Just Not As Cool.

Back, in Boston, at 'Deis, green-eyed with envy at Virgil Griffith's grad project:

Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of Cal Tech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.

Inspired by news last year that Congress members' offices had been editing their own entries, Griffith says he got curious, and wanted to know whether big companies and other organizations were doing things in a similarly self-interested vein.

"Everything's better if you do it on a huge scale, and automate it," he says with a grin.

There's That "Galaxy Expanding" Feeling Again.

"In order to describe the spectacle, its formation, its functions and whatever forces may hasten its demise, a few artificial distinctions are called for. To analyze the spectacle means talking its language to some degree -- to the degree, in fact, that we are obliged to engage the methodology of the society to which the spectacle gives expression. For what the spectacle expresses is the total practice of one particular economic and social formation; it is, so to speak, that formation's agenda. It is also the historical moment by which we happen to be governed."

-- The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord

Holy crap. You know when you have one of those ideas that won't let you sleep? This is what's rousing me out of bed right now. I have been dwelling extensively on Adbusters (credit actually goes to my roommate for that, she leaves them lying around the apartment), The Society of the Spectacle, 1984, and stuff like this.
The project involves:

* a public, site-specific installation (or several)
* privacy rights (the lack thereof)
* a slick, sassy website
* some negotiation with the city.


Then again, this is the same city that thought the promo for Aqua Teen Hunger Force was a terrorist attack. I don't know if it would be allowed. In a perfect world, it would be greenlighted, I'd get a hefty grant, helping hands, etcetera. Of course, maybe the "thesis" is just a paper, but it would be absolutely perfect, if, in the process of putting together a project I could:

* freak people out I mean, hold a mirror up to our times
* put together a winning grant application
* get past red tape by talking to lots of interesting people

I am still expecting to go to libraries and look at abstracts but the whole point of picking my school was to go way beyond that. Oh. And. I just got a Creative Commons license. I think everyone should have them, just to be on the safe side.

Daughter of a Diaspora(ish)

So I might have a little bit of a girlcrush on Korean pop star Lee Hyori. Or maybe I just feel a bit lost with no one in the media to "model" myself after. I mean, who exactly am I supposed to identify with?

a) Cassandra from Wayne's World
b) maybe Thandie Newton, if you squint (or if I don't squint, ha)
c) a bobblehead hula girl
d) nobody famous

Can I be this girl, for about ten minutes? A twinkly Asian "blonde" with street style and great dance routines?



What's odd is that this 3-part series of music videos is also blatantly a commercial for Samsung cellphones. On YouTube someone called Lee Hyori a Samsung model, whereas no one on MTV's Top 20 is referred to as a Dolce & Gabbana model. MUSIC as advertising? Is this some new Asian phenomenon I'm not aware of? Because I would totally do a paper on it.

Everything's potential research fodder these days. I think I have to scour a few master's theses this summer to get a better idea of what hasn't been done. Also something that would:

a) address a current issue (e.g. inconspicuous consumption, "green" design)
b) be considered edgy and "sexy". I think one achieves that by bringing seemingly disparate elements together in a creative way. In other words, something like this.

EDIT: more sexysexysexy -- We Are All Photographers Now. Hello, dream project!