One can say that development in civilisation and sanitation have been co-terminus. The more developed was the society, the more sanitised it became and vice versa.

Toilet is part of history of human hygiene which is a critical chapter in the history of human civilisation and which cannot be isolated to be accorded unimportant position in history. Toilet is a critical link between order and disorder and between good and bad environment.

In my own country i.e. India, how can any one ignore the subject of toilet when the society is faced with human excretions of the order of 900 million litres of urine and 135 million kilogrammes of faecal matter per day with totally inadequate system of its collection and disposal. The society, thus, has a constant threat of health hazards and epidemics. As many as 600 out of 900 million people do open defecation. Sewerage facilities are available to no more than 30 per cent of population in urban areas and only 3 per cent of rural population has access to pour flush latrines.

Seeing this challenge, I think the subject of toilet is as important if not more than other social challenges like literacy, poverty, education and employment. >from *History of toilets*. The paper presented by Dr. Bindeswar Pathak, Ph.D., D.Litt., Founder, Sulabh Movement at International Symposium on Public Toilets held in Hong Kong on May 25-27, 1995

The Sulabh technology has liberated so far 37,500 scavengers from the demeaning practice of physically cleaning and carrying human excreta. Indian scavengers transports the excrement of his fellow beings in 93% houses in villages. There are no latrines there. They carry the excrement of their fellow-beings in big metal trays. Approximately 600,000 men and women earn their livelihood from this work. They are known as 'Bhangis' and they occupy the lowest position in the caste system. They are the "untouchables". A cow is given more respect than they. At some places, they have to carry on their work at night, so that the aesthetic sentiments of their employers are not disturbed. One who has touched a 'Bhangi' must immediately take bath. Earlier, the excrement cleaner was supposed to wear a small bell around his neck and stamp heavily the ground with a stick so that the people around him should know that the 'Bhangi' is coming and everyone would make their children go inside their houses. Earlier, the 'Bhangis' did the menial job with their bare hands, but today they use either a broom or a small shovel. >from *Sulabh International site*. Views of Press & People.

related context
> sulabh international
> shit and civilization: our ambivalent relationship to ordure in the city, culture and the psyche. our societies are, quite literally, founded on shit. civilization means living in cities and cities are confronted, in a way more dispersed settlements are not, with heaps of garbage and ordure. ancient cities are now identified by the mounds raised above the surrounding terrain. cities have always left the poor to scavenge and to live from re-cycling garbage.
> cities built on fertile lands affect climate. u.s. cities have been built on the most fertile soils, lessening contributions of these lands to earth's food web and human agriculture. february 11, 2004

imago
> dig your own shit: can you?

More than 60 leading scientists - including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and university chairs and presidents - issued a statement calling for regulatory and legislative action to restore scientific integrity to federal policymaking. According to the scientists, the Bush administration has, among other abuses, suppressed and distorted scientific analysis from federal agencies, and taken actions that have undermined the quality of scientific advisory panels.

In conjunction with the statement, the Union of Concerned Scientists today released a report Scientific Integrity in Policymaking that investigates numerous allegations in the scientists' statement involving censorship and political interference with independent scientific inquiry at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Interior and Defense.

The statement demands that the Bush administration's "distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease" and calls for Congressional oversight hearings, guaranteed public access to government scientific studies and other measures to prevent such abuses in the future. The statement further calls on the scientific, engineering and medical communities to work together to reestablish scientific integrity in the policymaking process. >from *Preeminent Scientists Protest Bush Administration's Misuse of Science*. Nobel Laureates, National Medal of Science Recipients, and Other Leading Researchers Call for End to Scientific Abuses. February 18, 2004.

related context
> scientific integrity in policymaking. an investigation into the bush administration's misuse of science. union of concerned scientists. 2004
> challenges to evolution education. november 14, 2003
> berlin declaration: science and culture accessible to all internet users. november 5, 2003
> xenophobia may slow scientific progress. june 6, 2003
> science commons: building a free flow of knowledge. march 15, 2002
> attacks on science: ethics and public health. january 11, 2002
> artists and scientists in times of war by roger malina. september 23, 2001

imago
> science retracement

CodeCon is the premier showcase of active hacker projects. It is an excellent opportunity for developers to demonstrate their work and keep abreast of what's going on in their community.

