I found some pretty amazing work done by Lepht Anonym, a dying biohacker that takes transhumanism in her own hands at her own kitchen. Implanting sensors to her nerves she enhances her sensorial spectrum. An article on wired about her 

1. Mashups: The new breed of Web app, An introduction to mashups: http://bit.ly/6JisC

Duane Merrill gives an in depth description of Web applications. He denotes the difficulties and the progress of public domains in providing open APIs in order to facilitate mashups for third party users. The best and most common example is Google Maps. Web servers that don’t provide open APIs result in Screen scrapping, which is a less reliable way of stripping data from a server. Usually JavaScript is used to create client side requests that execute the logic on the server-side data library. Screen Scrapping is the alternate method of mashing up data to API , this method uses data that is created for human consumption. Mashers can write programs to strip this data, though it is not always consistent since most sites change these tags often when updating the visualization of their content. Ajax is a useful technology to load content that is extracted from a server to refresh content without having to reload or refresh the entire page. The main problem with Ajax is that the user needs to have javaScript enabled on their browser to parse the reloaded content. Merrill poses the social problems of mashups, he denotes that intellectual property is the most salient obstacle. Today, these are not always used seriously, but rather a hobby or a non-profiting project that integrates data. As servers realize the profits of providing open APIs for their content new rules and protocols will be set in place to set forth intellectual property guidelines for creating sophisticated applications.

2. Grey Album Producer Danger Mouse Explains How He Did It, http://bit.ly/hEOUS
In this essay Corey Moss interviews Brian Burton, composer of the “Grey Album”. Burton compiled Jay-Z’s The Black Album and the Beatle’s The White Album to create a mashup of Jay-Z’s cappella and the Beatle’s music beats. As the interview continues Burton states that he did not expect for this album to be public, neither gaining the amount of visibility it has received. Partly because when he was in the midst of production he realized that some people, including his friends, could consider it sacrilege to the Beatles. This album is just another sampling compilation, like the many we see in hip hop. The interesting aspect of it is the socio-racial connotations it implies. Though artistically it stands aside from these implications. It is impossible to ignore its social aspect. The Beatles greatly represent the Anglo population of American society, and The Black Album seems to have the same social weight in commentary to the African American society. I don’t see Burton’s album, as just another sampling album, but a strong comment on the way American culture should head towards the future. Blurring the cultural boundaries that persisted for hundreds of years, in this case The Grey Album poses the ultimate description of our current culture and society working towards integration.

3. 1+1+1+1=1 The New Math of Mashups: http://nyr.kr/bbEOOJ
Sasha Frere-Jones investigates different music mashups that have been popularized lately. Her first example is the “Frontin’ on Debra” mashup created by Jeremy Brown, DJ Reset. She explains that the song by Beck “Debra” and “Frontin’ ” in collaboration by Jay-Z and Pharell are not similar in style, but rather have an interesting correlation in content. She writes about their content as “for inept Romeos everywhere”, since in both songs the artists make abrupt misogynistic remarks. Then Fere-Jones critiques the The Grey Album, not considering a mashup because their content is so filtered that the origin of the work is not clear. She goes more in depth on the intellectual property rights of Jay-Z’s song “99 Problems”, denoting that the song already has 2 other samples from accredited copyrights.
So what we are seeing is this cycling of samples that later gets discarded and re-contained. Mashing “99 Problems” with another song means sampling, from a sample mashup. This brings a huge question for appropriation does the latest mashup artist owe reference to the sample owners used in Jay-Z’s original?

