liale blogs

You wish

2007-04-14T12:35:00.000-04:00

fully web 2.0 enhanced daily life. You get.

glumbert.com - Supermarket 2.0

If I was...

2007-04-12T03:15:00.000-04:00

... a manga character

...drawn by Mucha

... reborn (creepy)

hehe
http://morph.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk

Critical Space, Joshua Tree and my Mom

2007-04-11T02:29:00.001-04:00

Some people pointed out that I am neglecting my blog. I could come up with a bunch of lame excuses, but then decided to stick to the truth - I simply wasn't in the mood. Yes, I said it! At the same time I felt bad about it and then felt stupid about feeling bad not to post on my blog which resulted in me stubbornly refusing to post at all. Well, it seems like I finally got out of the vicious circle - after a long day that kept me busy doing things like driving to and from Irvine, teaching and being taught, AND getting in shape during 2 hours of Yoga my mood felt right enough to produce something that only requires to make sense in my head.
The highlights of the past weeks can be summarized in: surviving the winter quarter, working on papers, field research and prototypes related to playfulness, surveillance, and performative spaces... However, in between we had something called "spring break". A week of "break" used to spend time preparing for the next quarter is better than continuous pursuit of pre-established coffin addictions. I was told. Aeh right, umm so I decided to take terms like "taking a break" literally (as we German speaking people would say - we MAKE BREAKS! genau! ), invited my Mom over to spend a few days of relaxation and discovered "critical":

and "open" spaces:

The first picture shows art work by Andrea Zittel. I am a big fan of her work, which is exhibited in the MOCA right next to WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution March through July - also awesome! Zittel's engagement with livable and unlivable spaces and how to create space to go on distance to hectic life but to become closer to oneself through a being in and feeling of the world around us certainly drew me in. Even more after visiting Joshua Tree National Park, where she lives and works. Seeing her work right next to the feminist approaches evidences that being and performing a mobile and "by herself" female is still considered outside the norm and outside the "female" space (hence in a museum space), but also that there has been made room for it - right next to the pink razr.

Need a friend? - virtual friends for sale!

2006-12-12T17:38:00.000-05:00

just go to fakeyouspace.com and for 99 cent there are all yours. The service launched only a few days ago offers an illusion of popularity mostly not for oneself but for one's own image created to represent the virtual self. One can rent some "fake" cyberbuddies and for 99 cents per month they leave weekly messages on your page. It's nothing new that people buy friendship, it suddenly appears even easier and very cheap. Would one eventually gain more "real" friends because of a faked virtual popularity, or is this just another cyberian illusion that seems so apart from our lives while simulatenously shaping our behavior within it significantly? Apart from Second Life another interesting venue of how to make money of the belief in a virtual identity (sometimes more than in the physical one).

Pop-up!

2006-11-13T01:52:00.001-05:00

Yes they still exist: pop up books! Stories in 3D Art but exceptionally not in virtual immersive multi-player somethings.. Pop up books like this from Maurice Sendak are playful but in a sensitive way. Childrens' fantasies become tangible and overcome is the border between the big and small humans one more time: "Based on a play by Arthur Yorinks, “Mommy?” follows a toddler lost in a mad scientist’s lab as he searches for his missing mother. Anything Sendak touches becomes his own, however. As the boy explores the lab, the opening coffin lids and unwrapping mummies function as a tribute to classic movie monsters like Nosferatu, Frankenstein and the Wolfman. As a group, they’re not so much scary as Sendakian: they’re moody, melancholy beasts." (link)
I must have this one! :)

