I’m in San Francisco.

It’s gorgeous.

- - -

I’ve been here for 20 days and today is the first day I’ve looked at a map. This means…

1) I have fantastic friends who have toted me around and guided me along for more than two weeks without complaint.

2) I’ve had GPS or pre-trip access to Google Maps for each car trip I’ve taken. We live in a destination-based world.

- - -

Housing status: uncertain
Grad school status: uncertain

My feeling on those issues: uncertain

- - -

Some Favorites

Net Art

Tabor Robak’s Reality CPU

Music

Articles

“The Myth of Multitasking” - The New Atlantic

“Big Paycheck or Service? Students are Put to the Test” - NYT

Videos

- - -

Osborne is also this week’s People We Like on The Morning News

Artists

“Untitled” by Maurizio Cattelan

“Eyes Wide Shut” stilled film by Dennis Neuschaefer-Rube

Music
Timoni.org/music

Videos

“IOU” by Freeze, via Mediafury

As I said when Dana D. showed this to me over the weekend, “this video is epic in about five ways.”

- - -

News

The H Line began as a chronicle of my move from Florida to New York last summer and now, at least for a while, will be about my time away from it.

One week from today, I’m moving to San Francisco to work for a company that you are likely very familiar with if you’re reading this blog. I’ll be less cryptic about that part when I’m actually out there. Right now, I’m still pinching myself to make sure it’s real — and scrambling to get things in order before I depart on Wednesday.

The plan is to return in August to finish up my last year at ITP, so I’m doing the sublet shuffle. If you know someone who needs a place, let me know!

I’ve loved my time in the city, and have been absolutely blown away by the intelligence and interestingness of everyone I’ve met here. I’m so lucky to have so many people in my life who can serve not just as friends, but mentors, too. You’re brilliant. You’re beautiful. And you’ve molded me in more ways than you could possibly know.

Quirk

FakeTV - Simulates the light effects of a television to deter would-be burglars. Yes, it’s a gimmick, but it’s a brilliant gimmick. Signifying human presence via the simulated residue of the technology we use… There are so many places to go with this concept. Fascinating. [via BoingBoing Gadgets]

Blogs
Harvard Business’ Umair Haque- Whether I agree with him or not is almost irrelevant. I can’t help but admire intelligent people who are as (please excuse the phrase) balls-out as this guy. He called Facebook evil and discussed his rationale for it at length — twice.

Photoshop Disasters - Borked ads by lazy designers.

Articles
“The Affairs of Men: The Trouble With Sex and Marriage” - Ultimately, this NYMag piece is neither terribly original nor conclusive, but it’s still worth reading and contemplating. My favorite quote comes at the end: “A relationship is a myth you create with each other.” True of relationships of all kinds, parent-to-child more than anything.

Exhibits
The New Normal @ Artists Space through June 2

An exploration of privacy, with works by: Sophie Calle, Mohamed Camara, Hasan Elahi, Eyebeam R & D/Jonah Peretti & Michael Frumin, Kota Ezawa, Miranda July & Harrell Fletcher, Guthrie Lonergan, Jill Magid, Jennifer & Kevin McCoy, Trevor Paglen, Corinna Schnitt, Thomson & Craighead, Sharif Waked

- - -
H Elsewhere

“Adventures in WeeWorld: Part One of One” - My brief excursion through a teen-oriented virtual community.

The Fourth Wall - A short interview with Amy Arbus about her upcoming book, along with a gallery of select photos

music blogs
red threat
le touch

photography
juliane eirich

net art
michaela thelenova

hayley silverman

music videos
“cool and bored” - le corps mince de francoise

- - -

work & press

On heather-rasley.com : a message, a new home + additions to special moments (which is updated regularly).

Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City was kind enough to write a post about my work and name me a Featured Net Artist.

Since I started Tell Me All About Me, the order of my Google search results changes almost constantly. Like a pile driver digging into the ocean floor, Internet users searching for “Heather Rasley” are digging into the web, sometimes bringing the dregs of my identity to the top.

Among the forgotten statements I’ve made is a quick quip about Twitter from September 2007, posted to the One Day on the Internet feature for The Morning News. Here’s what I said…

Check Twitter to read Tweets by my—not friends, not contacts—“followy people,” maybe? I only know two of them from real life, and only one of those two actually updates. Remind me why I’m on this thing, again

- - -

Notice that my issue wasn’t with the service, but about the type of community and level of conversation that was happening there. At that point, I had been on Twitter for about three months, and was sick of needing to constantly explain what it was and why it was worthwhile when attempting to convince my friends to create an account and update it with interesting stuff. I believed in the service, but was frustrated by the absence of a vocabulary with which to describe it, and its position as something only of use to the tech/geek community.

It’s almost comical to think about that version of Twitter now, since over the past two months it’s become a central communication point for me and a number of friends and contacts. As of this morning, I follow 100 people and am followed by 120. Of those that I follow, I in some way “know” (have established outside one-to-one communication with) about half, and the other half is comprised of people and organizations that I enjoy and look up to. It’s now a pleasure to read my “followy people” stream.