4. Hacking, Mashing, Gluing: Understanding Opportunistic Design: http://bit.ly/9kpZ2z
Björn Hartmann, Scott Doorley, and Scott R. Klemmer co-authored this research based paper to investigate the use of existing technologies for creating new projects. They divided their research in three sections, Web 2.0, hardware, and ubiquitous computing. From each section they selected 4 participants. Their goal was to pinpoint the uses of pre-existing technologies in the individuals’ projects. For the Web based group 2 of them used Google Maps API, which leads to the argument on expanding publicly accessible API’s. All of the Web participants ran into the same issue at the culmination of their projects, even though some had been offered commercial support for their application, intellectual property rights made it impossible for these projects to be economically viable. As far as the hardware spectrum, the participants were mainly using off the shelf components and other products to evoke a specific concept in mind. Which mean that these mashups, were really prototypes. The idea behind the connection of the objects was more important than the context of the objects themselves. As for Ubicomp participants, there was a salient example of a sound designer. He used other game technologies available and created a physical patch for music interaction. These complex systems can be forged with “dove-tails” or “hot-glue”, write the authors. They consider that a mashup will have a varying amounts of solid and lose connections because of the nature of compatibility within systems.

5. Harnessing the Power of Feedback Loops: Thomas Goetz. Wired Magazine, 2011: http://bit.ly/o6EqJd
Feedback loops have become an integral part of our lives to accentuate positive behaviour. Thomas Goetz gives the example of radar-speed signs in school zones. He describes how law enforcement could not manage to make motorists respect school zone speed limits by force. If they set out a policemen to ticket people, or flashing lights, regardless of consequence drivers would still not comply with the law. Once they introduced a radar speedometer that exposed each car’s speed publicly on a board, then finally drivers began to change their behaviour. The article asserts that drivers are more struck by reading their speed from a radar display, than their own speedometer on their dashboard, to change their behaviour. I think this has to do with social pressure rather than simply a feedback emotional response. If your speed is plastered across the highway, or school zone, the social pressure of being publicly exposed changes your behaviour.
Feedback loops have a more effective result when retrieving data that is not obvious. For example, Patel’s experiment on electric noise monitoring. This interface results in useful information, that could not be gathered easily, but is necessary to be conscientious about. Examples like the GreenGoose by Krejcarek deal directly with the wanted and personal monitoring of behaviour. With RFID tags, and accelerometers, he managed to create a system that records the use of certain objects that imply behaviour, such as brushing teeth or sweeping. Depending on the amount of use, the GreenGoose keeps the data as points that can later be used for games on his website. This reward model is not necessary, but it acts as an incentive to promote people’s positive actions.

I did a quick exercise, in continuation of what I had previously done for my 7×7 project, adding the concept of mashup into it.
So I took “Ma Baker” by “Bonny M.”, and “Big in Japan” by “Alphaville”, recorded and mashed them up together.
Vocals, Guitars, Bass by my old self, and recorded in GarageBand.

Ma Baker in Japan

Mashups, in my opinion can be considered a synthesis of the existing data on the web. Limitless applications can be thought of when dealing with Mashups. From artistic applications focusing on a concept and using bits of data, displacing and combining them to make a statement, to practical service-oriented mashups such as data layers on maps in an effort to facilitate navigation, mashups introduce a whole new range of possibilities.

Much effort is being put towards creating web based services unique to their own field, and from time to time “inventing the wheel” again; while if we look at the current world wide web as our toolbox and building blocks, one can create a synthetic service taking advantage of semantic data.

In case of AJAX, as an increasingly popular tool not only in mashups but in the creation of web in general, I believe the tendency towards creating desktop-application-looking websites introduces a trend, and a vision. The text point out that the AJAX experience can be inconvenient to navigate back and forth since the bit of information loaded in different parts of the page do not result in loading of a different file form the server. I believe the point is valid. But the back and forth navigation are constrained dictated to us as users and designers by web browsers. Browsers that evolved from their early 90’s versions serving HTML4 pages to now asynchronous data loading through XMLHttpRequest.

The vision, and the trend proposed by technologies such as AJAX, might be a calling towards revolutionizing the way we browse the web. If navigation becomes and issue in AJAX-loaded pages in our browsers, I believe rethinking should be done in the design of browsers. In my opinion, the time when local computers will serve as mere operating-system-as-browsers is not that far ahead, taking off load from local computing and putting it all on servers, with our operating systems acting just as browsers and nothing more. In this rather futuristic context, navigating back and forth triggered by loading the complete page DOM will not be efficient anymore.

