gva's blog

Wii Max Granu Boids gestural interface demo (featuring Howard Rheingold on Cooperation Theory)

gva — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:46:55 -0500

This performance demonstrates my evolving Wii-Max/MSP gestural interface prototype.

Beginning with Howard Rheingold's brilliant interview on cooperation theory, I used the Wii controller to manipulate audio with a granular synthesis patch, and filled the video track with flocking pixels based on Craig Reynold's famous Boids algorithm in an OpenGL Jitter implementation.

In performance I insert realtime video feeds of myself operating the wireless controller, grabbed from the onboard laptop cam. The purpose is to integrate my physical presence and gestures. This material may also be understood as a reference to Narcissus, whose reflected extension of himself was described by McLuhan as one of the first accounts of the narcotic effect of technology.

The demo was completed as part of my coursework for Master of Science degree with the Integrated Digital Media Institute, Polytechnic University, Brooklyn.

My approach to this project was roughly as follows:

The problem: prepare and present a five-min. audio/video performance using an external controller with a dataflow flow programming environment, namely Max/MSP/Jitter
Start with my previous WiiGrano_6 demo and extend it to include new functionality
Add Nunchuck controller to Wii remote setup for additional input control
Select jit.boids family of patches to modify and control for visuals (http://www.maxobjects.com/?v=objects&id_objet=3980)
Patch Nunchuck joystick, triggers and accelerometer data into boids patch
Select new audio sample material (Howard Rheingold on Cooperation Theory)
Optimize gestural control around interesting & sensitive feedback params.
Practice, record, and present integrated a/v performance

Closer to e-book reality: Amazon Kindle

gva — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 14:32:49 -0500

Just announced last month is the strangely styled and potentially disruptive new e-book reader from Amazon, dubbed "Kindle." I don't know about you but that title makes me think of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451... Get video, images and blurbs from Amazon or google it for alternate perspectives.

Chief on the features list is wireless connectivity -- with no monthly fee -- using Sprint's high-speed (EVDO) network, more like an advanced mobile phone than a laptop with wi-fi. The gadget sells for 400. USD and early sign seem to suggest success -- it's sold out between now and Christmas....

Could be interesting to see how this entry plays into the emerging ecologies of literate media and media literacy.

Exploring gestural interface principles through Wii remote+Max/MSP granular synth mashup

gva — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 10:19:03 -0500

I developed this gestural interface prototype that offers an intuitive and performance-friendly interaction model. I'm exploiting the physicality of Nintendo's Wii controller by aiming to drawing out visceral, subtle, and "quasi-analogue" possibilities.

To build the prototype I combined functions from two existing Max patches: aka.wiiremote Nintendo Wii Remote Handler by Masayuki Akamatsu and granularized by Les & Zoax.

I chose the granular synthesizer because it provides a high degree of independent control of all sound variables, allowing the interaction design to access many parameters heuristically, looking for the most subtle and intriguing degree of sonic control. For example, pitch can be transposed independent of tempo and duration of sample playback. In terms of sonic culture, the quality of granular synthesis is less familiar and more more contemporary than, say, analogue modeling, or conventional sample playback. The sound of the granular synth has a "twenty-first century" quality that ties well with gestural control. The short demo video is not exhaustive or methodical but captures a bit of practice as I began to learn the characteristics of the system.

Thanks and shout out to Professor Joshua Goldberg, Brian MacMillan and other classmates at Integrated Digital Media Institute, Polytechnic University, Brooklyn.

Socially responsible, psychologically healthy, highly creative design workplaces

gva — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:39:25 -0400

I was recently asked (through a Facebook message) if I know any workplaces or firms that offer a complex, critical and creative design philosophy, as well as a great working environment, anywhere in the world. Would I recommend IDEO? Or, are there any more socially responsible firms to look at?

I had to say that the question is a good one but not so easy to answer.

I think social responsibility is one area, psychologically healthy working environment is another, and creative process is another, and few firms manage to accomplish all of those well.

For new issues in social responsibility one book I like is Thackara's "In the Bubble." As well, the people at World Changing are on the right track. I learned (through LinkedIn) that my formeer Institute without Boundaries student, the highly talented Jennifer Leonard, is now an editor there, which is fabulous news.

