DOCSLIB.ORG

Postdigital City

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Postdigital City ADVERTIMENT. Lʼaccés als continguts dʼaquesta tesi doctoral i la seva utilització ha de respectar els drets de la persona autora. Pot ser utilitzada per a consulta o estudi personal, així com en activitats o materials dʼinvestigació i docència en els termes establerts a lʼart. 32 del Text Refós de la Llei de Propietat Intel·lectual (RDL 1/1996). Per altres utilitzacions es requereix lʼautorització prèvia i expressa de la persona autora. En qualsevol cas, en la utilització dels seus continguts caldrà indicar de forma clara el nom i cognoms de la persona autora i el títol de la tesi doctoral. No sʼautoritza la seva reproducció o altres formes dʼexplotació efectuades amb finalitats de lucre ni la seva comunicació pública des dʼun lloc aliè al servei TDX. Tampoc sʼautoritza la presentació del seu contingut en una finestra o marc aliè a TDX (framing). Aquesta reserva de drets afecta tant als continguts de la tesi com als seus resums i índexs. ADVERTENCIA. El acceso a los contenidos de esta tesis doctoral y su utilización debe respetar los derechos de la persona autora. Puede ser utilizada para consulta o estudio personal, así como en actividades o materiales de investigación y docencia en los términos establecidos en el art. 32 del Texto Refundido de la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual (RDL 1/1996). Para otros usos se requiere la autorización previa y expresa de la persona autora. En cualquier caso, en la utilización de sus contenidos se deberá indicar de forma clara el nombre y apellidos de la persona autora y el título de la tesis doctoral. No se autoriza su reproducción u otras formas de explotación efectuadas con fines lucrativos ni su comunicación pública desde un sitio ajeno al servicio TDR. Tampoco se autoriza la presentación de su contenido en una ventana o marco ajeno a TDR (framing). Esta reserva de derechos afecta tanto al contenido de la tesis como a sus resúmenes e índices. WARNING. The access to the contents of this doctoral thesis and its use must respect the rights of the author. It can be used for reference or private study, as well as research and learning activities or materials in the terms established by the 32nd article of the Spanish Consolidated Copyright Act (RDL 1/1996). Express and previous authorization of the author is required for any other uses. In any case, when using its content, full name of the author and title of the thesis must be clearly indicated. Reproduction or other forms of for profit use or public communication from outside TDX service is not allowed. Presentation of its content in a window or frame external to TDX (framing) is not authorized either. These rights affect both the content of the thesis and its abstracts and indexes. Sandra Álvaro Sánchez PostDigital City: Aesthetics and Politics in the space of Embodied Virtuality Cover: Design by Margot Portrayed Image: Sandra Alvaro The Assemblage of Embodied Virtuality (2016) Build with Ghepi. Data from this research PostDigital City: Aesthetics and Politics in the space of Embodied Virtuality La Ciudad PostDigital. Estética y Política en el espacio de la Virtualidad Encarnada Sandra Álvaro Sánchez Thesis submitted in partial fulfi llment of the requirement for the degree of Ph.D Philosophy. Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Depeartment of Philosophy September 2016 Director: Prof. Khaldoun Zreik Tutor: Dr. David Casacuberta Klee dit qu’on «exerce un effort par poussées pour décoller de la terre» qu’on s’élève au-dessus d’elle sous l’empire de forces centrifuges qui triomphent de la pesanteur. Il ajoute que l’artiste commence par regarder autour de lui, dans touts les milieux, mais pour saisir la trace de la création dans le créé, de la nature naturante dans la nature naturée; et puis s’installant «dans les limites de la terre», il s’intéresse au microscope, aux cristaux, aux molécules, aux atomes et particules, non pas pour la conformité scientifique, mais pour le mouvement, rien que pour le mouvement immanent; l’artiste se dit que ce monde a eu des aspects différents, qu’il y en aura d’autres encore, et qu’il y en a déjà d’autres sur autres planètes; en fin il s’ouvre au Cosmos pour en capter les forces dans une «œuvre» (sans quoi l’ouverture au Cosmos ne serait qu’une rêverie incapable d’élargir les limites de la terre), et pur une telle œuvre il faut des moyens très simples, très purs, presque infantiles, mais il faut aussi les forces d’un peuple, et c’est cela qui manque encore, «il nous manque cette dernière force, nous cherchons ce soutien populaire...» Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari (1980) Capitalisme et schizophrénie 2. Mille Plateaux “Les ouvres acquerront une sorte d’ubiquité. Leur présence immédiate ou leur restitution à toute époque obéiront à notre appel”. Paul Valery (1928) La conquête de l’ubiquité Sandra Álvaro Sánchez 5 6 PostDigital City: Aesthetics and Politics in the space of Embodied Virtuality ABSTRACT Deleuze and Guattari quote Paul Klee to characterize modern art as research engaged in the mobilization of the creative potentialities of matter. Art gives up mimesis or Representation and assumes an aesthetic and political compromise: to express how things reach existence. The Modern Artist becomes an artisan engaged in the experimentation with matter, which is understood as multidimensional, active, complex, and counter-intuitive. After having abandoned the repetition of tradition and the codifications of power, art explores noise, the unactualized possibilities of the Virtual, and unfolds new channels of communication, new Transductions towards the creation of new territories or spaces of dwelling. Art becomes ecology and claims for a population, called on to be the oscillators that make these starting points and new temporalities resonate. The collective engagement in the creation of our surrounding reality will reach philosophy and science, this resulting in a new understanding of Ontology; our reality becomes an ongoing collective project, not populated by static objects but by the immanent process of producing complex assemblages. The Deleuzian concept of Art stems from a materialistic ontology that unfolded from the postcartesian philosophy of Leibniz and Spinoza and the conception of a processual reality proposed by Whitehead, and followed by authors such as Bergson, Simondon, Deleuze and Serres, that was later elaborated by Delambda and Latour and more recently by currents such as Software Studies, Media Archaeology, the Ecology of Media, and others that have considered the agency of matter in relation to the digital ground. The research presented here navigates these theories, their relation to and influence on to theories about urbanism, especially in Lefebvre, and contemporary artistic production to propose a series of concepts: ‘Space of Transformation’, ‘Embodied Virtuality’ and ‘PostDigital’ are the points of accumulation where all the previous conceptual elaborations converge; the nodes of a constellation that will allow a navigable map towards the understanding of the conformation of our technological milieu to be built. The Postdigital designates a situation shaped by the ubiquity of a big assemblage that has spread computation to all the spaces of knowledge and practice until reaching our daily routines and the physical space by means of the new connected devices of Ubiquitous Computing and the associated phenomena of Big Data, the Internet of Things and Smartcities, that are territorializing all the spaces of our life, all of them flattened under the politics of a representation where everything becomes computable data and modelled by new cartographies, which are aimed at the efficient management of these spaces. Under these circumstances, computers are not tools, but a new techno-social Apparatus changing the practiced, conceived and lived space. This research is aimed at the proposal of a productive relation with the new non-human agents populating our environment, by means of the consideration of the creative potential of Making, understood as a transductive process from where things emerge as Embodied Spaces of Transformation. That is to say, the result of a communicative encounter by virtue of which things are produced at the same time as the subjectivities and territories of the Collectives involved in them. As Valéry predicts art is becoming ubiquitous, the creations and techniques developed in the experimentation with new media pervade our environment from the facades of our buildings to the small communicative devices we stock in our pockets and the design of consumer products. In it, art and design encounter with technology and engineering. What is proposed here is a set of strategies arising from the free and playful activity developed on the intersections between art, engineering, architecture and social intervention, the