An exploration of virtual experiences and environments in and about China.
Aw Guo on IfGoGo:
This is a “panda shaoxiang” version. Shaoxiang, aka “烧香” in Chinese, means go to the temple for burning incense and offering up a sacrifice. The Shaoxiang Panda is a very famous computer virus (worm like) in China during 2007. Once you get infected, all the icons of your files will be a picture like this one.
Then of course, someone applied this image to a real photo and Photoshop:
A city wall tower and very clearly, the moat, Beijing, 1840-1860: just one of the many photos from around the Pacific, circa 1840-1940, now to be found online at the National Gallery of Australia’s Picture Paradise exhibition. Well worth browsing through this eclectic collection of shots of everything from Australian aborigines to Javanese dancers, a white European man in Chinese dress in a Hong Kong studio, bathers on the Ganges, and views of Fuzhou, in “daguerreotype portraits, mass-produced views and portraits on paper made possible by the revolutionary wet-plate and dry-plate glass negative-positive process, and prints from the modern era of small format film cameras and photojournalism.”
Start at the themes page and click through to the different collections, and be prepared for the dizzying format of photos sliding into view from left to right. I wish they wouldn’t do that.
(via The Asian Studies WWW Monitor: Aug 2008, Vol. 15, No. 9 (283))
“With music by Damon Albarn, and imagery by Jamie Hewlett — the duo that brought us the Gorillaz — I am loving BBC Sport’s marketing campaign for the Chinese Olympics.”
Via Drawn.
You’ve all seen the Beijing National Stadium by now…
But have you seen this farmer creation?
(Actually, Aw Guo guesses that a farmer made it. We don’t know for sure.)
Via IfGoGo (originally from Xiaonei).
Global Lives wants to film 24 hours in the life of a rural person somewhere in China. Want to join them?
全球生活计划 英文名字Global LivesProject (http://www.globallives.org计划于2008年9月于中国拍摄. 我们是一个非盈利教育艺术组织,与超过100个合作者于8个国家进行拍摄,我们寻找志愿于中国拍摄的志愿者。我们具体地需要以下几种类型的志愿者与组织机关.
在中国的团体与伙伴-对与大学的通信部门,博物馆,绿影生产演播室,或是其他文化团体合作感兴趣的志愿者. 中国副导演/制片-从事拍摄准备的相关工作,大约6-8个工作天. 平面摄影师-拍摄当天+运输时间,两人作业的状况,作业时间为8小时
摄影师-拍摄当天+运输时间,8-12小时的作业时间. 生产助理-于拍摄过程中协助导演/制片. 翻译-于拍摄当天配合翻译的相关工作.
我们已经募集到四名志愿者加入拍摄工作Nobuhiro Awata, Ya-Hsuan Huang, Ron Carr 和David Harris。Nobuhiro 和Ron筹画并且拍摄过GL于东京, David Harris于巴西和美国筹划并且拍摄过GL,Ron从日本带来照相摄影设备,但附加设备仍需要当地相关人员提供以及协助
想要更了解全球生活计划吗?请观览我们的网站http://globallives.org或是传送电子邮件到china [at] globallives [dot] org
电子邮件易读取于中文、广东、英语、日文、葡萄牙语或西班牙语。请自由翻译此文章于各种语言并且广为传送
感谢您的协力及合作
全球生活 The Global Lives Project.
- - -
Release date: July 15, 2008
The Global Lives Project is planning a shoot in China in September 2008. We will be recording the life story and 24 hours in the life of a as-yet-to-be-selected Chinese person.
We are a nonprofit educational arts organization with more than 100 collaborators in 8 countries and we are looking for volunteers in China to participate in the project. While participation will not be remunerated, the project offers broad, worldwide exposure for collaborators’ work and the opportunity to be a part of a growing and dynamic collective of creative and socially-minded filmmakers.
We specifically need the following types of people and organizations:
Partner Institutions in China - We are looking to partner with a university’s communications department, a museum, a video production studio, or any other cultural institution interested in being involved in the shoot from start to finish, and with organizing an exhibition in the future.
China Co-director/producer - Involved in subject selection process from the beginning, making preparations for shoot on the ground. Approximately 6-8 days total of time commitment including preparations and shoot. Also involved in post-production.
Camera operator - Commitment for the day of the shoot only + transportation time. Works usually in 2-person teams for 8-hour shifts.
Photographer - Day of shoot only + transport, 8 or 12-hour shifts.
Production assistant (good position for a film student) - Providing support throughout selection process to the director/producers with preparations for shoot. Commitment to assist with post-production also helpful.
Interpreter/translator - Needed for the day of the shoot as well as for post-production.
We already have four volunteers ready to join with local collaborators to produce the shoot: Nobuhiro Awata, Ya-Hsuan Huang, Ron Carr and David Harris. Nobuhiro and Ron co-directed and did camerawork on the Tokyo GL shoot, Ya-Hsuan co-directed the Malawi shoot. David Harris co-directed and produced the GL shoots in Brazil and the US. Ron will be bringing camera equipment from Japan, though some additional equipment will be needed on-site. The shoot will take place in a to-be-determined rural area in China between September 12 and 24.
