Yesterday at Ars was the DISRUPTION panel I moderated – which went really well! Some very interesting presentations including Joi Ito speaking about how the audience is part of his blog, and when he blogs it’s a meant as the beginning of a conversation instead of an end point. Also Krzysztof Wodiczko spoke about his projects that engage technology with immigrants as “armaments” such as the “Alien Staff” a project that puts a portable autobiographical video history in the hands of homeless people. Bruce Sterling finished out our session with the same rant he gave at SIGGRAPH about “blobjects” and “spimes” – gadgets with too much functionality that we don’t need or want. Sterling is the type of speaker who can captivate an audience with dry wit and sarcasm. At the end of the panel a few people asked me if my slides would be available for download so I will upload those soon. In the evening, we went over the Ars Electronica center and watched Tmema’s “Manual Input Sessions” performance and Julien Maire’s “DEMI-PAS” which involves a custom built slide projector (picture above) with animated scenes with a super high attention to detail. Really amazing work. Today’s panel is the “SPIRIT” and “TOPIA” sessions – so more from that soon.. oh yeah and a report on the whole festival due out afterwards…..