Too bad that muthafucker got too good of a reflex. I will open a champagne if his face got hit by the shoe! Scumbag bloodsucking Dubya!

This fall is probably the most busiest I have been. Despite having 11 shows and screenings in this season and travel to various places including Boca Raton and Boston giving lectures, I am working my ass off with Ben Abrams and Noah Vawter to finish the Gas Zappers online flash game. We are approaching the Beta stage and the game will debut at the end of this month at my solo show at Berkeley Arts Museum.

Please come to Gas Zappers solo show at BAM/PFA! I will be there on Oct 30 giving talk to Prof. Richard Rinehart’s class.

October 22, 2008 – February 8, 2009

Gas Zappers, by artist Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, is an interactive online art game that tackles global warming. Hung is among the contemporary artists and educators who have adopted video games as a new platform for social debate and aesthetic experience by developing “serious games.” In Gas Zappers, the idiom of the video game is exploited to challenge and illuminate the simplistic notion of quick fixes to environmental issues.

Berkeley and the Bay Area have been at the center of the cultural debate around alternative energy sources and global warming, due in no small part to developments like the $500 million joint project between UC Berkeley and British Petroleum to develop alternative biofuels. Gas Zappers furthers this discourse in a serious game that is also at times fantastical and wry.

Like much of the artist’s work, Gas Zappers is visually frenetic and colorful, referencing numerous popular and political sources. The animation style of Gas Zappers reinforces and goes beyond the game’s subject of global warming, caricaturing the exasperating and vulgar noise of the political media engine itself. In adopting the artistic strategies of photomontage, political satire, humor, and surrealism, Hung is an artistic descendent of Dadaist John Heartfield, whose photomontages lampooned Hitler and Mussolini. Ken Johnson wrote for the New York Times, “Looking at Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung’s art is like peeking into the fever dream of an overworked political blogger. Mr. Hung, 31, is a fierce, funny and inventive political satirist.”

Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung received a New Media Fellowship, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, to develop Gas Zappers. A video version of the work was shown in the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. BAM/PFA’s exhibition, on view starting October 22 at bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/gaszappers and in the museum’s Bancroft Lobby, is the world premiere of the fully realized work, including the interactive game.

Richard Rinehart
Digital Media Director and Adjunct Curator

My works is part of this huge show “Democracy in America: The National Campaign” curated by Mr. Nato Thompson. Mine is gonna be in the CONVERGENCE CENTER AT PARK AVENUE ARMORY:

Creative Time is pleased to announce the largest public art initiative in its 34-year history, Democracy in America: The National Campaign. A multifaceted project on a national scale, Democracy in America travels across the country to take the temperature of artists’ relationships with and reactions to the historic roots and practical manifestations of the American democratic tradition. Creative Time will promote active participation and open discourse during the 2008 election season and beyond by engaging a diverse community of artists, activists, thinkers, and citizens to create spaces for dialogue, exploration, and congregation. The project includes: a 7-day exhibition at the historic landmark Park Avenue Armory, performative artist commissions from coast to coast and at the RNC and DNC, mobile projects visiting communities in Queens and Brooklyn, and a publication giving artists a platform to reflect on democracy in this country. Democracy in America: The National Campaign is curated by Nato Thompson.

SEPTEMBER 21 TO 27
12 TO 10 PM DAILY*

OPENING RECEPTION: SEPTEMBER 21, 2 TO 10 PM

643 PARK AVENUE BETWEEN 66TH AND 67TH STREETS

PRESENTED IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY
*Open from 2 to 10 pm on September 21 and from 12 to 6:30 pm on September 23.