Postdigital Strategies are rooted in the space of Embodied Virtuality and directed at the elaboration of a new poetics of the city, which is concerned with the speculative construction of programmable space. It becomes not an unrooted, homogenized and fragmented nowhere, jeopardized by the fuzzy relational systems of an imperceptible Apparatus, but a space rooted in the specifics of the local and able to embrace difference, populated by open systems that foster participation and empowers citizens, able to be appropriated for new uses and where everybody can be engaged in its social production; the seeds for the new citizenship that Lefebvre claims in the Right of the City. Sandra Álvaro Sánchez 7 8 PostDigital City: Aesthetics and Politics in the space of Embodied Virtuality ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The realization of a thesis is a long journey starting with a first proposal that grows and evolves through its passage by multiple spaces and encounters. This short text is to thank some of the people and places that have collaborated to keep this research open and growing. Firstly, I express my gratitude to Khaldoun Zreik for having accepted the direction of this thesis, for his wise advice and encouraging support.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Origins of the Underline As Visual Representation of the Hyperlink on the Web: a Case Study in Skeuomorphism
    The Origins of the Underline as Visual Representation of the Hyperlink on the Web: A Case Study in Skeuomorphism The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Romano, John J. 2016. The Origins of the Underline as Visual Representation of the Hyperlink on the Web: A Case Study in Skeuomorphism. Master's thesis, Harvard Extension School. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33797379 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA The Origins of the Underline as Visual Representation of the Hyperlink on the Web: A Case Study in Skeuomorphism John J Romano A Thesis in the Field of Visual Arts for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Harvard University November 2016 Abstract This thesis investigates the process by which the underline came to be used as the default signifier of hyperlinks on the World Wide Web. Created in 1990 by Tim Berners- Lee, the web quickly became the most used hypertext system in the world, and most browsers default to indicating hyperlinks with an underline. To answer the question of why the underline was chosen over competing demarcation techniques, the thesis applies the methods of history of technology and sociology of technology. Before the invention of the web, the underline–also known as the vinculum–was used in many contexts in writing systems; collecting entities together to form a whole and ascribing additional meaning to the content.
    [Show full text]
  • Alan Emtage Coach Nick's Fav Tech Innovators
    Coach Nick’s Fav Tech Innovators Alan Emtage Innovation - The Search Engine: In 1989, Alan Emtage conceived of and implemented Archie, the world’s first Internet search engine. In doing so, he pioneered many of the techniques used by public search engines today. Coach Nick Says: “The search engine was named after, Archie, a famous comic book that I read as a kid! It changed the way people learn.” Coach Nick’s Fav Tech Innovators Ray Tomlinson Innovation - E-mail: In 1971, Ray Tomlinson developed an e-mail program and the @ sign. He is internationally known and credited as the inventor of email. WVMEN Coach Nick Says: “When I worked in the WV State Department of Education, we started using e-mail in our high schools in 1984 as part of WVMEN, the first statewide micro-computing network in the Nation!” Coach Nick’s Fav Tech Innovators Doug Engelbart Innovation - The Computer Mouse: Doug Engelbart invented the computer mouse in the early 1960s in his research lab at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International). The first prototype was built in 1964, the patent application was filed in 1967, and US Patent was awarded in 1970. Coach Nick Says: “Steve Jobs acquired — some say stole — the mouse concept from the Xerox PARC Labs in Palo Alto in 1979 and changed the world.” Coach Nick’s Fav Tech Innovators Steve Wozniak & Steve Jobs Innovation - The First Apple: The Apple I, also known as the Apple-1, was designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak. Wozniak’s friend Steve Jobs had the idea of selling the computer.
