augmenting past realities – and a connection with artificial intelligence

How should we reconstruct the past? Is the ideal Virtual Reality and photorealistic simulation? A CGI (pre)history? Under the supposition that this would be like it was back then? My line is that this would be the death of the past. It forgets the material ruin, the archaeological condition that is our cultural and historical…

early photography and archaeology – a matter of hygiene

Chris (Witmore) has sent me some comments about his fascinating research into early photography and archaeology – Conze at Samothrace Although photography had been used in the context of archaeological practice for some time, it was only with the Samothrace excavation volumes that photographs were placed directly into the publication (Conze, Hauser and Niemann 1875…

Patrick Roddie at Burning Man 2004 – corporealities categorized

Photographer Patrick Roddie has just posted his images of Burning Man 2004 – [Link]. The categories of this epic exploration of corporeality: blue – chests – children – couples – dust & dance – etc – feet – hands – hips – masks – me – men – meta – music – night – paint…

the color of the past – technicolor and the physiognomy of nostalgia

  The color of nostalgia? I mentioned last week our visit to Stanford Theatre and the showing of “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (and incidentally this movie appeared in my book “Experiencing the Past”). The technicolor print was stunning. Boonville September 2004 Of late, and in connection with my Metamedia Lab’s project to explore the…

is ethnic identity genetic?

August 27 – DNAPrint Launches EURO-DNA(TM) 1.0 DNAPrint genomics has announced today that it has launched EURO-DNA(TM) 1.0, the world’s first genetic test for determining intracontinental subpopulation (i.e. “ethnic”) admixture. EURO-DNA(TM) 1.0 provides customers their percentages of Northern European, Southeast European (Mediterranean), Middle Eastern and South Asian ancestry. Price for new customers – $399 –…

rural pursuits – crop circles and prehistory

On the subject of rural relationships [Link] [Link], Tim Dilworth, freelancing for National Geographic TV, contacted me last week about crop circles around Stonehenge – and we are definitely in the season for this kind of thing … Here are some extracts from our conversation. TD There are a couple of points I’d really like…