All presentations include working demonstrations, ideally accompanied by source code. Presenters must be one of the active developers of the code in question. We emphasize that demonstrations be of *working* code. >from *CodeCon site*. February 20-22, 2004

Projects presented included:
* Audacity (a cross-platform multi-track audio editor)
* Codeville (distributed version control system)
* FunFS: Fast User Network File System (an advanced network file system designed as a successor for NFS)
* GracefulTavi (advanced Wiki software in PHP+MySQL, with self-organization, hierarchies, plugins, and google-style search scoring)
* ida-x86emu (the x86 Emulator Plugin for IDA Pro)
* mod_zeroconf for Apache httpd (allows an Apache 2.0 web server to register its services on a Zero Configuration network)
* Mosuki (artificial networks naturally)
* Osiris (a free Host Integrity Monitor designed for large scale server deployments that require auditable security)
* PETmail (permission-based anti-spam replacement for SMTP)
* PGP Universal (automatic, transparent email encryption with zero clicks)
* Scream (a cross platform component oriented Java environment and API to utilize the SuperCollider3 DSP audio engine and language among other OSC/MIDI enabled applications)
* Solipsis (a peer-to-peer system for a massively multi-participant virtual world)
* Tor (second-generation Onion Routing: a TCP-based anonymizing overlay network)
* Vesta (an advanced software configuration management system that handles both versioning source files and building)
* Xerblin (multi-language compiler/debugger/profiler/linker/versioning IDE)

related context
> CodeCon 2002: p2p and cripto programming. february 21, 2002
> % hacking the xbox_ : an introduction to reverse engineering. may 26, 2003
> a new cultural movement?. august 7, 2002

imago
> hackers train to san francisco

Through functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, scientists for the first time peered into the brains of fully conscious nonhuman primates (marmoset, a tree-dwelling Brazilian monkey) to learn what's really on their minds when it comes to sex.

Common marmosets, like humans, live in family groups and have to make careful choices when confronted with the scent of an attractive female, a team of marmoset experts led by Charles T. Snowdon, UW-Madison professor of psychology, discovered.

"We were surprised to observe high levels of neural activity in areas of the brain important for decision-making, as well as in purely sexual arousal areas, in response to olfactory cues," Snowdon says. "Lighting up far more brightly than we expected were areas associated with decision-making and memory, emotional processing and reward, and cognitive control."

The marmoset fMRI findings add strong weight to the mounting evidence that, when faced with a novel, sexually attractive and receptive female, males even in monogamous species aren't necessarily just acting on some primal urge to procreate, without a second thought. Rather, they exhibit highly organized, complex neural processes. >from *Sex In The Brain: How Do Male Monkeys Evaluate Mates?*. February 3, 2004.

related context
> science in the bedroom: a history of sex research by vern l. bullough. 1994
> the evolution of human sexuality by don symons. 1979
> a history of sex by andres serrano. 1997. more...
> common biological ground for maternal and romantic love in humans. february 13, 2004
> neurobiological basis of romantic love. november 26, 2003
> conflict interaction of couples. october 27, 2003
> biodiversity include sexual diversity. june 14, 2002
> next sex: sex in the age of its procreative superfluousness. ars electronica. september 2-7, 2000

imago
> contained marmoset sex life?

The theory of the Transpermia raises some prototypes for a new extraterrestrial life and by extension it proposes the improvement of our world. Transpermia is born as a result of the Dèdal experiment, a set of micro-performances in zero gravity that were made during the spring of year 2003 in the City of Stars of the Russian Federation [ mir campaign 2003 ]. The later reflection to this microgravitational experience took to interest me, in addition to the lack of gravity, in the extraordinary machinery that supposes an extraterrestrial life.

Between the different ideas about the origin of the life, is the Panspermia. This theory proposes that comets or asteroids that hit in the Earth it makes 3,800 million years brought alive matter. If we accepted this hypothesis, we could say that this organic evolution that we called 'life' has taken million years, to return of where came, it is to say: the space. We can speak then of an inverse Panspermia is to say the Transpermia.

