“Design and the Elastic Mind” exhibition opens February 24th, 2008 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The Real Time Rome project is included in the exhibition catalogue. The exhibition, curated by Paola Antonelli, focuses on designers’ ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and social mores, changes that will demand or reflect major adjustments in human behavior, and convert them into objects and systems that people understand and use.

The exhibition highlights examples of successful translation of disruptive innovation, examples based on ongoing research, as well as reflections on the future responsibilities of design. If you are around NYC, you don’t want to miss it!

Junk Jet is a fanzine for electronics and aesthetics. When they asked some work from me, I was immediately psyched by their mix of retro web style and cybernetic concepts. I participated to the first issue with Micro Fashion Network and Open I/O. Just to recap what these are again. Micro Fashion Network is a low-res sampling scheme for the fashion system. By sensing the colors of the clothing of people on the street, it extracts a color relationship diagram over time. Open I/O is a platform to compose distributed physical media by exchanging sensor data over the Internet. I am looking forward to see the first issue of Junk Jet.

On their website they describe Junk Jet as:

Junk Jet deals with tinkering (bricoler, basteln), with forms and found objects, with theories and (small) narratives, with fashions and styles, and of course with computers and other electronic devices. It is about exploring do-it-yourself works, accidental outcomes, deviant and normal aesthetic forms that result from misused media, subverted customary tools, and jammed common practices. It is about cultivating an anti heart by “introducing noise to signal”: by distorting the digital hype and collapsing the technological seduction.

Junk Jet is currently doing the release event in Stuttgart. 2/5BZ Serhat Köksal from Istanbul is doing an audio-visual show that you don’t want to miss. Among many participants the first issue include Olia Lialina, Future Farmers, Matthew Fuller, Amy Alexander, and Jan Jalinek.

Real Time Rome has featured in Turkey’s prestigious architecture and design magazine Arredamento. I wrote an article describing six software-maps that utilize data gathered, in real time and at an unprecedented scale, from cell phones and wireless technologies, to better understand the patterns of daily life in Rome. The article covered both the techniques (data structures, protocols, processes) and cultural reflections (social control, information awareness, all-seeing, semi-openness) of the Real Time Rome project.

Here are some shots from the coverage (click on the images to enlarge):