(en) Dragan's Home Page!

Swine Fever 2.0!!

drx@a-blast.org — Sun, 13 Dec 2008 18:30:00 +0000

Swine Fever is a classic Bookmarklet that i wrote in 1999. Bookmarklets were very short Javascript programs (not more than one line) that could be called on any web page by simply calling them from your browser's bookmarks. They can be seen as the first step in the direction of Browser-Addons, like they are popular today with Firefox.

On 2008-12-13, Tobias Leingruber will open his artistic Addon repository artzilla and asked me to reanimate Swine Fever, as it is apparently the godfather of artistic Firefox Addons. However, until now, Swine Fever didn't even run on Firefox. The last browsers tested were Netscape 4.x and Internet Explorer 5.0. Where you even born when these were popular??

Now witness the complete rewrite of this amazing software, finally compatible with the latest Firefox release!!

Originally Swine Fever was great for usage on typical 1990's websites: These were usually overloaded with loads of images, because designers at that time thought that webdesign meant to draw something in Photoshop and then cut it into loads of small puzzle pieces held together by a table structure. They tried to make pages look as if they did not consist of rectagular areas, but of smooth shapes, drop shadows and freeform lines. They tried to hide that any web page is in fact made from modular elements that can be used and addressed independently. Swine Fever exposed this modular structure and demasked the appearance of a complete, balanced shape: every single of these puzzle pieces would be replaced with the image of a pig, loaded from Pig Fertilisation Station of Weser Ems. (However i think the translation of "Schweinebesamung" to "pig fetilisation" is not really accurate.)

Today, table layouts have mostly been replaced by CSS layouts. Swine Fever will not have a great effect on freshly produced websites. For historic reasons, i did not change it to modify CSS declarartions. So it is best to use it on old pages, or apply it to find old pages with it.

In 2001, this pig fertilisation station had their page redesigned and removed the image of the pig. Luckily i was able to recover it from the cache of Alvar and since then it is hosted on my own server.

Schweinchen

To include this wonderful thing into Firefox, drag the link to your Bookmarks Toolbar.

Here is a hand-picked list of sites that look great with Swine Fever:

The newpaper TAZ covers Swine Fever on 2000-07-06 (German language).

Belief Systems in Karlsruhe

drx@a-blast.org — Sun, 19 Nov 2008 09:00:00 +0000

On Friday 2008-11-21 Olia and me will appear at the conference What was old is new again at ZKM in Karlsruhe with our talk titled "Do you believe in the User". The event is revolves around Belief Systems and looks promising! The 8 Bit Movie is also being shown!

Request for Removal Update

drx@a-blast.org — Sun, 7 Nov 2008 09:00:00 +0000

Request for Removal, the tool for automated Google Groups Suicide, was updated and now runs much better than before. Many thanks to Julian Wiersbitzki, Open Source Public Domain Power!

Wii-Mote Masters

drx@a-blast.org — Sun, 6 Nov 2008 20:00:00 +0000

On November 12th, Merz Akademie Stuttgart hosts the glamorous Wii-Mote Masters!

32 Wii Tennis teams fight on two ~~courts~~ projections for the golden trophy!

Some slots are still free! So if you think you are the Wii Tennis pimp, sign up right now!!

Tell.net in Stuttgart

drx@a-blast.org — Sun, 13 Oct 2008 21:59:00 +0000

Wednesday, 2008-10-15, 19:30 @ Mörike-Kabinett of the Stuttgart City Library, Olia Lialina und Dragan Espenschied explain Digitaler Foklore to a blazed audience! This is part of the lecture series tell.net. The lecture will be delivered in German language.

MEDVED says PREVED

drx@a-blast.org — Sun, 14 Jul 2008 20:12:00 +0000

One week ago, i received a spam message through the ICQ network. It was riding on the Превед meme that is well known in the Russian web.

This message by "MEDVED" contained a link to an exceptionally well designed web page. However this web page is trying to load malicious software in the background. So i removed all the dangerous code to release this save version to the general public:

ПРИВЕТ!!!

Enjoying aesthetical spam in safety: a unique feature of Dragan's home page!

BITMAP exhibition in Philadelphia, PA

drx@a-blast.org — Sun, 26 Jun 2008 21:59:00 +0000

Citizens of Philadelphia, please excuse the late annoucement: on June 26th was the opening of BITMAP in the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery at Drexel University. This exhibition features the hottest, most imaginative and undergroundy media art you can see today, for example mine and Olia's scarfs. The first time this exhibition was at the vertexlist gallery in Brooklyn, a place you should visit regularily.

Show at the And/Or Gallery in Dallas

drx@a-blast.org — Sun, 1 Jun 2008 19:30:00 +0000

Many different co-productions by Olia Lialina and me will be shown at the awesome And/Or Gallery in Dallas from June 7th to July 19th. To top it all off, Cory Arcangel is exhibiting with us!

Everybody will be there for the opening. Get ready for some surprises!

I am net art

drx@a-blast.org — Sun, 15 May 2008 19:30:00 +0000

Quote of the day

To all the ravers in the internet

drx@a-blast.org — Sun, 13 May 2008 10:00:00 +0000

I set up a blog where i am discussing issues of digital design, actually mainly for my students and in German language: To all the ravers in the internet.

The update frequency is rather low and i like to publish posts i worked on for some time, so i think it is interesting for other people as well. If you know enough German.