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.

NAS love (day 64)

I got a new toy today.  A brand new NAS - the Synology DS209j.  1TB of storage in RAID1, all networked with an iTunes and web server.  Inside are two Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB drives.  I'm still configuring but I'm expecting that my life will be all joy and ribbons once it's online.  Next I buy an Airport Express.  And music will ring throughout.



A song for this post.

I'm not in love (day 63)

I used to fall in love with technology easily and deeply.  New gadgets, new tools, new languages, they all  triggered enough interest and hope that I would just fall in, willingly believing that they would change everything.  There are books that end in that phrase.  How x changes everything.   I still fall in love.  Now though I don't feel the love back in the way I used to and I lose interest a bit faster.  Sometimes I resist falling in love.  I don't love Twitter and Twitter doesn't love me.  It's a shallow conviction.  I will eventually get a Twitter account, if only to steep in a new crowd language for a time.  I appreciate that the online culture has fallen in love with social media.  I picture it in my head and I see the fascination in our eyes, the infatuation.  It's sweet and naive and joyful all at the same time.   What I don't love is everything becoming a nail to be hammered by social media.  This too shall pass.  I'm looking for the next stage.  If we've been solipsistic, perhaps we need to have a call and response situation.  I heard the term 'sentient city' today.   The holy grail of being heard is when the city responds automatically.  The grand telematics experiment.  It might evolve into a kind of SimVanCity where popular beliefs and desires are mocked up and tried out before being moved into the physical world.  It might be a mixture of virtual and real.  The idea of a more direct response to our social participation is attractive.  I'm not in love yet, but I could be.

A song for this post.

Degenerative diagnostic (day 62)

My neck is fine.  No pain now.   A month or so of pain after the accident but now no pain.  So the diagnostic of degenerative arthritis from an x-ray of my shoulders and neck was unexpected and a disorienting.  Did I know that, he asked?  No of course I didn't know that.   The discussion was deferred to the physiotherapist.  I left confused about the word degenerative.  I know what arthritis is.  It's what old people get in their joints that causes a lot of pain and deformities.  I told myself that nothing had changed but on my way home from the medical centre I shopped compulsively and got home with no other desire than to order pizza.  I was deflated.  Usually I'm delighted if I get home with enough time to prepare a salad and another side dish.   Pizza it was.  Fire-roasted vegetable pizza with a thin crust.  All organic.  At least there's that.  On a scale of junk to healthy I wasn't hitting the bottom.  I went to bed early, reading a story of a woman with early onset dementia.  I woke up still deflated but early enough to get in about an hour and half of exercise.   That helped a lot.  No pain in my neck.  I started to see the ridiculous nature of the worry.  A label.  Someone put a label on you.   Degenerative doesn't mean it's inevitably going to get worse, it means it got to this point from wear (computer typing posture probably doesn't help).   I stopped feeling old and decrepit and made a pancake, enjoying every bite.   The only thing I can do is be healthy and stop going for X-rays.

A song for this post.

Step on a crack (day 61)

Superstition.  It makes up a large part of our belief systems.  Complexity breeds superstition by the sheer number of contributing factors to a particular outcome and the unpredictability of said outcome.   We don't want to believe that bad things happen to good people so we choose to believe in a higher power that somehow knows what they are doing.  In that belief, we convince ourselves that power has a fickle personality that we must assuage.  I don't happen to have that particular superstition but I do have others.  I take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator because I think that if I don't I will increase my chances of becoming paralyzed in the future.   I don't use locker 13.  People that suffer from migraines are also prone to rituals or avoidances  sometimes based on evidence but often with some degree of superstition involved.   At the root of superstition there may be some rational behaviour.   By superstitiously participating in particular behaviours we 'fix' some parameters while allowing others to vary.   So if we get sick for example, we can say things like "I wash my hands after shaking hands with anyone, so that can't be it".   It just allows us to rule out or include causes that are either ritually absent or present.   So it affords some control.  The point at which rational action becomes superstitious ritual is the point at which we forgot why we do it, or we have become unable to vary it without some kind of emotional stress ("the sky will surely fall if I floss _before_ I brush").  On the surface, it seems likely that scientists would be less prone to superstition but in practice that hasn't been my observation.  It seems that beside the stuff that can be scientifically studied, there remains plenty that is chaotic and beyond measure.  Like why your lover left suddenly leaving not even a note.

There seems to be two types of superstition: one to stave off the bad and one to invite the good.  It is likely that people have an implicit preference toward one or the other.  I tend to fall in the superstition for the summoning of good category.   I believe that people that are superstitious to stave off bad or in a kind of prison where more and more superstitions are likely to be added since bad things happen anyway.  At least it seems more a slippery slope.  Superstition for generating good is self-perpetuating but not in an ever-growing way.   Believing in a parking goddess for example just means you praise your goddess every time you get a parking spot, and remember those times all the more.

A song for this post.

