A júliusban, Oxfordban rendezett TEDGlobal konferencia egyik legelgondolkodtatóbb előadása volt Chimamanda Adichie nigériai írónő története az emberi szűklátókörűségről. A TED.com-on nemrég publikált felvételt végre mindannyian láthatjuk. Hallgasson, tanuljon, kapcsolja ki a tévét és ne hagyja magát! 

Amazing mixed reality projection from begian art group, The Popcornmakers. "Disturb Me is an interactive installation between human and his environment. It is to make perceptible the reciprocal links and often forgotten contact, that we maintain with our environment.

The projection depends on the sound emitted by the spectators and creates consequently, a transitory and colored environment. The projected forms are revealed when in contact with surfaces of the room.

The senses are awakened, the room becomes alive."

Source: thepopcornmakers

A new European parliament is soon to be elected, and it seems to have an influence on this season's tech conferences as well. The EP needs to cope with the societal, economic and technological changes we all are riding - says user experience designer Nadia El-Imam to Kultplay. Nadia initiated a discussion at Reboot, a forth coming web conference located in Copenhagen, Denmark. This meet up is a gathering for "programmers, designers, innovators, entrepreneurs, thinkers, bloggers, and activists". The program here isn't set up by curators. Anyone can suggest topics and workshops, the community will vote for the best ideas to discuss.

The EC is launching a series of workshops for the tech literate to help design guidelines for policy making that will then be submitted to the new MEPs. Nadia and the Reboot community want to produce a set of best practice guidelines for the new members of the European parliament. "We think these guidelines will contribute towards better policy-making especially where Information and communication technology is concerned" - she added.

They think a good place to start is by identifying the most important techno-social trends and their effects on issues like societal governance, privacy and identity management.
What do they think will come out of this effort? For now let´s say it starts with inspiring policy makers to ask the right questions when shaping European research and policy agenda for ICT.                            

Nadia and her collaborators think the EP election is a little more than sending a new team of corporate lobbyists to Brussels. They believe as European citizens we can write the guidelines to our common future by suggesting a rational interenet policy to the MEPs. Europe after all isn't very famous of hitting the right note when it comes to the issues of copyright, net neutrality, or file sharing. How do they think it should it work and what should it include? Join the conversation here, and meet Nadia at this years Reboot!

"When you're moving, you can't pack your dishes in a blog."

via: Jeff Jarvis

SANSULA Dominik Eulberg musicvideo from dirk rauscher on Vimeo.

It's called POT TIN GOD, a joint 10 meters in height. It will be on display in Graz for three months, but the guys from Monochrom.at are planning to go on tour with it. We have just noticed the new überproject of Vienna's digital culture scene mastermind, Johannes Grenzfürthner and friends. Is this our western neighbor's way to fight the financial crisis? Another European government recognised the potential of becoming the biggest ganja dealer? And they already build statues advertising the holy gift of Shiva?

Since the post was written in german, we sent a message to Johannes on Facebook if he could help us understand the extraordinary installation. Johannes kindly replied our message and explained the project. It turned out that the giant joint is a cultural abstraction of course. A symbol of the once-radical counterculture is now just an icon of highly accepted recreational consumption. Here is the story behind the giant joint statue of Graz: 

"It is a very colossal and (literally) bloated statement about the emergence and decline of subcultural symbols" - Johannes told us. "In the 1960s and 1970s the "joint" was a radical symbol of counter-culture, a strong gesture of social revolution. But such icons of subculture -- such subcultural "memes" -- appear, just to be hollowed out by the harsh waves of normativity. After a short period of time the symbol climbs up the career-ladder. And what remains is a footnote in the endless realms of bourgeois history (or even worse: bourgeois art history). Our sculpture is as blunt and boring as that. It's a somewhat classical portray of what happens to subcultural icons once they are sucked in and became global players in the field of symbols of freedom and coolness in a sadly cool and monotonous "free world".

What is left of the radicality and political message of the joint? What is left of it's shining glory of "fuck them all?" Well, consuming pot is a minor offense (thankfully) kept alive by administration (not in Budapest. We'll have a Marijuana March next sunday though, it is still a bloody fight here). It's more a trade-off than a subversion anymore. It's a "yeah, it's somehow wrong to do it, but well, you know, yeah" kind of approach. And what is subversion anyways? Just a direct path into the dark dungeons of guerrilla marketing?
We have to find ways around a very-late-capitalist system that actually want us to be subversive. How can you subvert something that wants you to break rules? Well... we are working on it.

Don't Vietcong us - we'll Vietcong you!"

Skateboarding is spectacular. So is a naked girl lying on some big city pavement.      - Let's combine the two - said photographer Oliver Rath and took these very spectacular images of pro skater Jacob Vidic and the naked girl who seems to have no name (besides she's nude).

This combination creates a nice contrast between vulnerability and roughness. For the observer, these photographs are disturbing and interesting at the same time. Still we want to emphasise the role of the skater here. Imagine how hard could it be to land those tricks perfectly without a single moment of disorientation!

Check out all the pics here!

No concrete wall ever looked this good. Check out the bestest font style we've ever seen on the photo above. Eye candy blog Notcot reports from Santa Monica, where a new community beach just opened. Click for amazingly detailed sand castles, flying flags and girls in giant bubbles dancing on the water.