Review

It is not often that left-wing politics is associated with attributes such as humour and wit. Stevphen Shukaitis' book Imaginal Machines (2009) is not only abundant with it but shows that certain strands of imaginative revolutionary politics in the 20th century were also endowed with those precious qualities. This journey through the radical imagination of the left, written in a compelling and entertaining style, is definitely worth a read for everybody interested in radical and antagonistic politics.

In his essay All problems of Notation Will be Solved by the Masses, Simon Yuill claims that the emergent practice of livecoding 'most directly embodies the key principles of FLOSS production into the creation and experience of the work itself.' Unfortunately this claim is supportet by an argumentation which is elitist, draws on the criterium of virtuosity and thereby stands in stark contrast to the culture of particpation that FLOSS has engendered. While his central argument is not supported, the piece offers enough food for thought to be considered interesting reading.

Interesting tool to relate your posts in wordpress:

A plugin that uses the related terms Yahoo service to relate the posts you make on your wordpress, and gives other posts related to it in a block.

Extract Terms

Eine Rezension des Buches “Imaginary Futures” von Richard Barbrook.

Als sich die USA in der Ära des Kalten Krieges auf eine Spirale des Wettrüstens mit der Sowjetunion einließen, tobte zugleich auch ein ideologischer Kampf. Die Führungsschichten beider Seiten versuchten, indem sie den Anspruch auf die Zukunft erhoben, auch die Gegenwart zu dominieren. Die Sowjetunion hatte dabei den Vorteil, das von einer Befreiungs-Utopie geprägte Geschichtsbild des Marxismus auf ihrer Seite zu haben.

easy mapping - So the trick to map easily is:
I take pictures with my Canon Powershot A630, and get the gps information from my telephone.
I match them with gpscorrelate-gui (I have to get the proper commandline yet…). The most important part is calculating the difference between your camera and your gps, so you can align them perfectly. For doing so, a nice trick is to start the mapping taking a picture of the gps driver.

We are not in London for the Frieze Art Fair as Rhizom suggests, we simply live here toiling away at the coal face of the culture industry. Our screens are colourful and our thoughts are dark. Therefore we would not dream of writing off the manipulated electronics of the Beige programming ensemble or the kinetic graphic work of the group Paper Rad as interesting but merely stylish nostalgia