    [Show full text]
  • Video Games: Changing the Way We Think of Home Entertainment
    Rochester Institute of Technology RIT Scholar Works Theses 2005 Video games: Changing the way we think of home entertainment Eri Shulga Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/theses Recommended Citation Shulga, Eri, "Video games: Changing the way we think of home entertainment" (2005). Thesis. Rochester Institute of Technology. Accessed from This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by RIT Scholar Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of RIT Scholar Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Video Games: Changing The Way We Think Of Home Entertainment by Eri Shulga Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Information Technology Rochester Institute of Technology B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences Copyright 2005 Rochester Institute of Technology B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences Master of Science in Information Technology Thesis Approval Form Student Name: _ __;E=.;r....;...i S=-h;....;..;u;;;..;..lg;;i..;:a;;...__ _____ Thesis Title: Video Games: Changing the Way We Think of Home Entertainment Thesis Committee Name Signature Date Evelyn Rozanski, Ph.D Evelyn Rozanski /o-/d-os- Chair Prof. Andy Phelps Andrew Phelps Committee Member Anne Haake, Ph.D Anne R. Haake Committee Member Thesis Reproduction Permission Form Rochester Institute of Technology B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences Master of Science in Information Technology Video Games: Changing the Way We Think Of Home Entertainment L Eri Shulga. hereby grant permission to the Wallace Library of the Rochester Institute of Technofogy to reproduce my thesis in whole or in part.
    [Show full text]
  • The Uses of Animation 1
    The Uses of Animation 1 1 The Uses of Animation ANIMATION Animation is the process of making the illusion of motion and change by means of the rapid display of a sequence of static images that minimally differ from each other. The illusion—as in motion pictures in general—is thought to rely on the phi phenomenon. Animators are artists who specialize in the creation of animation. Animation can be recorded with either analogue media, a flip book, motion picture film, video tape,digital media, including formats with animated GIF, Flash animation and digital video. To display animation, a digital camera, computer, or projector are used along with new technologies that are produced. Animation creation methods include the traditional animation creation method and those involving stop motion animation of two and three-dimensional objects, paper cutouts, puppets and clay figures. Images are displayed in a rapid succession, usually 24, 25, 30, or 60 frames per second. THE MOST COMMON USES OF ANIMATION Cartoons The most common use of animation, and perhaps the origin of it, is cartoons. Cartoons appear all the time on television and the cinema and can be used for entertainment, advertising, 2 Aspects of Animation: Steps to Learn Animated Cartoons presentations and many more applications that are only limited by the imagination of the designer. The most important factor about making cartoons on a computer is reusability and flexibility. The system that will actually do the animation needs to be such that all the actions that are going to be performed can be repeated easily, without much fuss from the side of the animator.
    [Show full text]
  • Tim Berners-Lee
    Le Web Quelques repères Informations compilées par Omer Pesquer - http://infonum.omer.mobi/ - @_omr Internet Mapping Project, Kevin Kelly, 1999, https://kk.org/ct2/the-internet-mapping-project La proposition d'Alan Levin pour l'Internet Mapping Project https://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/24868066787/ 3 Hypertexte «Une structure de fchier pour l'information complexe, changeante et indéterminée » Ted Nelson, 1965 http://www.hyperfiction.org/texts/whatHypertextIs.pdf + https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertexte http://xanadu.com.au/ted/XUsurvey/xuDation.html THE INTERNET 2015 - THE OPTE PROJECT (juillet 2015) - Barrett Lyon http://www.opte.org/the-intern et/ 5 1990... Un accès universel à un large univers de documents En mars 1989, Tim Berners-Lee soumettait une Le 6 août 1991, Tim Berners-Lee annonce proposition d'un nouveau système de gestion de publiquement sur « alt.hypertext » l'existence du l'information à son supérieur. WorldWideWeb. http://info.cern.ch/Proposal.html http://info.cern.ch Le Web « Les sites (Web) doivent être en mesure d'interagir dans un espace unique et universel. » Tim Berners-Lee http://fr.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee +http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html 8 9/73 Les Horribles Cernettes - première photo publiée sur World Wide Web en 1992. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Horribles_Cernettes Logo historique du World Wide Web par Robert Cailliau http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:WWW_logo_by_Robert_Cailliau.svg Le site Web du Ministère de la Culture en novembre 1996 Le logo est GIF animé : https://twitter.com/_omr/status/711125480477487105 "Une archéologie des premiers sites web de musées en France" https://www.facebook.com/804024616337535/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1054783704594957 11/73 1990..
