Infosthetics blogs the Google Vanity Ring, a project by Marcus Kison. The ring indicates the number of google hits received when the wearer’s name is queried. The wearer places the ring in a dock at nighttime to update the hit count.

Very interesting concept. How else will we present our online status in the real world? For what reasons would we want to? Online is public but we have ways to control the way we present ourselves and who can see those presentations. Did we have such direct management before? How will this organization translate to the real world? Will I have clothing that reveals some information about me at a bar, different information at a job interview, and possibly none while I am waiting for the bus?

I like some of Kison’s other work, especially “touched echo“. Invisible memorial for the Bruehlsche Terrasse (Dresden), using bone conduction to take visitors back in time. While I am not that into artworks involving participants listening to audio tracks in a place to imagine themselves in that same place but another time, I really like that people can listen using a standing pose natural to the space the work is installed in. (See pictures at above link…to listen a participant stands at a fence around a raised plaza area overlooking a river, they place their elbows on the fence, hands over the ears and can lean in and listen.)

In other news, I want my garbage picked up. Though that’s not the news and unfortunately it is hard to say when garbage pick up will resume. Though parking enforcement will be in full swing. That sounds a little too enthusiastic for me.