To find out more, check out our website at http://globallives.org and send an email to china [at] globallives [dot] org. Emails will be understood easily if sent in Chinese, Cantonese, English, Japanese, Portuguese or Spanish. If you can translate this email to any other language, please do and send it along freely!
Finally, for an article on GLP in Chinese, please see this post on Global Voices.
Thanks for your help!
- The Global Lives Project
Confirmed Volunteer Crew Bios:
Ron Carr is Professor and Chair of the Communications Department at Temple University Japan. Born in the US with an MFA in Film & Theater from UCLA, Ron has lived in Japan for 15 years. Before going to Japan, Ron was a writer and producer for 10 years at ABC. Ron co-directed and produced the GLP Japan shoot.
Ya-Hsuan Huang is a documentary producer, video editor, and graphic designer based in Brooklyn, New York. Ms. Huang is a graduate of Yale University and is currently a graduate student in Media Studies at the New School in New York City. Ya-Hsuan was born in Taiwan and speaks Chinese, but has lived in the US for most of her life.
Nobuhiro Awata is an experienced video producer and director, photographer and audio technician. Born and raised in Japan, Nobuhiro lived in New York City for five years and now is living in Taipei where he is studying for a degree in Computer Science.
David Evan Harris is the Executive Director of the Global Lives Project and a Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California. David lived in Brazil from 2004-2007 and has experience in print and video journalism work. He holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MA in Sociology from the University of São Paulo.
If you join new social networking/web 2.0 things as research for work, you tend to find the same friends and acquaintances there. For me that group includes Howard Rheingold, my IFTF colleague Sean Ness, Jerry Michalski, and a group of Chinese/China-focused digerati who are a bridge across the Chinese- and English-language internet. Some of these people I know personally: Isaac Mao, Keso, Frank Yu, Kaiser Kuo, Sam Flemming, and Rebecca MacKinnon; and some I just know by their screen names or online correspondence, like Flypig and Micah Sittig.
One thing it’s fun to do is to see who other people are following. Having recently joined FriendFeed, I found the usual suspects and decided to browse through China IT maverick Keso’s “subscriptions”. Keso has subscribed to over 600 people’s FriendFeeds. In this one place you could, if you wanted, trace out the intersections of Chinese and non-Chinese digerati.
There I was struck by the new iconography that lets people “read” one another even if they can’t speak the same language, and helps you gauge the extent to which people participate in various communities. My FriendFeed, for instance, displays just 3 icons, one for this blog, one for my Twitter feed, one for gmail/gtalk (I couldn’t get my LinkedIn to work, and both my del.icio.us and flickr streams are group accounts). FriendFeed has 43 different “services” each with its own icon, ranging from Digg, YouTube and “blog” to more obscure things like Disqus, Mister Wong, and identi.ca. You don’t have to speak Chinese or French or English to be able to pick out the web 2.0 icon superheroes I found on Keso’s subscription feed, such as linsen and Schee Tzuhan:
but Jacky Zhao wins:
Two calls to sign this petition have been floating around my inbox recently:
Being from Hong Kong, I quickly submitted my name to support this cause. Thoughts stirred in my head: What was the UN doing? Is this a signal for Taiwan? Does this mean Hong Kong will switch to simplified Chinese soon?
Upon further research however, it seems have all been a hoax based upon a chain of sloppy journalism. According to Xiao Zhao who took the time to investigate the matter:
…the rumor was obviously started with a false message from a professor in China, named Chan, Zhang Tai who casually said UN will stop use Traditional Chinese in 2008 to a reporter with a Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong, Oriental Daily in March 2006. The reporter didn’t confirm with UN and just went ahead reporting what professor Chan said. Later on, UN had to announce that there is not abolishment of traditional Chinese in 2008 and UN has never used Traditional Chinese since 1971.
See the full exposee at Xiao Zhao’s blog: A Country Bumpkin Offering Sunshine.
I’m interested in virtuality, experience, and culture; Zafka Zhang is a metaverse researcher, blogger, and evangelist, directs research at China’s virtual world HiPiHi, and according to his Twitterstream, recently started his own youth insights and marketing company, China Youthology青年志; Li Feng is an Instructional Technology Specialist at University of Massachusetts Lowell and Second Lifer. Along with about 20 others, we’re all members (thanks Zafka) of the Association of Virtual Worlds’ Virtual Worlds in China group. It’s new, we’ll see. Join?
I’m doing some interviews with people who are playing with different reality media, and Justin.TV is a great example. The site recently got its one millionth user. Most are like me, I’m guessing, and just sign up so they can navigate the site better. But some are doing what Justin.TV is set up to do: broadcasting some or all of their lives, in real time, via a fixed or mobile webcam. Many of these “lifecasters” also maintain a running chat with viewers, or have interactive games and contests. Then there are what appear to be streaming TV channels, such as canal rcn colombia.
As of a few days ago, the site can be read in traditional and simplified Chinese characters. A search for “China” reveals 22 hits, and a 中国 search, 0. However, either I am missing the boat on how to get these things to play, or almost all the China channels are inactive, such as this from user “hello china” which as far as I can tell was done 9 months ago and has not been added to since then.
Let’s keep an eye on this and see 1) who the first Chinese lifecasters on Justin.TV will be; and 2) how lifecasting will show up on PRC websites, not on Justin.TV. Probably some people are already doing it and I’m just not aware of it.
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