Contextual belief (day 60)

I just listened to Peter Schiff speak in a somewhat desperate tone about the US dollar being devalued and on route to becoming worthless.  Hyperinflation.  He sounded scared or maybe a mixture of incredulous and desperate for people to wake up.  He sounded convincing perhaps in large measure because he's Peter Schiff, predictor of collapses.   I tried to imagine it was someone else saying these things and how much I believed it.  I do this kind of context test sometimes when I'm in a new city and feel like it's very different than where I came from.  I imagine that I'm actually in my home city, just somewhere I've never walked or driven before.  Where is it in the city?  Close to which neighbourhood?  I get curious about how much cognitive effort it takes to map the new city to my home city and how I feel about the new city afterward.   I do this as an exercise to see how clouded my perception might be by the assumption that where I am is totally different because it's thousands of kilometres away and the people dress differently.  I admit this may strike some people as odd (I know it).  But try it sometime.  It's actually a neat exercise to challenge contextual bias.   Once you start doing it in one situation, it's sort of addictive.  So back to Peter Schiff and his ilk - the people that speak with conviction and write books.  There was something in Peter's voice that was haunting, like a 'please wake up' quality.  I found myself thinking about context but this time in a different way.   Could the things that we are told about other incompetent or 'evil' governments apply to the United States?  And I'm not talking about the direct aggression.  I'm talking about the deliberate devaluing of currency combined with misinforming the public.  You know the type of behaviour that gets people clanging pots out of windows and into the streets, en masse.   I couldn't quite make the leap of context but I came close.  The changes are happening in slow motion so it's hard to understand the trajectory and harder to believe that it couldn't be stopped.  So far, Peter Schiff has convinced me that shifting money away from US currency is probably a safe and good idea.  But not convinced enough to call every one of my friends and tell them to do so.  Trust is so hard to come by.  One thing's for sure, extreme points of view are good at changing the context suddenly if not permanently.

A song for this post.

Feel the lungs (day 59)

Today I had lunch with Joy James and we talked about the Breath I/O project.  She asked me some interesting questions about the type of affect we would like the piece to have.  Why do what we are doing?  How will people feel the experience of the lungs and the video and the sound and the interface?  As she was talking and asking questions I could feel my mind going from the how to the why.  I am so often preoccupied with the technical details of doing something.   It felt nice to speak of the audience, to picture them in the room,  to imagine the sounds they might hear.  At first I pictured only one person entering a large dark room (the mocap studio actually) where the sound was louder than the picture.  The sounds were enveloping, breath like, rhythmic and calm.  There are several places to sit down near the ground and in front of each seat there is an object, each one different.  The lungs are in a chorus formation breathing in sync, the video interchanges between them.  The person picks up an object and holds it.  One of the lungs gradually takes on more importance visually and the video is more consistent and clear.  The sound of the video is heard over the breath.  The singled out lungs have more personality and are not so in sync with the rest of the chorus which has faded to the background.  The lungs are reacting to the video that is playing within them, sometimes sighing, sometimes coughing, sometimes fast breathing, sometimes deep breathing.   The object vibrates in a association with the lungs.   When more objects are picked up more lungs approach and start to interact with each other and the objects. 

The feeling of the environment to be calm and conducive to a reflection on the bittersweet nature of life,  the life cycles, the exchanges we have with people, the constant give and take of life.  The preciousness and sadness of being human.  The joy of movement and breath, of health.

Thanks for the talk Joy.

A song for this post.

Wild things (day 58)

"Mommy that was a sad movie".  That's what a little boy said at at the closing credits of Where The Wild Things Are.  He repeated it, looking for confirmation.  I didn't hear what his mom said but I imagine she didn't say "that's just real life, Sam".   But, just as Max realized in the movie, that's exactly what it might have been.  It wasn't sad in a tragic way, it was just sad in a regular disillusioned way.   What did surprise me is the slightly psychotic character of Carol.  He was a mixture of paranoid schizophrenic and bipolar.  The line "he doesn't mean to be that way, he's just scared" is a little too close to an excuse you give for someone's abusive behaviour.  The character of KW was good but it was never clear why she wanted out except to get away from psychotic Carol.  She was the most grounded of them all even though she had her own escapes (shooting owls out of the sky?!?).   I guess in the end I have to agree with the little boy.  The movie was sad.   It was sad because everyone was looking elsewhere for happiness.  To the king, the owls, the boat, the utopic city, the dirt clump war.  No one gets happy in the end but they are one failure closer to getting there maybe.

I never read the book.  I wasn't even aware of the book as I was growing up.  Perhaps because I grew up in Quebec?  Perhaps it wasn't translated?  I wonder how close the movie is to the book or the spirit of it anyway.  It's got me curious. 

A song for this post.

Hello lungs (day 57)

I took some time today to render the lung model to see if I could get the transparency to work correctly and maybe play around with the video mapping.  I got as far as getting the transparency to work and then ran into a resolution problem.  To my chagrin, Touch Designer will only render to a maximum horizontal resolution of 1280...unless I pay $599 for a commercial license (per machine).  I've asked if they have educational pricing and we'll see.  It's strange that I hadn't notice this before when I rendered to the screen in the lab.  But looking back, it does explain the slightly squished look of the lungs.   Even at the slightly lower resolution, the lungs look pretty good.  I'm really starting to get fond of the shape of the lungs.  They're almost friendly and sweet.  Here is a pic (which is down-res'd):

The grey scale give it a medical X-ray look.  I wanted to keep it neutral until the video is added to see if it has a fluoroscopy look.  We'll see.  Trent is currently working on the texture coordinates.

