Winner Transnational Communities Award - Transborder Immigrant Tool

Artists: Ricardo Domínguez, Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cárdenas y Jason
Najarro

A bang.lab project: (http://bang.calit2.net)

Project: Transborder Immigrant Tool (Herramienta Transfronteriza para
Inmigrantes)

Country: U.S.A

http://en.transitiomx.net/competition/transnationalwinner

The award was presented as part of the *nomadic borders* program of
the International Electronic Art Festival - TRANSITIO_MX 02. Which was
held in Mexico City from Oct. 12th to Oct. 20th, 2007.

The Transnational Communities Award was presented to us by the US
Embassy in Mexico and the award was funded by *Cultural Contact*,
Endowment for Culture Mexico - U.S. (Contacto Cultural, Fideicomiso
para la Cultura México-Estados Unidos).

The *Transborder Immigrant Tool* has also received an
award from UCSD, Center for Humanities' Transborder
Interventions, Transcontinental Archives Awards 2007-2008.
http://humctr.ucsd.edu/awards/awards.shtml#Transborder

We also received support from the Calit2 Summer Undergraduate Research
Scholarship Program at UCSD 2007 for our undergraduate researcher
Jason Navarro.

About Transborder Immigrant Tool:

The border between the U.S. and Mexico has moved between the virtual
and the all too real since before the birth of the two nation-states.
This has allowed a deep archive of suspect movement across this
border to be traced and tagged – specifically anchored to immigrants
bodies moving north, while immigrant bodies moving south much less
so. The danger of moving north across this border is not a question
of politics, but vertiginous geography. Hundreds of people have died
crossing the U.S./Mexico border due to not being able to tell where
they are in relation to where they have been and which direction
they need to go to reach their destination safely. Now with the rise
of multiple distributed geospatial information systems (such as the
Goggle Earth Project for example), GPS (Global Positioning System) and
the developing Virtual Hiker Algorithm by artist Brett Stalbaum it
is now possible to develop a Transborder Tools for Immigrants to be
implemented and distributed on cracked Nextel cell phones. This will
allow a virtual geography to mark new trails and potentially safer
routes across this desert of the real.

The technologies of Spatial Data Systems and GPS (Global Positioning
System) have enabled an entirely new relationship with the landscape
that takes form in applications for simulation, surveillance, resource
allocation, management of cooperative networks and pre-movement
pattern modeling (such as the Virtual Hiker Algorithm) an algorithm
that maps out a potential or suggested trail for real a hiker/or
hikers to follow. The Transborder Immigrant Tool would add a new layer
of agency to this emerging virtual geography that would allow segments
of global society that are usually outside of this emerging grid of
hyper-geo-mapping-power to gain quick and simple access with to GPS
system. The Transborder Immigrant Tool would not only offer access to
this emerging total map economy – but, would add an intelligent agent
algorithm that would parse out the best routes and trails on that day
and hour for immigrants to cross this vertiginous landscape as safely
as possible.

We also just returned from Berlin's House of World Culture where
bang.lab presented a new project on nanotechology, nomadic cultures
of New York art practice and the global economies - entitled:

PARTICLES OF INTEREST: TALES FROM THE MATTER MARKET
(a b.a.n.g lab project)
by
Ricardo Dominguez and Diane Ludin (Principal Investigators)

http://pitmm.net/

Lead Researcher:Nina Waisman

Assistant Researchers: Tristan Shone, Caleb Waldorf, Amy Carroll,
Marius Schebella, Pierre Galaud and Césaire José Carroll-Dominguez

nomadic new york counters Manhattan’s restless flow of money with
“decelerated” in-between spaces. Their performance art refuses
spectacle. It takes on a political dimension through the formation of
temporary collectives which occupy spaces in new ways. The artists
open up New York and Berlin through their nomadic coming and going,
their avoidance of fixed structures. In Berlin they will tell us a
story of life in the global metropolis, a story that we all have in
common.

