Get PhysiDigital with me at NXNEi this June (and save!)

I'll be speaking at NXNEi this June (2012), giving a talk entitled Let's Get PhysiDigital: How to Convert Online Memories Into Offline Artifacts. To quote the write-up on the NXNEi site:

Now that social media has become a black box recorder for countless emotionally significant moments, artists and brands are searching for ways to turn our digital milestones into physical keepsakes. The results include a .poster of your Tumblr followers, a book filled with your favorite Tweets and a unique origami shape built around the content of your favourite text message. But what is driving this newfound interest in physicality? Is it a reaction against the ephemeral nature of digital communication or simply the result of the online world bleeding into the offline? Drawing on my experience as co-creator of txt2hold and tweet2hold, I will explore how fleeting digital communications like texts and tweets can be converted into permanent memory objects. While locating the sometimes fragile intersection between the online and offline world requires careful research, the creative opportunities are numerous for those willing to get PhysiDigital.

If you are looking for an incentive to attend, here is a discount code good for 10% off: NXNEiRocks

Don't say I never give you nothing. Visit nxne.com for more info on the festival.

When in doubt, quote yourself

In November of 1999, Mike Usinger, writing in Saturday Night ("Call him Nardwuar") noted that: 

“But what's really made Nardwuar infamous is that, like those who read America's leading white-trash tabloid, he has an enquiring mind and he wants to know. With his high-pitched voice -- which doesn't sound so much like nails on a chalkboard as a chalkboard being dragged though a nail factory -- he's become North America's pre-eminent guerrilla journalist...”

Almost 13 years later, Usinger was interviewed for a Feb 21, 2012 RRJ profile of Nardwuar by Sara Harowitz: 

As [Mike] Usinger says, “Most of us don’t have the balls to dress up in a plaid tam and speak in a voice that sounds like a nail factory being dragged across a chalkboard.”

Given that I can't remember what I ate for breakfast last week, Usinger clearly has an incredible memory.

Welcome to NYC 1YL

I'll be blogging with a bit more frequency again in order to tone and condition my writing muscles. Shorter posts, but more often. The world needs a few more Bigge Ideas. Or Bigge Snark.

I'll start with my concept for a new Toronto restaurant called NYC 1YL. That's short for New York City One Year Later. It's a simple idea -- every month or so, the restaurant will switch up and serve whatever food and cocktails were popular in Manhattan exactly one year previous. Decor will also change accordingly.

Shockingly, since Toronto is at least 12-18 months behind Manhattan when it comes to food and drink (witness the painful delay between the pre-prohibition cocktail craze in New York and its appearance here) NYC 1YL will probably manage to stay ahead of the curve.

Keenan insight into Ford business card debacle

Rob Ford defined the standard by which use of expense accounts and sole-sourced contracts should be judged abusive or corrupt. He defined the principle by which $1,200 in spending should be considered an outrage. Then he spent $1,200 in taxpayer money he did not need to spend, and funnelled the money into his own company. Saying “whoops” and cutting a cheque now that the press has pointed it out cannot erase the misdeed. By the rules Ford defined, he ought to resign. And if he won’t judge himself by the standard he set, council ought to do it for him.

-- Edward Keenan calmly explains why Ford should be sent packing in The Grid

Indie bookstore ponders the merits of social media

I subscribe to the newsletter for indie bookstore Of Swallows, their Deeds, and the Winter Below. (The descriptor "indie bookstore" is probably redundant for an establishment with a name like that). The November issue contains one of the better skeptical debates about social media I've seen in awhile:

1. Bust or facebook

Banker: "You suffer from a traffic problem."

Swallow: "Yes."
Banker: "Why not use social media?"
Sw.: "Would a priest visit an analyst?"
B: "The priest has no Landlord."

We now have a facebook. You can recommend our facebook. It might help others know: they could be traffic.

www.facebook.com/283college

tweet2hold is brilliantly simplistic according to Metro

But perhaps the most brilliantly simplistic exhibit is their social media app, which takes the data from tweets sent to the project’s dedicated Twitter account, @tweet2hold, and converts them into physical objects, in this case origami birds.

--  Ian Gormely of Metro provides us with some much appreciated print media coverage

Photo by Dylan Reibling

@tweet2hold seeks 2,525 secrets about the future for Nuit Blanche 2011

TORONTO, ON (September 22, 2011) – On October 1, tweet2hold (tweet2hold.com), will fill the Bata Shoe Museum with 2,525 paper birds containing secrets about the future. In order to share a secret, participants simply send @tweet2hold an @reply.

Created specifically for Nuit Blanche 2011 by Toronto media collective the Brototypes, tweet2hold is a site-specific version of txt2hold, a recent CFC Media Lab interactive art project. Both txt2hold (which debuted at Toronto’s mini-Maker Faire in May 2011) and tweet2hold involve turning a digital experience into a permanent physical object.

“We drew partial inspiration for tweet2hold from Marshall McLuhan, who loved to describe the future using pithy aphorisms,” explains tweet2hold spokesperson Ryan Bigge. “As for gathering 2,525 secrets about the future our inspiration is a little less highbrow,” Bigge admits. “It’s a reference to the one-hit wonder ‘In the Year 2525’ by Zager and Evans.”

Part of this year’s CFC Media Lab’s Nuit Blanche exhibit (entitled Technological Displacement), tweet2hold will flirt with notions of public and private by placing 2,525 secrets in plain sight inside a large tweetcage. Tweet2hold also will leverage the sophisticated analysis engine of Lymbix.com in order to determine the emotional tone of each secret and assign it an appropriate colour palette.

“McLuhan said ‘We march backwards into the future.’ Given his interest in communication technologies I think he would have been fascinated by Twitter,” notes Bigge. “Or at the very least he would have something witty to say about it.”

To learn more visit: http://www.tweet2hold.com

Twitter: @tweet2hold

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/txt2hold

-30-

Contact:

Ryan Bigge, tweet2hold spokesperson, rbigge [@] cfcmedialab [dot] com

An animated gif for tweet2hold, my Nuit Blanche interactive art installation

When not working full-time, I've working on @tweet2hold, a new media project that I helped create as part of the CFC Media Lab's IAEP.

We're now into the marketing phase of the project, trying to get 2,525 secrets about the future before Saturday, October 1. As a bribe to convince you to submit a secret, I've included my very first animated gif:

Smooth jazz cannot rescue bad website design

Tempted though you are, you stay focused and click for the San Francisco restaurant. One bit of advice: If you’ve got a subwoofer attached to your computer, now’s the time to crank it up, because you’re in for some auto-playing, royalty-free, ambient techno smooth jazz!

-- Slate.com on the enigma of bad restaurant websites

Michael Schur from Parks and Recreation explains why taxes are okay

People don’t seem to make the connection between their tax money and the benefits that they get from their tax money, like free education, and the fire department, and police protection, and everything else. It drives me bonkers, because it’s pretty straightforward to me. People think of taxes as money just being robbed from you. They don’t consider the benefits of paying taxes. The benefits that they get and also the benefit of just being a part of a large group of people: a town, or a city, or a country, or a society that allegedly should stand together and all try to help each other. So my cynical, angry side I gave to Ron. And we have him voice the idea that there’s no point, that governments can’t function, that society is unreasonable, that everyone should just leave everybody else alone.

-- From The Onion AV Club