I also spent some time learning Field which I can run now that I have my Macbook Pro.  It feels like learning a new language even if the component elements (Java, Python, OpenGL) are familiar.  It feels to me like a tool I could seriously love after spending some hours with it.   It reminds me of the old Unix days with lots of command line and immediate feedback.  It also makes me a bit worried that I would write something in Field and a few months later remember nothing of the mental model that led me to a particular design (i.e. more than one way to shoot yourself in the foot).   But this minor worry is not going to stop me.   I'll just trust that I knew what I was doing at the time I wrote the program which, believe it or not, is hard to do.  The belief that I am smarter in the present, so smart in fact that I know better than the previous self who was immersed in the code, is always lurking.

A song for this post.

Is this real life? (day 56)

Reality.  That word gets more fuzzy every day.  It's one of those words where you think you know what it is but as soon as you start explaining it you end up neck deep in caveats.  It's a fuzzy concept precisely because it's defined as 'you know it when you're in it'.   The first crack is the realization that you're never out of it.   Maybe we should specify 'shared reality'.  That's a little closer to something precise and takes care of dream and drug spaces.  The real problem is that beyond straight up stimulus to our sense organs, there is a layered conceptual reality which is emergent and involved in a feedback loop on itself.  The term shared reality is a little better because it recognizes that the forces on the conceptual layers are largely shared by immediate neighbours (in a physical and/or cultural sense).   I recently saw a documentary on Jonestown where they explained that loudspeakers were constantly broadcasting Jones' voice.  At no time or place could the residents be free of his voice and his opinions.  He offered a view of the outside world that was both paranoid and delusional and they had no way of verifying what he was saying.  They were still in the same sensual reality that all people inhabit but their shared conceptual reality was both disconnected and discontinuous from the other shared realities.  What is astonishing is that at the moment between life and death only a few people trusted their basic sensual reality and decided to run.  Some after seeing their children die.  And these were not weak or deficient people.  They worked hard and had ideals that are hard to argue with.  The situation again brings up my paranoia about not knowing what I don't know.   It's important to diversify media sources.  And even then, you still have to suss out the most likely facts.  When the Yes Men pulled their last prank about the US Chamber of Commerce reversing its stance on climate change, it reminded me again how arbitrary the truth is.

A song for this post.

Act now and... (day 55)

Have you ever been so busy that new opportunities seemed more like problems?   Especially ones that come with some kind of expiry date?  Like act now or forever lose out to another that will take advantage of this opportunity because they're not so busy?   I feel this way about a lot of things these days but I figure one of the better skills in life is learning how to properly finish things.   Anyone can start things.  So I must finish some of the projects I've started before taking on new ones.  I know this.  But there is a lagging feeling that perhaps I should 'reserve my seat' at the table of the other opportunities.  Just start it and then sort of sit on it for a while.   It may be disingenuous.  In any case, it's a good problem.

Meanwhile, the projects go on.  The Interactive Futures conference is less than a month away and the lineup of events looks great, if a little full.  I'm very grateful for the help we've had.  Such amazing students helping out.   The lung project is crawling along but definitely still moving.  The lungs look good and I've been able to import them into Touch Designer with some tweaking of the model.   Next up is the bump map texture, and texture coordinates.  After that I'll try to make a chorus and see how many we can get in there before the frame rate drops too much.  Then I'll mess around with the video and see if some good effects can be created in and out of the lungs (then alternate this step with the last one).  This will take us the Interactive Futures easily...and perhaps I'm being overly optimistic about that.  Time moves on.

A song for this post.
(as an additional musical note...I heard Cris Derksen perform tonight at the Western Front and I thought she was fabulous.  Here is one piece that she performed).

@irk (day 54)

I'm @annoyed at all @the @$*%*( @tagging that's going @on.   Seriously I can't read people's posts without being cognitively interrupted all the time.  Is it me?  Am I just programmed to pause at an @?  Is my inner voice too loud?  What, if, I put, commas, everywhere, would, that be the, same?  Yup, seems to be.   But the @ has the additional annoyance of being visually prominent.    I have to learn to relax with the @.  Love it, view it as decoration to be skipped or acknowledged after the fact.   Part of a well written text is the fact that it disappears.  I love the lilt of a good turn of phrase.   I love the flow of a nicely timed sentence.  So far the @ destroys that for me.  This annoyance was partially triggered by the cross-posting from twitter to facebook.  In the twitter world the @ has a function that is definitely not the same in Facebook.  I think of a post on FB as being addressed to everyone, but what sometimes happens with cross-posted tweets is that certain people are named or it's obviously a response to something and it feels like it ended up on my FB feed by accident.   Like receiving an invite to a party that's not addressed to you.   It's visual and cognitive noise.

ta@

A song for this rant.

Today was (day 53)

Today I've made history.  Again.  Too bad it wasn't recorded.   Today I looked at the gorgeous gin bottle and thought wouldn't it be nice if it worked.  Today the idea of cucumber in gin made me grin.  Today I made okra and it was delicious.  Today lots of little quirky things happened.  Lots of little unplanned laughs with unlikely people.   Some leaps of logic that escaped me and then surprised me.  Some beyond the call of duty stuff that deserve a giant spotlight.   Some emails that were easy to answer.  Today I still ended up dead tired but perhaps a tinge more grateful for my life.  So may this post be a celebration of the little things that make a day productive and fun at the same time.

A song for this post.