EXHIBITION AND SPEECH SERIES WITH OVER 40 ARTISTS, INCLUDING:
Erick Beltrán, Center for Tactical Magic, Critical Art Ensemble and the Institute for Applied Autonomy, Annabel Daou, dBFoundation, Hasan Elahi, Feel Tank, Luca Frei, Chitra Ganesh & Mariam Ghani, Group Material, John Hawke, Sharon Hayes, Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, InCUBATE, Magdalena Jitrik, Matt Keegan, Jon Kessler, Olga Koumoundouros & Rodney McMillian, Steve Lambert, Ligorano/Reese, Pia Lindman, Rachel Mason, Carlos Motta, Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere, Trevor Paglen, Cornelia Parker, Jenny Polak, Steve Powers, Greta Pratt, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Red76, Duke Riley, Martha Rosler, Dread Scott, Allison Smith, Chris Sollars, Chris Stain, Mark Tribe, United Victorian Workers, Chu Yun, and more.

After traveling across the country to glean perspectives from artists and activists on the state of democracy, Creative Time’s year-long program Democracy in America: The National Campaign culminates in the “Convergence Center”: a major exhibition, participatory project space, and meeting hall mounted in New York City’s Park Avenue Armory. The Convergence Center at Park Avenue Armory will provide an activated space to both reflect on and perform democracy and will be punctuated by speeches by leading political thinkers as well as community leaders and activists throughout the run of its program. These orations are organized by Creative Time in collaboration with The Nation Institute. As one of the largest unobstructed spaces in New York, the non-traditional setting of the Armory features interiors—such as its vast drill hall and historic period rooms—that are ideal for artists presenting multifaceted visual and performing arts productions.

Work by more than 40 artists will fill the Armory’s period rooms on the first, second, and fourth floors as well as Wade Thompson Drill Hall. Creative Time will present the four performative national public art commissions made for Democracy in America in the Convergence Center at Park Avenue Armory. Some of the projects featured include giant, silvered surveillance balloons by Jon Kessler; wearable art by dBFoundation; an installation by Critical Art Ensemble and the Institute for Applied Autonomy of the physical artifacts of the 2004 FBI investigation of Steve Kurtz; a 20-foot-tall counter-surveillance tower by Jenny Polak; a nine-foot wooden hobbyhorse sculpture by Allison Smith; and Duke Riley’s functional replica of America’s first submarine. In addition, curator Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy organized the inclusion of work by four international artists that will offer incisive viewpoints on the notion of democracy and some of its core principles: nation building, freedom of speech, and labor rights. Three participatory projects will travel to parks in Queens and Brooklyn in early September before convening at the Convergence Center.

A diverse group of political thinkers, writers, theorists, and activists will be invited to deliver speeches on various subjects—including local city politics, the war on “terror,” the art world, and cultural production. Speeches will occur throughout each day the Convergence Center is open, punctuating the activity of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall’s participatory projects and social space. As speakers approach the front of the hall, they will be invited to select a podium from an array designed by artist Paul Ramirez Jonas—from a modest soapbox to an intimidating rostrum. A 40-foot backdrop by artist Chris Stain will frame the speakers in a social realist scene rendered through the technique of hand-cut stencils. In addition, select artists from the show—including Rachel Mason, and Pia Lindman—will give special performances. Lastly, local activist organizations will be invited to distribute information from tables set up throughout the space.

One last chance you can vote for Dubya! Be Patriotic! Freedom is NOT Free! Perform your civic duty protect your civil rights! Haha, I signed the petition to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant as the “George W. Bush Sewage Plant” too and I am so happy they make it on the ballot :-) All you San Franciscan better vote for it in November, it sucks that I don’t live there no mo.

From the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco’s press release:

Officials at the Department of Elections announced today that the citizens’ initiative to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant has qualified for the November 4th San Francisco ballot. Voters will decide on the measure in the general election alongside the presidential election, numerous statewide initiatives, and an expected 20 to 30 local measures.

Original link

Charging By The Byte To Curb Internet Traffic

By Brian Stelter (New York Times)
Sunday, June 15, 2008

Some people use the Internet simply to check e-mail and look up phone numbers. Others are online all day, downloading big video and music files. Should they pay the same price for access?

For years they have, with subscribers sharing a buffet of all-you-can-download Internet access, regardless of how much they consumed. But now three of the country’s largest Internet service providers are threatening to clamp down on their most active subscribers by placing monthly limits on their online activity.

