DEMILIT

"To innovate we must make, and to protect we must produce."

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:35:00 -0700

“To innovate we must make, and to protect we must produce.”

- DARPA moves further into swallowing-up all independent making: “DARPA, VA & TechShop partner to encourage innovation, build skills, explore iFAB design strategies.”

See also: DARPA invests $3.5M in TechShop to create pop-up weapons factories

jcstearns: What we teach children about police. Visiting the...

Fri, 25 May 2012 08:28:16 -0700

jcstearns:

What we teach children about police.

Visiting the local library yesterday my son picked out a book all about police. I was stunned when, after pages and pages of info about police cars and police offices, there were these two pages about Riot Control Trucks and SWAT Vans.

Even after months of tracking conflicts between police and the press I still have a profound respect for much of law enforcement and the jobs they do in our communities. However, the descriptions of water cannons being turned on protesters and the taunting opening on the SWAT page, “Someone’s causing a lot of trouble…,” all seemed out of place. Given the increasingly militarized response we have seen to citizen protests, seeing Riot and SWAT teams portrayed this way in a children’s book was troubling.

@timoreilly See also: ” Darpa is a force for good in the world” — kaden_harris...

Wed, 23 May 2012 21:52:00 -0700

@timoreilly See also: ” Darpa is a force for good in the world”
— kaden_harris (@kaden_harris) May 19, 2012

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams,...

Tue, 22 May 2012 22:40:00 -0700

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a drone

- Pruned, on http://www.schuelke.org/

Apropos:

RT @subtopes: The Pentagon treats Kafka’s Metamorphosis. As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning he found himself transformed into a gigantic…
— Al Javieera (@AlJavieera) December 23, 2011

“How DARPA Democratizes Design” @openbuddha...

Tue, 22 May 2012 13:17:00 -0700

“How DARPA Democratizes Design”

@openbuddha @mrteacup That’s a damn big assumption. Kind of like saying DARPA co-opted Apple because they funded Siri.
— Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) February 20, 2012

The suggestion that DARPA wasn’t co-opting the “maker movement”? See video above. Sounds like straight-up recruitment. The colonel even solicits resumes. Purportedly democratic and open-source design funded by the military? How ‘bout…

Open art project idea: Take work from “crowdsourced,” “open-source” DARPA makerspaces or Mentor. Send it to Iran or Venezuela. Sit. Wait.
— DEMILIT₃ (@demilit) May 22, 2012

"Synthetic biology, as Darpa notes, has the potential to yield “new materials, novel capabilities,..."

Tue, 22 May 2012 12:17:31 -0700

“

Synthetic biology, as Darpa notes, has the potential to yield “new materials, novel capabilities, fuel and medicines” — everything from fuels to solar cells to vaccines could be produced by engineering different living cells. But the agency isn’t content to wait seven years for each new innovation. In fact, they want the capability for “on-demand production” of whatever bio-product suits the military’s immediate needs.

To do it, Darpa will need to revamp the process of bio-engineering — from the initial design of a new material, to its construction, to its subsequent efficacy evaluation. The starting point, and one that agency-funded researchers will have to create, is a library of “modular genetic parts”: Standardized biological units that can be assembled in different ways — like LEGO — to create different materials.

Once that library is created, the agency wants researchers to come up with a set of “parts, regulators, devices and circuits” that can reliably yield various genetic systems. After that, they’ll also need “test platforms” to quickly evaluate new bio-materials. Think of it as a biological assembly line: Products are designed, pieced together using standardized tools and techniques, and then tested for efficacy.

”

CPD has the LRAD on it’s to #NATO Protesters twitter.com/Timcast/status… Streamers are being...

Mon, 21 May 2012 08:34:00 -0700

CPD has the LRAD on it’s to #NATO Protesters twitter.com/Timcast/status… Streamers are being pushed back Live ustream.tv/channel/occupy… #NoNATO
— Anonymous ⎝⏠⏝⏠⎠(@OperationLeakS) May 21, 2012

Urban surveillance station with overhead camera and boom mic. Why is this here?...

Sun, 20 May 2012 11:34:35 -0700

Urban surveillance station with overhead camera and boom mic. Why is this here? twitter.com/jeffreymcmanus…
— Jeffrey McManus (@jeffreymcmanus) May 19, 2012

“Commander-In-Chief Arriving” #MissionAccomplished...

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:45:57 -0700

“Commander-In-Chief Arriving” #MissionAccomplished #memory #LOLNo

"Reconstruction of the Mound of Vendôme: Imagine an environment that invokes a more revolutionary..."