Guestbook nostalgia (day 52)

I took some time today and fixed the broken link to the Digital Guest Book that I made for the IDS opening.  For reasons related to mySQL versions, I had stored it on a server other than my own and eventually that server was no more.  I've now migrated everything over but in so doing I've lost the timestamps for the signatures which is a little sad.  I'll see if I can recover them from the signature files themselves, stored on my tablet.

Looking at it now after almost 3 years it feels nice to see some of the comments.  I recognize some of my friends and even some I didn't even had come or signed.  If I have a bit more time (maybe Christmas break?), I'd like to change the animation to be a bit smoother.

Anyway, take a look and sign if you'd like (during the opening, it was displayed on a tablet so it was easier to sign).  The signature won't be stored but you'll see it animated while the app runs.

A song for this post.

Swine repellent (day 51)

I am aware of H1N1 -- who isn't.  I have so far stayed away from any flu vaccines based on the fact that I don't tend to get sick.  I reason that I should not fix what is not broken.   I have a superstition that if I artificially boost my immune system, I will wreck the naturally strong immune system I've been blessed with.  I have no evidence that this would happen but because nothing bad has happened stemming from this belief, it doesn't matter whether it's true or not.  With the re-appearance of the swine flu, it seems like it's starting to matter.   The word on the street is that it likes young women.  I may be on or past the cusp of not being a young woman but still it gives me pause.  The fact that perfectly healthy young people can be struck down by this virus is perplexing.   The mantra of only the very young, very old, or immunocompromised people needing to worry is suddenly a little too simplistic.

Apparently the H1N1 vaccine will be available within a month and undoubtedly I will offered the vaccine at the school.  The question will be called.  And it seems that it is both an individual  and communal decision.   Anecdotally I hear that mothers are particularly irked and more likely to chastise other mothers bringing their sick toddlers to playgrounds and pay groups.  Would I be the target of a mild communal reprimand if I refused the vaccine?  Is not getting the vaccine an irresponsible act?  I wonder.  I will continue to think on this.  I don't like the idea of something foreign being injected in my body.  But I don't like the idea of worrying about every little sore throat that comes my way. 

A song for this post.
(the song was composed from the dna sequence of the swine flu)

New is old news (day 50)

Have we always been obsessed with the new?  Before there were stores, what was new?  Before there were peer reviewed journals, what was new?  Before there were internet rankings, what was new?  Before patents?  It seems that new is relative but we use the word as if it's absolute.  For me, new has been a sore spot for many years because it often drives a wedge between creativity and responsibility.  I see it in my students too.  If what you are passionate about is not new in the absolute sense, where do you go from there?  To graduate you need something original but yet you need to go through some well trodden steps before coming close to new.  I often tell the story of being stuck during my doctoral research and my supervisor telling me that if everything seems grey, go toward the thing that is a a little less grey.   If you lose the thread of interest, you have to take little steps out.   It's important that personal interest remains a priority and is honoured as unique in the individual.    In fact, the relationship between unique and new is perhaps worth a second look.   In reality, journals and patents are rewarding something in between unique and new.   Same with degrees.   In digital media the new has been especially problematic because technology changes so quickly.   If an artist is using old technology, are they behind or somehow not worthy of being called a digital media artist?  Clearly not, but often there is an impulse to use the latest even as the old has not been explored to its fullest.  I think it's better to view the available tech as mere ingredients.  My winning recipe will not be the same as my neighbour's even if our ingredients are the same.  The unique fusion of ingredients is what should be celebrated.  In computing science, we also talk about the difference between the model and the view.   The model is the underlying structure of the data and processes.  The view is how we choose to represent the model to the senses.   Two data artists with the same dataset (model) will not produce the same visualization (view).   Is it new to re-represent a data set?  I would argue that it is.

Our relationship to new is based on immediate needs and interest.  Something may linger for decades before being dug up as new, interesting, and useful.  Traditionally we've trusted our gatekeepers to tell us what is new but I'm seeing a trend where the crowd is perfectly able to suss that out for itself.   And what's neat about that is that the definition of new is implicit and much more fluid.  My students still need to defend their thesis but the real feedback on the work happens in the frenzy of the crowd.

A song for this post.

Ungrounded wall (day 49)

Some days are just a little ungrounded.  Like today.  I woke up way too late and so did Steve.  We were both thrown into the day with no time to say hello.  The whole day reeled from this.  Everything I did seemed like it was late or instead of something else I should be doing.  Not that I wasted time, not at all.  It just felt all out of step like the beat and I never met.  Even now as I write this I have a craving for an unknown balm.  This is what drives people to eat, that feeling of needing something.  I'm pretty sure it's not food I'm craving, but movement.  No time to exercise and computer work all day makes for a pretty underutilized body.  Everyone should dance every day.  I usually do but today no dance and no joy.

I spent many hours today tweaking a 3D model of the Israeli/Palestinian wall superimposed on a 3D topo map of San Francisco.  It's not quite there yet but hopefully a bit more work and it'll be ready to be 3D printed for an upcoming exhibition.  The work is the brainchild of Paula Levine.  What stunned me most as I was working on the models is how long the wall is - and how tall.  It's amazing that most people either don't know this wall is being built or don't know the scale of the project.  This is a wall whose boundaries are chosen based on fear and greed.  It separates people from each other and from their livelihood.  I wonder how many more walls before we realize it just doesn't work.

A song for this post.