The space is radioactive, weightless and anaerobic. Therefore it is necessary to construct the foundations of an artificial device that embraces the ultraterrestrial life. The extraterrestrial life needs, in addition to alive beings, science and the technique, of the culture, for its existence and reproduction, in the space is not possible a natural life as we understand it in the Earth. On the Earth orbit artifice and nature are based, and is for me, the place where everything is imaginable, everything is possible, everything is about to to do. The space for the utopia is for my the Transpermia.

The Transpermia that I propose is by definition a hybrid, hybrid of nature and artifice, hybrid of instinct and reason. This doctrine, opened and in process, proposes a weave that it tries to include all the existence. The Transpermia impels and amalgamates a good part of findings that I have done in the last ten years with my work. These works based on prototypes such as robots, corporal interfaces and systemic software, have in the Transpermia a new frame of definition. The hypothesis of this Transpermia becomes effective from prototypes that I organize around four chapters: interface, robot, ephemeral identities and new forms of creation.

The interfaces understood like tools to extend the perception of the world and to increase its control. Robots seen as metaphor of the organic thing and in its last consequences as new forms of life: the Robogenics. The ephemeral identities conceived like new fields of experience, touching, rational and fantastic, these new forms of identity will have in addition new interfaces and robots of corporal transformations controlled thanks to chemistry and the biogenetics. New forms of creation, in an utopic society the creation manifest like the main human activity.

The transpermic utopia proposes a world that in their last consequences the work and the money no longer have sense. The transpermic existence is not based on the work, commerce and the industry. The new devices that this utopia proposes delegate the labor activity to biomechanic devices and ultrainterfaces that are in charge to do it. Therefore the main human occupation, goes towards the creative thing. The creation becomes the main task of the humans in the Artificial Transpermia.>from *transpermia by marcel-li antunez roca*. february, 2004

related context
> marcel-li antunez roca site.
> cosmic ancestry. "life comes from space because life comes from life"
> spacearts the space art database.
> space: science, technology and the arts. 7th workshop on space and the arts. european space research and technology centre, may 18 - 21, 2004
> entrevista a marcel-lí antunez roca [ca]. arts, revista del cercle de belles arts de lleida, n 20, p. 5. september 2003.
> space art: mir campaign 2003. april 2, 2003

imago
> transpermia: nocturnal operations

'PLAYLIST' brings together artists whose raw material is not wood, the marble or the fabric, but the culture.

These artists who work by connecting between them films, artworks or books, produce routes among the signs, invent modes of storage of information, archive or remixage.

'PLAYLIST' is not an exposure which 'illustrates' a topic, but a variation around a principle of work (or let us say, of a mental structure) which one could indicate under the name of cultural navigation: the artist like search engine moving among the signs.

Instead of handling a raw material, these artists move thus in a world of objects right now in circulation. They choose, design, assemble.

Establishing their own work inside that of the others, they contribute to abolish the traditional distinction between production and consumption, creation and copy, readymade and original artwork: does the contemporary culture rest on a formal collectivism?

This art of the postproduction corresponds to the proliferating chaos of the global culture. *EXPOSITION PLAYLIST*. Palais de Tokyo (Paris). February 12 - April 25, 2004.

related context
> palais de tokyo. site de création contemporaine.
> anne lacaton & jean philippe vassal. the architects behind the palais's new look. "they are characterized by their professional attitude which reveals a true ethics: to resist the invasion of the signs, to offer a space open to the appropriation until the obliteration of the intervention of the architect."
> nicolas bourriaud and karen moss. interviewed by stretcher. curators at the palais de tokyo in paris and at the san francisco art institute discuss the role of curators in contemporary art. february 25, 2003
> interview of miroslav kulchitsky with nicolas bourriaud. bourriaud formulated a new aesthetics for contemporary art. his theoretical leaning, summarized as 'relational art,' gives a new interpretation of the aesthetic object. the object is no longer materially or conceptually defined, but relationally. "what do relations eventually create? relations to the artistic work, institutions and so on? - context." art magazine boiler #1, 1999

imago
> the use of a · the making of

telenoia:: free dispersed and computer mediatized mind . asinchronic global connectivity . celebrating the telenoia we reject the lonely, anxious, distracted and neurotically privated individualism of the old industrial culture . on the telematic culture, telenoia replaces paranoia _ by :: Roy Ascott

Telenoika Cultural Association was founded on February 2000. It is a non-profit organization and intends to provide a platform for new artistic, social and cultural experiments through new audio+visual technologies. Telenoia's definition by Roy Ascott describes the critical and connected soul of Telenoika, projecting how TV is afecting the society we are living in and how we reject it to open and share our minds in global networked connectivity.

