Sticky Postings
By fabric | ch
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As we continue to lack a decent search engine on this blog and as we don't use a "tag cloud" ... This post could help navigate through the updated content on | rblg (as of 09.2023), via all its tags!
FIND BELOW ALL THE TAGS THAT CAN BE USED TO NAVIGATE IN THE CONTENTS OF | RBLG BLOG:
(to be seen just below if you're navigating on the blog's html pages or here for rss readers)
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Note that we had to hit the "pause" button on our reblogging activities a while ago (mainly because we ran out of time, but also because we received complaints from a major image stock company about some images that were displayed on | rblg, an activity that we felt was still "fair use" - we've never made any money or advertised on this site).
Nevertheless, we continue to publish from time to time information on the activities of fabric | ch, or content directly related to its work (documentation).
Monday, August 07. 2023
Note: Satellite Daylight Pavilion (2017) – pdf file documentation HERE – by fabric | ch is presented during Chengdu Biennale at AC Cube in Chengdu (Sichuan, CN).
The piece is an architectural experimentation, displayed as 4 videos in loops, and articulated around two "environmental devices", namely two Satellight Daylight pieces, which tend to reorganize and entertwine the natural rythms of day and night within the pavilion.
This creates a form of luminous phasing between two spatio-temporal referents (the localized one of London's Hyde Park and those of two fictitious satellites circling the Earth), hybridizing their time and space... in a quest for a new liveable relationship with the now mediated space.
The work is part of the exhibition Community of the Future: The Same Frequency and Resonance (images below) and is curated by Guo Jinman.
Via @fabricch_asfound (fabric | ch's default Instragram account)
Wednesday, July 14. 2021
Note: Patrick Keller (fabric | ch) was in discussion with curator Sabine Himmelsbach, from Haus der elektronischen Künste in Basel (CH), about their new acquisition for the collection of the Museum: Satellite Daylight 47°33'N.
The piece will be displayed permanently in the public space of the HeK. At least until breakdown... But interestingly, it is also part of a whole program of digital conservation at HeK that should prevent its technological collapse, for which we had to follow a tight protocol of documentation and provide the source code pf the work.
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fabric | ch, Satellite Daylight, 47°33‘N, 2020, Vue de l'installation durant «Shaping the Invisible World», 2021, HeK. Photo.: P. Keller.
Shooting set in preparation ...
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Followed by our discussion with Sabine Himmelsbach ... (with a lot of reverb in the staircase!)
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Via Haus der elektronischen Künste (blog)
Patrick Keller of fabric | ch, a studio for architecture, interaction and research in Lausanne, provides thrilling insight about the new work installed in the staircase of HeK.
Patrick Keller of fabric | ch, a studio for architecture, interaction and research in Lausanne, provides information about the new work in an interview. The installation Satellite Daylight, 47°33’N, commissioned for the HeK collection, simulates the light registered by an imaginary meteorological satellite orbiting the earth at the latitude of Basel at a speed of 7541m/s.
Thursday, July 28. 2016
Note: not only photography is affected by digitizing, of course... residency and citizenship as well. In a different way than one could expect. "Crypto-residency" to come soon to help you invest your cryptocurrencies in a "crypto-land"?
Will "Brexiters" apply, cynically?
Via MIT technology Review
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By Nanette Byrnes
Estonia aims to bring 10 million people to its digital shores.
With 1.3 million citizens, Estonia is one of the smallest countries in Europe, but its ambition is to become one of the largest countries in the world. Not one of the largest geographically or even by number of citizens, however. Largest in e-residents, a category of digital affiliation that it hopes will attract people, especially entrepreneurs.
Started two years ago, e-residency gives citizens of any nation the opportunity to set up Estonian bank accounts and businesses that use a verified digital signature and are operated remotely, online. The program is an outgrowth of a digitization of government services that the country launched 15 years ago in a bid to save money on the staffing of government offices. Today Estonians use their mandatory digital identity to do everything from track their medical care to pay their taxes.
Now the country is marketing e-residency as a path by which any business owner can set up and run a business in the European Union, benefiting from low business costs, digital bureaucratic infrastructure, and in certain cases, from the country’s low tax rates.
“If you want to run a fully functional company in the EU, in a good business climate, from anyplace in the world, all you need is an e-residency and a computer,” says Estonian prime minister Taavi Rõivas.
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Tallinn, capital city of Estonia
Things that don’t come with e-residency include a passport and citizenship. Nor do e-residents automatically owe taxes to the country, though digital companies that incorporate there and obtain a physical address can benefit from the country’s low tax rate. The chance to run a business out of Estonia has proven popular enough that almost 700 new businesses have been set up by the nearly 1,000 new e-residents, according to statistics from the government.