Go project go (day 48)

I am not a project manager.  I have many projects and they are all plodding along but most likely not as efficiently as they could.   My colleague Kara has pointed me to Action Method, a startup that claims to help with project management with a proven way of working.   And now of course we're back to the old magic-incantation-that-will-make-everything-perfect dream.  But I'm attracted to it.  Perhaps  attracted enough that I'll try it.  I've tried Basecamp before with some limited success.  The difference with ActionMethod is that a) it looks nice and b) it has an iPhone app.  Good design is crucial in a project management application.  You don't want to be overwhelmed by an interface when the task at hand is already overwhelming.  Good colours,  not too cluttered, intuitive placement, good level of notification, consistent language, these are all characteristics to aim for.   So far I'm impressed with AM.   I've got about six projects on the go which could use some management help.  It's a lot and most of them are collaborations with people.  Which brings me to the next hurdle with project management software.  You have to convince others to use it.  Everyone has their way of dealing with project tasks and information.  Some make Google sites, Google docs, Google tasks, Google calendar, blogs and wikis.  Some just have an ingenious use of folders, emails, and post-its.   It's hard to convince people to switch.   The best you can hope for is some sort of integration where systems can blend so that people can slowly be lured into a self-contained application.  And really not wanting to switch is completely rational.  It's an investment in time to transcribe a project's assets and tasks.  It's an investment in time to learn a new way of doing things. Why would this work if everything else has been a disappointment is a rational question.   In the end it may come down to discipline and a consistent process.  But I have to say it doesn't hurt if the software looks good.

The panacea of project management is a lure.  The promise of software solutions is a lure.  I spend so much time online that managing my projects there makes a lot of sense. I already do that in my own little ad-hoc way.   But another important aspect for me is to actually step away from the computer and get a better overall perspective.  That may be a chart on the wall or a white board drawing.  The point is to be able to actually stand with the big view.  Stop looking at a tiny window and think bigger.  Because windows actually do change the way we think.  We unconsciously think smaller when we look at a 15" screen.  And this is another reason why AM seems to be worthwhile.  They sell physical products to go with their software.  I'm not advocating spending money on this but I like the fact that they are thinking outside of the digital realm.  Perhaps they should also weigh in about space design for project management.

A song for this post.

There's more here (day 47)

Geotagging is hot.  I like the idea of say Twitter being geotagged a lot except it brings up a bit of anxiety about being too public.  This is different than the stage fright I felt when I opened my first blog nine years ago.  At that time I was afraid of the judgment, not so much people knowing too much.  That fear came later when it became obvious that the internet does not easily forget.   Geotagged twitter or any immediately broadcast note service is like painting graffiti out in the open.  It better be good and/or sanctioned.    It brings up so many issues of what one may do with a simple lat long.  If that lat long happens to index government land,  are there restrictions on what you can say?  What about a mall or a store?   Owners of that spot will want to control what gets posted.

Geotagging is an extension of the 'i like it, i don't like it' principle to place which in some ways makes it much more personal.   Still I can see so many good things that could happen.  Favourite places can be highlighted with instructions about where to look, history sliders could highlight the changes in that place, stories of that place, replays of the last year's tweets to/on that place, songs tagged to that place.   It really could be little treasures to be found on an ordinary stop somewhere.  Ordinary magic really.   People could leave compliments about each other's houses or garden (I know I'm heading fast into Utopia).   The landscape could respond with subtle clues that geotagged content would complement the experience if we let it.  

The upshot is that we leave traces of ourselves as a matter of daily life and it's being extended into the digital and then back into the physical.   Geo-tagged visualizations will be interesting: as always aesthetically pleasing aggregators will be great gifts.   I think sound will also play an important role in how we become aware that a certain place is rich with content.   Still the issue of forgetting remains.  In real life traces fade and biodegrade.  Not so in the geotagged world.  Maybe forgetting is just something we selectively apply to data as a matter of habit and ethic.

A song for this post.

Shiny and old (day 46)

A small package of new just entered my life.  A shiny aluminum package.  The click of the keyboard is louder and the click pad is stiff.  I've rebooted twice and each time I marvel at how quick it is.  Each time something new comes in a little bit of disappointment also sets in shortly after.  Chogyam Trungpa wrote that disappointment is a source of great learning.   He also called enlightenment the ultimate disappointment.  He might have been on to something.  Disappointment is that feeling you get when you come face to face with your projections onto the future, the object, the person.   Feeling disappointment can be the pointer to the places where you still long for the magic formula.  So I suppose the ultimate disappointment would be the deep realization that this is it and there is no magic incantation, no super perfect way to be, no state of grace where you are judged good and worthy of a life without suffering of any kind.  There is simply the capacity for delight in paying attention to what is.

I am grateful for the shiny in my life.  I'm also grateful for the aging in my life.  And this is the curious thing.  When I think about having something new, the feeling is so completely different from taking care of something (or someone) aging.   They are both full of projections, but one is a promise of ease, and the other is a promise of struggle.  But the reality is that in the taking care of the old I appreciate the life lived.  In those moments when I let the joy of the process seep in, the old is a gift.

One of my favourite songs for this post.

Pancakes and art (day 45)

I've mentioned before that I have pancakes every morning.   Since tonight is a late one (btw, if you're a night person are you more likely to have a hard time dying?) I will share my pancake mix recipe and call it a night.  Oh and maybe share some art pieces that I think are ok...