Telenoika is made up by a group of people related with audiovisual creations and emerging technologies who show a keen interest in research and development of new means of human comunication and artistic expression.

Telenoika was founded because of the necessity of being a legal entity to organize a festival: VideA2000 :: AudioVisuals & New Technologies Festival. The idea of the festival was born from a little e-mail list from Aestesis real/time video software in 1999 . The main point was to organize a meeting of real/time video software users and their coders to share, enjoy, learn and see what other people was doing with similar audiovisual domestic techniques.

From that little mail list intention, the idea of the festival was spread through the internet and 'magically', with lots of ilusion and good intentions it became a 3 days festival with about 40 artists from all around europe, with experimental afternoons, conferences, workshops, and audiovisual nights. The festival was basically organized and promoted through the internet, with really low economic resources, by 4 friends with no previous experience, and just for the pleasure of sharing and communicating.

For this first edition, the Barcelona council let us a space to develop the afternoon activities, but we could not get any subvention or sponsoring from any institution or company. This way, and as being the first year, the budget was close to null and we just could pay for the artists accomodation and technical requirements. As usual in first times, we lost some money.

Definitively, VideA2000 was a great success, satisfying artists, public and organizers as a first experience. Since our first festival, we always received the
support of lots of artists, and that helped us to believe on what we were doing. Need to mention another important part of the festival since the first edition, the off_VideA. Some days after the festival in a country-side house where organizers and artists could share in a more relaxed ambience, and just to enjoy meeting up all together.

Since then, TELENOIKA started to interact and collaborate with lots of audiovisual experiences and experiments, mainly inside the VJ scene with visual sessions in free parties, raves, clubs, festivals and events. TELENOIKA begin to cooperate with other audiovisual collectives from around Europe (Tasmaniak, Rotok, neXus, Fifty-Fifty, LaLavanderia, Absurde, HeadSpace, ...) and 'VideA family' began to grow.

In 2001 we re-defined VideA as a platform for new audiovisual creatives and meeting point for the experimentation and fussion of diferent creations in one space and as an overview of the new audiovisual domestic tecnologies, reflexing the new global society through new expression media. In VideA2001 we tried again to get some sponsoring, but we had no luck again and we began to use the No_sponsor_No_money_Festival as a way of doing. We had no money, but lots of artists interested about coming to the festival and lots of people who wanted to collaborate with us. So, we accepted to work under this conditions.

Finally, 'El Mercat de les Flors', a public theater, let us celebrate VideA_2001 in its installations and BAF -a rental company- help us a lot for having an amazing audiovisual installation: About 16 video beamers in two magnific venues. On the second edition, we tried to fit into it as many artists as we could support, and finally there were about 80 different crews, collectives, artists, films, documentaries, videos, installations, dancers, performances, paintings... all sharing an open festival.

VideA2001 became one of the first meetings of VJ software developers, putting in one festival software developer teams like Electronika, VJamm , Resolume and VisualJockey. As a consequence of this meeting we find the birth of the idea of sharing some work between different VJ software developer teams, and so appeared FreeFrame, an OpenSource plugin architechture which actually is shared by all this softwares and some more, and it is in fantastic development health.

VideA2001 was a success again, but from the assistance point of view it was a little disappointing: we had very few people coming and our low budget and the great number of artists made impossible to pay more than just the accomodation to the artists, and again, we lost money.

From there on, Telenoika continued being part and developing the VJ scene all around Europe, being in touch through the internet with lots of VJ teams all around the world and playing visuals in lots of national and international parties, festivals and sessions.