    [Show full text]
  • Ted Nelson History of Computing
    History of Computing Douglas R. Dechow Daniele C. Struppa Editors Intertwingled The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson History of Computing Founding Editor Martin Campbell-Kelly, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK Series Editor Gerard Alberts, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Advisory Board Jack Copeland, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand Ulf Hashagen, Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany John V. Tucker, Swansea University, Swansea, UK Jeffrey R. Yost, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA The History of Computing series publishes high-quality books which address the history of computing, with an emphasis on the ‘externalist’ view of this history, more accessible to a wider audience. The series examines content and history from four main quadrants: the history of relevant technologies, the history of the core science, the history of relevant business and economic developments, and the history of computing as it pertains to social history and societal developments. Titles can span a variety of product types, including but not exclusively, themed volumes, biographies, ‘profi le’ books (with brief biographies of a number of key people), expansions of workshop proceedings, general readers, scholarly expositions, titles used as ancillary textbooks, revivals and new editions of previous worthy titles. These books will appeal, varyingly, to academics and students in computer science, history, mathematics, business and technology studies. Some titles will also directly appeal to professionals and practitioners
    [Show full text]
  • Terry “Trickman” Minnich and Jeff Lee Home of Terry Minnich – Glendale Heights, IL
    Terry “Trickman” Minnich and Jeff Lee Home of Terry Minnich – Glendale Heights, IL *** Date: October 13, 2015 Location: Home of Terry Minnich (157 Golden Dr.) – Glendale Heights, IL Interviewer(s): Jordan Mynes, Fulgencio Torres Transcription: Jared Wohn, Zhanna Badasyan, Silvia Nunez Length: 2 hours, 30 minutes, 15 seconds Project: History of Coin­Op in Chicago [00:00:00] Jordan Mynes [JM]: Alright I’m Jordan Mynes Fulgencio Torres [FT]: And Fulgencio Torres JM: And we’re interviewing Trickman Terry and I forgot your name, sorry Jeff Lee [JL]: Jeff Lee! 2 JM: Jeff Lee, and this is for our class History of Video Games with Carly Kocurek and the Chicago Coin­Op Archive and just real quick tell us about yourselves, how’d you first get into video games? Terry Trickman [TM]: You first or JL: Well I got into video games back in 1981. I was working as an artist I was working at Triton College in River Grove and I got a call one day from a friend of mine, Richard Tracy, who I’ve known for a number of years socially. We played music together and he knew one of my hobbies was playing games war games, cards, and board games all kinds of stuff like that and he had recently taken a job at D. Gottlieb & Co. which was one of the three, four , five pinball companies in chicago. Chicago being the home of pinball and D. Gottlieb invented the flipper game back in the 30s and JM: It was mostly tilt before that right? JL: Yeah, I guess, I guess so that’s all they did All: [laughs] JL: Supposedly, supposedly, David Gottlieb or even probably one of his engineers invented the flipper then right and anyway the video game boom had commenced and a lot of the companies, Bally Midway, Williams, and Stern, had jumped on that bandwagon.
