oliver
DESIGNER + RESEARCHER + EDUCATOR + PHOTOGRAPHER + THEORIST + CREATIVE_DIRECTOR + OUTSIDE_OF_CLASIFICATIONS + INTERVENTIONIST
6 days, 11 hours ago
A must read!
"The heavy atoms in cameras will continue to be replaced with bits of weightless software, shrinking them down to microscopic dots scanning the environment 24 hours a day. The mirrorworld will be a world governed by light rays zipping around, coming into cameras, leaving displays, entering eyes, a never-ending stream of photons painting forms that we walk through and visible ghosts that we touch. The laws of light will govern what is possible.
New technologies bestow new superpowers. We gained super speed with jet planes, super healing powers with antibiotics, super hearing with the radio. The mirrorworld promises super vision. We’ll have a type of x-ray vision able to see into objects via their virtual ghosts, exploding them into constituent parts, able to untangle their circuits visually. Just as past generations gained textual literacy in school, learning how to master the written word, from alphabets to indexes, the next generation will master visual literacy. A properly educated person will be able to create a 3D image inside of a 3D landscape nearly as fast as one can type today. They will know how to search all videos ever made for the visual idea they have in their head, without needing words. The complexities of color and the rules of perspective will be commonly understood, like the rules of grammar. It will be the Photonic Era."
https://www.wired.com/story/mirrorworld-ar-next-big-tech-platform/


1 week, 4 days ago
The Situationist Times and some thoughts on Memefest publishing
The Situationists had an immense influence on Memefest from its very beginnings in 2002. The concept...
1 week, 5 days ago
Listen to the new episode of Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff, here in conversation with Geert Lovink.
Playing for Team Human today: media activist and scholar Geert Lovink. Geert will be helping us see how an understanding of the political economy is not enough. We have to reacquaint ourselves with the experiential layer of our humanity and even reclaim our sadness to counter the stultifying effects of platform capitalism. Today, when our sources of information are intimately intertwined with our social lives, it’s not as simple as just “going offline.” How can we overcome the anti-human agendas embedded in our technology?
Today’s show reaches back to the origins of what became known as “tactical media” — using interactive media to promote the human agenda. Geert makes the case for reawakening this sensibility. You can learn more about Geert at networkedcultures.org and discover his forthcoming book Sad By Design: On Platform Nihilism.
https://player.pippa.io/teamhuman/episodes/ep-114-geert-lovink-sad-by-design
2 weeks, 6 days ago
"In the latest study measuring the effects of social media on a person’s life, researchers at New York University and Stanford University found that deactivating Facebook for just four weeks could alter people’s behavior and state of mind. The study found that temporarily quitting Facebook led people to spend more time offline, watching TV and socializing with family and friends; reduced their knowledge of current events and polarization of policy views; and provoked a small but significant improvement in people’s self-reported happiness and satisfaction with their lives.
What’s more, the researchers found that the deactivation freed up on average an hour per day for participants. And the people who took a break from Facebook continued to use the platform less often, even after the experiment ended.
“Our study offers the largest-scale experimental evidence available to date on the way Facebook affects a range of individual and social welfare measures,” the researchers wrote. "
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/technology/2019/01/31/deactivating-facebook-leaves-people-less-informed-happier-study-finds/

1 month ago
'The goal is to automate us': welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism
Shoshana Zuboff’s new book is a chilling exposé of the business model that underpins the digital world. Observer tech columnist John Naughton explains the importance of Zuboff’s work and asks the author 10 key questions
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook
1 month, 1 week ago
Sad by design
While classical melancholy was defined by isolation and introspection, today’s tristesse plays out amidst busy social media interactions. Geert Lovink on ‘technological sadness’ – the default mental state of the online billions.
https://www.eurozine.com/sad-by-design/

