Just saw Visage at the Rotterdam Film Festival. Tsai introduced the movie as his “Self-Portrait but not really a autobiography”. Overall it is less accessible then his earlier work and the three major “story lines” never really interact. However, Tsai is massively playing around with the possibilities of cinema, without any pressure for success or fear of failure. It’s just pure love for the movies. Watch it with a open heart.
I played allot of Lego and started to climb around trees. Kraftwerk’s 20min Autobahn was playing on my tape deck and water pistols made people dance on the love parade. Guys with water canons made people cry. Weizenbaum’s code would listen to my stories. A spaceship would slowly fly through a layer of fog. Lions and candles make me a men. The world does not end. Little messages get me on my own feet. Little messages burn me down. A channel full of kids moves me across borders. Contradictions break down the walls. The belief in words is lost.
AnonymousPrivacy Wars
Kink on tap had an interesting podcast about the privacy wars. It showed the point of view from a group of people, that have to take care of their privacy. However, i feel that it was lacking some crucial aspects that came up since the development of social networking.
Real names
Using a real name on the internet is an interesting topic and highly depends on your background, and the initial goal for a certain platform.
Before the massive use of the word wide web, most of the public communication was happening over the usenet. Many newsgroups asked the subscribers to provide a real name as a matter of good manners.
With the information stored in the usenet and public mailing-list archives, you can create social networks of the participants. It often exposed key members of the network, core people who play a crucial role of keeping a community running.
Also developers for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution are asked to provide their real name, in progress of the integration into the community. The whole process comes from the need to manifest responsibilities for crucial elements of the operating system.
On of the first programs, that answered the need for a “web-of-trust”, is “pretty good privacy” aka PGP. However it was providing encrypted eMail communication, the key-signing feature also exposed the social network to the public. A long time before sites like Facebook. This problem was addressed by providing a local-only storage of that information. Later, GnuPG became a GPL equivalent of PGP.
The public pgp key of any Debian developer, would directly show how well established a person is in the community. The whole GnuPG based web-of-trust became the essential base of the Debian developer and maintainer network.
Anonymity
In the more radical and political movements, you would hardly find anyone without a nickname of sorts, unless they have to represent a NGO or other official organizations. Massive repression from the state and police or threads from right wing groups make it almost impossible to be known under the real name. Many people even used a separate nickname for this community only.
Facing stalkers and employers is an aspect of the users privacy on the internet. Facing the repression of the state and police brings up a couple more crucial questions that still matter for everyone, whether you fight against the state or not.
Who has access to the data? Where is the data stored? Who owns the data? And how willing is a company or group to share the information with third parties, state and police? The very recent anonymous release of the “compliance guide for law enforcement” of some social network providers, stress the importance of these questions.
The outer edge of this discussion are projects like Wikileaks, Indymedia, Tor and other networks and services that intentionally stand up for freedom of speech and anonymous publishing of any material. Networks that work on the technical and social infrastructure to guarantee as much anonymity as possible. The refusal of indymedia.us to give out the users IP-Address logs show that web services could protect their users privacy.
Your data
There is no question that sharing and the “social net” are the key applications on the internet today. There will most likely be a point when the western world will no longer be able to live without it. Just avoiding social networks will not solve the problem.
The simple answer to many of these problems are that the user needs direct control over their data, at best, stored on their own computers.
With that we come back to the very basic horizontal ideas of the internet, that every node, every computer can provide services and share data. Opera Unite for example, is trying to make this fundamental feature of the internet accessible to the average user.
Also projects like open-id, foaf-ssl and the semantic web in general, work on technical solutions, for a more diverse and decentralized social network, that allows the user to have more direct control over their data.
What is needed are services and desktop applications that combine the features of decentralized social networks, the web-of-trust and encrypted communications.
But it’s not only the technical aspects, it’s about the consequences of horizontal and direct communication in times when people move away from one-way mediums like the television.
Back in 2001, Wau Holland said, that we more and more “need to learn to filter”.
We are no longer just consumers, where other people make the choices for us. The social networks we are exposed to is one of our filters and it is what we want to see in this world.
In 2007 Andreas Pfitzmann held a little speech at the German Federal Constitutional Court, that stresses the need for direct control over our data.
He points us to the possibility that computers are no longer just going to be desktops or laptops separated from us, they will become part of our body. They become a extension of ourselves, provide us with additional memory and give us unique and extended access to these memories, to our data.
The very interesting documentary The Cyborg Revolution from 2007 shows what the current developments are. From artificial vision for blind people to the digital replication of the neurological brain structure of the rat.