    [Show full text]
  • The Culture of Wikipedia
    Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia Good Faith Collaboration The Culture of Wikipedia Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. Foreword by Lawrence Lessig The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Web edition, Copyright © 2011 by Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. CC-NC-SA 3.0 Purchase at Amazon.com | Barnes and Noble | IndieBound | MIT Press Wikipedia's style of collaborative production has been lauded, lambasted, and satirized. Despite unease over its implications for the character (and quality) of knowledge, Wikipedia has brought us closer than ever to a realization of the centuries-old Author Bio & Research Blog pursuit of a universal encyclopedia. Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia is a rich ethnographic portrayal of Wikipedia's historical roots, collaborative culture, and much debated legacy. Foreword Preface to the Web Edition Praise for Good Faith Collaboration Preface Extended Table of Contents "Reagle offers a compelling case that Wikipedia's most fascinating and unprecedented aspect isn't the encyclopedia itself — rather, it's the collaborative culture that underpins it: brawling, self-reflexive, funny, serious, and full-tilt committed to the 1. Nazis and Norms project, even if it means setting aside personal differences. Reagle's position as a scholar and a member of the community 2. The Pursuit of the Universal makes him uniquely situated to describe this culture." —Cory Doctorow , Boing Boing Encyclopedia "Reagle provides ample data regarding the everyday practices and cultural norms of the community which collaborates to 3. Good Faith Collaboration produce Wikipedia. His rich research and nuanced appreciation of the complexities of cultural digital media research are 4. The Puzzle of Openness well presented.
    [Show full text]
  • Global Nomads: Techno and New Age As Transnational Countercultures
    1111 2 Global Nomads 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 A uniquely ‘nomadic ethnography,’ Global Nomads is the first in-depth treat- 3111 ment of a counterculture flourishing in the global gulf stream of new electronic 4 and spiritual developments. D’Andrea’s is an insightful study of expressive indi- vidualism manifested in and through key cosmopolitan sites. This book is an 5 invaluable contribution to the anthropology/sociology of contemporary culture, 6 and presents required reading for students and scholars of new spiritualities, 7 techno-dance culture and globalization. 8 Graham St John, Research Fellow, 9 School of American Research, New Mexico 20111 1 D'Andrea breaks new ground in the scholarship on both globalization and the shaping of subjectivities. And he does so spectacularly, both through his focus 2 on neomadic cultures and a novel theorization. This is a deeply erudite book 3 and it is a lot of fun. 4 Saskia Sassen, Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology 5 at the University of Chicago, and Centennial Visiting Professor 6 at the London School of Economics. 7 8 Global Nomads is a unique introduction to the globalization of countercultures, 9 a topic largely unknown in and outside academia. Anthony D’Andrea examines 30111 the social life of mobile expatriates who live within a global circuit of counter- 1 cultural practice in paradoxical paradises. 2 Based on nomadic fieldwork across Spain and India, the study analyzes how and why these post-metropolitan subjects reject the homeland to shape an alternative 3 lifestyle. They become artists, therapists, exotic traders and bohemian workers seek- 4 ing to integrate labor, mobility and spirituality within a cosmopolitan culture of 35 expressive individualism.
    [Show full text]
  • A Topological Space for Design, Participation and Production. Tracking Spaces of Transformation
    The Journal of Peer Production New perspectives on the implications of peer production for social change Journal of Peer Production Issue 13: OPEN http://peerproduction.net — ISSN 2213-5316 A TOPOLOGICAL SPACE FOR DESIGN, PARTICIPATION AND PRODUCTION. TRACKING SPACES OF TRANSFORMATION Sandra Álvaro Sánchez ‘Space of transformation’ is a concept borrowed from Serres’ communication theory and here redefined after the evolution of the post-digital milieu and the materialistic critique of the same. Hackerspaces, fablabs, medialabs and other shared machines shops are defined here as spaces of transformation, places for the encounter between humans and non-humans, where disciplines are bridged together, hitherto severed, giving place to collective practices related to education, production and society. Shared machine shops are sited locally but also connected globally. Online, they share innovative forms of production, education and collective organization, giving place to a complex ecosystem. This article presents an analysis of the topology of this ecosystem conducted by means of tracking and visualizing the online interactions between the hackerspaces listed at the platform Hackerspaces.org. The application of network analysis is aimed to answer the research questions: First, how shared machine shops are locally and globally connected? Second, what links hackerspaces among them and these with new social issues? The concept of shared machine shops as spaces of transformation and the study of their mutual relations allows for an understanding of the transformative capacity of these spaces and how they are producing a new space for social innovation through its mutual interchange of information. Keywords: hackerspaces, network analysis, design, social innovation, space of transformation development of new organizational forms related to By Sandra Álvaro Sánchez peer-production, and the prototyping of new material products, linked to entrepreneurship and Download as PDF innovation, as well as, of new educational projects.