One day in history

2006-11-02T12:47:00.000-05:00

One day in British history: November 1st. History Matters invited people living in Britain to post a blog entry on a "nationwide" blog. The idea behind it, is to leave a trace for future generations. We don't know what historians in future will find interesting, strange or fascinating about us and our times nowadays, says BBC. The upload process of the diary entries is still in process, more than 8000 people contributed to the collective one-day blog. Looking through the first blog entries, I found a lot of insights into adolescents' lives. This is one of my favourites: "My favourite food is tuna, Chicken and quiche. I am nine years old and i have brown eyes and blonde hair. Our prime minister is Tony blaire. And our queen is called Qeen Elizabeth." Some of the blog entries seem a little bit "forced" and written under the pressure of describing one's daily routines in a list arrangement (7am alarm woke me up, 8am going to work,....). I guess the whole blog would get a very different notion if it randomly collected blog entries from regular bloggers who are not writing under the assumption of contribution to history and hence not trying to describe what might be interesting for our descendents, but rather whatever is currently on their mind, what interests them, what they are fascinated of, disgusted by, etc. Stories of thoughts, insights in how we think.
However, I like the idea of a collective blog and of letting people tell stories "gemeinschaftlich". I attended a talk about communities in Irvine yesterday. The speaker researched on how (and if) the former notion of "Gemeinschaft" (community) transforms and provokes that we can't speak of "Gemeinschaft" anymore. Individuals rather strive for their own goals and principles, form "communities" based on their individualistic mindset and plans. Blogging on first glance truly seems like one of these individualistic activities. Especially the communication forms such as blogs transport a new collective experience. When claiming that the term community might not work in former terms anymore (did we really ever live what it stands for?), we have to consider that not just the community itself but also the individual changed. We live with several identities, no matter if in role-playing games, through our self-representation in blogs, or networking sites such as Facebook. Humans always played with multiple identities (acting, performing arts, writers), however it seems that a broader group of people is now getting the chance to let the own self "play". It hence becomes an everyday activity and part of ourselves. Instead of acting through various identities, I argue, that we just found another way of exploring our "self" in more collective experiences.

Schnitzel and Noodles - Panierte Heimat

2006-10-30T20:17:00.000-05:00

My home country is not just place for funny food creations such as "panierts zeigs", even funnier costumes we wear when we are "mia" (a notion for differentation of those ibelonging to the Austrian culture from the others "ia"), but also a place for sentimental but critical reflection on our idiosynchrasies we sell so well into the rest of the world: In a live video performance Claudia Rohrmoser and Marcel Schobel artistically combine various kitchy elements of Austrian film history into a spectacle of patriotism and Austrian mentality. Dealing with the conflict of our self-created image in the outside world of "ia" and our own self-perception (is it actually really that different? ;) they draw attention on the typical Austrian behavior of repression.
"I simply remember my favourite things. And then I don't feel so bad" (quote from the famous sound of music) - something that seems not just inherit into Austrian culture, but reflects in behavior of diasporic societies in general. That the Austrian is proud of its Schnitzel and Strudel is not a secret. For the longest time I couldn't deal with this sometimes to me appearing simple-minded mentality... Until I realized another intrisic quality: we are strange, and we know it and we love to make fun of it in this so unique Austrian way - a conclomerate of humour, sentimentality and a little bit of pride.
"We are friendly Austrian people...".

gwei

2006-10-29T21:21:00.000-05:00

google will eat itself. According to Übermorgen, a group of artists in Vienna. They were founded in 1999 and mainly produce provocative techno-critical art work especially related to privacy and security. We cross conceptual art with experimental research, says founder Hans Bernhard, and the end products are socio-technological art pieces. Not approaching their work with the question what art, technology or research should be, Übermorgen practises "radical self-experiments". Gwei is a paradoxon, and a time-critical response on information monopoly and global advertisement systems. I am amazed by the variety of different ideas conveyed through all sorts of media. Art that doesn't claim to be, but much more is. Interaction that propels critical thought about the now and how the now influences not just tomorrow but Übermorgen. And a nice interview with them on we-make-money-not-art.

When I play with my cat...

2006-10-23T23:25:00.000-04:00

...,who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me? (Michel Eyquem de Montaigne)
brought me back to the notion of "nonsense" & "it-just-is" moments of doing nothing really but enjoying it the most. Surrounded by complex role-playing games and extravagant aniamted graphics, we tend to forget how recreational the rather simple, tangible and emotionally touching encounters are.
Last week, while I was driving to Irvine, as usual in the slow-looser lane with something like 60 mph (I don't want to disappoint my Volvo) I met somebody on the road. This is nothing unusual in LA. I would assume. Missing social day-to-day encounters in public spaces or when forced to waste time taking public transportation (never imagined how much I will miss my spaceless times in the subway), LAers meet in the car. Each person has its own. That's not unusual either. Me driving slowly enjoying Morning Stories on the radio, this other old-car driver passed by. Almost same speed. A little bit faster. Hmm, I felt less lonely among the "we are the right car to have" colleagues. We ended up driving next to each other for about 15 min I guess, both smiling, ridiculously waving our hands and pretending to be really different than all the others. It was fun and I experienced my first car relationship - a game for the moment.

