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)

Today, in the company of Yonatan Kelib and a new first year ITP student, Amber, I went to central park to extend my support to (and photograph) the rally against the genocide in Darfur (a rally which took place simultaneously in other cities around the world). In general I do not really discuss my views on topics such as these on this blog, simply because it has most often been a place for me to think out loud, post homework assignments and programming frustrations and re-blog about interesting topics going on, more often then not, in the world of online social-networking and mobile development. However, I was particularily impressed by the organization, dedication and innovation of the organizors of this rally. And the seriousness of the issue is one that cannot easily be ignored. The following information was taken from the Save Darfur website:

Darfur has been embroiled in a deadly conflict for over three years. At least 400,000 people have been killed; more than 2 million innocent civilians have been forced to flee their homes and now live in displaced-persons camps in Sudan or in refugee camps in neighboring Chad; and more than 3.5 million men, women, and children are completely reliant on international aid for survival. Not since the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has the world seen such a calculated campaign of displacement, starvation, rape, and mass slaughter.

Images of the rally:

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What I found most impressing was that the organizors had devised many ways for people to help both from the rally itself and once they got home....ways that did not only include making donations. (many other activist groups have become wise in this department) One way was to send a text message to a specified number with your feelings on the issue or simply the message 'stop the genocide in Darfur'. These messages would be forwarded to 'President' Bush. As to whether or not such call in/text in campaigns are actually effective, I am no expert, but I do think this was a very intelligent strategy for two reasons. One, some people, either flaky on the issue itself or for time or other reasons, do not like calling in and talking to actual people or leaving recorded comments. Two, many people just stopping by a rally of this nature may get caught up in the moment and be excited about the issue, but then go home and get involved in their own lives and forget. To be able to send a simple text message from the rally itself while the idea is fresh in your mind is a very clever strategy.

In conclusion, I will be very brief with my thoughts on the subject. All over the world, too many situations to varying degrees of the nature of what is happening in Darfur happen. And too many times, the world community has been too slow to act if they act at all. What, then, is the purpose of the United Nations? In this country in particular our government appeas to be more concerned with bombing, occupying and destroying countries and engaging in war's that have no moral purpose or foreseable end then we are with helping innocent civilians that are being murdered by the thousands or millions. It is frustrating, depressing and incredibly sad. Especially when our government uses the murder of citizens on our soil as justification for such wars, while the citizens of other countries such as Darfur are dying in a similar brutal fashion and we stand by (as a world community) and do nothing. I cannot even imagine what it must be like to be someone living in a region of the world in turmoil such as this. And perhaps that is the problem. So many people can't imagine it from their comfy couches in their comfy homes where they live their relatively uncomplicated lives, that they simple don't care. It is not politically important to care.

If you want to learn more, go to the webiste And here is an interactive flash game I found while doing research for another class.

Posted by Cat at 02:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was pointed to this article by Alex Bisceglie and was glad to see that Amnesty is finally addressing this incredibly important issue. Its seemed to me inevitable for quite a while, that the need to wage a campaign against online censorship would become the next fight against the repression of individual freedoms. Many people became quite enraged to hear that companies like Google were submitting to the opressive regimes of countries like China and blocking politically sensitive material. However, the problem becomes even more severe when you're no longer talking about websites being blocked, but about people being jailed for their contributions to the online conversation or having their every online move watched and cataloged.

Amnesty has already collected 7064 signatures through their new website challenging Internet censhorship (one of them being mine). But this is not nearly enough. As someone significantly interested in the role that average people can play in both the documenting, publishing and transmission of original stories and media, to me the concept of preventing such information from becomming available poses a significant threat to the grassroots media movement, to the recording of human rights violations and to the ability of the Internet to serve as a medium for the sharing of relevant ideas. To a certain extent, I also feel that it is naive of anyone to assume that Internet censorship, if unchallenged, will remain a problem in only a select few countries. It is probably true that we have yet to really realize how much information is actually being blocked. Amnesty is working with OpenNet Initiative, whose aim is to document patterns of Internet content filtering and surveillance worldwide, in an attempt to raise awarness as to how pervasive the problem is becoming.

This is a map detailing ONI global filtering findings.
Check it out and sign the pledge.

Posted by Cat at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)