screenlife

Wifi Tapestry

Artwork by Richard Vijgen is a woven fabric whose appearance alters based on surrounding wifi traffic:

WifiTapestry is a dynamic wall hanging that visualises the wireless activity of a space. The tapestry visualises the ever changing “landscape” of radio frequencies around us. The invisible signals from Cellphones, printers and all kinds of smart devices leave an imprint as they try to negotiate available wireless channels.

A controller listens to all traffic across 13 channels of the 2.4GHz WiFi Spectrum. Whenever data is transmitted on a channel, the controller sends a current to an array of thermal elements embedded in the tapestry, converting data into heat and activating a thermochromic yarn woven into the tapestry. Like a Shroud of Turin, streams of data transmitted through a space appear as visual traces from an invisible dimension that gradually form and dissolve.

Like we’ve got this dimension right next to ours, that extends across the entire planet, and it is just brimming with nightmares. We have spambots, viruses, ransomware, this endless legion of malevolent entities that are blindly probing us for weaknesses, seeking only to corrupt, to thieve, to destroy.

Add onto that the corrupted ones themselves, humans who’ve abandoned morality and given up faces to hunt other people, jeering them, lashing out, seeing how easy it is to kill something you can’t touch or see or smell. They’ll corrupt anything they think could be a vessel for their message and they’ll jabber madly at any who question them. Their chittering haunts every corner of the internet. They are not unlike the spambots in some ways.

Add on top of that the arcane magisters, who are forever working at the cracks between our world and the world we made. Some of them do it for fun, some of them do it for wealth, others do it for the power of nations unwise enough to trust them. There are mages who work to defend against this particular evil, but they are mad prophets, and their advice is almost never heeded, even by those who keep them as protection.

All people know several spells to use the internet. Facebook asks you for the magic words to log in, so does your email, so does your twitter and on and on. The spells are words or a gesture with the hand, some use the colour of your eyes, or the shape of your finger. Our chief of security joked about requiring users to give a drop of blood before they could log in. Many do not understand the humour of mages.

The cracks between the two are breaking. IP cameras filled our world with eyes and the magisters learned how to open almost all of them. We all carry magic slabs of glass that if you hold it up to your ear can sing to you with a loved one’s voice, but if you look at it with your eyes, can show you a corrupted human with bleeding orange skin scream the profane with a thousand voices. The other day I saw someone hack a moving vehicle. At one point they made it stop. At another they made it so it couldn’t stop. Some of our best and brightest are going to create an army of four winged bats hovering throughout every city and we are going to connect them directly to the dimension where the nightmares live.

On april 7th, 2017, I made a request of a french ID card. All the papers asked for the card were legal and authentic, the demand was accepted and I have now my new French ID card.

The photo I submitted for this request is actually a 3D model created on a computer, by means of several different software and techniques used for special effects in movies and in the video game industry. It is a digital image, where the body is absent, the result of an artificial process.

The image corresponds to the official demands for an ID: it is resembling, is recent, and answers all the criteria of framing, light, bottom and contrasts to be observed.

The document validating my french identity in the most official way thus presents today an image of me which is practically virtual, a version of video game, fiction.

WHOLE FOODS: CUSTOMER, NOT RETAILER

This is the key to understanding the purchase of Whole Foods: to the outside it may seem that Amazon is buying a retailer. The truth, though, is that Amazon is buying a customer — the first-and-best customer that will instantly bring its grocery efforts to scale.

Today, all of the logistics that go into a Whole Foods store are for the purpose of stocking physical shelves: the entire operation is integrated. What I expect Amazon to do over the next few years is transform the Whole Foods supply chain into a service architecture based on primitives: meat, fruit, vegetables, baked goods, non-perishables (Whole Foods’ outsized reliance on store brands is something that I’m sure was very attractive to Amazon). What will make this massive investment worth it, though, is that there will be a guaranteed customer: Whole Foods Markets.

(via Amazon’s New Customer – Stratechery by Ben Thompson)

Extremely good essay. well worth a read.

‘I NEED A COMPUTER!’ - it’s the future and Keanu Reeves is proto-Neo Johnny Smith. He’s had his memory wiped. It’s the future so it all begins in Beijing. It’s the future so people wear angular hats but it’s also the past so they send a lot of faxes.

Even if you haven’t seen Johnny Mnemonic you have.

It’s the future and Keanu Reeves is a data courier smuggling information that can’t be sent on The Net. He just wants to take on one last job (like Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception). It’s the future and there’s too much data in Keanu’s tiny brain. He got an upgrade but it wasn’t enough. 160 GBs! It makes his nosebleed (like Scarlett Johanssen in Lucy). All he wants is his childhood back. He takes the data to the free city of Newark, NJ. The rookies who hired him get shot and he doesn’t have the download code.

It’s the future and everyone wants the data. A hot bodyguard in chainmail called Jane rescues him but she’s melting down too. Her nose doesn’t bleed but her arms convulse. 

In Newark it’s the future and there are anti-corporate anarchists with dreadlocks and bonfires in metal trash cans. Ice T is the leader of the anarchists. We know he’s an anarchist because he has an anarchy symbol on his head. 

It’s the future and the pharmaceutical companies are evil.

It’s the future and everyone’s bodies are overloaded. They’ve got the black shakes.   

'What causes it?’

'The world causes it… Technological civilization. This shit causes it.’

Whatever’s in Keanu’s tiny brain is worth a lot of money. Turns out he’s carrying the cure to the shakes but the evil pharmaceutical companies make more profit from treatments than cures. All Keanu wants is his childhood. 

It’s the future and Johnny doesn’t really have a personality which might be because he has no memory or might be because he’s Keanu Reeves. Either way, he feels some compulsion to deliver the cure so it can help Jane and also cure the whole world (like Matt Damon in Elysium). But this is very stressful. He just wants room service and his childhood and shouts for a while on top of some kind of slag heap.

Sometimes Johnny has memory flashes - balloons or a tiny tricycle. It is very poignant (like Sean Young in Blade Runner only in reverse). He kisses Jane. 

Ice T takes them to Heaven to meet Jones who 'cuts through hard encryption like a knife cuts through butter.’ It’s the future and Jones is a dolphin. 

Takeshi Kitano turns up. His daughter is dead. It’s a bit confusing. There is also some kind of cyber Messiah crucifixion and a woman burning up inside a computer.

Johnny goes into cyberspace and lots of balloons come flooding back into his memory. He is happy when he remembers his mother. 'Happy birthday Johnny’. It’s like Citizen Kane’s rosebud. Only Keanu doesn’t die.

The evil Pharmakon building is on fire. 

'It’s pay back time’ says Ice T. The flames glow on the horizon. Johnny and Jane look pretty cool against the blue screen.