Had another car experience in front of the grocery store in Long Beach. Seem to collect them gradually.
People in LA don't beg sitting on the street.. "wo sind wir denn bitte!"
Here people beg while passing you, the person who is walking on the street, in their car! I was so stunned, I could just stare at this... and damn, this car was newer than my own! (I vote for the invention of the begging-drive-through!)

The artist's freedom

2006-10-22T12:46:00.000-04:00

Last night I saw Mirkem. It's funny when you start dreaming of your own imagional creations and they become suddenly more realistic than you expect - at least as realistic as dreams can get. I could blame the fact of not having enough sleep recently. Grading until 3:30am yesterday (on a Saturday evening!!!).. Meeting Mirkem was nice though and probably something like a small escape into a more innocent and childish world. She looked quite different than I had imagined her when writing about her. However, I think Laurie Anderson made me think about Mirkem again and so I mainly should blame her. I was at her performance at USC yesterday (ya I started grading quite late ;) and which was more something like a person to person conversation than a performance, but even more powerful. She talked about two recent art pieces she was working on - within places as diverse as they can get - NASA and a japanese garden. Embraced by her words and surrounded by the darkness of the auditorium it was suddenly just me and her. Empowering her "talk" as a "performance" for each single one of us she took us on a journey. The journey into her world, which gradually became more and more my own. Floating through abstract natural landscapes, powerful machines and escaping to a place where art is as simple as it is: just Laurie, just me, just you. "Why are you changing us Laurie", the audience asked. "I would never want to change you. I would never want to make somebody a better human being, a better member of society,... because there is nothing better for the artist. This is our freedom." And then there was Mirkem. When I finally admitted to myself, that there is not more to me, but this. And I felt a little bit of freedom.. in downtown LA.

Entry 4228

2006-09-01T18:27:00.000-04:00

The name of the entry was 4228. Miss Aurelie opened the door and with her not only the exaggerated odor of sweet roses but also the taste of another, a mysterious world that was formed by seducing embodiments of byrocracy, infinite freedom and money wafted into our, the waiters, direction.
Families never seen together, suddenly stood in one row, head down and tense cramped from the feeling of silent begging which fulfilled the surrounding air deeper and deeper with time of wellowing. Or rather the feeling grew with you while sitting among them, among the waiters. waiting to walk through the entry of 4228. The whole waiting process made me realize how little I still understood about the things I was going to do here, even though I knew why - but confused and locked in the space in front of 4228 I couldn't focus my mind.
My number in the waiting line was A57. 40 numbers in front of me and I knew I was about to be tested again, to proof that, despite all the pain, this is what I wanted. And it was still 4228, rolling alongside the wall, intermediately hidden, reappearing again - from right to left. 4 2 2 8. Right to Left.
Suddenly I felt cold. My wet clothes stuck to my body and not just me but the whole room felt like a sunken ship salvaged few moments ago from the deep ocean's grounds. On my way to 4228 I had met the spanish woman who picked me up, me who was helplessly stranded in the sheer endless muds of heavy rainfall. The spanish woman knew about entry 4228. She had been there before.. and obviously made it through, I thought by myself. Cold. And still 4228. From right to Left. And suddenly jingling of keys. 10, 20, 50 more keys on a key chain. The guy in front of me proudly moved them from one side to the other. Does he hope that this ridiculous amount of keys will open the door for him? I thought and watched him with despite. Before I could fully penetrate the mood of grouchyness, I remembered that I was already here, here in front of 4228. Here, everything was possible and everybody was here. Blue-white-checkered shirts, german sneakers, key chains, children with golden jewelry, grown-ups with dirt between their toes. Hmm german sneakers, Deutschland was written in bright white letters on the black leather. In Deutschland there was no entry to 4228, at least not for me. And still, happiness was far from reality. And then the man in the heavy black rain suit was allowed to enter. He smiled, but it seemed more occasionally, as if it was the most common thing to do - smile and enter (and wearing a black rain suit). Maybe that's the solution, I thought. I thought and smiled. A57!, Miss Aurelie's dark voice echoed through the space. And so I entered, with a smile.