If we think of API’s as interfaces between web applications and services, semantic web can be considered the spoken language. The grammar in which countless parts and nodes of this increasingly growing web fall into their own place, making it possible for us to navigate through and benefit from data. This is where closed architectures become unavailable to other services, making it difficult to interface with them. Datascraping in my opinion is the fruit of non-semantic closed architectures. Personally I do not approve of the closed mentality of systems as such.

But this openness does not come at no cost. Obviously issues of intellectual property and privacy introduce challenges here. A coherent policy might be a workaround to the intellectual property challenges.

To sum up, I believe an effort towards making the web a semantic structure, offering easy-to-use API’s accompanied by appropriate licensing to protect intellectual rights can pave the path for a robust web. A web in which applications will act as building blocks of a well structured accessible structure that can be reshaped, re-purposed, re-used and improved.

I heard about this along time ago.  I’m a music fan, but I never really sampled this Danger Mouse’s remix of Jay Z + The Beatles.  I think anytime a musician touches the Beatles, they get sued.  So I wasn’t surprised that the a cease-and-desist letter happened.

It was interesting to read about how Danger Mouse’s process and how it wasn’t really that easy for him to do, from deconstructing and reconstructing them all over again.  It had taken him two weeks just to pull beats from one track to another then see if they made sense.  I can only imagine.  I think what helped him to accomplish this is his love for both of the musicians Jay Z+ Beatles.  He sites that he had become “obsessed” in getting it done and perfectly well.

I haven’t actually heard this Mash-up and I found a track on YouTube and I was impressed with how it all made sense in the end as in it was pleasant to listen to:
by Danger Mouse

But with this article in relationship with what we’re doing, it was a good insight as to what a Mash-up is.  Although I have no clue what my deadline would be.  In context of music, it’s pretty straight forward.  Take two different tracks, preferably from two different genres, take them apart and combine them both.  What comes out of it is a hybrid of two songs that seems to work.  With music Mash-ups, one would have to carefully and intricately, splice and piece things back together.  If it’s not done properly it would end up sounding like a big mess.

For us, I imagine we’d have to be doing some sort of Mash-up.  I don’t exactly know what I’ll be coming up with nor where to start.  All I know is I’d like it to be something that would be beneficial to a person’s well being, something designed to help or address some sort of social problem.   Just something useful.  Because as a designer, I view myself as someone who is a problem solver.

I had to read this one twice.

Bleeker’s style of writing seemed a little sporadic at least for me.  I wasn’t really getting his train of thought, I didn’t know where he was leading me and mainly the metaphors he used seemed to be all over the place.  I couldn’t quickly grasp the material because he just sort of rambled on.

I liked that he touched up on the importance of blogging, he explains of its network of exchange of ideas, reports and commentaries on ideas, products places or things.  “They report what they see, know and think about” as he puts it.  That’s true in all sense.  It’s the exchange of ideas, whether it’s been read or not, readily accessible over the internet on top of that is what’s important.  Before networking via the internet ever existed, our exchange has been limited, I’m guessing through word of mouth, articles published and consumer reports.

But here’s what I summed up with what Bleeker is trying to imply.  Things (Internet of Things) are important in a more modernized and sophisticated world such as ours, well mainly because Things are an exchange of ideas centered in meaningful topics.  I also think that it’s a reflection of our culture.  To which I agree with what Bleeker implies, because in our current culture and decade, information is valuable.

He mentions the ubiquitous things, internet, wifi all over the place as well as security cameras.  All have something to do with capturing, gathering and providing information.  When used properly, it’s very useful with law enforcement, security, marketing, business growth and both cultural growth and also exchange.  Things can be socially meaningful and it’s interesting to see how things like this shapes a culture.

But after a long time reading through this, I did eventually agree with the points that he’d touched up on.