In 2002, VideA still had no subvention from the Barcelona city hall or any help from cultural institutions so we directly adopted the No_Sponsor_No_Money_Festival motto. During this last years Telenoika structure had been changing and the Telenoik's had been collaborating with many local collectives and groups, so in 2002, Telenoika opened doors to let more people to get involved on the organization and 'open' the festival. By then, VideA2002 was organized by Telenoika + NoSoloTecno (raver collective) + other collaborators from the scene. VA2002 was totally autonomous, auto-organized and auto-produced by Telenoika and the rest of the 'VideA_family', a
collective-work that finally worked quite well.

VA2002 was a success again, considering all the chaotic difficulties that we had to face with our open structure organization, low budgets and low resources. For this time we launched the 'Adopt a VideA artist' campaign, that was basically focused on local artists who where present at the festival to encourage them to accomodate foreign artists, saving costs for the festival and enfatizing the exchange and intercommunication sense of VideA. In VA2002 public assistance was not a problem, so we could cover all the festival expenses and cover the money we had lost in the two previous editions. We have to mention the night sessions we made in an enormous squat old disco inside Barcelona -Discoteca Barçalles. About 1.500 people per night enjoyed a VJ_ALL sessions, where 4 to 6 VJ teams where playing at the same time in 8 big screens. At the end, close to 28 VJ teams were playing in VA2002 in an ambience that nobody who was there will never forget.

After that, in june of 2003 Telenoika organized the JustDataMeeting in Sant Just Desvern(a little village close to Barcelona). The main idea was to develop an event focused on the broadcast of information related with the audiovisual experimental technologies (conferences, workshops, round-tables...). The intention was to give a bit of local continuity to the VideA meetings. Again, it was a collaborative event with the 'VideA family' that was : Telenoika joined with NoSoloTecno, neXus, LaMaquinaDeTuring, HamsterLoco, Rotok and many others. Curiously, that was the last event organized by Telenoika.

Since JustDataMeeting, 'VideA family' was fragmented and the collective force of Telenoika was lost. Internal discussions between getting into show-bussiness or surviving as a non-profit cultural entity ended up to a crisis into the association, and from then it was impossible to rebuild it. A cycle had ended, and there were no more VideA experiences ... :-(

From then, Telenoika dissappeared as an organizative collective and some of their members continue playing in the scene, so Telenoika rested like a meta-collective of diferent audio-visual teams with no common activities, but with a great memory of what they have done together. VJ_pAuse, Lectrovision, OFF//TV and OutputVideo are the most aktive ones. Currently, these people are trying to find another tenable way to continue with the Telenoika project: share and enjoy new experimental ways of living through audiovisual technologies.

eloi maduell , february 2004

related context
> openfridays
> telenoia by roy ascott
> 120 years of electronic music

imago
> what we do?

This artwork and this life merge indeed, would be this only because this artwork is made exclusively of self-portraits. Unbearable images or shocking for some of them, but also images splendid, indisputably called to take a place among the first in the history of photography. >from *Autoportraits. David Nebreda*. Editions Léo Scheer.

"Nebreda has lowered to the darkest abyss of itself and, after undergoing unspeakable eventful journeys and penalties, it has returned loaded of treasures. Like rutilantes jewels, shine now in the dark of this shady world in which we inhabited all. 'Not further on', seems to proclaim. From the bottom of the cave, from the interior of the cocoon of the metamorphosis, from the chalice of the passion the message emerges from which 'here no longer it is left nothing' - it is only possible to return to begin, or better still, to revive." >from David Nebreda: sacrificio y resurrección, p. 94 *CORPUS SOLUS. Para un mapa del cuerpo en el arte contemporáneo by Juan Antonio Ramírez*. via zherji.

related context
> photo gallery: self-portraits by david nebreda.
> emotions in art and the brain. the third international conference on neuroesthetics. january 10, 2004
> exposition orlan. "i am an artist who works on the self-portrait and which questions the social pressures which weigh on the body." centre national de la photographie. march 31 - june 28, 2004
> skinstrip online. naked identity. march 31, 2003
> genetic self-portrait by gary schneider. "schneider extends the self portrait beyond
the figure in front of a camera and into the depths of the elemental nature of the
individual. 'genetic self-portrait' explores issues dealing with identity, photography, science, art and new technologies." 2000

imago
> who we are?