Random learning, things that stick (day 94)

Some random things I learned today:

• you can become addicted to your own stress hormones
  
• stay away from chiggers (they'll make you sick and dissolve your flesh so they can eat it).
• Corelam is a very good sound absorbing material (amongst other things) and it was invented by one of Emily Carr's Industrial Design faculty, Christian Blyt.
• CMHC allowed an exhibit of small houses ('Homes for Less') designed to help homelessness but drew the line when one of them became inhabited.
• The repetitive nature of the commute (or the running track) can be exploited for narrative design.

A song for this post.

New is beautiful (day 92)

I get a special little thrill when I think about learning something new.  It's a similar thrill to opening up a novel already in progress.  The moment of anticipation of something unexpected and engaging.  It's different but similar to the thrill of creating something which feels exciting and risky all at once.  Learning something new feels hopeful and young.

I know a lot of people don't have this experience but I liked school so much when I was a kid that I would miss it in the summer.  I would ask for extra homework.  I would read books from the grades above me.  I particularly loved looking at algebra books and later calculus books so I could figure them out.   I loved things that had answers and were self-consistent.  Playing with coloured shapes and grouping them together was fun too.  Anything that was well framed and logical.

Looking back now, it doesn't seem crazy that I ended up in computing science.  Though at the time it wasn't such an easy decision.  The hard sciences like Chemistry, Biology, and Physics were much more respected.   And computing science (I'm not even using capital letters), in my mind, was for play...not serious business.  I was so serious.

I still love cracking open a computing science book though I would never immerse myself back in the field as I was.  I love the frame of a system that is logical and responsive.  It's a refuge from the open-ended and much more arbitrary art world (I don't say this pejoratively...I mean arbitrary in the same way that the law is arbitrary...complex systems built over time and highly contingent).

This weekend I'll learn something new about GLSL.  I look forward to it.

A song for this post.

Self-surveillance (day 91)

I just started taking a snapshot of my computer screen every 15 minutes.  It's all automated on all three screens I typically use (mac laptop, PC laptop, PC desktop).   It's actually fascinating to see the shots at the end of the day.  How long I spent on something.  The tidbits I read during the day.  The videos I watched.  The emails I wrote.  Sometimes I don't remember having looked at a particular thing.  It all goes by pretty quickly and somewhat compulsively.  It would be neat to get a snapshot of my face as well...and to record my breathing pattern.  For now, it's just screenshots.  It's for the Breath I/O project.  I'll collect hundreds of screenshots and make a quicktime to map into the environment and onto the lungs.

For those that are interested, it's pretty easy to set this up.  It's easiest on a Mac because cron runs natively.   All you have to do is issue the command "crontab -e" and edit the file that opens.   I run the following script in mine:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/sbin/screencapture -x $(printf "/Users/mlantin/Pictures/screenshots/macscreen-%04d.png" $((`ls ~/Pictures/screenshots| grep -c ''`+1)))

On a PC it's not as easy.  I downloaded and installed the MiniCap application.  Then I made a script in cygwin, again using bash.   Then I made a batch file to run the bash script.  Then I made a shortcut to the batch file so I could set it to run minimized (so it wouldn't pop up the svchost.exe window). Then I used Scheduled Tasks to make the script run every 15 minutes.  Here is the bash script:

#!/bin/bash

/cygdrive/d/Program\ Files/MiniCap/MiniCap.exe -capturedesktop -exit -save "$(cygpath -w $(printf "/home/mlantin/screenshots/desktopscreen-%04d.tiff" $((`ls /home/mlantin/screenshots | grep -c ""` + 1))))"

Here is the batch file (called takeashotdos.bat):

D:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe -l /home/mlantin/takeashot

exit

Here is the command in the Scheduled Task:

D:\cygwin\home\mlantin\takeashotdosshort.lnk

A song for this post.

Efficient language (day 90)

My friend Nathalie said something interesting tonight at dinner.  She said that religious language is very efficient.  It bypasses the frontal lobe and goes directly to the limbic system.  It creates affect without trying very hard.  It's efficient language.   I wonder then what the relationship between art and religion is.  Perhaps other people have wondered this and there is a whole discourse for which I have a blind spot.  But tonight marked the first time I'd ever really parked my awareness on the question.   It seems that art is related to religion in their desire for short-cutting preconceptions to create emotional insight or affect.   Art can be very efficient communication.  I suppose when people talk about the sublime and sublimation are referring to that efficiency of state change.

