Chances are, unless you spent a lot of time in Japan lately or do IT-related studies at a technical university, you never heard of Semacode before. The concept is simple: A web URL is encoded into a two-dimensional grid image, which can be read by software and turned back into the embedded link. The creators claim that any such image can take “up to 50% damage” without making it unreadable. So what you can do is snap a picture of a semacode with your camphone, and your mobile automagically opens the corresponding website.

Sounds geeky? You bet. I first heard about the technology about 1 years ago, probably at BoingBoing, and considered it a cute, but currently useless idea. Back then, camphones were still pretty new, pretty rare, and pretty expensive. That has changed a lot in the last months, and now you actually have to search for a phone that comes without at least a VGA-quality camera built in.

Remember those pink and white posters for the electric beats festival at the MQ - the Stereo MC’s/Gus Gus/Zoot Woman one? Well, they had semacodes on them that sent you directly to the ticket ordering page. And yesterday, I met Alexis at the Phil, who told me about his current project - the Semapedia.

Everyone knows the Wikipedia - the world’s largest and best-organized free encyclopedia. And if you’re like me, you often stumble about things in the so-called real world and think “Hm, I’d like to know more about that, can’t wait to get home and look it up.” The Semapedia project aims to make it easier for information junkies to get their fix the moment a need kicks in. They tag buildings, places and other things with semacode stickers that link to the corresponding Wikipedia entries or websites. The project is less than a week old, but it moves along really well - if you look closely, you can find semacode tags all over Vienna’s inner city.

If you want to join the idea, get some reader software for your cellphone, and/or use the Semapedias’ Tag creator. The guys also keep a blog about their progress, and if you’re a theory whore, you can read the paper they made about the whole thing.

Finally, there’s something actually useful you can do with a camphone! Now if the carriers get their act together and provide some actually affordable mobile net connections, this could become a really, really cool thing. No, wait, it’s already really cool, but it has the potential to become HUGE (with fries).

FYI, the semacode embedded into this article links to http://vienna.metblogs.com - that might be redundant since you’re already here, but redundancy is the new black, anyway.

“The things one finds wandering in a landscape: familiar things and utterly unknown, like a flower one has never seen before, or, as Columbus discovered, an inexplicable continent; and then, behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy.”

Gelatin, our beloved Viennese art-boygroup, errected a giant pink bunny on the Colletto Fava mountain in Italy’s Piemonte region. The uber-toy is over 60 meters long, and if all goes according to plan, it will stick around for the next 20 years before it has to be removed - just think how your regular-sized plush toys look now, 20 years after your childhood, and you will understand.

The Gelatins want to create a Gulliver-feeling for the visitors, and they encourage visitors to climb the 6 meter high animal and rest on its’ belly. Oh, and animal rights activists need not worry - Project “Hase/Rabbit/Coniglio/Lapin/Conejo/…” was “knitted by dozens of grannies out of pink wool”, so neither rabbit fur nor child labor was involved. Yay!

By the way, it wouldn’t be the Gelatins if they couldn’t even make a project like this into a message that will make larger portions of the population feel uneasy. From the press text:

“The toilet-paper-pink creature lies on its back: a rabbit-mountain like Gulliver in Lilliput. Happy you feel as you climb up along its ears, almost falling into its cavernous mouth, to the belly-summit and look out over the pink woolen landscape of the rabbits’ body, a country dropped from the sky; ears and limbs sneaking into the distance; from its side flowing heart, liver and intestines. Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowel. Happy you leave like the larva that gets its wings from an innocent carcass at the roadside.Such is the happiness which made this rabbit.”

While getting a new passport can be relatively easy in Austria, turning your foreign licence plate to an Austrian plate is something similar to the bureaucracy test of the 12 Tasks Of Asterix.

Here it is the shopping list:
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Mr. Jogi presents an evening dedicated to Austrian indie computer game whizzos.

Live set by DOT.MATRIX.

Saturday, September 24; starting at 5 PM.
Museumsquartier / quartier21 / electric avenue, 1070 Vienna.

More info (German only)

This “temple” is near Naschmarkt.

Any body an idea what that could be or that was good for?
I found it in the old cellars of the gallery Artposition.

Economy of an aesthetics without values.

Quote:

A parking lot serves as a place for an exhibition. On it, several trucks are hosting solo-presentations of 10 artists. The exchange and respectively exchangability of matters as a phenomenon of contemporary culture builds the main topic of the exhibition. The connecting element between the artists is on the one hand a strategy of invalidating parts they later combine or filter to create new values, on the other hand an occupation with the use of symbols and the functionality of pop- and subculture.

With Thomas Draschan, Mana Furuyama / Akafuji, Irina Georgieva, Gerhard Himmer, Valentin Hirsch, Tillman Kaiser, Zenita Komad, Ursula Mayer, Nick Oberthaler, Simon Reitst

I just got up and i have no fucking clue if i went to work today. how weird is that?
it took me a couple of minutes to realise that i went to bed around 7pm, after i returned from work, and felt too drugged by a sick combination of different medicine and passed out in bed.
Anyways, thats a new surreal feeling. wonder if i am getting the flue, or if i am generally somewhat … beside me.

