Monthly Archives: November 2004

Ira Tattelman's Work Creeps Me the Fuck Out

But that’s not a bad thing.

Be sure to check out his installation, “They Taught Me To Wash Away My Desires” in the restroom at the end of the hall at Artomatic. I keep forgetting to write down the room number but you’ll know it when you see it. Trust me.

I can’t even put my finger on why it weirds me out so much, I guess that’s what makes it so effective. Ira’s a delight to talk to but I keep forgetting to ask him if he’s capturing the piece on video. I don’t think he’ll be able to recreate the ambience or impact in video but it’s worth a try. Sadly, I loaned my camera to someone or I’d give it a shot. (literally and figuratively, I suppose).

now you can lojack your kids!

28,000 Texas schoolchildren are being electronically monitored. That’s good. That way school officials know everything about them and can learn their habits, figure out when they’re alone, stuff like that. No potentially for creepy shit whatsoever. Nope.

My Cyberculture students wrote so many great essays about the rise of electronic student surveillance. The kids are alright. It’s the administrators we have to worry about.

As a value-added feature, I bet they’ll find so many ways to harvest marketing-data out of this little experiment…