For creative environment, one person I would ask, as she interviewed myself as well as numerous top notch design firms on the subject of creative process for her PhD, is Silje Alberthe Kamille Friis.
check this:

http://www.nextd.org/04/contents.htm
Conscious Design Study
Kamille Friis, a PhD student at Learning Lab in Denmark, studied Humantific, NextD, IDEO, Bruce Mau Design and eTypes as part of her thesis focused on “Conscious Design Practice as a Strategic Tool.” Kamille spent a week in our Humantific New York office and attended a NextD WorkshopONE summer session.

“The purpose of the industrial PhD Conscious Design Practice as a Strategic Tool is to create new in-depth understanding of how strategic design consultancies carry out design work, in particular the design methods and processes. It is a journey into new territory. The concept of strategic design is a recent development within the field of design, focusing on the strategic thinking important to identify opportunities for innovation and growth.”

To inquire about buying a copy of this just published PhD thesis, email: Katrine (at) e-types (dot) com

Architectures of Control v. Designing for Emergence

gva — Fri, 18 May 2007 13:20:20 -0400

In the course of research for my Media Law paper, on Creative Commons and designing for emergence in law, I came across this excellent blog. In many ways this site might be considered the opposite of "designing for emergence":

Architectures of Control
http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/

What are Architectures of Control?

[example images - Audi A2: The user cannot open the bonnet; Bench designed to prevent lying down: 'redesigned to face contemporary urban realities'; printer: Some HP printers shut down the cartridges at a pre-determined date regardless of whether they are empty]

Increasingly, many products are being designed with features that intentionally restrict the way the user can behave, or enforce certain modes of behaviour. The same intentions are also evident in the design of many systems and environments.

This site aims—with readers’ input—to examine and analyse the ideas and techniques of these architectures of control in design, through examples and anecdotes, and by keeping up-to-date with relevant developments...

I plan to redesign metabolo.org later this summer and intend to emulate many of the successful features I see here...

Short and sweet: succinct definitions of design

gva — Mon, 14 May 2007 15:34:35 -0400

I wrote my own shortest definition of design as a personal challenge to express the term in a manner that was brief, robust and circumspect. The result (discussed elsewhere in this blog):

"Design is creation for reproduction."

Another short definition that I greatly admire was sent to me by Richard Thomas, a colleague at the Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity. Ricky said:

"Design is the process of initiating and representing relationships."

Doug Chapman, whom I know as an actor, environmentalist, former director of research at William McDonough + Partners, and graduate of the Institute without Boundaries program I directed until 2003, recently offered this very concise statement:

"Design is the line between idea and result."

In Toothpicks and Logos: Design in Everyday Life (2002, Oxford University Press), John J. Heskett highlights the multivalent senses of the word "design" by offering and analyzing a bewildering sentence:

"Design is to design a design to produce a design."

"Design," says Heskett, "has splintered into ever-greater subdivisions of practice without any overarching concept or organization, and can be appropriated by anyone."

While I don't consider this situation to be alarming, I do believe in this time of great change and great opportunity that practitioners and theorists of contemporary design will benefit by having a sense of what they have in common with those flying the same colours.

Biomedia: GVA @ Beal Institute’s Weekly Show+Tell, March 29, 2007

gva — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:35:43 -0400

With the encouragement of Alexander Manu, Director of the Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity, I am scheduled to present highlights from my ongoing graduate work toward a Master of Science degree in Integrated Digital Media. Beginning at 3:30 pm I'll present for an hour, at the Beal, 100 McCaul Street, 6th floor, Toronto. I'll start with work from last semester (History of Media + Philosophy and Media). Later on, in another session, I will cover the current semester (Media Law e.g. copyright, trademarks, free speech, libel etc and a Media Studies course on the Situationists, Guy Debord, détournement, post-situationist mashup culture etc). So tomorrow,

I'll show a short film entitled "Biomedia: A Work in Progress" that uses quotations from the 1st century AD Roman philosopher Lucretius and images of several thousand ant species from the Creative Commons site
Antweb.org

I'll outline my history paper, to be delivered at the Mexico City Media Ecology Association convention this June: "Biomedia: Past, Present, Future"

Abstract: This paper traces a historical thread from the biomechanical insights of early cybernetics and Norbert Weiner's visionary "communication machines," through Marshall McLuhan's little recognized but highly poetic and influential use of cybernetics, to the dawning opportunities for biomimetics in communications media presented by our burgeoning, massively interconnected socio-technical networks. The paper seeks to articulate the case that media theorists and practitioners should recognize “biomimetics” as a twin or mirror of “cybernetics” -- hence as a discourse integral to the intellectual heritage of their discipline. It interrogates and broadens the increasingly popular term "biomimicry" to acknowledge historical precedents and parallels including “bionics” and “biomimetics.” Finally, it seeks to reveal an emerging need and opportunity for a new biology of media -- or “biomedia” -- as a legitimate and promising realm for future communications research and practice that is fundamentally sympathetic with the most advanced contemporary thinking in ecological and social sustainability.