The government hopes to have 10 million e-residents by 2025, though others think that goal is a stretch.
Estonian officials describe e-residency as an early step toward a mobile future, one in which countries will compete for the best people. And they are not the only ones pursing this idea. Payment company Stripe recently launched a program called Atlas that it hopes will boost the number of companies using its services to accept payments. It helps global Internet businesses incorporate in the state of Delaware, open a bank account, and get tax and legal guidance.
Juan Pablo Vazquez Sampere, a professor at Madrid’s IE Business School, sees the Estonia program as enabling global entrepreneurs to operate in Europe at a fraction of the cost of living in the region.
Last year, Arvind Kumar, an electrical engineer who lives just outside Mumbai, left his 30-year-career in the steel industry to start Kaytek Solutions OÜ, which creates models to improve manufacturing quality and efficiency. Last September Kumar flew to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, and spent half a day setting up a bank account and a virtual office. In addition to the price of the trip, initial setup costs were around $3,300 (€3,000), and he has ongoing expenses of about $480 (€440) a year. The Indian system of setting up a new business is “tedious” by contrast, says Kumar—time-consuming, difficult, and expensive.
Cost was also a factor for Vojkan Tasic, chairman of a high-end car service company called Limos4, in his decision to pick Estonia as a new home for the company. Started in his home country of Serbia six years ago, Limos4 has been paying credit-card processing fees of 7 percent. Limos4 operates in 20 large European cities as well as Dubai and Istanbul, and counts Saudi Arabian and Swedish royalty and U.S. and European celebrities among its clients.
After considering Delaware and Ireland, Tasic chose Estonia, where he can settle his credit-card transactions through PayPal subsidiary Braintree for 2.9 percent and where there is no tax on corporate profits so long as they remain invested in the business. Since getting his e-residency and moving the company to Estonia, profits are up 20 percent, Tasic says. Annual revenue is around $2 million.
For Estonia, the financial benefit comes from the fees e-residents pay to the government and the tax revenue local support services like accountants and law firms make.
To Tasic, who runs background checks on all his drivers, one of the best things about the e-residency is the fact that the Estonian police investigate every applicant. Since Kumar set up his company, Estonia has begun allowing e-residents to set up their bank accounts online, but there remains a level of security, because to pick up their residency card, applicants must go in person to one of Estonia’s 39 embassies around the world and prove their identity.
Some have raised concerns that the e-residence might attract shady characters who could shield themselves from prosecution and possible punishment by doing business in Estonia but residing outside of its jurisdiction. But with no serious cases of fraud or illicit activity to date, it is unclear whether this is a serious concern, says Karsten Staehr, a professor of international and public finance at Tallinn University of Technology.
As with any digital system, security is a major concern. Estonia, which sits just to the west of Russia and south of the Gulf of Finland, recently announced plans to back up much of its data, including banking credentials, birth records, and critical government information, in the United Kingdom.
In 2007 the country suffered a sustained denial-of-service cyberattack linked to Russia after moving a Soviet war memorial from Tallinn city center and has run a distributed system for some time with data centers in every embassy in the world.
“I am convinced they are doing a good job,” says Tasic, who holds a PhD in information services. “But with increased attention, the attacks will increase, so let’s see what the future is.”
Monday, February 15. 2016
Note: we are --like many others I guess-- very interested in the work of Carribean writer Édouard Glissant here at the studio (fabric | ch). Concepts like "archipelagic thinking", "rhizomic identity", "Tout-Monde" (could be imperfectly translated as "Whole-World") and of course "creolization" are powerful yet poetic and positive tools to understand our interleaved world and possibly envision ways of action.
I recently followed a link posted by Nicolas Nova which drived me to a channel on Youtube (managed by Laure Braeckman) that gather different sources/talks by E. Glissant and where he speaks about the different concets that structure his thinking.
Below is the link to this resource that might be useful when you'll like to discover or come back to these ideas.
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By Laure Braeckman
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"Imaginaire du monde" / "Tout-Monde" / "Imaginaire poétique" / "Pensée de l'opacité" / "Pensée archipélique" / Marronage" / "Trois étapes de la Relation" / "Identité rhizome" / "Négritude" / "Métissage" / "Europe en archipel" / ... and many more ...
by Édouard Glissant.
Wednesday, December 24. 2014
Note: Google Earth or literally and progressively Google's Earth? It could also be considered as the start of the privatization of the lower stratosphere, where up to now, no artifacts were permanently present.
Via MIT Technology Review
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Google X research lab boss Astro Teller says experimental wireless balloons will test delivering Internet access throughout the Southern Hemisphere by next year.
