.:: "m-Novel"

Ok I know that I call everything with my name, but this time "m-Novel" isn't an abbreviation for "marina's-Novel"...;-)
"m-Novel" is a mobile literature channel that has been launched in China.
The first story is a romance called 'Distance' written by Xuan Huang (a prominent new-generation novelist from Taiwan) and will be delivered by SMS with versions in MMS, WAP and IVR to follow.
Mike Grenville reports for 160characters.org:

"Distance" is a winding love story of a young couple that becomes acquainted
because of a mis-sent SMS message. As Chinese characters are double-byte, the
story only has 70 Chinese characters in each SMS message. The whole story is
1,008 Chinese characters told in 15 chapters with one chapter sent each day.

Can I please meet the love of my life through a mis-sent SMS?!?

.:: Mobile Social Software

Reading on social software I found very interesting this article in Timo Arnall's blog:
Mobile social software applications. He makes a good summary of recent applications ( he wrote it in june ). Social software have been used for absolutely everything, also for a Bluetooth against Bush:

Uses bluetooth enabled devices (mobile phones, PDA’s, laptop computers) to
create moments of ad-hoc solidarity for people opposed to George W. Bush.

!!!!!!!!

I found also an useful definition attempt in Raindrop (the group blog for the Social Computing Group at Microsoft Research) : Defining Mobile Social Software by Pedram Keyani.

.:: snow.

iced fjord, originally uploaded by marinella.

Today it snowed.
I would like to be a writer in this moment.
I would like to find the right words for describing all this.
For describing my emotion, the colors, the softness, the sensation under my feet,under my hands, on my mouth, on my skin. In my eyes.
My eyes devoured everything, excited as a child.
I love it.

.:: Italy 'text tax' sparks outrage.

I'm completely out from Italian politics at the moment...this is why I've been really surprised reading this in the BBC website:

Italians have reacted angrily to government proposals to bring in a tax on
mobile phone text messages.
With 27 billion text messages sent by Italy's
residents last year, even a small surtax could raise a fortune.
But Italians
- who own more mobile phones and send more text messages per head of population
than any other nation - are unlikely to support it.
The plan was put forward
as a way to help Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi fulfil election promises to
cut taxes.

I cannot believe we have such a Prime Minister!! Does he really think that just doing this he will be re-elected?!?

.:: Lecture on generative art.

Marius Watz will have a lecture on "GENERATIVE ART AND COMPUTATIONAL DESIGN" on Tuesday at 10 a.m. at the Kunsthøgskolen of Bergen (the Art and Design College).

Marius Watz's project "Drawing machine 1-12" is part of the initiative for Art for public digital space, supported by the National Foundation for Art in Public Buildings and the Norwegian Cultural Council.
It's an art project that develops over time, continuously changing over the two years that the project has been online on the Odin (a public electronic information service for the Norwegian Government and Ministries of state) web site. It consists of 12 drawing machines in the form of software that run on the Odin servers. Each machine draws a single picture over the scope of two months, and after 24 months all the machines have drawn one picture each.

.:: Iliade

My favourite italian writer, Alessandro Baricco, started a project one month ago : Iliade. Public readings from the Homers poem. Just actors and writers reading and sometimes music: all the attention concentrated on the reader and his voice. For this project he has re-written the poem, creating a series of prose monologues in modern italian.
This is what he says about the choice of the Iliade:

Quando racconto questo lavoro, spesso la gente mi chiede: perché proprio
l'Iliade? Alcuni vorrebbero l'Odissea (che io non amo, tranne il finale), o
magari Dante o Ariosto. Ho due risposte: la prima è che l'Iliade mi sembra una
storia bellissima. La seconda è che godere del racconto di una guerra mi sembra
una cura efficace per allontanare il desiderio (tragico ma legittimo) di godere
facendo la guerra.

It's an ambitious work, but he is a great writer and a fascinating story-teller, I'm sure it has to be great. I would really like to be in Italy in this moment.

.:: e-literature and other stuff.

Yesterday during the workshop we started talking about a possible birth of a critic's class also in the e-litaratures field. Easily predictable, I think, but at the same time further than it could seem.
The e-literature is just moving its first steps and it's still such a messy and undefined world!
We need constraints, we need genres, we need paramethers for learnig how to judge, how to become critics. Til now I just heard positive comments about great e-literature works. But what about the bad stuff? I'm sure there has to be a lot of garbage out there, but none talks about it. Because we don't know how to distinguish the good stuff from the bad one. We dont' know , yet.
For centuries we have seen generations of critics capable of destroying books and writer's lives with their comments and reviews. But now all seems more polite.
I've always been thinking that the freedom gifted us from the Internet would be people's passport to sincerity: to wickedness and to goodness at the same time, but both extreme and extremely true. But it's not: I've been blogging for a couple of months and publishing photos in Flickr and I've received some (few) positive comments...but what about the bad but constructive feedback?
We aren't aware enough for judgeing. We are not confident enough in our capacity of making good "bad-comments".
In this messy huge new world we urgently need a compass. But what?

.:: digital og sosial.

Too many interesting things at the conference today for my poor tired brain.
But exciting, definitely.
Scott Rettberg with his lecture and than with the readings from "Implementation" was really great and I found the discussion in the workshop very stimulating.
I will try to "tidy" a little bit my thoughts and I will post soon about all this.
In the meanwhile I will stick everywhere the implementations and I will take millions of photos! ;-)

.:: preparation!!!!!

Rachael, Jon, Marina and Toril, originally uploaded by Jill.

We were "discussing" about the conference...yes eating a little bit too ;-))

.:: I'm back!

I've been having problems with the log-in and i haven't been able to post for a while but...now I'm back!
These days I'm totally absorbed from the conference "Digital og Sosial" that will officially start tomorrow morning here in Bergen. I'm soo excited! Fpr "normal" people the conference costs more or less 200 euros but I'm helping the orgnizators as a volunteer so.. I have it for free! And I will know a lot of people that I already know through Internet , but only because I've read their essays or blogs or literaure..and now I will see them "live"...Tomorrow for example there will be Howard Rheingold (the author of "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution") and on thursday Scott Rettberg , co-author of the great distributed novel "Implementation" and of "The Unknown", and author of the serial email novel "Kind of Blue".
I've been all these months studying and surfing and reading this stuff and now I can meet them! It's great. Thanks Jill.
Ah! And the website of the conference is wiki, too!

.:: written in your eyes

written in your eyes, originally uploaded by marinella83.

.:: pearl days.

I don’t know if I’ll ever tell you this story
I don’t even know whether we’ll have the chance
I don’t know if you’ll ever see me shaking like this
I’m not sure I can open my door to more…

Bitter words, full of rage, and clever ways
To find the key to my weakest side

I just can’t see where the truth lies
I remember seeing in your eyes…
But then, oh then, such bitter words
When you knew I wasn’t hiding
You… you hit my soul, you couldn’t make it any deeper inside
You just hit my soul and I cried, I cried over

Bitter words, full of rage, and clever ways
To find the key to my weakest side

Now only one word is left for
me to say: why?

[Elisa - Bitter words]

Elisa's new CD - Pearl days - is born and I didn't know it! Is it possible?!?
Anyway, even if you don't know her (that is very probable if you are not italian).. go and download it: it's great! [and she sings in English, too]