Keywords:Biomimetics, bionics, communications, cybernetics, media, sustainability

Are Designers the Enemy of Design?

gva — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 18:02:31 -0400

Patrick Keenan from The Movement sent me this provocative link, which underscores the arguments Bob Logan and I are making in the Designing for Emergence papers:

From Businessweek.com's
Nussbaum on Design column

March 18, 2007
Are Designers The Enemy Of Design?
Bruce Nussbaum

Here's the speech I gave at Parson's on Thursday that deals with the backlash against design. I've edited it just a bit. It's designed to provoke design management students and show how I've redesigned my job at Business Week from the Voice Of Authority to the Curator of the Conversation on Innovation. We all live life in beta now.
Are Designers The Enemy of Design?

In the name of provocation, let me start by saying that DESIGNERS SUCK. I’m sorry. It’s true. DESIGNERS SUCK. There’s a big backlash against design going on today and it’s because designers suck.

So let me tell you why. Designers suck because they are arrogant. The blogs and websites are full of designers shouting how awful it is that now, thanks to Macs, Web 2.0, even YouTube, EVERYONE is a designer. Core 77 recently ran an article on this backlash and so did we on our Innovation & Design site. Designers are saying that Design is everywhere, done by everyone. So Design is debased, eroded, insulted. The subtext, of course, is that Real design can only be done by great star designers.

This is simply not true. Design Democracy is the wave of the future. Exceptional design may only be done by great star designers. But the design of our music experiences, the design of our MySpace pages, the design of our blogs, the design of our clothes, the design of our online community chats, the design of our Class of ’95 brochures, the design of our screens, the design of the designs on our bodies?"We are all designing more of our lives. And with more and more tools, we, the masses, want to design anything that touches us on the journey, the big journey through life. People want to participate in the design of their lives. They insist on being part of the conversation about their lives....

Article continues... choose URL above for the full piece

“How to Realize a Gallery Exhibition Based on Design-Oriented Content”

gva — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 21:44:25 -0500

I was recently contacted about the Massive Change project by Matt Garmon, a student of OCAD where I'm currently teaching design. Following are his intro letter and interview questions, along with my answers.

"Hi Greg. I am currently in Todd Falkowsky's 3rd year Thesis Prep class at Ontario College of Art & Design. I am working on a case study based on the Massive Change project and was wondering if I could interview you to gain some personal insight into the project.

Specifically, I'm using the Massive Change exhibit as a model for how to effectively organize and realize a gallery exhibition based on design-oriented content. Your expertise and personal experience with this project would definitely help me generate a content-rich study and would be greatly appreciated. Would you be available to answer the following questions?"

1) What was the biggest obstacle/hurdle that the team encountered while working on the project? How did you overcome it?

In writing, curating and designing Massive Change, the biggest challenge was the overall ambition of the project. By this I mean the implications and reach of the critical questions, the sheer number and variety of deliverables, and the magnitude of the stakes. Everyone attached to the project had much at stake, due to the highly public profile and the way it was organized. This was not an accident or miscalculation but a deliberate factor designed to irreversibly intensify and characterize the learning experience for the Institute without Boundaries students.

2) What was the teams greatest strength when resolving conflicts or while problem solving during the project?

This may seem surprising but the team was so interdisciplinary that no one had the "real" answer to any problem. This meant that a new and often surprising answer arose for most questions. In the absence of experts, everyone becomes an authority of one kind or another. Combining these differing notions of authority produced unexpected and resilient solutions.

3) If you could have changed anything about the way the project was structured, what would it be? Why?