I am so happy on my third last day

2006-08-23T11:48:00.000-04:00

Leaving - the best and most terrible thing at the same time. I think this pic, sponsored by Herwig, fully represents my current state of emotion. My heart is happy, while my eyes are crying and my mouth is smiling.
Thanks to all for being there for me during all these emotional times!
Big Hug.
Silvia

Get dressed, darling!

2006-07-13T11:03:00.000-04:00

Fashion doesn't always mean beauty dolls & satc girlies ;)

No. It is art!

Found at: http://www.antwerp-fashion.be/SHOW2006/4/MIKIOSAKABE/image.htm#

Share your fears!

2006-07-11T12:23:00.000-04:00

Fear Buddies

collect the numbers of anonymous encounters with people having the same fear, insecurity or phobia as you without revealing your or their identity.

You purchase your own fear buddy based on your own anxieties. The upper scale of your fear buddy shows how many people around you are currently suffering from the same phobia. The lower scale counts how many accidental anonymous encounter you've made so far with other people dealing with the same issues as you.

Another nice gadget to share our emotions? Yes, but this time not for lovers, family or friends, but rather for strangers, people sharing same time and location snippets with each other. I think a great idea to create a feeling of not being alone in the huge mass of anonymity and rather connect strangers in a very subtle way while respecting each individual's privacy.

I think best when I am drawing

2006-07-10T12:11:00.000-04:00

says Tim Burton.

Conceptual sketches are the first step for Burton on any film project. His characters, and the film's settings, evolve from these drawings. But not just famous Tim Burton knows that drawing can induce processes of creativity but also digestion of problems hidden in the deap worlds of our befoged subconsciousness.. children spend hours drawing and talking about their drawings while being involved within a natural process of dealing with new experiences, emotional stress like fights with parents and friends, or just perceiving and reflecting their picture of a - often very difficult to deal with - world that is surrounding them. Besides evoking creative processes children deal in a natural way with psychological problems - why should we give that up when entering the serious world of the grown-ups? I think we all need childish moments, no.. we rather should listen to our own child inside ourselves and find our way of freeing it, is it drawing, playing games, collecting leaves in fall, chewing straweberry-smelly but after 4 seconds tasteless chewing gum to blow the most perfect bubbles, or whatever doesn't make sense to anybody else but to us..

I found an art installation in Salzburg this weekend, which shows artwork of a bunch of brooklyn/new york artists. I have seen some of their work when I was back in New York last year. Great to see art like this in my conservative home town, even though I got this weird impression that either me or the art work or the environment is displaced while I was glancing at brooklyn worlds in Salzburg's shiny Hangar: HangART7
Check it out!
No matter where presented, and I think Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz is doing a great job in bringing Salzburg closer to a more real and at the same time more dreamy-artsy world, these artists let their child-inside play - and see what you can get while practising it: reach the world of the conservative and let them take part in your game!

My favorites...

Dasha Shishkin:

John Lurie:

Bradley Castellanos:

Chuck, Daisy, Betti and me in Prag: my big cousin, the cutest dog on earth and two girls discover the better Vienna

2006-07-03T12:05:00.000-04:00

What a great city. So close but so far away in the minds of so many Germans. Having the reputation of being the second Vienna, I have to completely disagree: Yes, there are similarities (nobody and nothing, especially not a European city can deny its past). However, Prague is younger and older than Vienna at the same time. While watching the lovely old-european sceneray one gets the feeling of being put into the good old days of "Kaiser, Kornprinz und Dienstmädchen".. however, the people are everything but ancient. The city sings, embraces you - there is no showing-off, no "etepetete-tamtam ;)". It just is: musicians, sun-bathing in gardens & at rivers, spooky night-walks through an old castle, franz kafka's miny house, blechtassen-shops, lithography, old babuschkas and *sigh* ya the dark side: tourists.
A glance in my insights:

My cousin Chuck:

Daisy in action:

Betti & me not just once:

Musicians in our ears and eyes:

babuschkas on the streets:

and... tourists - just everywhere, but mainly on Charle's bridge =)

Watch me closely!