Here is the recipe:
2 cups of unbleached white flour
1 cup of whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup of buckwheat flour
1/2 cup buttermilk powder
1/4 cup vanilla sugar (plain sugar will do but really the vanilla is a nice touch)
1/4 cup freeze-dried cocoa powder (mycryo) (optional but makes it moist)
4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

To make a good size pancake you mix about 1/3+ cup with a little more water than that.  I just wing it every morning to get batter that is a little more runny than cake batter.
These days I add coronation grapes but the season is almost over.  Blueberries of course work well.

And here are two art links that I think are all right:
"Best Buy" by Borna Sammak
"Tiny Sketch" competition

A song for this post.

What you don't know (day 44)

Apparently when we go to sleep we forget most of what happened during our day.  Only the unusual gets stored in a way that can be recalled in more details.  The rest gets absorbed and reinforces certain patterns or inhibits them.  The point is that we think we know what happened yesterday but we're missing big chunks.  This gets worse as time goes on.  We have very little recall of what happened last week and even less last month and last year.    There was a book written recently that talks about why life speeds up as we age.  One of the points mentioned was the repetition of pattern with less new or unusual stimulation.  The older you get, the more you've done and seen, and the harder it is to stimulate the brain to create a new memory.   Memories are intimately linked with time perception.  They also mention the fact that a year when you're 60 is not the same as a year when you're 4.  One is 1/60th of a life lived, the other is a quarter.   I'm not sure I buy that argument for life speeding up but it's a worth a reflection.   I know that the older I get the more paranoid I am about what I'm not perceiving either deliberately or through forgetfulness or just plain physiology.  I think about a certain mood I was in a few weeks back and it seems so foreign, like another person.   Yet I know it will happen again.  I'm puzzled by the contrast between immediate control and long term uncertainty.

If you know french, Jacques Languirand spoke about the book mentioned above on his show Par Quatres Chemins.

A song for this post.

The one that got away (day 43)

I'm writing this post at my PC, not the laptop.  I mention this because I think it might make a difference.  You see, I bought this beautiful 24" lcd a little while ago and it doesn't fit in the computer desk which means it needs to sit higher than it should.  So I'm always slightly looking up at the screen -- like a reverent expecting look.  My seat is a little too low so my shoulders are always twitching to scrunch up to my ears.  I'm looking at the wall behind my screen.  Usually I'm looking at the living room through the kitchen.  Context is everything and now I'd like to talk about real estate.

In an interesting twist of fate we met some of our neighbours just a block away from where we live.  They were having a yard sale.  They live in the house that we tried to rent when we came back to Vancouver in 2006.  We ended up losing the bid to another couple probably because we were in Alberta and couldn't be there in person to properly represent ourselves.  The story is actually slightly longer than that but let's just say, since we moved to the area, we've been looking at the unit we didn't get with a somewhat nostalgic gaze. One of the tenants holding the yard sale is a screenwriter and musician from Newfoundland.  He  was delightful and played us a song on the guitar as we discussed the soul-sucking high rents in Vancouver and his choice of DVDs and soundtracks.  He is going back East.  The other tenants showed us their basement bachelor suite and we were stunned when they told us how much they're paying.  They seemed relatively happy to be going back to Florida.  Just as we were leaving the landlady came over and we were able to introduce ourselves. She was very gracious and arranged for us to see the suite that we didn't get.  It is gorgeous.  There is a chance that it may become available in the new year but it is a slim chance.  Having met the tenants, we wish them nothing but good fortune...which would mean they would stay in the suite.  Nevertheless, it was nice to close that loop, and re-open it all in one afternoon.

A song for this post.

Macbook on world trip (day 42)

This is the trajectory for my new macbook pro.  It started in China which was surprising in itself and then instead of heading south from Anchorage to its eventual destination, it crossed the country to New York and Ontario.  Is this a mistake, or a baffling side effect of centralization?

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Unitaskers unite (day 41)

[The new power supply worked. I am happy. My PC is running and maybe even quieter than before. Now I just have to find out where to recycle the old power supply.   It probably could be fixed but no one would bother.]

Today was a glorious day.  I stayed home and answered emails all day.  I didn't see anybody, I didn't talk to anybody and no one interrupted me.  I processed seventy-five emails.  It was a rare day where solitude came at exactly the right time.  As I sipped ginger lemon honey tea,  I felt myself becoming more civil and generous.  As I listened to the birds I felt hopeful instead of resentful.

I try to picture the days when I only had a one or two things to do.  How did multi-tasking become the norm.  I was more productive as a unitasker or at least I was more creative.  There is something about multi-tasking that robs me of the depth needed to make something new and meaningful.   I can do a lot in one day juggling devices, media, and meetings.  But I don't necessarily have anything tangible to show for it.  So many books have been written on this subject.  So many people claim they have the process that will change you from inefficient and overwhelmed to fulfilled and productive.  I believe processes evolve that will fit the context.  If something is not working, I can converge on solutions.   For example, adding Google tasks to my process changed things.  I get less email now because I can add to my task list without having to ask people to email me to remind me of something. 

This week on 'This American Life' they talked about a man who collected Lewis and Clark books until he was able to retire on the proceeds from their sale.   He retired and became a scholar.  He speaks of his new found freedom to explore in such glowing terms.  He's a true unitasker and he is happy.  Maybe this could be next year's resolution -- to become a unitasker and to write a unitasker manifesto.

