BongBoing today posted a link to a game called “I made this, you play this, we are enemies”

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen any computer art quite as — I’m sorry, there’s no other way of putting this — as fucked up as “I made this, you play this, we are enemies,” a Flash game that really strongly resembles the unmistakable bonkerosity of the complicated sketches left behind the crazy people who used to sit at their own tables in the library I worked at, furiously drawing for 10 hours at a stretch. It’s brilliant and terrible all at once and that is why I love it.

I just played the first three levels and I must say I completely agree with Cory Doctorow. Apart from the gameplay itself, the soundtrack totally reminds me of the early Frank Zappa album “Freak out”.

Link.

Worm the Rotterdam stage for culture and music is on sale on marktplaats.

Disregarding a very positive response by the Rotterdam Council for Art and Culture (RRKC) to WORM’s plans concerning 2009-2012, it will not be possible to keep the organisation afloat with the amount of money assigned to it by this same council. It seems like we have perished amongst the waves of good intent, crushed by cultures mammoth-tank vessels in a pond which is too small. The fact that we would perish for budgetary reasons only – if RRKC’s advice is utilised in its present form – seems ridicules and has caused for much grief at Achterhaven 148.

Mike van Gaasbeek, the financial director and a good friend of mine, indicates that every bid from at least €400.000 will be taken seriously.

Link

People who read my blog now that I frequently post articles I have read on Boing Boing. This post is not different from that rule. There is just one funny twist about this one: I find it unbelievable that I have to read an American blog to know what is happening in Leeuwarden. Afterall my sister is living there.

So much for the intro.

Henk Hofstra installed a couple of fried eggs in the center of Leeuwarden. The project is called: art-eggcident. Each of the eggs is about 30 metres wide and will remain in the city for the next six months.

I finally found my way to wikileaks.org. Wikileaks is a website for whistleblowers, it accepts classified, censored or otherwise restricted material of political, diplomatic or ethical significance. I read a lot about it during the time they were brought offline by the Swiss bank, but never found a moment to just have a look at the site. Until today that is. Apart from a description of the US equipment in Iraq in 2007 they have a report desribing how former Stasi employees help out to classify the old Stasi reports.

 However from November 2006 allegations started to circulate, most notably in the German news paper Die Welt that the BStU, tasked to guard the Stasi files, had been infiltrated by a number of former Stasi officers and informers. In response the German government commissioned an investigation.

By June 2007, the investigative team, led by Prof. Hans Hugo Klien, a former judge of the German Federal Constitution Court and CDU politician, had completed its confidential report into the infiltration.

The report has been obtained by Wikileaks and is the subject of this analysis.

Link

Lifehacker has the 10 best ways to get rid of your cablesalad.

When you finally decide it’s time to do something about that rat’s nest of cables that’s spreading like kudzu, you don’t have to spend a lot of time and money to get it under control. Whether you’re looking to stow your headphone wires tangle-free in your gym bag, hide the ugly wire spaghetti you keep kicking further under your desk, or organize your gadget chargers and power plugs, we’ve got some cord management tricks for you. Hit the jump for photos and videos of our top 10 favorite ways to get cables under control.

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I found this beautiful website of the “Universität der Künste in Berlin”. It features some of the most interesting gadgets I have seen in years. If only they would be available. Two fine examples include:

The CharmingBurka:

The Charming Burka deals with Freud’s idea that all clothes can be positioned between appeal and shame. The Burka was chosen, because it is often perceived in the west as a symbol of repression. A digital layer was added so that women can decide for themselves where they want to position themselves virtually. The Burka sends an image, chosen by the wearer, via Bluetooth technology. Every person next to her can receive her picture via mobile phone and see the women’s self-determined identity. In the artists interpretation the virtual appeals can not be gathered by the laws of the Koran and so the Charming Burka fulfills the desire of living a more western life, which some Muslim women have today.
Therefore the Burka is equipped with bluetooth antenna/micro-controller and uses the OBEX protocol, already working with most mobile phones.

The Vanity Ring:

Update of the ring as a status symbol. It shows the number of Google hits you get, when you search for the name of the person who wears it.

While in earlier times richness and importance were equal to the amount of money or jewels someone possessed, in a post information society it’s the attention you get from the worlds people, that counts. Being in people’s mind means being important, whether they think about you in a positive way our not doesn’t matter. And what people have in their mind is what they read in the media. In the future this will mean, what they read/see on the net. Every content creator that copies and pastes your name will rise the value of your virtual mirrored importance. And there is a hard mechanical algorithm on the net, that extremely objectively measures your appearance, it’s called Google and has already passed the “line of no return” (Bruce Sterling). In most job interviews the personnel manager will already use this machine to check your importance and have a look at the first answers this mirror tells about you. Your mirror identity strikes back on your chances in the real world.

Oberwelt e.V., a German artists collective presents a nice device which can protect you from all the infrared security cameras installed on public roads. It sends out an invisible infrared light that will make your face show up as a white bulb.

I-R.A.S.C is a device giving every citizen a reliable protection from governmental security measures. I-R.A.S.C. is security against security and therefore a response to the dissymmetry of the forces between state and individual.

Instead of showing and interaction among human-beings, or between man and machine, I-R.A.S.C. demonstrates an interaction among machines. This is part of an absurd situation – while the time and effort invested into protection measures aims at the alleged safety of the citizens, the individual looses importance in this safety concept.

I-R.A.S.C is an infra-red device working as a protection shield from infra-red surveillance cameras. Everybody can rebuild this device without special technical skills.

Link via Boing Boing

WFMU’s Beware of the the Blog features a great Bollywood video clip. The clip istself is very infectious and will surely get a smile on your face.

I can highly recommend the whole blog site. It features a large number of interresting movies. Highlights include the food triology by Jan Svankmajer and The Complaints Choir of Helsinki

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Boingboing features a very nice picture of a fly wearing eyeglasses. And since it is easier to copy than to write you own below follows a copy of the boingboing article:

National Geographic has a photo of a housefly wearing miniature eyeglasses, which had been “crafted and set in place with a cutting-edge laser technique. The glasses fit snuggly on the fly’s 0.08-inch-wid head.”

The article doesn’t say whether or not the glasses improved the fly’s vision (or whether or not the fly had vision problems to begin with), but they do look rather snazzy.

Link.

A while ago I blogged about a falling mannequin. Seems that someone has changed the flash file, so it now features a falling G.W. Bush. He just keeps falling and falling and …

Link.