1 month, 1 week ago
Douglas Rushkoff
The real value of Facebook
Thinking Outside the Black Box
What the algorithms can’t see may be the most human thing about us
https://medium.com/s/douglas-rushkoff/the-real-value-of-facebook-
2 months ago
Food Democracy is sold out!
Food democracy is sold out and is now being reprinted. The only change will be a slightly thicker co...
2 months ago
"Our main interest in this analysis is to try to explore some of the forms and methods of interventions that different political actors or power structures can use to control and conquer online sphere. Here we will mostly speak about hidden, indirect actions, interventions done by the unknown actors, individuals with hidden or fake identities, companies without visible ties to government officials, political troll armies and troll lords, or even “artificial” entities.
As usual in our investigations we will try to quantify and visualise some of those forms and try to detect and understand some patterns."
https://labs.rs/en/mapping-and-quantifying-political-information-warfare/
2 months ago
A small starting experimental project on the new concept of pleasure media and (un)learning photography that we are exploring done by our students here in Kathmandu. The pleasure media concept started to emerge at our 2016 Memefest titled "Pleasure". We are now spending a three week workshop with students from various backgrounds in Kathmandu to explore - what we see as a new media concept further. This are some early explorations. More to come!
https://www.instagram.com/patankitchens/
2 months, 2 weeks ago
Fake news??
Here is a really good three part documentary made by NY Times journalists.
Mandatory watching!
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/russia-meddling-disinformation-fake-news-elections.html
2 months, 2 weeks ago
You will remember our last big Memefest titled PLEASURE. So here we go:
"For many of her clientele, who are almost exclusively white right-wing men because she finds herself unable 'to be even fictionally cruel to any other type of man,' that fetish is serving a powerful woman. Maybury derives her pleasure comes from forcing those men to see the contradiction between their love of powerful women and their support for political parties that actively work to limit women’s rights and empowerment."
https://womenintheworld.com/2018/11/30/dominatrix-specializes-in-turning-white-right-wing-men-into-socialists/?fbclid=IwAR2hQQXbn8YpEGIvNOrwrE_4wX5Q9qLR-8al_qQcsPLBcs6Rzo1OVA6xW4o

2 months, 3 weeks ago
This is fantastic evidence in showing how brands can be hacked and used a vehicles for political campaigns. The article reveals how Cambridge Analytica has "Waponized" brands in order to promote Donald Trump. The key question opened for me is: Can we reverse engineer the process and use brands to influence social change? What is highly interesting here is the use of fashion as s key cultural medium.
Here the full article: https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/news-analysis/cambridge-analytica-weaponised-fashion-brands-to-elect-trump-says-christopher-wylie?
3 months ago
Back from our magic trip in south Italy, where we were taking part of the festival "The Land of Bread" in Matera, presenting the ideas behind our Food Democracy book in a festival lecture and three Lipstick+Bread workshops. One of the many amazing parts was visiting Lecce and a small village next to it where we were hosted for several days by the beautiful family of our fratello Antonio Rollo. The video is from a while ago and shows the father, mother and daughter making incredible breads at the only community oven in the village they have been running for many years. Just amazing!! The breads, bread dishes, the tomatoes, sardines, pasta and the olive oil(!!!) we ate were pure heaven and this unique culture of baking, bread making and food, music, friendship and hospitality will be for ever cherished in our memories. More soon!
3 months, 1 week ago
Use Duck Duck Go and Disconnect.me.
'Advertising companies and data brokers have been quietly collecting, analysing, trading, and selling data on people for decades. What has changed is the granularity and invasiveness at which this is possible. Data brokers buy your personal data from companies you do business with; collect data such as web browsing histories from a range of sources; combine it with other information about you (such as magazine subscriptions, public government records, or purchasing histories); and sell their insights to anyone that wants to know more about you.'
https://privacyinternational.org/feature/2433/i-asked-online-tracking-company-all-my-data-and-heres-what-i-found

3 months, 2 weeks ago
The Anatomy of the Book Conference
The fine people at RMIT are together with @frasermuggeridgestudio organizing this conference at RMIT...
3 months, 2 weeks ago
The fine people at RMIT University are organizing this conference at RMIT Barcelona titled The Anatomy of the Book.
It really is great staff, and if you have a chance, go and participate- the conference is free!
Check more here on the web site:
https://anatomyofthebook.com
3 months, 4 weeks ago
Major crisis in Colombian higher education- professors and student on hunger strike!!
Dear comrades,
our friends from Universidad Caldas in Manizales Colombia have made this video to...