A song for this post.

Look it up (day 40)

Search engines are the new clerics.  They interpret our requests and tell us where to look for answers.  When people speak of the hegemony of Google they are speaking of the new religion built upon the necessary faith we must have that the big G is benevolent and has our best interest embedded in its cloud.   Short of writing our own search engine (oh the heresy), we need to park our  search faith somewhere.  And Google might as well be it.  They have cute logos, a simple home page, some cool apps and a geek's equivalent of the Hippocratic oath.  Can anything go wrong?  They damaged their reputation a little when they voluntarily censored results in China.  But overall we are inclined to believe that Google is indeed the right agent to be digitizing the world's information.  There's never been a cuter more ambitious behemoth next store.

There is a good reason to be agnostic though.  We should search with multiple partners for the same reason the movie Memento threw me for an extended loop.  We simply don't know what we don't know.   Reflecting on this long enough is guaranteed to send me into a paranoid tizzy.  So diversification is key.  Friends or concerned parties may tell you what you don't know.

The truth is that I don't worry about G very much.  But I read a few blogs where there is much anxious typing about who owns what information and what may happen if the religion turns into an evil cult.   I think they have good points and I am happy that open source alternatives like OpenStreetMap exist to challenge some of the issues inherent in contributing to an infrastructure in which the public has no real stake.   It's correct to worry about the size of an entity that we ultimately cannot control.   On the other hand, at least G cares about what they do.  They seem to genuinely like the cloud and its possibilities.  I am curious about how long this can be sustained.  Part of me is always waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Will G ever have their equivalent of the Vista launch?  I wonder.   But for now, in G we trust.

A song for this post.

I've angered the gods (day 39)

I'm in PC hell yet again.  This time it seems to be my power supply.  The machine just randomly shuts down without warning.  Ugh.  I've just ordered a new power supply and hopefully all is well in a few days.  I'm suspecting my covet of an iMac has brought this fate down upon our household.    The macbook pro that is on its way from China probably also heaved some heavy karma toward my pc. 

I will fix the PC but only until the new iMac comes out and then I'll go through the agony of deciding whether I'm forever jumping ship.   That'll take a month at least.   So I need a good PSU that will last me roughly 3 months.  Not being one to skimp, I got a really quiet one.  There is nothing like a quiet machine.  And on that front Apple has everyone beat.  You could fall asleep to the purr of a Mac Pro.

I really really hope it's the power supply.  The last time I went through a random shutdown problem, it wasn't so easy to pinpoint.  I ended up swapping out the motherboard, the PSU, and tons of memory sticks.  In the end, it was the memory sticks though I could tell you a story about unlikely coincidences that would make the story seem fishy.  It was a long moment of hell.

There is nothing like a hardware problem to make me revert to obsessive geekiness - a state more endured than enjoyed.

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Meet me at the field (day 38)

Today Leila and I looked at stereoscopic footage of soccer and hockey games that she shot over the weekend.  The best thing about it was the outcome of an experiment in which she shot the soccer game with the cameras at ground level.  It works very well projected in the big screen in the studio I think because the screen almost touches the floor.  The green grass of the soccer field appears to join with the floor of the studio.  It remains to be seen how the footage will look in or on the lungs.  After seeing the initial lung mapping tests, it seems that we'll have to do experiment with different texture mapping techniques to get the right 'interior' feel.   Right now it just feels too glassy.  Maybe some kind of vignetting would be interesting so that it doesn't look entirely wrapped around the lungs.    We still haven't seen the new lungs in stereo.  It may give us new ideas for things to try.

We also have some green screen tests we did in Banff which deserve some attention.  Would be interesting to position green screened individuals seemingly inside the lungs.

A song for this post.

A love list (day 37)

I have a hate list.  Does everyone have a hate list?  Probably but I bet not everyone as a well developed formal hate list.  I'm somewhere in between now but in my early twenties I had this thing call the pit which had many levels.   Things and people (mostly people) would get thrown into the pit.  Some people would be given tools to dig themselves out.  Most times these were only small plastic spoons.   One person went so low into the pit that they became a mythical figure haunting the pit with the sound of their nails on the pit walls.  Some people were given bungee cords and although they were occasionally thrown into the pit, they had an automatic reprieve after a harrowing few moments.

My friend Zeenat asked me what is on my love list today.  I don't have a formal love list at all.  But I think, however sappy it may be, a love list might be a good thing to start.  First, what is the correct metaphor for a love list.   A bean stalk?  clouds?  Warm lofty winds?  Oh I know.  Food.  A layer cake.  It works because it's not just layers of cake but there's frosting and cherries and decorations and coulis.   Some people are good frosting, others are more robust cake layers.   Zeenat is definitely sparkles on the cake.  Steve is a mottled chocolate and white cake layer all his own.  My cat Tagi is little bits of almond that are sometimes welcomed and other times just incongruous.  My parents are the plate.  I know it sounds unglamourous but being a plate is the very base of the love cake.  Shannon is well-placed sour cherries.  Nathalie is refreshing slices of pear.  This cake deserves never to be eaten.