2006-06-28T06:44:00.000-04:00

The feeling of being watched makes people act more honestly, even if the eyes are not real, a british study suggests. Hm what a suprise one may snigger at this statement - hollywood best teaches us how the betraying flamboyant can never look into his girls eyes, which she of course realizes ending up in hours of suffering and tear-full speculations with her intimate girl-friends about the mean male world and its desires...

Fact is that in the study people were 2.76 times more "honest".

"Although it was just a photocopied black and white poster, we know that people's brains are set up to process faces and eyes, and that is probably because it is very important for us to know if we are being watched by other people."
"It does raise the possibility that you could get people to behave more co-operatively or pro-socially by putting up pictures of eyes," says Dr Bateson.
(BBC Today)

hmm how intersting, if we think about how the glance of a virtual pet might as well generate certain human behavior - something which probably just works if the virtual thingie owns the respect of the person or is even considered as something more human likish

We all should have listened to Humphrey Bogart's wrongly pronounced most famous Casablanca phrase "Here's looking at you, kid" or the german (even more incorrect but famous):

"Schau mir in die Augen, Kleines."

le fight de piiilooow !

2006-06-23T09:09:00.000-04:00

paris . june 20th . french

a place . a date . & a society...

...thatknows how to live out own aggressions without destroying but rather creating "une fête de la joie"

À vos marques, prêt, partez! KISSENSCHLAAAAAAACHT!

Like a photograph of a sunken city on the ocean floor.

2006-06-20T07:40:00.000-04:00

Hmm what a nice metaphor. Murakami gets me always with his pictures and moods, with his characters that seem to be from far away and at the same time thinking and talking our words, our thoughts and living our lives, or the ones we dream of.
I read it today in the morning while sitting in the subway on my way to work and it just came back to my mind - secretley wishing to get back to my book soon.
Somehow, there are not many thoughts on my mind today... or I guess there are rather too many things going on which give me no time for extensive thinking, or let's say thinking in the way I want to. I really enjoy my travelling times, but at the same time it always kinda puts me out of concept and it takes me some time to move back into the rhythm at the "new" place. Feelings and thoughts can change with location, putting us in this awkward situation of not knowing how to control our thougths and feelings - since it obviously changes while moving from place to place - or maybe it's just about getting to know the different "MEs" in ourselves.
Yup, that's it for today.

Cringing Butterfly

2006-05-31T20:17:00.000-04:00

Listening to one of the stories of fabulous "This American Life", called "Cringe", some old memories of a workshop, that I joined at Hagenberg university, came back to me and actually put me in a kinda happy mood (besides of course making me sentimental and sad missing old friends).
"Cringe" talks about, why certain stories create this feeling of "cringing" within us and others don't: Something, which makes us cringe the most, is the moment, when we realize, how our environment, how the rest of the world, perceives us - especially if this perception is different from our own peception we have from ourselves.
During this workshop I took part in (something like 2 years ago), we got the task to get together in groups and choose animals for the members of the other groups. Choosing an animal as a metaphor to describe the personality of the other - to describe the picture we have of this person. It was exciting and frightening at the same time. I looked at my class mates whom I knew for more than 3 years in a more critical, but also more personal way than usual.. and we found for each one of the other group's members a to us well-fitting animal. The interesting thing was on the one hand, that almost all of them could identify with the animal we chose and on the other hand, we could more openly talk about each others' weaknesses and strengths, without hurting or offending us.
The animal the other group chose for me was a butterfly. And I remembered my surprise and very positive "cringing" feeling I felt when they described, why they picked this animal: A Butterfly, they said, is an animal who loves to move from one place to the other, who is never still, always looking for something new, looking out for new things to experience. Sometimes it's afraid and its fragile appearance might make us think it can not make it, but it always finds its ways and cheers its environment up in doing so.
I would have never described myself in that way or even compared myself to this animal. I was thrilled that the others have seen me in this way - open, flying around, experiencing myself and the rest of the world, but also fragile, sometimes very afraid of doing the wrong thing. And at this moment I decided that I want to live this image, to live what I obviously already was to my friends and class mates, that I will support this strong and open side of the butterfly that wants to explore and fly around, than rather being too fragile for this dangers out there or being too scared to sometimes cringe.
Recently, I again came across this fragile and timidly side of mine - I guess each time before the butterfly arranges to leave for the new place it shrunks, looks at its thin wings suddenly loosing all the trust in them and tries to convince itself it can never make it.
I decided I can be like this butterfly: cringe, but then start off again for the next adventure.

