BigMother.dk

The art of surveillance

Mikkel Holm Sørensen — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:26:54 +0000

Wired features a nice little series of examples of surveillance as art. Very interesting:

Is there such a thing as citizen-friendly surveillance? Designers, filmmakers and architects are making art out of the technology that watches over us. Mindful of Google Earth, camera phones, over-the-counter spy gear, reality TV, terrorist-conscious politicians and security-obsessed corporations, these interactive auteurs put their own spin on a surveillance-saturated global culture. Is New Voyeurism the next genre?

Christian Möller’s ‘Mojo’

Via Anders

Sleevage: Great album cover design resource

Mikkel Holm Sørensen — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 19:31:00 +0000

I just learned about the new album cover design resource Sleevage. Complete with background stories, design details, gossip on design origins, copycats etc. this is a must go site for music lovers of all ages.

Sleevage is still in the building up phase so please allow for growth. I personally look forward to future visits for both encyclopedic info on covers as well as mere browsing around. If you have privileged information to share even better so.

Via Josh Spear

Actics featured

Mikkel Holm Sørensen — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:30:53 +0000

It really helped that I left Actics’ everyday operations. First Treehugger offered a very nice review and now follows Boingboing.

I wonder what would happen if I burned the bridges and deleted all traces of my involvement with Actics.

In rainbows

Mikkel Holm Sørensen — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:53:25 +0000

There’s been quite some fuzz about Radiohead’s distribution method for their latest album ’In Rainbows’. You simply decide yourself how much the downloadable version is worth to you by choosing your own price. I choose to pay 10 pounds. Most probably a lot less. I paid for affection to the best mainstream rockband there is. Besides, I thought that since analytics and commentators will judge the success and importance of Radiohead’s move on how much revenue they manage to get out of downloads, I might as well make a contribution to quite decent numbers.

I’m not sure if ‘In rainbows’ is revolutionary for the music business. But linking price closer to real value and affection is quite strong. Bands can benchmark average price of downloads to test their real net worth. Fans will have a much harder time ethically to simply pirate the material. In a certain sense, there will be prestige in paying a lot to demonstrate how hardcore a fan you are. And labels have obviously become obsolete with new technologies for production, cover art and digital distribution. So let’s see who follows Radiohead on this one.

Oh and the album? It’s fabulous! Rich, textured, melodic, dynamic appropriately harmonious. It seems quite short but it’s probably because it’s so very good. For a very interesting song-by-song walkthrough, see Pitchfork’s excellent coverage.

Surveillance as entertainment

Mikkel Holm Sørensen — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 19:15:29 +0000

I haven’t used the category ‘Surveillance as entertainment’ for quite a while, but fortunately Anders evoked the category again with his latest post on the Ars Electronica festival. This year the influential event is themed ‘Goodbye Privacy‘ and deals with the seemingly increasing transparency and voluntary letting go of digital privacy. Anders moreover links to his paper for the upcoming AOIR conference entitled Surveillance as social play). Thanks Anders for keeping my categories alive

New playing fields

Mikkel Holm Sørensen — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 10:27:22 +0000

I’m leaving Actics for greener fields in Advice. Actics is entering the next natural phase of a successful start up and I feel comfortable passing on the baby to trained business professionals.

I’ve chosen Advice because of their approach and profile as the only bureau covering the whole range from web 2.0 solutions to top management strategy consulting. In Advice I’ll deal with all sorts of exciting assignments ranging from branding to organizational change including Actics-like value processes. I’ve been received very kind in Advice so far and I’m dying to get started. Luckily I will do so already this Wednesday when joining my new colleagues on a five day company getaway to Spain. What a perfect way to meet my new colleagues and dive directly into the company spirit.

Surveillance is good - or the new cliché on the block?

Mikkel Holm Sørensen — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 07:34:33 +0000

Yet another story about how happy Danes have become with surveillance. It’s the second story about ‘the tendency’ in few months in DK. I’ve been called by two different journalists within 12 hours for a comment (both of which I transferred to my good friend Anders who actually appears in the article). Now suddenly everybody agrees that surveillance is good and creates comfort and security. If we disregard the journalist urge simply to say SOMETHING different (I guess that’s why my BigMother perspective is popular in the Danish media) and often make up the ‘news’ themselves (as it might be in this case), I wish to use the chance to rehearse one basic observation that sparked BigMother. NOT that surveillance is good per se. But how most public debate is swamped cliché inertia. Just as the Big Brother notion have had disproportionate cultural power by offering a handy and shared image of the consequences of surveillance gone bad (actually: coupled with fascism), don’t be surprised is everybody starts saying that surveillance is for the common good, heightened general ethics, greater awareness of others or what have you. Bottom line: don’t trust you visceral reactions to ‘controversial’ issues. Chances are that they depend on a single experience you have come to generalize or simply that your opinion is THE opinion in your segment. It’s quite banal; but just realize it next time you discuss politics

Bigmother sells out

Mikkel Holm Sørensen — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:10:02 +0000

I’ve been assisting an exiting Danish biotech company called Hypo-Safe for some time and have come out as freelance consultant under the Bigmother moniker. I support Hypo-Safe in several ways, from R&D design, press contact and communication and innovation potentials reports and other companies with challenges at the intersection of research, technology and business are welcome as to contact me.

I’m still full time at Actics, so my Bigmother Consulting venture is a spare time project.

‘MySpacing’ Bigmother.dk

Mikkel Holm Sørensen — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:35:55 +0000

I’d wished to put some LastFM stuff on Bigmother for some time to flash all the überhip music I listen to all the time. The result is the somewhat MySpace-ugly display at right. The reason is that LastFM hasn’t worked properly for me (no, Keith Jarrett and Bob Dylan are NOT my overall top artists) and I haven’t used it fully either. Besides, my loved Powerbook has almost died (I’m still trying to recover the music library) and left me with my wife’s old G3 incapable of wasting resources to music listening and LastFM streams. The result is highly misleading top artists and tracks, no radio and no recent tracks at all. So until I get my LastFM mojo working or find other musical bling for my blog, you’re left with the display.

But as a service, let me manually recommend the latest albums from: Battles, The Field, People Press Play, Cinematic Orchestra, Björk, Yeah yeah yeahs, Jacob Bro, Deadbeat

And as always, the coming material from WhoMadeWho and Samurai.fm

Bypassing formal and tedious processes

Mikkel Holm Sørensen — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 12:06:47 +0000

I’ve just been announced professor at Århus University, simply by giving an interview on Bigmother, Careware and cognitive enhancements for Danish Radio. A surprising change of status and occupation. Look at the fact box right.

I did notify DR on the mistake but they seem so convinced of my merits that they have kept the title.