By Tom Simonite
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Astro Teller & a Project Loon prototype sails skyward.
Within a year, Google is aiming to have a continuous ring of high-altitude balloons in the Southern Hemisphere capable of providing wireless Internet service to cell phones on the ground.
That’s according to Astro Teller, head of the Google X lab, the company established with the purpose of working on “moon shot” research projects. He spoke at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference in Cambridge today.
Teller said that the balloon project, known as Project Loon, was on track to meet the goal of demonstrating a practical way to get wireless Internet access to billions of people who don’t have it today, mostly in poor parts of the globe.
For that to work, Google would need a large fleet of balloons constantly circling the globe so that people on the ground could always get a signal. Teller said Google should soon have enough balloons aloft to prove that the idea is workable. “In the next year or so we should have a semi-permanent ring of balloons somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere,” he said.
Google first revealed the existence of Project Loon in June 2013 and has tested Loon Balloons, as they are known, in the U.S., New Zealand, and Brazil. The balloons fly at 60,000 feet and can stay aloft for as long as 100 days, their electronics powered by solar panels. Google’s balloons have now traveled more than two million kilometers, said Teller.
The balloons provide wireless Internet using the same LTE protocol used by cellular devices. Google has said that the balloons can serve data at rates of 22 megabits per second to fixed antennas, and five megabits per second to mobile handsets.
Google’s trials in New Zealand and Brazil are being conducted in partnership with local cellular providers. Google isn’t currently in the Internet service provider business—despite dabbling in wired services in the U.S. (see “Google Fiber’s Ripple Effect”)—but Teller said Project Loon would generate profits if it worked out. “We haven’t taken a dime of revenue, but if we can figure out a way to take the Internet to five billion people, that’s very valuable,” he said.
Monday, May 19. 2014
Via The Verge (via Computed·Blg)
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The internet will have nearly 3 billion users, about 40 percent of the world's population, by the end of 2014, according to a new report from the United Nations International Telecommunications Union. Two-thirds of those users will be in developing countries.
Those numbers refer to people who have used the internet in the last three months, not just those who have access to it.
Internet penetration is reaching saturation in developed countries, while it's growing rapidly in developing countries. Three out of four people in Europe will be using the internet by the end of the year, compared to two out of three in the Americas and one in three in Asia and the Pacific. In Africa, nearly one in five people will be online by the end of the year.
Mobile phone subscriptions will reach almost 7 billion. That growth rate is slowing, suggesting that the number will plateau soon. Mobile internet subscriptions are still growing rapidly, however, and are expected to reach 2.3 billion by the end of 2014.
These numbers make it easy to imagine a future in which every human on Earth is using the internet. The number of people online will still be dwarfed by the number of things, however. Cisco estimates the internet already has 10 billion connected devices and is expected to hit 50 billion by 2020.
Friday, January 10. 2014
By fabric | ch
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After its creation for Close, Closer, the Lisbon Architecture Triennale last summer, we had the opportunity to exhibit Deterritorialized Living for the first time in November 13 during Acces(s) Festival in Pau (curated by Ewenn Chardronnet), at the Maison de l'Architecture.
The project, which consists in an "artificial troposphere" that reverses our causal relationship to the rythms of day and night, air, seasons, time -- based on real time global network activity by both humans and robots and that is delivered in the form of open data feeds, fictional data in some ways -- was displayed accompanied by videos of former projects by fabric | ch.
Specifically, we took the ocasion to complete an electromagnetic sample of Deterritorialized Daylight, based on its feed of data.
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The simple spatialization took the appearance of two strong controllable projectors and two light reflectors. These were the only sources of light in the exhibition space, accompanied by five screens that displayed the different data feeds and the interactive version of Deterritorialized Daylight (a controllable intensity of the 13 last hours). Two small but intense "suns", an "eclipse" and a "waning moon" seemed to appear in the space, at the same time.
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The variable intensity of the light in the space defined a pattern of illumination within the exhibition room where the display tables took place, in an apparent random manner, yet following this pattern accordingly to their own reflection potential and their exhibition program.
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Exhibition after exhibition, we plan to develop physical samples of the data feeds and materialize the "geoengineered" troposphere. We will also look into some architectural explorations of this "geoengineered" climate, architectural environments that will locate themselves within, or just use this deterritorialized atmosphere.
Thursday, December 12. 2013
(Joking) note: does somebody came up with some sort of Moore's law regarding the size of these ships? Will there be a "singularity" too with container boats? Maybe a point where they will be able to contain the "captive globe"?
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La taille des nouveaux porte-containers fait comprendre que la notion de Mega Mobil Factory n'est pas seulement une fiction comme certains très beaux projets pourraient le laisser croire - voir " New Offshore Nomadic City ?" ou " Salt Eater Moving Machine" - mais bien une réalité en marche.