Granny of the Future

2006-05-26T16:40:00.000-04:00

Hmm.. why am I still surprised about things like that:

"30 percent
of Chinese women surveyed in 1990 thought that men were born to be more important than women. 33 percent thought that women should hold themselves back so that they would not be more successful than their husbands."
(pobronson.com)

I don't want to start a big discussion about this topic now. However, I was doing some survey on demographic changes and family/gender roles. Fascinating to me is, that it seems that the older generation of 56+, especially divorced or widowed female elderly (esp. within western cultures), live a very independent life, become very active in social and caring activities and are very proactive about their own health. Trends show that the Granny of the Future will live even more independently, practising so called LAT partnerships (living apart but together) and spends much of her time with friends around her age and communicates with her grandchildren using skype or video games...
I guess my generation, especially females, should learn a lesson from our Grannies to become once at least as great and independent as they already are.

Mimi, what is instant housing?

2006-05-23T15:03:00.000-04:00

How will we live in the future? What shall homes of the future provide or rather what can they provide and will society and its usage of technology influence our living styles? - of course one could answer: just think about how radio, TV and (of course) the internet changed habits of daily life. Hmm but wasn't it rather humans who decided for accepting to let these technolgies into their lives and finally adopting themselves to a new situation. I see fun-, emotion-, and fear-driven decision-making processes.. but isn't there something else: something I want to summarize as how do we want to see ourselves, how transparent do we want to live and how we want to be perceived by others (which all again is probably rooted in the modern need of being entertained, of deciding out of love or out of fear). Many of us accept changes or restrictions (or even decide for it) in our daily lives when it comes along with feelings of pride and status in society. Being judged for having one of the lowest status within our society homeless people live on the edge of acceptance and abandoned pride.
Winnfried Baumann developed an idea of instant housing that helps us to understand this concept of abandoned pride a bit better and to accept and integrate - those to us - strange living habits into our social society. Check it out: Instant Housing (unfortunately in german), but I also found this entry on it in english.

Goal or Sinn: Let's ask Homer

2006-05-19T11:35:00.000-04:00

Getting back to Blaubär's (okok I am switching back to the original version, but I request a full-background-history-why-it-is explanation) comment.. I would not necessarily differentiate goal and the german "sinn" to that extend. Those lucky ones of us who could find the ultimate goal in our lives (no matter if it's becoming incredibly rich, influentual, a famous writer, artist, or a parent, a social activist, a bridge-builder, austrian-coffee-shop owner *yam*, gas-efficient-car-driver,...) mostly describe their lives as "sinnvoll" (which basically means that it makes sense to them to be alive). However, leading a sinnvoll life is probably exactly the opposite of Herwig's "sinnbefreit" living, since it doesn't necessarily result in leading a happy life (all the successful goal achievers will tell you long stories of how they became happy when they have actually been the furthest away from reaching their goal ;), which again leads to the question: can we be happy without giving our lives a deeper "sinn"?
BBC today asked Homer Simpson about his life philosophy and thinking by myself that Homer might actually be wiser than we all together who think too much about all this life's "sinn" crap: how is TV influencing our daily lives, routines, behaviors but also how are diligent couch potatos answering questions such as a "sinn" in life.
We who are trying to add some "sinn" into our lives always ask: "where are we coming from, where are we going, how can we influence where we will go to, is there something more, something deeper and wiser that we with our limited human mind can't grasp (e.g. is there a God, or what is God or are we more animals than humans "a bunch of naked apes trying to get on as best we can, usually messing things up, but somehow finding life can be sweet all the same. All delusions of a significance that we do not really have need to be stripped away, and nothing can do this better that the great deflater: comedy..."
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4995624.stm)

Probably beyond mine and Homer's understanding... however, Homer got it and definitely lives "sinnbefreit" - even if it's just an excuse for spending time in front of the TV:
"What's the big deal about going to some building every Sunday, I mean, isn't God everywhere?"
"Don't you think the almighty has better things to worry about than where one little guy spends one measly hour of his week?"

