Wired’s Gadget Lab recently invited me to be on their Podcast to discuss Should This Exist, and the recent article by Olivia Solon about IBM using Flickr Creative Commons licensed photos to train their facial recognition AI–NOT something anyone would have anticipated when those photos were licensed in the early 2000s.
China is rejecting our trash. I was surprised to learn that since China started rejecting our trash, more and more is being put into our landfill here in the U.S. It’s astonishing that shipping trash to China is (was!) more economical than recycling it here.
Claude Parent was an architect who conceived of “the function of the oblique” working on buildings that did not hew to the horizontal, but had slanted floors, and were more like landscapes–imagine lying on a hill, or settling into a pond–than typical interiors. This made people active, rather than passive, in his buildings. Parent worked with artists and theorists such as Yves Tanguy and Paul Virilio, and there are photos of him in conversation with people using slanted platforms instead of furniture. Like Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, Parent’s Manifesto is made up of disruptive maneuvers to free yourself from conventional thinking:
Twelve Subversive Acts to Dodge the System
1. Open the Imaginary
2. Operate in Illusion
3. Dislodge the Immobile
4. Think Continuity
5. Surf on the Surface
6. Live in Obliqueness
7. Destabilize
8. Use the Fall
9. Fracture
10. Practice Inversion
11. Orchestrate Conflict
12. Limit Without Closing
Caterina.net 