A song for this post.

Tribal misbehaviour (day 89)

Today on my twitter feed there was a news article about being tweckled.  A nice word that belies the extent of damage it can bring.  It's basically bullying on a mass scale in a conference backchannel.  If someone is daring to bore you at a conference you can blow off steam by insulting the speaker with your closest backchannel friends, loudly, in the public twittersphere.  The backchannel group referred to in the article, retrospectively feels justified based on the grounds that the speaker was obviously disrespecting them so they had the right to disrespect them right back.   In the moment, I doubt the thinking even went that far if anywhere at all. Another oft-stated argument was that this is the new world and you better come prepared to face the backchannel.   It rewards richly and punishes harshly.  It's the new world.  Hardly.  It's the gauntlet, revisited.  I've seen this behaviour in snowboarding terrain parks too.  It's not so new.  It's, in fact, as old as the hills.

As evidence of their good nature, they pointed out that they had collectively bought a new laptop for someone in their group who had lost theirs. Seems to be the same tribal behaviour flipped over.  I wonder which felt better.  It's a real question.

There is so much to say about why their tribal misbehaviour and lesser forms of it is harmful.  Part of me refuses to even spend the time thinking about it.  My high horses are so ready to ride but the real argument is based on a humble principle of generosity.

'the world owes me nothing, we owe each other the world'.  -- Ani Di Franco

A song for this post.

Theatre in a box (day 87)

I mentioned Sid Fels project, the "pCubee" in my last post.  It's a five-sided lcd display that simulates the appearance of something inside the cube.  It tracks the head of the person looking and gives them a realistic rendering of what is inside.
I'm not a fan of the name but I am a fan of the thing.  It's like having a cell phone in your hand except it's a cube.  I know that sounds a bit simple but I make the comparison because I remember the first time I watched a video on my iPhone, how personal it felt.  I'm imagining the same thing could apply to the pCubee with different types of content.
My suggestion to Sid was to investigate live action video in the cubee.   Right now it's just CG scenes.  I'm not sure how many cameras would be needed (16-20?) but you could probably capture 3D live theatre and show it in the cubee.  People would download an e-play for the pCubee in the same way people are now starting to download e-books on their readers. 
I like the idea of theatre in a box.  There could be something so intriguing about watching little people perform for you in a little box.   I'm not sure if it would be like a parlour game or something serious like watching an art film.  Probably more parlour game.  Either way I'd love to experience it.  It reminds me of music boxes.  But then there is an edge to it with live content...like looking at a bird in a cage.  Not so pleasant.  Holograms in Star Trek are not boxed in so they don't suffer from the cage metaphor.
He does have a bigger version of the pCubee which would significantly alter the experience.  Perhaps lends it more to games or puppetry than theatre.

A song for this post.

The physical world called more strongly (day 86)

I naively thought I could keep up with my daily writing practice during the week leading up to the Interactive Futures  conference.  I thought to myself 'I'll have lots to talk about'.  Indeed I had lots to talk about but I had more to physically do.  The physical world simply called more strongly than my digital world.

So here I am a week later wondering how on earth I'll write about all that happened.  I'm afraid it will fade fast as the days progress.  Because those types of whirlwind experiences always do fade fast. 

I'll just make a list of the feelings and outcomes that stand out right now on a Sunday evening after 11 hours of deserved blissful sleep.