Sinnbefreit or why do we blog?

2006-05-18T23:19:00.000-04:00

Talking a lot about blogs with mo&co@muc and becoming more and more confused about the fact that there is a younger, hipper, cooler, SIM playing, mySpace addicted and ya I guess somehow more up-to-date generation (definitely hiding outside of my small circle-of-trust-friends), I came to the conclusion, that my life needs some new "goal" - as we call it in neat german-style: "Sinn".
However, something was wrong about that. Being very critical about blogging and presenting my deepest inside to the rest of the world I looked through my old-fashioned diary in paper format and spent something like 2 hours reminiscing in good old (austrian) memories.. and then I suddenly realized; there is more to it, my diary was for me and myself only, I even put a cute, unbreakable (to me) security lock on it to demonstrate how secret its content was. I still didn't really get what it was, but I felt the need of expressing myself - but instead of having a very one-sided dialogue with my own (even though it can be sometimes really fascincatig when you listen actually what you have to say to yourself ;), I started writing emails to my dear friends far away at home (*buhuhuhuhu* ;') and sharing my first blog-likish comments, which I dare to share here now with the rest of the mysterious number of possible blog readers (hihi, I hope nobody besides you guys is actually really reading that ;):

since I realized....
.. that as a PhD student one almost can't refuse getting into the diary writing addiction of blogging, I conducted some serious research the last few days concentrating on the topic blogging and if this should really be one of my future and oh so carefully chosen and hard-fought for spare time activities...

ya some of you and other friends blog and it seems that compared to my private diary - that oh shame on me! is full of angry complaints about the rest of the world - the existing blogs seem to demonstrate that most of the incredible over-worked students and young people live a happy independent life, demonstrated through artistic pictures (yaaa the flickr link) and intelligent thoughts on whatever topic..
especially enthusiastic are of course we phd students that visit confereces such as CHI ....
(yep whole CHI was blogged by diligent SV students)
hmm I guess some of you may know danah boyd - a famous blogger and in public very visible phd student from berkeley:
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
(actually not a bad blog I have to admit)

confused by all these great thoughts and challenged to make my own blog at least not as dull as this one:
http://www.wibsite.com/wiblog/dull/
(oh goche this guy is great - and the whole community is pissed because he makes fun of something as serious as daily blogging about the newest gadgets)

ok I admit.. I need help. I need a blog. how can I survive otherwise in this world of global chatting about our deepest emotions - especially when being seperated from the rest of our close-ones? I can not longer refuse swimming with the stream of public sharing of ourselves, our ideas and our lives in pictures..

ach simply I miss you guys and you can expect my own lia blog soon =)))
(uuuuuh I already feel the pressure *hehe*)

I guess this is the longest blog entry I am ever going to write.. *unschuldigschau*
so let's take the chance and finish it quickly up with some nice links I came up with today.

Did you know that:
we are not deriving from monkeys, but that our ancestors simply had sex with monkeys *hehe*
http://www.boston.com
So what are we: humans or animals? or both?

A hot topic, which it definitely shouldn't be: are we west or east, who differentiates and why - or should we?
I think this is a nice approach of the photographer Bärbel Möllmann dealing with this issue and letting our genreation talk. I especially like the technique and idea of using a pin-hole camera (instead of making a video reportage) that creates sensitive pictures such as:

http://what-do-you-think-about-the-west.com/index.php?d=0〈=en

uuu ya and I promised more thoughts about "sinnbefreit"..
guess I need some additional discussion with Mr. Bluebear about negative side-effects, which might occur after longer "intake", before following up on that.
We'll see tomorrow :)

ok out off the context, but still too awesome not to cite ;)
"Men will do the same stupid thing over and over again and be happy. Women tend to want a more complex, creative experience."
(Will Wright, Inventor of SIMS)