Monthly Archives: May 2005

stelarc

Posted on by October 14, 2012
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… completely unfinished thoughts—anyway, here we go: When the concept of ‘structure’ suddenly burst into anthropology and replaced ‘pattern’, ↑Alfred Kroeber (1876-1960) derogatory commented that this was merely an interchanging of words—old wine in new bottles. He was wrong, because it meant more. Namely a change of perspectives in anthropology. Same is true for ‘ethnic’ and ‘ethnicity’ replacing ‘tribe’ and ‘culture’ in the mid-1970s. (↵Cohen 1978: 379-380, 384-385) In other words: This vocabulary is a portal to the understanding of the history, or even the culture of anthropology itself. In 1994 anthropologist ↑Arturo Escobar stigmatised words like ‘cyberspace’ as misnomers—he … Continue reading →

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military training geeks

Posted on by October 3, 2012
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Two new publications from the extreme ends of the spectrum, but both touching my topic. Now guess which one of the two is closer to my mind and heart. KELTY, CHRISTOPHER M. 2005. Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics. Cultural Anthropology 20(2):185-214. official abstract: This article investigates the social, technical, and legal affiliations among “geeks” (hackers, lawyers, activists, and IT entrepreneurs) on the Internet. The mode of association specific to this group is that of a “recursive public sphere” constituted by a shared imaginary of the technical and legal conditions of possibility for their own association. On the basis of … Continue reading →

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piling up

Posted on by October 2, 2012
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playful appropriation of gamespace  ↑[HP] just sent me a screenshot of an avatar-tower done in ‘Quake 3 Arena’ (↵Q3A—check out the ↑movie-collection at planetquake3 for footage of more like this, for example the ↑57 Player Q3 Tower [.avi | 35,2MB]). [HP]’s only accompanying line-of-text was “roxooxoxoxorz”, roughly meaning: “that rocks like hell&mdash’nough said!” The tight to-the-pointness of his commentary gives me the opportunity to post my unfinished thoughts on ‘playful appropriation of gamespace’: Although it was published already in 1999 the so-called first-person-shooter Q3A still is very popular today (in 2005), both on the Internet and at ↵LAN-parties. The underlying … Continue reading →

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filing up

Posted on by October 5, 2012
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This project started some time in 2002, the exact starting point can’t be named, as the idea gradually developed by associating otherwise unrelated input. After ↑KerLeone had preached enough I converted into an ardent believer in weblogs. Consequently the two of us started the ↑ethno::log. Soon it became clear to me that I needed an own weblog for my project, but due to a whole array of contrarieties it did not see the light of day before late 2004. Until then I wrote and saved everything on my harddrives, or published it over at the ethno::log. Especially the latter’s categories … Continue reading →

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ethnicity online

Posted on by March 1, 2011
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Having read on ‘quasi kinship’ (Brown 1989), on the forming of transnational communities on ethnical basis (Glick Schiller, Basch & Szanton Blanc 1995) and the problem of ethnicity in anthropology (Cohen 1978) led me to the question: what about the common myth of origin within the MP-modding community? What was the primordial mythical time? Some esotericism: MP-gamespace is the primordial time, which can always be accessed, is potentially omnipresent. BROWN, DAVID. 1989. Ethnic revival: Perspectives on State and Society. Third World Quarterly 11(4)1-17. COHEN, RONALD. 1978. Ethnicity: Problem and focus in anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 7:379-403. GLICK SCHILLER, NINA, … Continue reading →

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time traveler convention

Posted on by October 4, 2012
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The folks at MIT are hosting ↑The Time Traveler Convention on May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC) | (event starts at 8:00pm—feel free to come at either 8pm, 10pm, or anytime in between.) | East Campus Courtyard, MIT | 42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W | (42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees) … that should suffice to ↵spawn correctly. Although “technically, you would only need one time traveler convention” ever (think about it a bit, just a bit) and nothing else, the guys are helping out by answering questions like: Can’t the time travelers just hear about it from the attendees, and … Continue reading →

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dark side of casemodding

Posted on by October 1, 2012
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By squishing a ↑computer into a vintage-model of Han Solo’s Millenium Falcon casemodder ↑Russ Caslis made the Star-Wars-nerd’s heart jump high and right out of the galaxy. ↑Alienware just seems to have achieved the opposite, ↑according to boingboing: “Alienware has licensed the right to create an official Star Wars PC from Lucas, and then squandered the opportunity by shipping a pair of stock PCs distinguished only by cheesy van-art airbrush murals on their sides.” A perfect example of casemodding becoming “‘ethnokitsch,’ commercially designed and profitably mass produced.” (↵Mitchell 1992: 174) Kitty, one of Michael Kitchenman’s informants has voiced that, too. … Continue reading →

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hypermedia ethnography

Posted on by October 3, 2012
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Note to me: Checking your own referrer-log ain’t just a bonfire of vanity, but sometimes indeed proofs to be useful. Anthropology student ↑Andrea Handl of Vienna urges me in her ↑blog entry to have a look on the dissertation by Johann Stockinger. Then some soul was good natured enough to click the link to xirdalium Andrea had inserted and presto—I found it in my logs. That’s one of the ways the blogosphere works, I guess. Here’s what I am urged to read: ↑STOCKINGER, JOHANN. 2004. Ethnologische Wissensrepräsentation mittels XML. Univ.-Diss. Wien. Unfortunately it seems not to be published yet. Mr. … Continue reading →

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