It’s only a question of how fast the interface between humans and computer will develop. Augmented reality today, is a little application on your mobile phone. In 10 years it might sit on your nose as part of your glasses, in 20 years it is part of your eye.
Independence
Many social networks like Facebook work with the commercial strategy of binding the customer to their service, to create a dependency, up to the point where they make the choices for you.
This is contrary to the idea of a horizontal communication, to the old idea of “power to the people”, contrary to diversity and independence. Make sure the choice is yours.
occam, 2009-12-27
DE Wenn man Sie so beobachtet, sucht man nach dem passenden Film - etwas was Ihre Geschichte erzählt. Man denkt in Schwarz / Weiß, Frankreich, 60er, New Wave, man denkt an das Buch von Duras an Chopin und die Ferne. Man denkt an Nina Menkes und Zohara.
Aber all diese Geschichten sind alt, es ist nicht Ihre Geschichte, es ist nicht unsere Zeit. Und was hier und jetzt über die Leinwand flimmert will Ihre Geschichte nicht mal erhören.
Da liegt dein Buch, du sollst es schreiben, aber jede Seite ist bedruckt. Nichts ist weiß. Fahre langsam mit dem Bleistift jeden Buchstaben nach, damit du auch alle Regeln genau kennst.
EN If you observes her as such, one looks for the suitable film - something telling her story. One thinks of 60’s, new wave in black/white, france. One thinks of the book from Duras of Chopin and traveling afar. One thinks of Nina Menkes and Zohara.
But all the stories are old, it is not her story, it is not our time. And what flickers here and now over the canvas, does not want to answer, reflect her story.
There your book, you shall write it, but each page is already printed. Nothing is white. Re-draw slowly with the pencil each printed letter, so that you exactly know all the rules.
rules
I like to watch movies from different times and different cultures. In comparison, the movies show elements of human behavior that are influenced by the rules around them. The intersection that remains, shows the pure human.
S O N
La vie nouvelle reflects me, parts of me, plain violent intelligent male cinema. I let go, i look at the reflection, put myself into it and let it go. Intense, as i like it. Short deep breath, scene by scene, feeling it all, but not understanding any word, any story. The memory of joy as flickering strobe on fast forward, not being able to hold it, out of reach. Seconds of joy vs. the constant tone of obsession. Its over, french end-titles, S O N, short deep breath, i get up, my heart is pumping, taking the fire out in the open, in the silence and freedom of these days, senses on maximum. Every bit of music takes me with it. Standing on the roof in the storm and attracting the wind like a magnet from all sides. Reflection feedback loop. Shower, hot, cold. cold. Routine, this place, my known cave, blind automatic movements, keeping the intense, in focus. Plain raw me.
This strength. intense, drives me. If we love i bite and claw you to me, get you so close to feel it all. If you are sick, i will hold your head and let it go, giving you the breath back, the peace, calm, against the pain. It always helped my mother. Senses. Its not my myth or science, not my believe but my being.
Don’t ask me to relax. Don’t ask why i am always so serious, controlled, calm and watching. Don’t ask, you can not take the answer. You can not take me like this, you can not take my question about the ground you are standing on. How real are you? Tell me? How true can you be to yourself? How true can you be about your mistakes and fake useless values. Show me the strength of your religion, how many questions can it take? One?
What is the root of your culture. How much do you know about it? Who was the first to marry? Who made the music? Would you stand behind it? Would you defend it? Its not yours. Yours is the Television, your choice of products.
Can you take the contradictions of this world? Can you divine them. What is it? Too many roads? Cant you decide? I am not talking about overcrowded roads. You are stuck in fear of change. Get off the roads.
No, its not strength, don’t tell me i am violent. You just don’t want to feel me.
Ohne Worte / Without words
You might notice, i don’t often write here. But these last two postings, described perfectly well, a situation i wanted to share. Me swinging under a tree, with the feeling of “not being around”. Thats how mario oucci described that moment. Yesterday i woke up and was in that state, went out in that state, walked around, hardly able to grasp anything. Thats what came to mind, that photo.
That sort of connection, its very common with many of the bits, pieces and findings i collect here. They reflect a feeling, something words can hardly describe. It often takes a hole movie, song, moment, expression.
And so is San tiao ren (1999) aka “Away with words” still my favorite movie. Because it also deals with words and languages, but also communicates a feeling i can only name “global” and “modern”. And those two words don’t describe it at all.
But i can’t, i can’t find the right words for it. Not for you, not without knowing you, not without knowing your background, your culture, your way of talking, your opinions.
So words end up being a connection for me, “tags”, a point of orientation. Words that are common, so everyone is able to understand them.
