The Conflux Festival is accepting submissions for 2008.

Conflux is the annual New York festival for contemporary psychogeography, the investigation of everyday urban life through emerging artistic, technological and social practice. At Conflux, visual and sound artists, writers, urban adventurers and the public gather for four days to explore their urban environment.

People from a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures come together at the festival to re-imagine the city as a playground, a space for positive change and an opportunity for civic engagement. The Village Voice describes Conflux as a “network of maverick artists and unorthodox urban investigators… making fresh, if underground, contributions to pedestrian life in New York City, and upping the ante on today’s fight for the soul of high-density metropolises.”

From architects to skateboarders, Conflux participants have an enthusiasm for the city that’s contagious. Over the course of the long weekend the sidewalks are literally transformed into a mobile laboratory for creative action. With tools ranging from traditional paper maps to high-tech mobile devices, artists present walking tours, public installations and interactive performance, as well as bike and subway expeditions, workshops, a lecture series, a film program and live music performances at night.

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My dear roommate Peter is moving to SFO on Wednesday, and a lot of cleaning out has been happening around my apt.

We have collectively identified many things we don't need that are below the threshold of worth-putting-on-craigslist, but above the threshold of throwing away.

As an experiment, I am going to put the ones relevant to Eyebeamers (and anyone who might read this blog post) in a box on the corner of the shelf above my desk.  They will be there for a week.

Pay what you want.  Just leave the $ in the my desk drawer.  And if you want it, but think its not even worth paying for, then don't: just take it!

You be the judge.

Its an honor system, and you are all honorable.

Plus its an experiment.  Consider this social-sculptural research.  I'll post the executive summary of the research report next week (LOL)

if anyone wants to join in on the game, go for it.

michael

*Things that will be in a box on my desk*

JK Audio Cell Tap, a pro-grade adapter for getting a line out of your cell phone.  I used it for http://www.turbulence.org/Works/innetwork

Apple Airport Extreme Card

An Apple Powerbook G4 power supply, and a plethora of related cables (the long ones and the really short plug pieces)

Buddha Machine (http://www.fm3buddhamachine.com)

1 GB SD Card

Griffin iTalk voice recorder for iPod

Laminated streetmaps of Brooklyn (x2), Queens, Bronx.

A bunch of AA and AAA batteries (still w/in expiration date, but I don't seem to use any).  Yes, I'm offering up some POWER!!!

iPod power supply (firewire, no cable)

Firewire 6 to 4 pin adapter

Several DC wall warts (e.g AC to DC power convertors) that I saved for use in some electronics stuff, but never used.

Several CFL bulbs that were too big to fit in my ceiling lamps (one is a fancy daylight bulb i had to mail-order, but couldn't use :-(  )

Chinese ink for brush painting

Silver press-type sheets

some other stuff...

I remember seeing KAWS work in San Francisco when I was temping in downtown office buildings. It was a black and white ad for something in a Market Street kiosk and there was a green, multi headed snake attacking the model in the photo. I remember studying it trying to figure out if it was an actual campaign or if someone had broken into it. And if they had, why would they do that? For me this was pre-internet, pre-art education, pre-public work. I was a 21 (?) year old college and high school drop out with a shitty office job and half an eye open. And this work was one of the many, many, many, many, many, many things that came out of the Bay Area that expanded my idea of what was possible in the world.

via Wooster

How valuable is our public space to advertisers and marketers? An anonymous agent of the Anti-Advertising Agency made some calls. How much does it currently costs to have street level ads in a city like San Francisco? Here’s some examples.

Market Street Kiosks.
Background: Three sided containing four by six foot poster advertisements. Introduced to San Francisco on the condition that one of the three sides is used for art – handled by the San Francisco Art Commission. Interestingly, advertisers are only interested in the 2 sides that face car traffic.
Cost: between $1367 and $1473 per panel. But with a 16 panel minimum cost ranges from $21,866 to $23,562. This does not include production which could easily be thousands more.

Wildposting
Background: While seen pasted all over San Francisco’s construction sites, these two by three foot posters are displayed without permits and are illegal. Regardless of the law, the less scrupulous can still pay to have them made and pasted up. Because one hires a contractor, it’s possible to argue plausible deniability if one ever were caught. But most likely that wont happen because the law is so poorly enforced. (Conversely, throw up some graffiti on a wall and see what happens…)
Cost: For a week of wildposting you can get 40-60 posters. Cost (including production) is about $4,250.

Other Factors: Campaign design, testing, and evaluation costs not included. Advertising expenses are tax deductible.