Sun, 13 May 2012 22:21:00 -0700

“Reconstruction of the Mound of Vendôme: Imagine an environment that invokes a more revolutionary environmental and socio-natural scenario: in the center of the Place Vendome wrapped around the base of Napoleon’s column is a glass box dotted with holes, such as one may find in a natural history museum or zoo and that typically holds plants or animals. Inside is a monumental mound of lifeless dirt. The mound is a reconstruction of the one built there by members of the 1871 Paris Commune. The Communards created this mound of dirt as a type of cushion for when they toppled Napoleon’s column – a hated symbol of war and imperialism – to the ground. The contemporary glass box and its dirt mound stands there under the rebuilt column as both an object of the past and a possible future in which that column will be moved or will no longer exist – an environment with a type of revolutionary history and potential.”

- David Gissen

(by Chris Woebken)

Sun, 13 May 2012 21:39:57 -0700

(by Chris Woebken)

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Sun, 13 May 2012 21:18:46 -0700

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Thu, 03 May 2012 22:18:29 -0700

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Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:35:55 -0700

Trustifier: Future DARPApp?

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:41:00 -0700

For those residing in the cult of the difficult problem who say there is no automation in defensive security, Trustifier will prove U wrong.
— Rob Lewis (@Infosec_Tourist) April 20, 2012

If only we could claim we come up this stuff:

Trustifier provides framework for ordering trust relationships within & between groups for purpose of automating labelled security. #infosec
— Rob Lewis (@Infosec_Tourist) April 20, 2012

Image from the Trustifier corporation. ROFL.

This is only one apparition, a singular instance of a much larger effort by hackers to sell trust and security, including selling it to the Pentagon & DARPA:

@kairoer @wh1t3rabbit @infosec_tourist @wireheadlance My recent submission to DARPA CFT is intended to measure trust to improve security.
— jax (@jackie_singh) April 20, 2012

Photo

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 10:08:29 -0700

The Homeless Hotspots $600,000 Charity

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 13:44:00 -0700

Campaigns are about starting debates and networks - Sir John Hegarty on how BBH starting thinking about #HomelessHotspots #squared2012
— nathan miller (@nathannmiller) April 3, 2012

Remember “which product at this year’s South by Southwest technology conference received more attention than perhaps any other?” Of course, the infamous “Homeless Hotspots,” outfitting homeless people with WiFi routers. This was “skunkworks marketing” masquerading as charity or as socially innovative tactical urbanism or something. Marketing firm BBH invited a viral heap of scorn, and also a fair amount of undeserved legitimacy from professional and amateur social reformers.

After the proverbial dust settled, however, what many of us said all along seems to prove true. The stunt exploited homeless people (and the reformers that stood up for BBH) to generate riches for the advertising agency, the ultimate winners, according to this information from a recent conference (Nathan Miller live-tweeting from Squared 2012; Sir John Hegarty is the H in BBH):

Publicity value of #homelesshotspots was $620,341 but only cost $8000to set up #squared2012
— nathan miller (@nathannmiller) April 3, 2012

$620,341 minus $8,000 equals a $612,341 charitable donation—to BBH.

Let no one believe, however, that the “cultivated” Englishman openly brags with his egotism. On the contrary, he conceals it under the vilest hypocrisy. What? The wealthy English fail to remember the poor? They who have founded philanthropic institutions, such as no other country can boast of! Philanthropic institutions forsooth! As though you rendered the proletarians a service in first sucking out their very life-blood and then practising your self-complacent, Pharisaic philanthropy upon them, placing yourselves before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when you give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them! Charity which degrades him who gives more than him who takes; charity which treads the downtrodden still deeper in the dust, which demands that the degraded, the pariah cast out by society, shall first surrender the last that remains to him, his very claim to manhood, shall first beg for mercy before your mercy deigns to press, in the shape of an alms, the brand of degradation upon his brow.

- Frederick Engels

SF Gravelator 91L

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:01:00 -0700

SF Gravelator 91L by DEMILIT

Originally aired on Deutchlandradio Kultur ‘s Newcomer Werkstatt, June 24, 2011.

Commissioned by Marcus Gammel of Deutchlandradio.

SF-91L is the name of the abandoned Nike Missile station on Angel Island, in the San Francisco Bay, where we recorded the sounds for this piece. Gravelator refers to the simultaneous process of building up and eroding away the island. We displaced the island’s own material to construct a second island, an imaginary island, which is encapsulated in the sound.

In a related fashion, the military severed the island’s crown in order to install the radar system for the missiles. The missiles were made obsolete not long after it was finished and was decommissioned. Decades later, the Gravelator is a means of awakening the sequestered spaces of the silo.

“SF Gravelator 91L” by DEMILIT is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Link: http://demilit.tumblr.com/SFG

Jeppesen: Bfunk+Soundscrapers in the Fortresses of Eden...

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 11:14:00 -0700

Jeppesen: Bfunk+Soundscrapers in the Fortresses of Eden (archive.org)

Untitled (paper drones). March 16, 2011.

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:23:47 -0700

Untitled (paper drones). March 16, 2011.