part of the process

Scramble for Africa: Berlin Conference of 1884-85 kicked off

On this day, in 1884, Western countries met to discuss the future of Afrrica in what is known as the Berlin Conference. The result of the meeting saw the countries distributing portions of the continent to come under their control…

The Berlin Conference of 1884-85 produced the General Act of the Berlin Conference which began the Scramble for Africa. Called for by Portugal, the conference was organised by Germany first chancellor, Otto van Bismarck (during Germany’s rapid rise as a power) and signified a time of increased European colonialism which decimated most of Africa’s self-governance. 

The colonial powers superimposed their domains on the African Continent. By the time most of Africa regained its ‘independence’ after the late 1950s, it was extremely fragmented, almost beyond repair. Instead, while Africa celebrates freedoms and independence, there are more subtle ways that Europe still exerts its vast influence over the continent.

For example, there is a new scramble for Africa and France still loots its former colonies.

12 countries participated. Namely Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, The Netherlands, , Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Norway, the USA and Germany. 

The initial task of the conference was to agree that the Congo River and Niger River mouths and basins would be considered neutral and open to trade. Despite its neutrality, part of the Kongo Basin became a personal Kingdom (private property) for Belgium’s King Leopold II and under his rule, over half of the region’s population died.

The General Act of the Berlin Conference formalized several points:

Powers could only possess colonies if they maintained sufficient authority to administer and defend them;

The Niger and Congo rivers were free and open to the traffic of trade; the Congo Free State was the private property of the Congo Society;

Any new act of possession along the African coast would not be recognized unless reported to the other signatory powers. The phrase “spheres of influence” made its first appearance in an international agreement.

Floating projections

Latest from @joanielemercier continuing his No-logram experiments presents what appears to be 3D forms in mid air (which are actually projections on transparent screen with viewer tracking):

- This is a video projection that appears to float in the air. - The user is tracked to adjust perspective so objects appears in 3D. - Unlike AR and VR, no headset, device or screen is required. - You can control the projection with your hands. - There is no limitation in scale. - I’m developping this as an art installation - It’s also available for special commissions. 

THIS IS NOT A HOLOGRAM ! Holograms are still images captured on photographic plate with a laser, and were invented in 1971.

THIS IS A VIDEO PROJECTION appearing to float in the air and following the viewers perspective, overlayed with the real world. Unlike AR and VR, no headset, device or screen is required.

You can read more about the No-logram project here

vvvv academy

Dominik Koller is starting workshops to learn how to use creative coding platform which is used by many professionals in the interactive field starting this summer in Berlin - no experience required, only your own laptop:

We are launching our first ever full vvvv course in August 2017.

In eight weekly sessions, this course provides you with a strong foundation for using creative technology and building interactive interfaces.

No previous knowledge needed.

Each week, we will focus on a topic:     

 2x vvvv basics     

 Sound reactive visuals

 2x Projection Mapping

 Motion Tracking: Kinect

 Arduino and Electronics

 3D and Virtual Reality

My new PhotoMagazine - “Peppapot” -now available for your collection.

My new PhotoMagazine “Peppapot”- 44 pages of wonderful imagery - is now available. A magazine of photographic experiences. A journey of love. “Peppapot”. It is a diverse compilation of my photography published in print. I am now releasing the first issue available for purchase online.

http://www.spaceshipgeorge.com/peppapot-mag-1

Peppapot is representative of my photography experiences and the love I have for the craft of image making. Personally I want to make my art more accessible to the world and to those who would like to collect my work. This magazine is a labor of love and I am excited share it with you. This is a personal venture of my art and an exploration of the many ways to present it to the world.

The 1st issue of “Peppapot” is now available for purchase online - http://www.spaceshipgeorge.com/peppapot-mag-1

Much thanks for your support.

#kwesiabbensetts #peppapot #guyana #selfpublishing #nude #blackandwhite #women #art #blackwomen #magazine #photography #fashion #color #blackness 🌐

1) it was for mommies and daddies who were married;

2) it made me, my five year old sister, and my baby brother.

i learned everything i knew about sex from the internet while secretly browsing grownup sites on my 4th generation ipod touch i earned for doing so well at a piano recital. because of the nature of, you know, men and their internet porn, i learned that my sexual role as a woman was to be slapped and pissed on and tied up. i didn’t know what healthy sex was. i didn’t know it should be mutually consensual, or that it was okay to want sex with girls. i didn’t know that sex should be good for both people. i learned that sex would hurt, and that sex was about men and men only, and that i would be forced into sex whether i liked it or not, and that it was normal to have sex with big, burly, grown men as a teenager. i learned it was normal to cry during sex. i was scared of sex for so many years because of that, and the way i was exposed to sex at a young age led to the inappropriate and traumatic sexual encounters i had (occasionally with older people) later on in my teen years.