• Excellent art work and performances at the E-Mixer/opening reception at the Surrey Art Gallery.  Was an absolute treat to see Ryoji Ikeda's Data.tron.
• Paula Levine's 3D print got done.  Amazingly enough the superposition of The Wall on San Francisco was processed in time, printed, and prepped for display.  It is currently on display in the Concourse gallery for another day.  Thanks to Thomas Groppi for processing the mesh data, and Sean Arden for taking care of the print.
• Leila and I gave a pretty good talk, considering my total lack of preparation.  I was sad I didn't have more tests to show but the one test I did manage to render out was interesting enough to spur some discussion.  I rather liked the ambience in the venue which was dark except for the podium.  It felt like a radio experience where I was broadcasting out to an unknown audience.  It also felt like a comfortable living room kind of experience.  Leila and I tag-teamed about the story of Tulip Theory and how the lung project came about and how it is currently progressing.   Many people came to us afterward and expressed interest.
• Meeting Munro Ferguson was such a treat. His work has been an inspiration to me for a long time.  He gave an excellent keynote talk with lots of animation and video clips.  His screening was absolutely delightful and a real highlight for the conference.
• Perry Hoberman gave a retrospective on his stereo work which was both awesome in scope and depth.  The whole talk was light and humourus.  In some ways I would compare his body of work with Norman McLaren in that it has a certain lightness of being that is contagious.  Though Perry has a touch of cynicism that brings everything to a sardonic point.  I was particularly touched by the scale of some of his work.  The feeling of intimacy as you looked in on the sculptural worlds he created.   It made me rethink what the scale of the lungs should be relative to the media landscape they are surrounded by.
• Perry Hoberman and Julia Hayward also gave an amazing performance on Saturday night with singing, acoustic Guitar, synthesizer, and stereo visuals.  Really too bad that wasn't recorded for the Interactive Futures archives (though they have documentation).
• Really enjoyed Marten Berkman's screening.  Very quiet beautiful landscapes interspersed with manufactured and industrial landscapes.  The stereo effect really enhanced the experience.
• Julie Andreyev and Simon Overstall's Animal Lover performance.  I was skeptical about a performance based on a dog vocals but it was absolutely amazing and evocative.  You could feel the joy of her dogs as they ran and experienced the world.  It stands as an animal appreciation work as much as a great digital art performance.
• Sid Fel's P-Cubee was interesting.  A display in the form a cube that simulates internal space.  More on that in an upcoming post.
• Open Ended Group's demo of Field was very inspiring in the quality of line and stroke they achieve in software, and using motion capture data.  I hope to join in on one of their workshops as some point.
• George LeGrady's retrospective on his data visualization work was great.  I especially like the Pockets of Memories work.  A lot of his work is documented on the Langlois Foundation archives (including an interactive CD rom).
• Henry Daniel and his team of dancers,musicians,and digital media programmers created an amazing co-located dance performance (located in the lab and the concourse gallery).
• JoAnn Kuchera Morin spoke of the Allosphere in such a way that we all become believers.  We got to see Hydrogen orbitals in stereo (how cool is that?)
• Catherine Richards gave an excellent talk on Sensory illusions including a flicker animation at the end which was totally trippy.
• Paula Levine spoke of places becoming conflated as we go more global. 
  

There is so much more to say but I'll leave it at that for now.  I'll try to write more in the following days.  But I'm sure life will start again and other things will take over.

A song for this post.

Infopong (day 79)

Informavore is a term that Frank Schirrmacher uses to describe our current propensity to ingest information.  It's obviously a term that relates to information overload but without a negative connotation.   I like the term and I'm certainly a fan of food and eating metaphors but I wonder if it's the correct metaphor.   Obviously I'm biased here because of the Breath I/O project but it seems to me that a breathing metaphor may be a little more apt.  I say this because the act of digesting is inherently a one way transformation  (not to get too graphic) whereas the act of breathing is one of exchange and shared environment.  This is an excerpt of a response from Daniel Kahneman to the Frank Schirrmacher interview on Edge.org

The interview vividly expresses the sense many of us are getting that when we are bathed in information (it is not really snippets of information, we need the metaphor of living in a liquid that is constantly changing in flavor and feel) we no longer know precisely what we have learned, nor do we know where our thoughts come from, or indeed whether the thoughts are our own or absorbed from the bath. The link with Bargh is also interesting, because John pushes the idea that we are driven from the outside and controlled by a multitude of cues of which we are only vaguely aware — we are bathing in primes.

I think too that the metaphor of ingesting information implies the right of first refusal -- that we are not being force-fed.  In reality, it's a combination.  We can choose what information we take in by choosing our context (who/what we follow, who we friend,  what we surf) but the information bits that are presented to us are not of our own choosing.  For certain, this can be a great thing, rather like christmas morning when you get a particularly relevant tidbit you weren't expecting.   But there are also many instances where our context may be chosen with a particular purpose in mind (shopping for food, for instance) but is usurped for another purpose (selling celebrity lifestyles or diet fads).  So we are forced to hold our breath or just breathe and deal with the cough later.

For sure neither metaphors go far enough in describing the affect of having a multitude of information feeds that we somehow process, pass on, and contribute to.   There is something too crude with food, and too insubstantial with air.  And both suffer from a certain amount of passivity.  A better metaphor might be a game of pong with thousands of balls in play.  But then we're back with the no-body problem.

It seems too that any metaphor should have a dual, a metaphor to describe the negative space of what's happening -- what is not felt.   In the case of processing information, I feel this may have to do with space itself.  A sense of the bigger context that comes with a moment of reflection.

A song for this post.

How tweetly they fall (day 78)

I've been on Twitter for a few days now so I feel qualified to give my first impressions as someone who resisted the very idea of Twitter for so long.   I got an account and got into a strange loop when adding contacts such that all the contacts that it gathered from my gmail were included in my follow list.  No big deal I figured, I'll just prune later.  Well it turns out that most of them got an email from Twitter saying I was following them.   I surmised that this was the case when I started getting emails saying they were following me back.  This was somewhat disconcerting.  I wanted more control right off the bat.   Then I downloaded TweetDeck for the iPhone and logged on.  I immediately got overwhelmed by the number of letters on the screen and proceeded to ignore Twitter for a few days.  Then I installed TweetDeck on my macbook and things seemed more manageable and I noticed someone had written me a message, which helped.   I started tweeting a bit and doing some searches.  Kinda fun but with a certain amount of discomfort coming from a general lack of understanding of the Twitter language -- the format that things need to be in to properly direct, credit, and link tweets.  Compound that with the use of SMS type of abbreviated words and it becomes a lot to absorb all at once.  Half the time I think I'm doing it wrong and that I'm pissing off lots of old timers.   I screwed up a couple times but there is a delete tweet button so I could redo.

Twitter has a different feel than Facebook, must more about conversation and little observations, less about media collection or persona building.  It's more about linking people together around topics, than around pre-existing cliques.  I am following people that I don't know based on recommendations and searches.  So far I feel that Twitter is more about expanding your network than keeping your existing network up to date.  There is less commitment there than 'friending' someone so it's not such a big decision to link to someone.   Of course one of the biggest differences there is that you can follow without the other person's permission (though there are safeguards).

Sometimes it feels a bit like a cross between messaging or  texting.

I'm still learning the etiquette around twittering.   It feels like it's worth a learn and that's somewhat surprising to me.  But Facebook has taken a back seat.  It already was getting squeezed out but now even more so.  I don't like people that crosspost from Twitter to Facebook.  Seems like an intrusion.  I don't want to be that person.   We'll see if even that barrier falls.

A song for this post.

Email Apnea (day 77)

An unexpected find today had be smiling all the way to the bus stop.  I was listening to the Spark podcast of November 3rd (which is a great one btw, two longer interviews both on fascinating topics).  Nora interviewed Linda Stone who coined the term 'email apnea' to refer to the lack or shallow breath that happens when we are anticipating the next email, tweet, or txt.  This is wonderfully in line with the investigation in the Breath I/O project.    This is an excerpt from our grant application:

We have chosen to work with lungs as a visceral representation of personal interior space that is in a direct relationship of exchange with the environment. Even more directly than the heart, the lungs are a link to life and health. They offer the first clue to the quality of the surrounding environment, and breathing patterns are in a reciprocal relationship with emotional states. With these traits in mind, sounds and image streams are added to the environment of the lungs to mimic our modern situation of being surrounded and sometimes overwhelmed with images and sounds. Our relationship with media sources competing for our attention is often one of unconscious ingesting in a constant search for meaning, connection, diversion. This can be compared to shallow breathing where the body is forgotten and left to react to a starving mental state. Conversely, images and sounds may bring attention to the body by matching its rhythm or otherwise bringing the mind out of its usual patterns, triggering curiosity or calm attention. This can be compared to deep mindful breathing. Breath I/O intends to investigate the individual and collective act of apprehending media spaces as it relates to personal history and the physical body.

I was so happy to hear/read Linda Stone talk about her breathing practice and how she noticed that when she sat down in front of the computer her breath became shallow and sometimes stopped.  She has since studied the phenomenon and how it relates to the sympathetic nervous system.  She has written an article about this in the Huffington Post and this is an excerpt from her interview with Nora Young (starts at about 28 minutes into the podcast).

...email apnea means...temporary cessation of breath or shallow breathing in front of any screen it could be a computer screen it could be a television set it could be a mobile device.  ...with anticipation most mammals humans most certainly do a sharp intake of breath like that and so between the inhale not exhaling because of our posture we were breath holding and many people think of breathing really as an inhale take a deep breath and they go but the really most important part of breathing is the exhale...There are a number of things that begin to happen when you cumulatively over time shallow breathe or breath hold the first is that it kicks sometimes low level sometimes not so low level flight or fight stress response.  The part of the autonomic nervous system that is all about flight or fight is the sympathetic nervous system so this breath holding up regulates or really activates the sympathetic nervous system sending us into flight or fight.  A few things happen when we're in fight or flight.  The part of our brain that creates habit is activated, it blooms so to speak. and we become more compulsive in all our bevaviours and I'm sure that we've experienced and those listening can recognize gee I just can't stop texting or I just can't stop checking my email.  It activates actually the part of our brain that compulsively behaves.

The interview is really interesting and I highly recommend hearing it in its entirety.  I completely relates to what she is saying and I would love to integrate some of the thinking into the Breath I/O project, particularly integrating some of the sounds of our devices that call us to immediate attention: the small chirp of TweetDeck, the trill of the iPhone when a new txt comes in, the ding dong of a new email.  The moment where there is nothing happening and we wait for it like a kid anticipating the movement of a monster in the closet.  Or we stop waiting for it and turn on the light and look everywhere.   For me the sounds are much more evocative of what she is talking about than the actual content of the information that is constantly pouring in.  It would be great to bring the affect of that anticipation into the chorus of lungs.

A song for this post.

Shut out the shuteye (day 76)

I'm so tired my short term memory is going.  I'm so tired because I punch through the tired to the second, third, and fourth wind.  Eventually I run out of wind and I have to collapse into bed.   I can almost hear the bed berate me incredulously.   I want to be one of those people that can do 4 hours of sleep a night.   My brother and I used to fantasize about what it would be like not to sleep.  Think of all the things you could do.  We didn't think about the fact that it would be more but that everyone could do more too.  It's all in the contrast.  So really we just needed even just a one hour advantage.   People that only need even 6 hours of sleep have a serious advantage over the rest of us.  Evolution, where are you?  I need to need to sleep less!

A song for this post.

Lark envy (day 75)

Days when I don't have to go to work trigger a slide toward my true nature of night owl.   I am not a lark, have never been a lark.  I do enjoy the smell of early morning and the sun's first shine of the day but I rarely get to see either.   Unfortunately (and unfairly), the world is made for early risers.   And oh I envy them.   People who gladly wake up at 5am and saunter in to work a leisurely 4 hours later.   I wake up at 7 usually groggy after an indulgent late night and struggle to work out, eat, shower and get to work by 10.   On vacation I settle in to a rhythm of going to bed at 2am and waking out at 10.   Part of me can see understand the rationale of an early start.  Part of me feels out of step and unnatural.  But I honestly prefer the evening to the morning.

I once went to Tuktoyaktuk way up north.  The most northern town before hitting the research outposts.  It was June and the sun went around and around the horizon.  I totally loved feeling of not aging resulting from the lack of reference points.  The best part though was the lack of schedules.  People slept when they were tired, got up when they were rested.  Shops opened when they opened.  Babies were walked at all hours.   In Tuk, I was not a night owl or a lark.  I was just someone that could enjoy any hour like any other.

A song for this post.
Update: This is the song I really wanted to post.

I'll bump that +1 thread and rt (day 74)

Recently I asked Steve 'what is the difference between ice cream and gelato?'  He answered the question and added that he knew because I had told him.   Somehow I had transferred the knowledge to him and deleted my cache.  I was behaving as an information conduit with limited storage capacity.   Looking around I see that this is not an isolated phenomenon.  The proliferation of social media tools means that we are spreading information around more than we are storing it.  We've all become information amplifiers and dampeners.   The benefit to this is that we don't all have to read or experience everything.   We can read and experience our part and amplify what we think is interesting and then let the rest of the crowd filter down what they think is important toward us.  The detriment is that we may be less able to synthesize new knowledge.  If we are not holding deep knowledge in one or more areas, it's hard to understand how information from another field may be applicable to what we already know.   We are in danger of becoming dilettantes.   And this is the conundrum: there is more information than ever before but because it is not housed in our brains, it's not deeply held knowledge in a way that it can be productive.  It's as if we went from being experts at making things to being experts at networking.  I'm not making a case for more or less networking.  There just needs to be a balance between knowledge acquired and information sharing.  If we are all busy sharing information but not enough new knowledge is being acquired, it quickly devolves into a solipsistic exercise...a kind of cabin fever.

I've made a distinction here between knowledge and information.   I think of knowledge as something that an individual has.  Something borne out of experience, trial and error, experiment.  In contrast, information resides outside of the human body and can be stored, on a hard drive, for example.   Knowledge then becomes information as it gets shared in writing or speech.  It can become knowledge again as it gets absorbed and integrated by someone else.  Facts are a type of information which for the most part have never been knowledge.

We'll continue doing, recording, and sharing as always.  And as always, we'll wonder what and why.  What's changed are the proportions and the media.

A song for this post.

As the river flows (day 73)

Spending time with Alex has made me realize how crucial information management is.  She showed and spoke to me about how she organizes her emails and her notes and her blog posts.  She talked about the tools she uses, the filters, the habits, the idea cache.   She spends a lot of time with social media so in some ways she has more need for these techniques and tools than I do but still there were some really useful tidbits of information.  I've started using Evernote more since she showed me how she uses it.  I've downloaded an application called Skitch for taking snapshots.  I'm seriously thinking of filtering my mail more seriously than I have been.

At the conference there was a talk about the digital divide in which the speaker mentioned that after the distribution of technology is relatively achieved, the divide is more about the skills it takes to cope with the onslaught of available information channels.   After speaking with Alex I can see that it's a continuum with some people surfing the information flow with glee and skill.  Others (like me),  swim and splash around but definitely not with glee.   Having just joined Twitter, not only do I have to learn a new language but I have manage yet another stream joining in to the raging river.  I still haven't faced up to it.

I must say there is something exciting about meeting Alex.  Like downloading another application or buying a new tool.  I can't wait to see how it changes my life.

A song for this post.

Rant + Celestial Beauty (day 72)

I bought myself an Apple Airport Express.  I connected it, went through a short setup process and was able to play songs from iTunes on my speakers in the living room, remotely.   I was happy.  But the next step was not so easy.  In fact, it seems to be impossible.   All my music is hosted on a NAS which permits all my computers to store it once and share it with all the machines on my network.  So far so good.   iTunes on my machines can connect to the shared library on the NAS.  But if I try to use the Remote app on the iphone to see the shared library, I can't do it.  I can't pair with the library on the NAS because there is no way for me to enter the pairing code on the server (there seem to be some hacks out there that might work, but it certainly is not easy or sanctioned).  Even if I connect with the itunes client running on one of my machines, it doesn't see the shared library.  It looks like my library is empty.   So I'm stuck.  Apple does not provide a proper iTunes client on the iPhone, and does not allow the browsing of share libraries on the Remote App, and does not allow pairing with servers without a GUI.   This is a sad state of affairs.  The only other solution I've found is to buy an expensive media player that would be paired with PlugPlayer which can see my NAS (but not the Airport Express).  There is an application called Air UPnP which will make the Airport Express look like a proper device to applications like PlugPlayer but it needs to run on a PC which defeats one of the purpose of having the NAS in the first place -- not to have any other machines on besides the NAS.  My real beef is with Apple for not providing support for externally hosted libraries with the Apple Remote app.   It would make the Airport Express so much more useful.

I may still find a hack around this mess, but for now the frustration of being so close is driving me mad.

I will redeem this post with a picture of a beautiful animation I saw the IDMAa09 conference exhibition : Celestial Clock by Anson Call.  I can't find any information online about it unfortunately.  No video, no pictures.  What I'm posting here is a snapshot from my iPhone.

A song for this post.

IDMAa eh? (day 70)

I'm astonished to say that I have no recollection of not blogging on Wednesday night.  I was up until 2 working on Paula's The Wall project again and I guess I just tuned out at some point.  Last night though I was exhausted from a travel odyssey to Muncie Indiana to the IDMAa conference (which Emily Carr is hosting next year).   It was a conscious decision that sleep was better than blog.

The conference started early with a keynote from Tom Kelley of IDEO.   He was...umm...perky.   We came in late so I'm not sure what the red queen is was going on about was, but it seemed to apply to a lot of things.  To be honest I didn't get much out of his talk but that may be because I have a block when it comes to that kind of presentation.  It's a sort of inspirational tone that just says "nothing deep here, move along".   But let me be clear.   I have nothing but respect for IDEO and what they do.   Many people seemed to enjoy his talk a lot.

The next talk I totally missed because of jetlag.  I slept through most of it.   The little bits that I remember were fascinating.  That talk was from John Fillwalk from the Digital Intermedia Arts Institute which is part of Ball State University.   Turns out the Institute was part of the campus tour later so I got to see some of what he talked about in his talk which was great.   The best part was a Second Life instrument that rang the real life bells in a bell tower on campus.  It was amazing to walk down the street and hear the seemingly random bell sounds, like a postmodern concert.

The next panel I attended was about the Future of Interactivity.  I was impressed with the work of Richard Elaver (Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne) who is using generative patterns based on nature to create 3D printed forms.  Some beautiful modular jewelry and other objects.  I can't find a website unfortunately.

The last talk I attended was at the Museum of Art where they also had the conference exhibit.  I toured about half of the exhibit before having to break to go to the panel.  It's an awesome show.  There were two highlights to the panel session.  One was Lindsay Grace (Miami University) talking about Critical Games.  He did one game a week for six weeks, all critiquing particular aspects of game play that are pathologically repeated and not often questioned.  He demoed one game called "Wait'  where the details of the game (and points) only come if you remain in one place in the game space.   As soon as you walk, the environment goes white.  Another is game was 'Black/White' where all characters are visually the same except for colour and behaviour.  There is no way to tell if the characters are enemy or not.  The other talk that caught my eye was from Tammy Brackett (Alfred University) who uses cellular automata to remix video feedback.  She has some great images that were generated from a seed of a musical score derived from chromosome six.  She had work installed in the exhibit but I didn't get to see it because when it was closed after the talks.  I was very disappointed about this.  Particularly because it's doesn't open again until 1:30pm tomorrow at which time I'll be on my way home. 

My biggest regret of the day is not having toured all of the exhibit.  My second biggest regret of the day is not being able to attend all of the afternoon panels.  My possibly third regret of the day is joining twitter.

A song for this post.

Feather magic (day 67)

When I was a child, I was fascinated by the story of Dumbo the elephant.   The feather that helped him fly fascinated me.  The triumphant moment of letting go of the feather was not so important.  The fact that the feather helped was the bit that gave me joy.  I knew nothing of placebos at the time but I loved the magic of it.  I still use the analogy of Dumbo but most people don't know the reference and just look at me thinking I just called them dumb.   Still feathers are reminiscent of power for me.  I collect them during forest walks if one catches my eye.  I've used one as a stand-in for a weapon in a warrior figurine.   I've offered them as gifts of courage.  I've used the bird as gift bearer in one of my 3D class projects (pictured below).   It's a romantic superstition but a very soft gentle one.

A song for this post.

Hello first day (day 66)

Anticipation is key. A first day is fun. She popped her head in and I barely recognized her in my fog of email, phone calls, and worry. Still I'm happy and mostly curious. Yet another one in the mix. Like a good recipe, you hope it's the spice that was missing. I am anticipating.

Here's to you Alex.

Geek out complete (day 65)

The NAS is set up.  It works fabulously.  It is acting as a Time Machine, file server, iTunes server, audio station, and photo station.   I can upload and download files remotely which is great when I'm at work and need project files.  It's really neat to be able to stream my audio library from anywhere using my iPhone.  It's too bad iTunes does not do that on the iPhone.   For home, I'll have to buy an Airport Express to get my iTunes library to output onto the speakers in the living room, with iTunes remote on the iPhone to control the playback. 

I feel more responsible already.  I'm ashamed to admit I was at the mercy of the disk gods until today.  So far, I've had good luck with hard disks but luck always runs out. 

This weekend of geeking out has left me feeling distant from work, like it's a world far far away.  I wish I'd set aside a bit more time to enjoy the sun.  Especially today.

A song for this post.