Twitter has also led to the creation of a new friendship that couldn’t have existed without it: I met this awesome chick face-to-face recently when she was here visiting from San Fran. I’d never have known of her if she hadn’t decided to add me to her contact list one day. To me, that’s a sign that the type of community and exchange that’s happening there is becoming strong and meaningful.

- - -

Still, the vocabulary issue isn’t gone. In fact, it came back to haunt me at the Sousveillance Culture Conference this past weekend. During my presentation, I talked about “status updates” on Twitter and Facebook as a form of data that could easily be tracked, with potentially detrimental results if in the hands of the wrong reader.

After a few mentions of this, a group of 40-something women in the second row began to giggle. I looked out at them and realized that they had no idea what I was talking about. In a quick attempt to clarify, I paused and provided a definition of Twitter that was something like:

“A group feed of short-form blog entries that answer the question ‘What are you doing?’”

What kind of grade would I give myself on that description? EPIC FAIL!

“Feed”? “Blog”? My definition was still all wrapped up in the technobabble that had confounded them in the first place.

They ended up leaving before the Q&A, and I can’t help but feel like the obscurity of my language had something to do with it (though I’m also open to the possibility that I’m completely solipsistic and they just had to leave).

- - -

But despite it still being sort of hard to explain, Twitter is pushing through to the masses.

In the past few weeks there has been much discussion about whether or not Twitter is or ever can be “mainstream.” Why that’s an issue of such great interest, I’m not entirely sure. There’s plenty of evidence that, mainstream or not, Twitter is now a valuable communication tool for a diverse group of contributors, and a site of meaningful exchange of ideas and information.Thanks to Twitter, students are being freed from jail, the web is turning into summer camp, and inanimate objects are telling us their feelings.

There are also dozens of apps that make use of Twitter info to show us data in a new way, Twistori (which uses Summize) being among the newest and sleekest.

- - -

In short: There’s no need to “remind me why I’m on this thing” anymore.

I’m there because I believe it’s a space in which truly groundbreaking developments in the social web are taking place. It’s a bridge between the real world and the virtual, and new planks are being thrown across each day thanks to its foundation.

In his recent comments at ComicCon, Douglas Rushkoff made the great observation that in the early days of the web, going online was an invigorating experience. You hopped on, did your thing, hopped off, and felt energized. Now, it’s a brain drain. So much information. So many tasks. So much STUFF.

Twitter has recaptured the energy and magic of the early days of the web. It’s not just stuff. It’s people. Sharing real thoughts about real events in really new ways.

It’s not quite a chatroom, it’s not quite a blog. It’s something else. And it’s exactly that mystery and ambiguity that makes me excited to log on in the morning.

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Lucien Samaha, who helped launch the first digital camera during his time at Kodak. His memorizing portrait was taken by Devin Elijah, who I tracked down immediately after seeing his work on the walls at Think Coffee this winter.

Since the PWL format necessitates very brief interviews, some of my questions had to be truncated or cut entirely. Among them was a mention of his work with the Arab Image Foundation, which curates and collects some truly gorgeous images from throughout Arab history. I absolutely love some of the examples on their site, and look forward to seeing the full collection online (”coming soon” to www.fai.org.lb). This is my fave from the current site:

“Untitled / Antonio / Morocco / Coll. Y. Barrada”

More are here.

Be sure to catch Lucien’s show at Sara Tecchia at 529 West 20th Street, through April 12.

Events
“Nasty as U Wanna Be” DVD screening at New York Underground Film Festival, TONIGHT

Hyungkoo Lee Solo Show at Arario Gallery, through April 19

Science

“MIT Researchers create ‘Nexi Bot’”

“Logo can make you ‘think different’”

The team conducted an experiment in which 341 university students completed what they believed was a visual acuity task, during which either the Apple or IBM logo was flashed so quickly that they were unaware they had been exposed to the brand logo. The participants then completed a task designed to evaluate how creative they were, listing all of the uses for a brick that they could imagine beyond building a wall.

People who were exposed to the Apple logo generated significantly more unusual uses for the brick compared with those who were primed with the IBM logo, the researchers said. In addition, the unusual uses the Apple-primed participants generated were rated as more creative by independent judges.

Music
“The Crystal Cat” - Dan Deacon

Me Elsewhere
From my blog on Zoom In: Harper’s on Twitter, Rhizome on Vimeo, Mossberg on the state of the web + more

Books
BibliOdyssey
Based on the blog of the same name. More than 100 pages of fantastic images (literally), accompanied by brief descriptions of their origins and significance.

Blogs
Threat Level
Keeping tabs on surveillance developments of all kinds, and the laws that let them happen.

Web Apps
Muxtape
You’ve already heard of it by now, but there you are again. I didn’t realize until after poking around that it was created by friend-of-friend Justin Ouellette, who also happens to take lovely pictures. Right now my account only has one song, but it alone is worth the click: “Taken Too Young (Tough Alliance remix)” - Taken by Trees.

Photography
“Domesticated” series by Amy Stein

Net
Platinum Member Zone
Each day a new rule for 30 days.

Music
“Courtship Date” - Crystal Castles

Shopping
Arcona Skin Care
All natural. Amazingly quick results. Worth the money.

Food
PAIN AU CHOCOLAT!