the day i got my first period, i was ten-and-a-half. i was swimming in the river with my best friend, and when i got out to go to the bathroom, i noticed brown blood on the inside of my mint-green tankini bottom. i knew what a period was, but i hid it from my mother in shame. she found out, eventually, of course. she told me, you have a woman’s body now, and if you have sex, you could have a baby. all i heard was, you have a woman’s body.

i started shaving my vulva when i was eleven, because i saw memes on memegenerator about how disgusting “hairy pussy” was. i wanted to be sexy. i was eleven years old, and all i wanted was to be sexy. it hurt, and it itched, and it made me uncomfortable, and i’d sometimes nick my labia with the razor, but i did it anyway, because i didn’t want to have a nasty, “hairy pussy.”

eleven was the age i first started getting pinched on the EL. i was an early bloomer: i had B-cup breasts already, and my menstrual cycle was regular enough that i could keep a calendar. i started wearing a full face of makeup to school and buying shorts that rode all the way up my skinny twelve-year-old thighs. i remember the day i stopped jumping off the swings the summer after fifth grade. skinned knees weren’t sexy. smooth, flawless legs were sexy, and i was a sexy girl. i was probably the sexiest little girl in the whole world. my parents hated it. they told me i was too young, but i knew the truth. my body was older, maybe 17 or 18, so my brain must be, too.

when i was twelve, i had a secret kik account that my parents didn’t know about. i used it to message strangers. i made all sorts of friends. i wasn’t stupid. i used a fake name. never showed my face. one of my friends asked me for a bra picture. i was a cool girl, right, i was sexy, so i sent him a picture of me in front of my bedroom mirror in my little white training bra with the blue butterflies.

sexy, he said.

that was all i wanted.

i’m not typing out all this bullshit because i think it’s something special. i’m typing it out because it’s not. i’m typing it out because i see the same thing happening to my little sister. i’m typing it out because i see the same thing happening to that little millie bobbie brown, sexiest actress at thirteen. i’m typing it out because i’m sixteen years old now, a girl in the eyes of the law and a woman in the eyes of men.

mothers, talk to your daughters. tell them to jump off the swingset and skin their knees. tell them to get dirt on their dresses. tell them that they’re a woman on their 18th birthday, not at ten-and-a-half on the first day of their menstrual cycle. the world is confused. the world is sick. if your daughters don’t hear about how to treat their bodies from you, they’ll hear it from the sick, sick world, and they’ll do the things i did.

let girls be girls.

Portable Lumipen

Latest project from Ishikawa Senoo Laboratory is the latest iteration of their incredibly fast projection mapping technology that can project on moving surfaces, now in a more portable form:

Portable Lumipen is a portable dynamic projection mapping system that tracks a target at 1,000fps with 3ms response time.

In recent years, projection mapping systems for dynamically moving targets have been proposed and this field is called “dynamic projection mapping.” In Dynamic projection mapping, the moving target is tracked by a high-speed camera, and the projection is controlled at high speed. By achieving high responsiveness in sensing and feedback, these systems enable dynamic and immersive applications. However, they are not truly dynamic because the systems are fixed in a room.

In this reseach, we use a 3D-stacked vision chip and an optical gaze contoller and realize a portable dynamic projection mapping system. The 3D-stacked vision chip enables to omit a huge workstation and inefficient data transfer, and the optical gaze controller enables high-speed tracking shot and also tracking projection. The portable system enables a variety of applications including wearable user interface, projector-based makeup and combination with a drone, and this device will take projection mapping a step further.

One side sees the people as subjects; the other, customers. The difference between a dictator-subject relationship and a business-customer relationship is that the brutality and exploitation of the latter is masked behind layers of politeness and seduction, and so sometimes can be mistaken for generosity. 

Gloomy Sunday

Latest addition to Memo Akten’s ongoing ‘Learning to See’ project demonstrates a neural network powered realtime image translation framework, presenting possibilites for visual poetry:

A pre-trained deep neural network making predictions on live camera input, trying to make sense of what it sees, in context of what it’s seen before. It can see only what it already knows, just like us.