Username
oliver
Name
Oliver Vodeb
Gender
male
Country
Australia
Description
I am a member of Memefest communication/art/theory Kolektiv, and founder, curator and editor of Memefest Festival of Socially Responsive Communication and Art. Iam also facilitator of Memefest online social network.
I am an Academic at RMIT University, Melbourne. I teach and research mostly in the field of communication design. I approach design/communication from a critical inter/ extradisciplinary perspective and I investigate theoretical, strategic, conceptual and "hands on" practice.
I enjoy working in many different media including visual and text.
Books I have published :
http://memefest.org/en/fooddemocracy/
www.memefest.org/en/indebtedtointervene/
www.memefest.org/demonstratingrelevance/en
www.druzbenoodzivnokomuniciranje.si/
This was my studio in Slovenia (2004-2012): www.poper.si
CV (sort of): http://www.memefest.org/en/about/who_we_are_oliver_vodeb/
You can read some of my texts here:
https://rmit.academia.edu/OliverVodeb
I have joined the Memfest community becasue i am interested in
I have been here from the very beginning of Memefest. I am interested in communication/design for social and environmental change.
I name such communication socially responsive communication.
Broadly speaking I am interested in visual communication, photography, sociological aspects of communication, design and media.
Iam interested in institutionalised forms of communication like for example communication done by design/communication studios and advertising agencies as well as non institutionalised forms of communication like tactical media or broader aspects of media activism.
In a slightly more academic language:
I am interested in how critical social theory can illuminate the complex processes of production, distribution and reception of public (visual) communication in order to generate public communication as a responsible social, political, economic and cultural practice.
I am particularly interested in relations between concepts of response-ability and communication effectiveness, and the social construction of design and other forms of pubic communication as profession, practice and praxis within academia, the market environments and non-institutionalised communities.
Faculty
was studiing at Faculty for social sciences University of Ljubljana
Education
PhD in sociology of communication and design
Working place
RMIT University, School of Design, Master of Communication Design
Music I like
Flamming Lips, Pixies, The Black Crowes, Demeter, Porno for Pyros, Ry Cooder, Junior Kimbrough, Townes van Zandt, T-model Ford, The Dirty Three, Bonnie Prince Billy, Primus, Faith no More, Bob Dylan, RHCP, Alice Donut, Faith no more, Mark Lanegan, Reigning Sound, Total Control;
Books I like
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, A Confederacy of Dunces, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, PanikHerz...;
Films I like
The man who wasn't there, No country for old man, Genova, Zidane a 21st century portrait, There will be blood, Il Postino, Festen, Straight Story, Wild at heart, White Ribbon, Dog tooth;
Communication projects I like
I like stuff we did at Poper studio. I like posters from Inkahoots. I like the zine project 23/56 from Kevin. I like many things that were submitted to Memefest, I like stuff from Cactusnetwork, I like the work of Image-shift.
Websites I like
poper.si, memefest.org, magnumphotos.com, mubi.com, ubu.com, http://twotheories.blogspot.com, brianholmes.wordpress.com, www.lensculture.com, www.burnmagazine.org, www.bagnewsnotes.com, www.cactusnetwork.org.uk, http://www.image-shift.net, www.inkahoots.com.au/
www.lokidesign.net
People I like
My dear family and my wonderful friends.

1 week, 5 days ago