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Me and my machine (day 36)

At some point I started having an arms length relationship with the machine.  This does not feel so good.  I probably will go back to manipulating data directly but for now I'm in interface hell.  Yes, I'm in menus with options that I'm not sure about trying to achieve thing that clearly these menus weren't meant to facilitiate.  Often there is a nagging suspicion that perhaps it's not me or the menus, but something wrong in the implementation or an unintended interaction with another plugin or widget.   These mild irritants used to be motivations to go to the code and change things directly.  Now they are stumbling blocks that keep me from getting things done because either I don't have access to the files I need or I simply don't have the time to fiddle.  You see, I've become an administrator.  Administrators delegate.  My problem is that I still secretly long to fiddle.  Sometimes I give in and spend hours tweaking or programming something.  It's like being on a diet and suddenly binging on ice cream.  It feels good in the moment but then the cold hard reality of my inbox hits me in the morning.

I think that for my own sanity I'll have to carve out some time at least three times a week to assuage the programming urge.  I've just ordered a new Macbook Pro and I'm looking forward to working with Field.  I think it could be a nice mix between menus and low level wrangling.

A song for this post.

Stereo ahoy! (day 35)

This week Leila and Thea were here from Montreal to work on the Breath I/O project.  It was worth the stress of carving time from a busy schedule to work on the project in a more sustained way.  The main thing we are trying to work out is a workflow for the output of the Sony HDR-TG1 cameras we are using to shoot stereoscopic footage.   We had great hopes for the little Sony's and I think they will work out in the end but we've hit many walls along the way.  The TG1 is ideal for us because of its small size.  We can mount two TG1s beside each other on a Slik twin camera mount and shoot stereo at varying inter-ocular distances.   Miles built us a remote that controls both cameras so we can start/stop and zoom them in tandem.  Another ideal aspect of the TG1 is that they record surround sound.   With such a small microphone we wondered how good the sound would be.  It turns out to be quite good!   Overall we were pleased with the output of the camera but we started to hit some snags when it came time to edit the video.  The footage is in AVCHD format and the sound is Dolby Surround.   Here is what we know so far:

• The Picture Motion Browser software that comes with the camera will export the video to mpg2 or wmv with surround sound but not full resolution (it downgrades to 720x480)
• Final Cut Pro downgrades the audio to stereo
• Adobe Premiere can import the mts with surround sound and full res, but cannot output surround sound.  We did find a plug-in that may help but it's $295 and at this point we haven't given up on a cheaper solution.  CS4 says it comes with a trial version of said plug-in but we don't seem to have it.
• Stereoscopic Player does not play the surround sound (this is just a minor irritant since eventually we'll be playing the stereoscopic footage in a virtual environment)
• Interlacing is an issue.  The TG1 records at 1080 60i and needs to be deinterlaced to 1080 30p.  

So we currently don't have a workflow that preserves both resolution and surround sound.  The belief that this it must be possible keeps us searching.

Despite these setbacks we had some nice stereoscopic results with the footage that Leila shot of her nephews in track and field, and hockey.  The twin camera mount needs a level so some of the footage  had some vertical disparity but we were able to fix that in post-processing.  We tested the stereo footage on the old lung prototype and it looked interesting.  It kind of looked like the lungs were transparent.  Not exactly what we were looking for but perhaps with a little bit of a bumpy surface on the lungs, they won't look so mirror-like or transparent.

Another highlight was Trent's new model of the lungs.  They look great!  With any luck we'll be working with these on Monday (Leila's last day).

Miles was also around working with different sounds.  Making soundtracks on the fly for the silent videos we were playing.   We talked about different ways of teasing out the deeper resonance of someone voice in real-time.  He showed us an effect in super-collider which may be the start of what we're looking for.

A song for this post.

Mood dips in step with temperature (day 34)

I've noticed that the stock market gyrations need a story.  You can't just say "the stock market dipped by 300 points today".  You have to say "the stock market dipped dramatically following investor doubts about...".   I have read many of these headlines.   Over time an image has formed in my head, helped by the many trading room stock photos.  I picture chemicals (economic indicators) being piped in and landing on the crowds of traders in uneven but clustered patterns.  They there is general barking and howling that spreads to local neighbourhoods.  A frenzy of anxious trading takes place, and when the chemicals subside, exhausted stunned traders reckon with the result.   To put a story on this behaviour is interesting but most surely wrong because the traders are barking out of habit and neighbourly influence as much as reason.   The headlines are like a running commentary on a cock fight.   They create mini-dramas out of very immediate facts.  Some of these mini-dramas will actually fit the facts longer than others and you'll feel good about the narrative arc.  It's good to feel like you might know the next thing that happens, or to feel like a tragedy is in the making.  The anticipation is good.  Good like dessert.

The problem is that eventually drama exhaustion sets in.  There is only one cure for drama: deep engagement.  But how does one actually get beyond the fine grained noise to the deeper currents in financial systems?  It's not clear to me that anyone is even relatively sure of the deeper narrative taking place.  And maybe there is none.  It's quite possible that we've created a machine so mesmerizingly complex and with such high stakes that we're stuck in a fearful narcissistic moment.  This may be one reason to see the movie "cloudy with a chance of meatballs".

There is not real conclusion to this post.  The compulsion to stay at the surface of things because it's more immediately interesting is a trap that eventually robs us of insight.  It's related to discernment in the choice of information we take in.  It's also one of the topics we are researching with the Breath I/O project.  The frenzied consumption of the new eventually leads to shallow breathing and anxiety.  What kind of media consumption leads to a deeper breathing?

A song for this post.