technology

Britisches Verteidigungsministerium stellt Kampfjetdrohne Taranis vor

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Taranis

Das britische Militär muss wohl auch zeigen, wofür Steuergelder rausgeblasen werden, weshalb das Verteidigungsministerium jetzt die Drohne Taranis vorgestellt hat, die gerade von BAE Systems entwickelt wird. Wobei “vorgestellt” bei so einer Technologie eben heißt, dass der Öffentlichkeit ein kurzer Blick gestattet und über die Details eisern geschwiegen wird. Nur soviel ist klar: Taranis ist eine Kampfdrohne der neuesten Generation, die auch für offensive Operationen über feindlichem Territorium konzipiert ist. Dass der Kampfflugroboter dabei ferngesteuert wird, versteht sich noch von selbst, alles andere wäre wohl auch ein Grund wirklich paranoid zu werden.

http://de.engadget.com/2010/07/13/britisches-verteidigungsministerium-stellt-kampfjetdrohne-tarani/

Named Taranis, after the Celtic god of thunder, the £142.5 million prototype has been dubbed the ”pinnacle” of British engineering and aeronautical design. It is the size of a light aircraft and has been equipped with advanced stealth technology making it virtually undetectable.
video online

re-active platform @ glasmoog

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re-active platform
Ralf Baecker, Artur Holling, Karin Lingnau, JiHyun Park, mit Luis Negrón van Grieken, Susanna Schoenberg
March 20 to April 14, 2010
glasmoog
Academy of Media Arts Cologne
Filzengraben 2a, Cologne, germany

re-active platform

re-active platform is about the logic and aesthetics of systems; circuits, signals and displays are represented as objects, images and sites, while the Phänomene des Realen [phenomena of the real] seem to be nothing more than just mere coincidence.
re-active platform, initiated by Susanna Schoenberg in 2004, embodies concepts, works, tests and exchange between students and other art and technology competencies that temporarily and repeatedly turned into site and condition themselves.
www.khm.de/export/re-active

Background
re-active platform began 2004 as seminar formula at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne; it was part of the research&teaching field called multimedia&performance; it was supposed to be as >technical< as possible and to be in the local vanguard of application of and
experimentation with new technologies [expanded media, intermedia..] or pieces of them.
So re-active platform started as a label for a production oriented environment [the platform as a place] where persons with very different background issues, interests, skills, and positions in the creative process [the platform as a collaborative pool], were and still are asked to reflect together about art works acting [re-acting] like >systems<.
With a kind of regular incidence re-active platform got visible as a concept and as a variable group in seminar activities, workshops, group exhibitions, field works.

Concept
The main task consists in reflecting the idea of re-activity on a very abstract level, not referring to much to individual preferences of the artists for their usual shapes of production.
The first entities discussed as metaphors were circuits and data-streamings as accessible phenomena.
The results is a collaborative produced ensemble of artefacts not produced for being unique, but for being part of a [variable] discourse.

Surveillance, Performance and New Media Art

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Vol 7, No 2 (2010)
Surveillance, Performance and New Media Art

The relationship between the visual arts and surveillance has been explored through large scale exhibitions (CTRL:Space, ZKM), and texts such as Loving Big Brother (McGrath, 2004) have introduced questions of performance and performativity into the surveillance debate. However, as the technological possibilities available to artists grow, and the social impact of surveillance is increasingly recognized, there is a need for a thorough examination of the uses of surveillance in the visual arts, particularly in the genres of new media and performance art, where issues regarding technological engagement and embodiment come to the fore. This special issue of Surveillance & Society presents papers and works that examine the complexities of surveillance in new media and performance art.

http://surveillance-and-society.org/ojs/index.php/journal/issue/view/Performance/showToc

From The NY Times: In Bid to Sway Sales, Cameras Track Shoppers

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Paco Underhill is the founder of Envirosell, a trailblazer in observational research.

Because of sensitivities surrounding privacy, some retailers are reluctant to discuss surveillance technology. And exactly how many cameras are tracking shoppers is not known, partly because cameras are installed and uninstalled during various studies. (The videotape is for internal use only).

But industry professionals said interest in analyzing shoppers was growing. Video analysis companies said nearly every major chain was or had been a client, including giants like Wal-Mart Stores and Best Buy Company Incorporated”.

more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/20/business/20surveillance.html

Collateral Murder

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Overview

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

http://www.collateralmurder.com/

Could be truthful: Moscow cameras streamed false pictures

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Police have learned that CCTV cameras all across Moscow streamed prerecorded pictures, while the company servicing them received more than a million dollars in payments.
The company, StroyMontageService, has been accused of security fraud. Police have detained its director, Dmitry Kudryavtsev, who denies all charges saying the scandal is an attempt by his rivals to squeeze him out of the market.
The alleged fraud was uncovered during a routine check of Moscow CCTV cameras.
“From May to September 2009 CCTV cameras in several districts of Moscow streamed pre-recorded pictures instead of real-time video,” police spokeswoman Olga Dumalkina stated on Tuesday.

http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-01-13/cctv-cameras-fraud-moscow.html