For the market, nanoparticles hold the 21st century’s great
promise. For critics, they are a vision of pure horror, as long
as the toxicological risks are not known. The era of unregulated
nanocapitalism has already dawned, with these smallest of particles
being used today in cosmetics, fabrics and dyes. Ricardo Dominguez,
founder of the Electronic Disturbance Theater and initiator of virtual
sit-ins with the Zapatista resistance, sees his art as explicitly
politically commissioned. He and Diane Ludin invite the public to a
multimedia lecture-performance with two leading nanotechnologists that
will provide insight into the stories of the global particle market.
Knowledge is action!

http://www.hkw.de/en/programm2007/new_york/_new_york/projekt-detail_3_
14893.php

This project was funded by CALIT2 Research Funds and the UCSD,
Division of Arts and Humanities.

A new version of this nano-culture project will open at the San Diego

Museum of Art in March 2008 as part of the *Next Wave* show.

CAP: Artists and activists Ricardo Dominguez and DJ lotu5 will give a presentation about their recent work with the Electronic Disturbance Theater, the Transborder Immigrant Tool, Hacklab and the Boredom Patrol of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army. The presentation will be followed by an open forum with the audience.

The CAP Forum Series brings leading artists, intellectuals, civic leaders, community activists and policy makers in conversation with the CalArts community. The series promotes learning and critical dialogue about artistic practices and strategies committed to community engagement, collaborative approaches and the arts as a catalyst for social change.

CalArts is located at 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia, CA 91355.

This event is free and open to the public.

Spring 2008 - Vis 198 - Directed Group Study
Collective Art Practice - Performative and Networked Approaches to Challenging Power

If you have questions or are interested in registering for this class, email Micha Cárdenas at mcardenas at ucsd (d0t] edu.

This class has three main foci:

- to introduce students to collective practices
- to facilitate student understanding of social issues embodied in the san diego / tijuana borderlands
- to explore online space as public space, its limitations and possibilities

Throughout the class, students will meet art and activist collectives from the San Diego/Tijuana border region and discuss their approaches to collective practice and their motivations for using it. Two of these collective presentations will take place in Tijuana, in order to facilitate collaboration with students at the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC) in Tijuana. The presenting groups may include: Groundwork Books at UCSD, The Boredom Patrol of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, Grrrl Zines A Go-Go, Bulbo.tv, Lui Velazquez, San Diego Indymedia, Colectivo Zapatista and Sharing Is Sexy.org.

The main goal will be for students to create collective projects responding to social issues existing in the San Diego / Tijuana border region building on this understanding of collective practice and, ideally, begin long term sustainable collectives within which to continue the practice. The projects will be collaborative engagements with real-world issues, consisting of performance in the online public space of Second Life. Students will consider the nature of public space, the lack of physical space and the opportunities for online spaces to be public spaces.

This class will take place in the Spring 2008 quarter at UCSD, on Wednesday nights from 5-8pm. The class is supported by an Open Classroom grant from UCIRA and is receiving support from CRCA.

Second Life image from Second Front, http://slfront.blogspot.com

Border image from http://noborderscamp.org

Watch the video of this talk at the 24th Chaos Computer Club meeting in Berlin, here.

About the talk: Biological engineering does not have to be confined to the laboratories of high-end industry laboratories. Rather, it is desirable to  ... all » foster a more open culture of biological technology. This talk is an effort to do so; it aims to equip you with basic practical knowledge of biological engineering.

Genetic engineering is now a thirty year old technology. For reference, over a similar period of time, modern computing machines went from exclusive objects used to design weapons of mass destruction, to the now ubiquitous panoply of personal computing devices that support mass communication and construction. Inspired by this and many other past examples of the overwhelmingly constructive uses of technology by individuals, we have been working over the past five years to develop new tools that will help to make biology easy to engineer. We have also been working to foster a constructive culture of future biological technologists, who can reliably and responsibly conceive, develop, and deliver biological technologies that solve local problems.

This talk will introduce current best practice in biological engineering, including an overview of how to order synthetic DNA and how to use and contribute standard biological parts to an open source collection of genetic functions. The talk will also discuss issues of human practice, including biological safety, biological security, ownership, sharing, and innovation in biotechnology, community organization, and perception across many different publics. My hope is that the conferees of 24C3 will help me to understand how to best enable an overwhelmingly constructive hacker culture for programming DNA.

 Also, see the comic book version!