A couple of days i ago my mother asked about my passport. We are going to Dublin next month, and she was completely sure that my old passport expired. Being a smartass i said everything is aaaaaaaaaaallright, dont worry, yo.
In my little reality everything was alright, until i tried to find my passport. It has indeed expired.
I did NOT panic, okay i did panic, and googled around to see where to get a new one. I still had the one i got when i was around 14 and still living in lower austria, and that means that my parents got me said document. What does one intelligent woman do? Yes, first panic, and then try to think straight. I still have enough time to get one, right? Right. Checked the “Virtual Amt”.
According to that site, my district has no own get-a-new-passport-agency. Instead of feeling happy to know where to find one in my district, i had to figure out where the Magistrat in the first district is. Wipplinger Str. Everybody knows that street, i didnt. YES I DO NOT KNOW EVERY GODDAMN STREET IN THIS CITY. Everybody who knows me, knows how lost i am within this city if i do not have a guide or 100 people i can ask for the right way. I am the tourist everybody fears to meet. I am one of those people with puppy eyes, close to tears, to ask how to get from point A to point B (while i am probably already standing on Point B without realising it).
I called all of my people to ask if someone would please pity me enough to bring me to the Wipplinger Str. I was lucky, and found a friend who actually knew how to get there and to be my company.
The Wipplinger Str is found rather easily, and I immediately felt somewhat dumb. Thats nothing new, and nothing new to my company.
I went inside of this… weird building. They have a nifty machine that produces little papers with little numbers on it if you push a little button. i took one. Fine, i took 4, cause the goddamn machine wouldnt stop giving me numbers. We sat down in the waiting room, where i immediately started to make up weird thoughts about the numbers. I was ashamed of having 4 of them, and tried to find a good explanation why i have 4 numbers instead of one. The coolest reason would be: “sorry, i am schizoprhenic. Every person needs their own number.” My friend was nice enough not to laugh but calm me down. I was in a meshugge state that day.
Suddenly a weird noise filled the room. Do you know firealarms? Those nervebreaking loud siren thing? Take one chord of the siren, and thats what i heard. Before i could go nuts and scream FIRE FIRE FIRE and run outside with both arms waving around in panic, my friend showed me the huge display in the corner of the waiting room. It showed number “8″. I looked at the number, then looked at my little pieces of paper. I am number 9 (and 10,11 and 12) . hmm… oh wait, aaaah, got it now. we are next, right? Right. I am a child sometimes. With the IQ of a really really small child.
Siren goes again. Ha, i am next!
Had to give them my old passport, told them that my address changed and gave them my new “Meldezettel”.
The young lady took everything and then gave me another piece of paper, telling me i need to go to the second floor and pay.
Right. second floor. Thats easy, i can do that.
No i cant.
It took us, believe it or not, 30 minutes to find said second floor. I dont know where the fuck we went to, and i had to go back to the lady and ask for the exact way twice. I am pretty sure she thought i am nuts.
We found the correct room, on the correct second floor, in the correct building. I went inside and said “Good day” to 2 Ladies. They looked at me, and then continued chatting with each other. I waited. 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes… “Uhm, Excuse me, I…” chit chat chit chat chit chat. They were rather good with ignoring me. I am not small, you cannot ignore me that easily. “Hello? I….” The older one stared at me and said “Cant you see we are talking?” Le Gasp! “Well, excuse me, i see that you are chatting. But honestly, i dont give a fuck, i dont have much time, and i need to pay for my new passport. Right now. You can continue bitching about your colleagues a bit later, yes?” Silence. “That makes 69Eur.” I paid. “See, that was easy, wasnt it? No hard feelings and insults. Have a great day.”
Hurried back to the first Lady and showed her the recipt. I smiled like I killed a dragon and became a hero. She didnt smile. My company laughed in the waiting room.
She looked at my new passport pictures. I felt ashamed. You see, i made those pictures after a sleepless night, with rings under my eyes, and the very special “Corpse decaying in water for days” look. I didnt care, i just need my passport. Those pictures are not that cheap, mind you. Its just an ID anyways.. who cares that the picture is the worst manifestation of evil i ever saw.
20 minutes later i was the happy owner of a new passport.
I celebrated it with a cacao and felt like a king, err… queen.

I rock.
Yes, i am fully aware that its easy to do those things. Yes, you might think i am totally silly. And you know what, i’d agree with you.

Some useful information:
They accept Maestro Cards (ATM, Bankomat)
They need your old passport, special passport pictures, and a “Meldezettel” if your address changed.
All in all it only takes 30 minutes. If you find the room, the building, and helpful workers there.

Franky Ablinger posted a message on the Bagasch mailing list.

Sorry, German only.

Simon Wiesenthal, 96, the controversial Nazi hunter who pursued hundreds of war criminals after World War II and was central to preserving the memory of the Holocaust for more than half a century, died today in Vienna, Austria, his base of operations.

Dubbed the “deputy for the dead” and “avenging archangel” of the Holocaust, Wiesenthal created after the war a repository of concentration camp testimonials and dossiers on Nazis at his Jewish Documentation Center. The information was used to help professional lawyers prosecute those responsible for some of the 20th century’s most abominable crimes.

Link NY Times
Link LA Times
Link Washington Post