Zombies, Art and The Fighting The Machine
Police arrest pretend zombies for possessing pretend weapons
In Minneapolis, it is apparently against the law to pretend to look like an undead ghoul carrying a bag "with wires sticking out."
Saw this in the commuter paper this morning. Would have known about it yesterday if I hadn't been behind in my fun RSS feeds. A true example of over-reaction if I've ever seen one. (Or is there actually a zombie epidemic that only those in law enforcement have been told about? Is terrorism a red herring? Are the dead really rising from the grave?)
Process vs Outcome
At the recent Media Lab faculty retreat led by our new director Frank Moss, we had an interesting time discussing our favorite topic here at the Lab -- the future. It's never easy to discuss the future when you're living in the present of the course, but with the impressive array of colleagues I have here it's not that difficult.
Digital music impresario Tod Machover and the mind of Lego's Mindstorm Mitch Resnick led a discussion about the future of creativity. It was here that the past collided with the future, or at least in my mind. The timeless question in art arose: What matters more: the process of creating an artwork, or just the artwork alone? There are only a few variants to this answer.
So what matters most to you? What is created or how it's created? Or simply the fact that things are created?
Shawn Hogan, Hero
Last November, Shawn Hogan received an unsettling call: A lawyer representing Universal Pictures and the Motion Picture Association of America informed the 30-year-old software developer that they were suing him for downloading Meet the Fockers over BitTorrent. Hogan was baffled. Not only does he deny the accusation, he says he already owned the film on DVD. The attorney said they would settle for $2,500. Hogan declined.
Now he’s embroiled in a surprisingly rare situation - a drawn-out legal fight with the MPAA. The organization and its music cousin, the Recording Industry Association of America, have filed thousands of similar lawsuits between them, but largely because of the legal costs few have been contested and none have gone to trial. This has left several controversies unresolved, including the lawfulness of how the associations get access to ISP records and whether it’s possible to definitively tie a person to an IP address in the age of Wi-Fi.
Finally, someone who can throw some money around and maybe beat the bastards. (I'm not naive enough to think that anything will actually come of this, which, really, is sad in it's own way.)
In Minneapolis, it is apparently against the law to pretend to look like an undead ghoul carrying a bag "with wires sticking out."
Saw this in the commuter paper this morning. Would have known about it yesterday if I hadn't been behind in my fun RSS feeds. A true example of over-reaction if I've ever seen one. (Or is there actually a zombie epidemic that only those in law enforcement have been told about? Is terrorism a red herring? Are the dead really rising from the grave?)
Process vs Outcome
At the recent Media Lab faculty retreat led by our new director Frank Moss, we had an interesting time discussing our favorite topic here at the Lab -- the future. It's never easy to discuss the future when you're living in the present of the course, but with the impressive array of colleagues I have here it's not that difficult.
Digital music impresario Tod Machover and the mind of Lego's Mindstorm Mitch Resnick led a discussion about the future of creativity. It was here that the past collided with the future, or at least in my mind. The timeless question in art arose: What matters more: the process of creating an artwork, or just the artwork alone? There are only a few variants to this answer.
So what matters most to you? What is created or how it's created? Or simply the fact that things are created?
Shawn Hogan, Hero
Last November, Shawn Hogan received an unsettling call: A lawyer representing Universal Pictures and the Motion Picture Association of America informed the 30-year-old software developer that they were suing him for downloading Meet the Fockers over BitTorrent. Hogan was baffled. Not only does he deny the accusation, he says he already owned the film on DVD. The attorney said they would settle for $2,500. Hogan declined.
Now he’s embroiled in a surprisingly rare situation - a drawn-out legal fight with the MPAA. The organization and its music cousin, the Recording Industry Association of America, have filed thousands of similar lawsuits between them, but largely because of the legal costs few have been contested and none have gone to trial. This has left several controversies unresolved, including the lawfulness of how the associations get access to ISP records and whether it’s possible to definitively tie a person to an IP address in the age of Wi-Fi.
Finally, someone who can throw some money around and maybe beat the bastards. (I'm not naive enough to think that anything will actually come of this, which, really, is sad in it's own way.)