One of them, Time Warner Cable, began a trial of “Internet metering” in one Texas city early this month, asking customers to select a monthly plan and pay surcharges when they exceed their bandwidth limit. The idea is that people who use the network more heavily should pay more, the way they do for water, electricity, or, in many cases, cell phone minutes.

That same week, Comcast said that it would expand on a strategy it uses to manage Internet traffic: slowing down the connections of the heaviest users, so-called bandwidth hogs, at peak times.

AT&T also said Thursday that limits on heavy use were inevitable and that it was considering pricing based on data volume. “Based on current trends, total bandwidth in the AT&T network will increase by four times over the next three years,” the company said in a statement.

All three companies say that placing caps on broadband use will ensure fair access for all users.

Internet metering is a throwback to the days of dial-up service, but at a time when video and interactive games are becoming popular, the experiments could have huge implications for the future of the Web.

Millions of people are moving online to watch movies and television shows, play multiplayer video games and talk over videoconference with family and friends. And media companies are trying to get people to spend more time online: the Disneys and NBCs of the world keep adding television shows and movies to their Web sites, giving consumers convenient entertainment that soaks up a lot of bandwidth.

Moreover, companies with physical storefronts, like Blockbuster, are moving toward digital delivery of entertainment. And new distributors of online content — think YouTube — are relying on an open data spigot to make their business plans work.

Critics of the bandwidth limits say that metering and capping network use could hold back the inevitable convergence of television, computers and the Internet.

The Internet “is how we deliver our shows,” said Jim Louderback, chief executive of Revision3, a three-year-old media company that runs what it calls a television network on the Web. “If all of a sudden our viewers are worried about some sort of a broadband cap, they may think twice about downloading or watching our shows.”

Even if the caps are far above the average users’ consumption, their mere existence could cause users to reduce their time online.

Just ask people who carefully monitor their monthly allotments of cell phone minutes and text messages.

“As soon as you put serious uncertainty as to cost on the table, people’s feeling of freedom to predict cost dries up and so does innovation and trying new applications,” Vint Cerf, the chief Internet evangelist for Google who is often called the “father of the Internet,” said in an e-mail message.

But the companies imposing the caps say that their actions are only fair. People who use more network capacity should pay more, Time Warner argues. And Comcast says that people who use too much – like those who engage in file-sharing – should be forced to slow down.

Time Warner also frames the issue in financial terms: The broadband infrastructure needs to be improved, it says, and maybe metering could pay for the upgrades. So far its trial is limited to new subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, a city of roughly 110,000.

In that trial, new customers can buy plans with a 5-gigabyte cap, a 20-gigabyte cap or a 40-gigabyte cap. Prices for those plans range from $30 to $50. Above the cap, customers pay $1 a gigabyte. Plans with higher caps come with faster service.

“Average customers are way below the caps,” said Kevin Leddy, executive vice president for advanced technology at Time Warner Cable.

“These caps give them years’ worth of growth before they’d ever pay any surcharges.”

Casual Internet users who merely send e-mail messages, check movie times and read the news are not likely to exceed the caps. But people who watch television shows on Hulu.com, rent movies on iTunes or play the multiplayer game Halo on Xbox may start to exceed the limits — and millions of people are already doing those things.

Streaming an hour of video on Hulu, which shows programs like “Saturday Night Live,” “Family Guy” and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” consumes about 200 megabytes, or one-fifth of a gigabyte. A higher-quality hour of the same content bought through Apple’s iTunes store can use about 500 megabytes, or half a gigabyte.

A high-definition episode of “Survivor” on CBS.com can use up to a gigabyte, and a DVD-quality movie through Netflix’s new online service can eat up about 5 gigabytes. One Netflix download alone, in fact, could bring a user to the limit on the cheapest plan in Time Warner’s trial in Beaumont.

Even services like Skype and Vonage that use the Internet to transmit phone calls could help put users over the monthly limits.

Time Warner would not reveal how many gigabytes an average customer uses, saying only that 95 percent of customers use under 40 gigabytes each in a month.

