Over the past two weeks uɐɯʞuǝɯ ɐsoɹ and I have been working on the Mediamatic Distributed Library project:

We are liquidating our library in protest of the cultural funding stalemate

Mediamatic will give away all its books. Our library will cease to exist in protest of the impasse between the Raad van Cultuur and Minister Plasterk on cultural subsidies. We call on the public to come collect the full book collection and to take care of the cultural capital themselves. Mediamatic can no longer do it on their own. (Press release June 19th, 2008)

A library filled with books and media objects waiting to be taken care of.

Mediamatic has been carefully documenting their collection of books, magazines, VHS tapes, Betamax tapes, CD-ROMs and a wide variety of other media objects in Filemaker. The first part of the project consisted of exporting this Filemaker database to a .cvs file that could be “cleansed” before importing it into Mediamatic’s anyMeta system.

The cleaning of data is a meticulous task for any (un)certified Data Care Specialist. Unfortunately the original Filemaker file had all the authors in one single field without a consistent notation. I spent the first week on preparing an import file for anyMeta and working with Mediamatic on database structures and press releases.

After 2500 items were imported into the database Roos and I went through the whole physical archive and moved it into the library space. We started planning and organizing the event that took place on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th of June.

Five minutes before take-off. Cybrarian crew from left to right: Me, Michael, Laura and Roos

The event on Saturday started at 4 o’clock and dozens of people who had been waiting outside for the doors to open entered the library. Even though we had friends helping us register all the outgoing books the amount of people who wanted to take care of all the books was overwhelming.

Crowds are gathering.

There were drinks and a DJ and a lot of press present to cover the bookparty. After day 1 about 70% of all the titles were gone and distributed among the members of the Mediamatic network.

Happy booklovers

On the second day there were still dozens of people taking up to thirty books home! It was less busy which gave us the opportunity to personally help people to enter stories on the books and take pictures for the website. One of the rules of the Mediamatic Distributed Library is that you will write down your motivation for taking care of this particular book and enter a picture into the system. A typical page will then look like this entry on the book Jargon Watch. The idea is to extend the information on the media objects and to build a social network around them using the existing Mediamatic network.

The Stedelijk Museum is going to take care of all the items that have not found a new caretaker this weekend and is going to distribute a part of the collection among other cultural institutions and libraries.

Mediamatic is thinking about organizing a follow-up event to meet your fellow booklovers, caretakers to provide a platform where you can exchange your books or bring new books for the distributed library. Keep your eye on the Mediamatic website for more information.

Press & Media coverage:

Parool.tv. Three seconds of me at 2:24 mins ;)

More pictures on Flickr.

Here are the slides of the lecture I gave at Mediamatic in Amsterdam yesterday titled ‘The Widgetized Self. Distributed identity and the role of software-engine relations in blogging.’

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Easy embedding of the slideshow thanks to Joost de Valk’s great SlideShare WordPress plugin.

This Thursday I will be giving a lecture on ‘The Widgetized Self‘ a term coined by Nancy Baym. Blogs are increasingly connected to search engines such as Google and Technorati through the blog software. This leads to practices that focus on identity building through the engines. What does the increasing popularity of widgets mean for the identity of the blog and the blogger? What role do blog software and blog templates play in identity construction?

The lecture is part of the Mediamatic Beauty Parlour lecture series which deals with self presentation on the net.

Esther Weltevrede will present our MacBook Reading Club. Digital camera technology advanced ego-photography and ways for self presentation. The web cam advanced camera technology as medium of selfpresentation further. The camera is always directed at the self. The image where the face is shot from a slightly upper angle is known as the “Youtube angle” or “MySpace angle”. With the built-in cam and Photobooth software, the first thing one does when installing a new mac is taking a snapshot of the self. MacBook Reading Club takes advantage of Photobooth and the build-in camera. MacBook Reading Club is a new phenomenon in ego-photography, and introduces the “MacBook Reading Club angle”.

Admission is free and the presentations will be in English. Hope to see you there!

General information:

Place: Mediamatic, Amsterdam
Date: Thursday the 27th of March
Time: 18:00 hours
Admission: FREE
Language: English

More info on the Mediamatic page.

Timo Arnall, Einar Sneve Martinussen and Jørn Knutsen and I built an RFID Photo Booth at the Mediamatic RFID & Physical Computing Hackers Camp. We think it looks absolutely beautiful and we can’t wait for people to actually use it.

If you are visiting the PICNIC festival check it out in the Extraction Hall East (Zuiveringshal Oost) with your Rabobank RFID chip. Invite your friends, the more the merrier, scan your RFID badge and smile!

The RFID Photobooth project page.

The RFID Photobooth Flickr photo page.

Test picture for our RFID Photo Installation with Mediamatic founder Willem van Velthoven.

Picnic bags

iTea

I am covering the Mediamatic RFID & Physical Computing Hackers Camp @ Picnic 07 and the PICNIC conference in my Flickr stream.

I have been planning on writing an update of what I’ve been up to lately but first this: I am proud to announce that I will be participating in the Mediamatic RFID & Physical Computing Hackers Camp @ PICNIC07. This will be a great hands-on learning experience and an excellent preparation for the Recalling RFID event at the Balie that I will also be attending.

At the PICNIC07 event I will probably build/design several web components but of course I will keep you updated during the event.

My databody at the RFID Paraplay event at Paradiso.