Avec la nouvelle classe des Triple-E et notamment le Maerks Mc-Kinney Moller, nous avons faire à un nouvelle catégorie de machines qui va peu à peu bouleverser nos façons de penser ce qui peut se réaliser sur un bateau, et donc ce à quoi pourraient devenir les navires dans futur. Car tout comme le paquebot de croisière a transformé un moyen de transport en un lieu de destination ( d'un bateau en un club de vacances), la mutation des porte-containers annoncent peut-être d'autres évolutions plus radicales tel le projet BlueSeed dont je vous ai parlé dans mon précédents post. Pourquoi, en effet, ne pas imaginer que le porte-containers passe du statut de moyen de transport à celui de lieu de production off shore ? Les containers passerait du statut de boite à celui de lieu de production - voir là, là et là -, soit sous sous forme de mini factory (un ou deux containers) soit de mega factory par l'assemblage de plusieurs dizaines de containers. On est loin d'être là aujourd'hui, mais la révolution industrielle en cours - voir " Micro-multinationale du futur ?" et là - va peut être changer les choses.
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Ce qui est certain c'est que ces nouvelles classes de porte-containers perturbent tout, nos grilles de lectures, mais aussi les infrastructures terrestres. Les ports ont, en effet, de plus en plus de mal à adapter leurs équipement, et notamment leurs grues, à ce gonflement incessant de plus en plus rapide du gabarits des nouvelles générations de navires.
L'évolution est tellement rapide que certains ports, et pas forcément les moins performants, sont obligés de faire appel à des méga bateaux grues pour décharger les porte containers qui font escale chez eux - voir par exemple Miami, là.
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Les ports qui avaient déjà perdu leurs bâtiments, les docks ou les hangars, depuis vingt ans avec l'apparition des containers vont peut-être bientôt perdre leurs grues. Pourquoi en effet continuer à investir dans des grues s'il faut les changer tous les 10 ans ? C'est quoi un port dans ces conditions là ? L’espace portuaire, entièrement dédié aux containers, ne tolère plus aujourd'hui tout ce qui est fixe ou impossible à déplacer. Mais demain c'est peut-être les ports qui seront nomade. En effet, on retrouve aujourd'hui à terre, les logiques portuaires que développe l' US Navy au large avec ses ports mobiles - voir " Quand les bateaux deviennent des ports".
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Et l'on peut-être tenté de se demander si, tout comme le container a détruit le port en le transformant en un simple parking à boites, le porte-containers ne pourrait pas à terme détruire non seulement les ports mais aussi une partie du tissus industriel statique et terrestre en devenant lui-même une mega factory flottante via des containers transformés en mini-usines ?
Bref, et dit autrement, et si notre futur industriel s'écrivait entre cela et cela ?
L'hypothèse n'est aujourd'hui qu'une pure hypothèse, mais il ne faut jamais oublier le rôle défricheur des militaires dans l'évolution de la mobilité.
Et pour continuer à réfléchir sur le rôle des containers dans l'économie et le système productif mondial, je ne peux que vous inciter à regarder :
Tuesday, September 10. 2013
By fabric | ch
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We are glad to announce that we'll be taking part with an Associated Project to the next Lisbon Architecture Triennale (Close, Closer, cur. Beatrice Galilee) that will take place between September 12 and December 15, 2013.
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Img: I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting, fabric | ch, 2010 01SJ, San Jose.
Project:
The work we'll present with fabric | ch, in collaboration with TASML, will be in fact a call for projects (!): Deterritorialized Living (the Beijing sessions) / Inhabiting the Computer Cabinet. It follows the residency and the work we produced in Beijing last Summer at the Tsinghua University. The call is open to the international community as well as specifically to the Tsinghua University (two different dedicated awards).
We will also present two talks. On the 21st of September, I'll present this call, some related projects by fabric | ch and the results of our residency in Beijing at the LX Factory (CoworkLisboa, 103 Rua Rodrigues Faria, PIso 4). On the 14th of December, we'll present along with TASML the results of the call, with a presentation by the winning entry from China.
Dates:
30.08. - Competition launch. Tsinghua University, Beijing
21.09. 5pm - Talk by fabric | ch: Deterritorialized Living. At the LX Factory, Lisbon
14.10. Competition submissions deadline, Beijing
01.11. Announcement of winning entries
14.12., 5pm - Talk by the winner of the competition, along with fabric | ch & TASML. At the LX Factory, Lisbon
Call: http://call.deterritorialized.org
Program in Lisbon: http://beijing.deterritorialized.org/
Close, Closer: http://www.close-closer.com/en/
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