That means that 5 percent of customers use more than 50 percent of the network’s overall capacity, the company said, and many of those people are assumed to be sharing copyrighted video and music files illegally.

The Time Warner plan has the potential to bring Internet use full circle, back to the days when pay-as-you-go pricing held back the Web’s popularity. In the early days of dial-up access, America Online and other providers offered tiered pricing, in part because audio and video were barely viable online. Consumers feared going over their allotted time and bristled at the idea that access to cyberspace was billed by the hour.

In 1996, when AOL started offering unlimited access plans, Internet use took off and the online world started moving to the center of people’s daily lives. Today most Internet packages provide a seemingly unlimited amount of capacity, at least from the consumer’s perspective.

But like water and electricity, even digital resources are finite.

Last year Comcast disclosed that it was temporarily turning off the connections of customers who used file-sharing services like BitTorrent, arguing that they were slowing things down for everyone else. The people who got cut off complained and asked how much broadband use was too much; the company did not have a ready answer.

Thus, like Time Warner, Comcast is considering a form of Internet metering that would apply to all online activity.

The goal, says Mitch Bowling, a senior vice president at Comcast, is “ensuring that a small number of users don’t impact the experience for everyone else.”

Last year Comcast was sued when it was disclosed that the company had singled out BitTorrent users.

In February, Comcast departed from that approach and started collaborating with the company that runs BitTorrent. Now it has shifted to what it calls a “platform agnostic” approach to managing its network, meaning that it slows down the connection of any customer who uses too much bandwidth at congested times.

Bowling said that “typical Internet usage” would not be affected.

But on the Internet, “typical” use is constantly being redefined.

“The definitions of low and high usage today are meaningless, because the Internet’s going to grow, and nothing’s going to stop that,” said Eric Klinker, the chief technology officer of BitTorrent.

As the technology company Cisco put it in a recent report, “today’s ‘bandwidth hog’ is tomorrow’s average user.”

One result of these experiments is a tug of war between the Internet providers and media companies, which are monitoring the Time Warner experiment with trepidation.

“We hate it,” said a senior executive at a major media company, who requested anonymity because his company, like all broadcasters, must play nice with the same cable operators that are imposing the limits. Now that some television shows are viewed millions of times online, the executive said, any impediment would hurt the advertising model for online video streaming.

Leddy of Time Warner said that the media companies’ fears were overblown. If the company were to try to stop Web video, “we would not succeed,” he said. “We know how much capacity they’re going to need in the future, and we know what it’s going to cost. And today’s business model doesn’t pay for it very well.”

New film from award-winning documentary maker John Pilger which suggests that, far from bringing democracy to the world as it claims, the US is doing its best to stifle its progress. Talking exclusively to American government officials, including agents who reveal for the first time on film how the CIA ran its war in Latin America in the 80s, Pilger argues that true popular democracy is more likely to be found among the poorest in Latin America, whose movements are often ignored in the West.

This is a very serious matter…

In 2007, the ‘artist’ Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, took a dog from the street, tied him to a rope in an art gallery, and starved him to death.

For several days, the ‘artist’ and the visitors of the exhibition have watched emotionless the shameful ‘masterpiece’ based on the dog’s agony, until eventually he died.

Does it look like art to you?

But this is not all… the prestigious Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American decided that the ‘installation’ was actually art, so that Guillermo Vargas Habacuc has been invited to repeat his cruel action for the biennial of 2008.

PLEASE HELP STOP HIM.

http://www.petitiononline.com/ea6gk/petition.html

It’s free of charge, there is no need to register, and it will only take 1 minute to save the life of an innocent creature.

Thank you for your time.

http://www.dehp.net/candidate/

2. Another webpage here gives you a big table consists of all the stands of the candidates on different issues:

http://www.2decide.com/table.htm

3. This Dutch website asks you 35 questions and show you a result in socialgraph/ compass format of how close the candidates are with your view. Too bad they don’t have Kucinich.

http://www.electoralcompass.com/

4. Lastly, here are all the voting records of the 2008 presidential candidates:

http://www.vote-smart.org/election_president.php