Are we one step close to a Blade Runner-style dystopian future in which giant blimps float over our city-scapes broadcasting advertising? Well, that might be a bit extreme, but we certainly are a at the point where modern science as seen fit to bestow on us the joys of the floating soap bubble advertisement. No really. Someone has made a machine which somehow creates long lasting gigantic soap bubbles which can be formed into set shapes. Seriously…

Picture the Manhattan skyline filled with Nike swooshes. Or the golden arches of McDonald’s gently drifting over Los Angeles.

A special-effects entrepreneur from Alabama has come up with a way to fill the sky with foamy clouds as big as 4 feet across and shaped like corporate logos - Flogos, as he calls them.

Francisco Guerra, who’s also a former magician, developed a machine that produces tiny bubbles filled with air and a little helium, forms the foam into shapes and pumps them into the sky.

The Walt Disney Co. will use one of the machines next month to send clouds shaped like Mickey Mouse heads into the air at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., Guerra said.

“It’s a shock factor when you look up and there’s a logo over your head,” said Guerra, whose company, SnowMasters Inc., makes machines that churn out fake snow and foam for Hollywood movies and special events.

A single Flogo can travel as far as 30 miles and as high as 20,000 feet, Guerra says, and a machine can produce one every 15 seconds. Guerra says he could put a half-dozen machines together and fill the sky with almost any shape a company orders.

Imagine a line of drifting Flogos shaped like the Honda logo leading to a car dealership and you get the idea.

You can find out more about this company and how these things work here.

So can anything be done about floating bubble billboards? From the article I quoted above, it looks like the F.A.A. might try to regulate them as some sort of an air hazard. Otherwise, I doubt any municipality has any laws against such a thing on the books. I guess this image might be something to watch out for if this catches on…

Update: here’s a video we found on youtube (which doesn’t seem top-secret)

anneelizabethmoore posted a photo:

girl_onthe_les posted a photo:

this women has 20 kids. all of them hers. that means she is preggers for 15 years of her life straight. the worst part is they are all in home schooling so they dont even learn how wrong this is.

but the bigger question I have is how do they manage to find time to even have sex at this point?

I’ll plan to update these regularly, but for now, here are just a few of the comments that have come across my desk at the AAAFFF since taking over the ED position:

“I have worked for the past 4 years (since I graduated from a very prestigious culinary school) doing R&D for a food manufacturer . . . Boy, throwing away 5,000 pre-packaged hamburger buns when they don’t get used is even more egregious when you wake up to CNN telling you that people are rioting in Haiti and Egypt because they can’t afford a loaf of bread. Poor people are so silly. I’m all ready to quit my job so that I can devote my time to the theatre which is my true love . . .” .” —Midwestern Ad Man

“Today, after my job, I was walking to my apartment and felt sad, because, after a good weekend, my work today was a #%$# (censured). It’s not life to live, 10 hours and only business, business. Some people want to sell agriculture machines and technology and I spend my time on it?” —Brasilia Ad Man

“Throughout my studies I’ve found myself questioning if advertising is the right industry for me. I’m in love with the creative process, but not as interested in the products it’s being centered around.”—New York Ad Woman

“[The AAAFFF is] enough to make me wish I could leave advertising all over again. . . . I left advertising, but I never got a GIANT NOVELTY CHECK! I didn’t even get a normal-sized severance package. I guess I did get a pretty nice unemployment income for a while. Advertising is inherently evil, though, I am glad I am not doing that anymore. It is better to starve righteously.” —Minneapolis Painter

“We’ve seen your website at http://antiadvertisingagency.com/projects/foundation-for-freedom and we love it! We see that your traffic rank is 602777 and your link popularity is 26. Also, you have been online since 19/06/2004. With that kind of traffic, we will pay you up to $4,800/month to advertise our links on your website. If you’re interested, read our terms from this page: [website deleted for privacy concerns].” — Internet Ad Man

From AAA pal, Eliot Van Buskirk at Listening Post:

Approximately two weeks after we reported on TuneBoom Pro, a tool apparently used by major labels and indie artists to artificially inflate the number of times their songs had been streamed on MySpace, the site has gone offline. We had contacted MySpace about TuneBoom Pro, but it’s unclear whether MySpace had anything to do with the site’s disappearance.

One way or another, the site is offline. However, bands and labels looking for a way to fake MySpace popularity have plenty of other ways to manipulate their play counts on MySpace Music. A reader recently sent in a list of 46 alternatives to the possibly defunct TuneBoom Pro service.

Is it wrong to inflate MySpace song plays? If every other band and label is doing it, you almost have to — just like baseball players and steroids. It’s unlikely that MySpace will be able to defeat every type of play count-increasing technology, just like it’s unlikely that Major League Baseball will ever be able to do away completely with all performance-enhancing drugs.

Read the rest… MySpace Play Count Inflaters: The Steroids of the Music Industry | Listening Post from Wired.com