    [Show full text]
  • Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press 2021
    Jan 21 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Sherlockians (and Holmesians) did not gather in New York to celebrate the Great Detective’s 167th birthday this year, but the somewhat shorter long weekend offered plenty of events, thanks to Zoom and other modern technol- ogy. Detailed reports will be available soon at the web-site of The Baker Street Irregulars <www.bakerstreetirregulars.com>, but here are few brief paragraphs to tide you over: The BSI’s Distinguished Speaker on Thursday was Andrew Lycett, the author of two fine books about Conan Doyle; his topic was “Conan Doyle’s Questing World” (and close to 400 people were able to attend the virtual lecture); the event also included the announcement by Steve Rothman, editor of the Baker Street Journal, of the winner of the Morley-Montgomery Award for the best article the BSJ last year: Jessica Schilling (for her “Just His Type: An Analysis of the Découpé Warning in The Hound of the Baskervilles”). Irregulars and guests gathered on Friday for the BSI’s annual dinner, with Andrew Joffe offering the traditional first toast to Nina Singleton as The Woman, and the program continued with the usual toasts, rituals, and pap- ers; this year the toast to Mrs. Hudson was delivered by the lady herself, splendidly impersonated by Denny Dobry from his recreation of the sitting- room at 221B Baker Street. Mike Kean (the “Wiggins” of the BSI) presented the Birthday Honours (Irregular Shillings and Investitures) to Dan Andri- acco (St. Saviour’s Near King’s Cross), Deborah Clark (Mrs. Cecil Forres- ter), Carla Coupe (London Bridge), Ann Margaret Lewis (The Polyphonic Mo- tets of Lassus), Steve Mason (The Fortescue Scholarship), Ashley Polasek (Singlestick), Svend Ranild (A “Copenhagen” Label), Ray Riethmeier (Mor- rison, Morrison, and Dodd), Alan Rettig (The Red Lamp), and Tracy Revels (A Black Sequin-Covered Dinner-Dress).
    [Show full text]
  • Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press 2015
    Jan 15 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Sherlockians (and Holmesians) gathered in New York to celebrate the Great Detective's 161st birthday during the long weekend from Jan. 7 to Jan. 11. The festivities began with the traditional ASH Wednesday dinner sponsored by The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes at Annie Moore's, and continued with the Christopher Morley Walk led by Jim Cox and Dore Nash on Thursday morn- ing, followed by the usual lunch at McSorley's. The Baker Street Irregulars' Distinguished Speaker at the Midtown Executive Club on Thursday evening was Alan Bradley, co-author of MS. HOLMES OF BAKER STREET (2004), and author of the award-winning "Flavia de Luce" series; the title of his talk was "Ha! The Stars Are Out and the Wind Has Fallen" (his paper will be published in the next issue of The Baker Street Journal). The William Gillette Luncheon at Moran's Restaurant was well attended, as always, and the Friends of Bogie's at Baker Street (Paul Singleton and An- drew Joffe) entertained the audience with an updated version of "The Sher- lock Holmes Cable Network" (2000). The luncheon also was the occasion for Al Gregory's presentation of the annual Jan Whimsey Award (named in memory of his wife Jan Stauber), which honors the most whimsical piece in The Ser- pentine Muse last year: the winner (Jenn Eaker) received a certificate and a check for the Canonical sum of $221.17. And Otto Penzler's traditional open house at the Mysterious Bookshop provided the usual opportunities to browse and buy.
    [Show full text]