Doppelgänger #12
Published on Monday, July 20 2009
Apollo lunar module in the Sea of Tranquility / Temporary sauna at Biscay Bay.
Archive for Category ‘Projects‘
Temporary sauna at Biscay Bay
Published on Tuesday, July 14 2009
Temporary sauna at Biscay Bay from Mesq on Vimeo.
In February 2009 I travelled to the Basque Country to join Demos Helsinki & Co’s “basecamp” in Donostia-San Sebastián. I brought a portable DIY sauna with me and one evening we built it on a remote beach. This is a 2.5 minute video how it happened. Camerawork by Kirmo Kivelä.
Pimp My Passport in Jyväskylä
Published on Wednesday, May 27 2009
This spring has been very eventful and it shows on the worsened update frequency on this site. Anyhow one of the better events has been the first Pimp My Passport workshop on 16 May 2009. Remember PMP was first introduced in Riga last autumn but now we actually got hands-on.
Mari and I were invited to Jyväskylä by the media art working group Live Herring. They’re currently appointed as “regional artist” which is a radical move in Finnish cultural politics. The workshop was held at the university lobby during the city’s “long night of the arts” so there was a lot of buzz and people on the move.
The idea was to facilite a workshop where people could make their own shielded covers for their new RFID passports and in the process discuss and get informed about the issues related to technology, privacy and biometric passports.
We set up our tables at the university lobby which itself is an Alvar Aalto landmar and put up lots of scrap and recycled material including used coffee packets, info sheets about RFID and passports plus a sewing machine. The amount of visitors exceeded all expectations. The first people arrived minutes before the official start and the last participants left at 00:05. During the eight hours the booth was never empty of visitors!
It was also nice to note that people of all ages came by. Young women were the most active group, but seniors and children took part as well. Creative flair was shooting through the roof all the time. At the end we counted some 40+ covers were made.
Press showed some interest to the event, regional newspaper Keskisuomalainen put it on page five where we were pitted against the Ministry of the Interior. Another paper from Turku also took note of the event and concentrate more on the crafting side. Unfortunately none of them checked out the vibes themselves but resorted to phone interviews.
The event night and the afterparty presented Jyväskylä as a very jovial and friendly city. It might well be the “most underrated” city in Finland. A world of thanks also to Soile of Live Herring for her kind efforts and support.
Links:
DIY instructions (fi)
Article from Keskisuomalainen (pdf, fi)
Gone to the Canaries
Published on Monday, April 6 2009
Greetings from the beach! I’m in Playa del Ingles overcoming tourisim until 10th April with mikroPaliskunta ‘The Finnish on Holiday’ expedition. Follow us on www.mikroPaliskunta.net
Spectropia
Published on Monday, October 20 2008
Left: Antisolar glory over Gdansk Bay. Right: ENKI interface presentation.
I spent the last weekend in Riga at the 10th Art+Communication festival titled SPECTROPIA. The title hints at artistic investigations of electromagnetic spectrum. Mari and I were invited to present the Pimp My Passport do-it-yourself workshop, which could be described as a civic action to reclaim electomagnetic privacy in the age of RFID and biometric passports. The initial concept was introduced on this blog in April 2008.
In addition to the exhibition, the accompanying conference was very inspiring and overwhelmingly dense. So dense that it was impossible to give every presentation the concentration they deserved. But if you too want to dig into this I’ve compiled featured projects on my delicious under tag spectropia.
As for Riga, I also stumbled upon a limerick which I’d like to quote to end this
There was a young lady of Riga
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger.
Pimp My Passport
Published on Monday, April 21 2008
Sent in a proposal for Art+Communication festival in Riga in October. This year’s festival is about “artistic explorations within the invisible space of electromagnetic spectrum surrounding us” so I think an examination of RFID and passports could fit in nicely.
Here’s a description:
Pimp My Passport
The project examines DIY and hacking prospects as well as control and privacy issues of RFID passports currently being rolled out throughout the European Union. It also plays around with the notion of nationality and its symbols – seeking new ways to signal identity by “pimping” personal travel documents.
Although dealing with heavy subject matter like electronic privacy, big brother and nationality, Pimp My Passport is a playful, hands-on project that anyone can take part of.
For Art+Communication festival we’d like to propose a 1-2 day workshop with following structure:
- Probing sessions using RFID transceiver to read passports remotely
- Crafting of protective “Faraday cage” passport covers
- Pimping sessions e.g. working on re-interpretations of national symbols used on passports and other decorations
I’ve already talked about this to some of you long time ago, but now that I wrote that much down I might as well blog it and see how the forest answers!
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Some related links: