bacterial update: The kombucha is ready to bottle. I tested the pH and it's perfect but I found the sweetness still a little too high. I left some for Steve to try and he loved it. He had me fill one bottle for him. He put it in the fridge and I later tasted it. For some reason it didn't taste as sweet when chilled. This is a bit puzzling but familiar too -- warm fruit juice also tastes sweeter. Anyway, I think it'll be a nice compromise to bottle it tomorrow.
I fed some of the extra Kefir grains to my cat, and threw away the rest. They are just multiplying so quickly. Steve was starting to compare me to an old lady with 50 cats. I got ruthless.
My friend Tara pointed me to this podcast about fermenters. It's a good listen.
Today was a boring chore day. The most exciting thing I did is try Kefir with Muesli (delicious). But not wanting to spread the boredom I'll resurrect a piece of research that I find interesting, especially for the Breath I/O project, and perhaps for interface designers too.
Apparently our awareness can be entrained to a rhythm. Researchers at the University of Illinois discovered that you could induce awareness of otherwise masked stimulus by entraining with a regular rhythm and letting the masked stimulus fall where a beat would have been (details). I'm now thinking that breathing rhythms may be something to exploit in this way. Perhaps having usually undetectable visuals appear at a particular interval related to the breath. I'm not sure of the limits of this study (they were using very fast rhythmic patterns, to the tune of 12Hz). It's possible what I'm describing would be beyond the range of the effect they observed. I'm also wondering about trance music. Might we become more aware in a rhythmic trance? Castanada can only be around the corner.
A song for this post.
Showing posts with label rhythm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rhythm. Show all posts
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Friday, December 11, 2009
What does online feel like (day 105)
I had an interesting discussion with Miles today about what the feeling of being online. I've been thinking about this a lot lately because of my self-surveillance project that snaps a picture of my desktop every 15 minutes on all 3 of my screens if they are active (and sometimes my iPhone too, though that is not automatic). I've now collected close to 500 screenshots and looking at them in a fast (10 screenshots/second) sequence it doesn't even get close to the feeling of being online. I'm going to investigate varying the duration of each frame by random amounts and see how that changes things. I've added a bit of blur to the movie for privacy but here is what the movie for one my screens looks like for now:
226 screenshots (test) from Maria Lantin on Vimeo.
The feeling of being online is hard to describe. It's not embodied but it can feel vast and rich. It sometimes feels social but sometimes anxious. Much of my time is spent processing the information that is coming at me (the social network as recommendation engine). Making decisions about this information seems to be the source of a low grade anxiety stemming from a reluctance to spend time and the fear of missing out (FOMO). There are moments of relaxation into a time commitment such as watching a show, scanning family albums, or programming an application. There are quick smiles like interesting pictures in twitter. There are lots of interruptions, little blips and popups. Email anxiety is never far but seems to ebb and flow depending on time of day and how much the physical world needs my attention. There is a both a satisfaction to answering email and an anxiety about the conversation progressing too quickly from there. There are moments of boredom when there is not enough will to separate from the online but not enough interest to continue (the feed has slowed and the stand-bys are exhausted). There is definitely a feeling of being in the flow of information but it is usually interrupted by having to click or type which brings me back to the screen. A bit like being into a novel and someone asking you a question about work.
The more I think about it the more the rhythm seems to be important. I'll see about adding different timings. I also thought about doing a character recognition scan which would give me a data set to maybe assign an emotional 'score' to an image (many of my screenshots are mostly text). Either way I'd like to play around with adding an emotional curve which can then be mapped the lung breathing pattern.
A song for this post.
226 screenshots (test) from Maria Lantin on Vimeo.
The feeling of being online is hard to describe. It's not embodied but it can feel vast and rich. It sometimes feels social but sometimes anxious. Much of my time is spent processing the information that is coming at me (the social network as recommendation engine). Making decisions about this information seems to be the source of a low grade anxiety stemming from a reluctance to spend time and the fear of missing out (FOMO). There are moments of relaxation into a time commitment such as watching a show, scanning family albums, or programming an application. There are quick smiles like interesting pictures in twitter. There are lots of interruptions, little blips and popups. Email anxiety is never far but seems to ebb and flow depending on time of day and how much the physical world needs my attention. There is a both a satisfaction to answering email and an anxiety about the conversation progressing too quickly from there. There are moments of boredom when there is not enough will to separate from the online but not enough interest to continue (the feed has slowed and the stand-bys are exhausted). There is definitely a feeling of being in the flow of information but it is usually interrupted by having to click or type which brings me back to the screen. A bit like being into a novel and someone asking you a question about work.
The more I think about it the more the rhythm seems to be important. I'll see about adding different timings. I also thought about doing a character recognition scan which would give me a data set to maybe assign an emotional 'score' to an image (many of my screenshots are mostly text). Either way I'd like to play around with adding an emotional curve which can then be mapped the lung breathing pattern.
A song for this post.
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