Luna Lounge, which is located at 61 Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg from 11am to 12:30pm Thursday, September 13th and Saturday, September 15th. After the workshop, we will be conducting a walking tour through the streets of the surrounding area for anyone that would like to experience the project in its intended environment.

In addition to many other very interesting projects at Conflux this year, several former and current ITP students will be showing work. Mike Dory will be showing Concrete Crickets, Dan Phifer and Mushon Zer-Aviv will be showing Shift Space and Christian Croft and Kate Hartman will be showing Energy Harvesting Dérive. Forgive me if I missed anyone.

It should be an awesome time!!

Posted by Cat at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I finally made time to photograph some of my old pictures with the new Nikon digital. It will probably take me a long time to get all my prints digitized but I got through a large portion of the good stuff. View them here.

Posted by Cat at 07:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Although rumors have been floating around for a while abut flickr adding video, this post on TechCrunch seems to confirm that this is in fact the case. As much as I understand the progression to video, and the thought from users that it would be very convenient to be able to store and share multiple different kinds of media in one place, there is a part of me that wonders how successful flickr video will be. I think the only way to do it right is to have photos and videos in ONE place, rather then separating them into different streams for each user. Even still, I really do feel that the reason flickr has been so successful is because of their sole focus on photography. From the day I began using it, I thought it was the best photo sharing app on the web and possibly even one of the best social networking sites period, organizationally at least. This feeling hasn't changed despite all the copycats and my increased use of Facebook photos over the last few months, which is also designed and organized pretty well.

Part of the reason I have such loving feelings towards flickr is because of their sole focus on one thing, making it really easy to upload, organize, find and share photos, without the added burden of lengthy personal profiles and silly fringe features. I am not necessarily saying that video fits into the category of being an irrelevant step to take, but I worry about what the inclusion of video may turn flickr into. Unlike many of the commenters on the TechCrunch post, I for one, do not want flickr to turn into YouTube AT ALL. Why should they try to revival a site that has simply become a myspace-like marketing tool? (and a highly unsearchable at that) Although I doubt that the intention of flickr's developers is to become the next YouTube, I am almost ready to say, 'why bother doing it at all?' But then again, it may turn out to be perfectly integrated and very useful....I guess we'll have to see.

Posted by Cat at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)