The mix of "economies" was an intentional move away from the usual categories of industrial design, graphic design, architecture etc. and as such it was knowingly tentative, incomplete, but closer to the true intermingling of the worlds systems of exchange. IwB member Mark Beever and I improved the categories by adding "Market Economies" near the start of the project, which I think turned out to be one of the most interesting, unexpected and successful categories. However we were reminded (by KaosPilot's director Uffe Elbaek and others) that we should have also included "Human Economies" -- that is to say, a category focusing on the redesign of education, the art and science of human imagination, or as we might call it at the Beal Institute, Strategic Creativity.

4) Can you explain the organizational structure of the project and how it manifested itself on a daily basis?

We were largely driven by opportunistically embracing sub-projects and by the resulting mix of these smaller deadlines alternating with big official deadlines (e.g. for the Vancouver Art Gallery). By sub-projects I mean interstitial commissions like the Digifest virtual reality environment called "Suspension: A A typical day might see a group-based charrette led by myself, a series of presentations of individual design research to Bruce, and a visit from an outside critic collaborator, such as advertising veteran, Marlene Hore.

5) Were there any eureka moments during the process and what were they?

One eureka moment came when Bruce explained that the key characteristic we were searching for was "capacity." This was the meaning of "Massive Change" -- a paradigm-shifting transformation in the magnitude of human capacity to alter the world. These implications drive us to the brink of the quandary: "Now that we can anything, what will we do?"

6) If you could offer any advice to someone wishing to set up a gallery exhibition, regardless of its size what would it be?

An exhibition places real people physically in contact with work and thus offers an unmatched context for eliciting extreme experience. This opportunity should never be squandered by offering a mere encounter with images. What Walter Benjamin called the "aura" of the artwork is actually not the exclusive preserve of art but applies to all objects that are somehow testament to history and to change. Uniqueness is not the only mandatory criterion. Better thing to look for (or to manufacture) is a confrontational poetic quality. This is one thing we sought to do in creating Massive Change.

7) How did you find peoples reactions to a design-centred exhibit in an art gallery especially with the focus on anti-aesthetic?

I'm told the Vancouver Art Gallery the Art gallery of Onatario had some visitors call in and cancel their memberships in protest. It may have happened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago too but I'm not sure. I find this reaction both surprising and heartening. I believe art is in a greater stage of irrelevancy and general crisis than ever before and I'm not alone. See, for example, my comments for the MAK's annual report on the "The Crisis of Art" http://www.metabolo.org/node/183. I'm heartened because it tells me that an institution dedicated to sharing new ideas can still shake its patrons out of slumbering complacency and that it can do so by embracing certain aspects of contemporary culture that are in themselves exciting and troubling. We didn't set out to shock but rather to represent and propagate some exhilarating ideas. If we did exhilarate I'm greatly heartened.

8) How did you generate content for the exhibit?

In general the IwB members contacted scores of authoritative sources of different kinds of material, like data, images, case studies. We also worked from sculptural sketches and build scale models of each room to test the ideas in 3D form. We wrote thematic "frames" to describe the patterns inherent in each case or collection, and wove the different strands together. this whole process was iteratively cycled many times, always testing and refining against our loose but vivid vision of the kind of experience and reaction we sought to arouse.

9) Obviously, the people involved were great assets when generating a show such as this. What attributes would you say to be the most critical to successfully producing this exhibition?

In our recruiting we were very deliberate about seeking and selecting candidates with unbridled curiosity, intellectual and physical stamina to sustain the iterative process, and perhaps most importantly, good cheer, to enable the successful navigation of all these challenges without losing heart or focus. If these were their strengths coming in, I believe each IwB member became what we referred to as "a new breed of designer, one who is, in the words of Buckminster Fuller, a 'synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist, and evolutionary strategist."

On the Crisis of Art: MAK’s Agenda Art 2010

gva — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 12:18:34 -0500

At the request of of Vienna-based contemporary art museum the MAK, I prepared this text contribution for their their annual report, Agenda Art 2010. The museum described it as "perfect for the agenda":

For solutions to the current crisis of art we must first realize the underlying causes. It is a matter of perspective and posture.

Art presents itself as a critical commentary on social and productive relations, from a perspective of exteriority. And so, when it is increasingly impossible to say there is an inside and an outside, then what?

As an activity within a complex economic and semiotic ecosystem, art proudly occupies an idiosyncratic niche. What then, when all perspectives and positions increasingly resemble niches?

Art's stance is predicated on independence and an aversion to reciprocal complicity. And when we realize that emergence within a field of reciprocal complicity is the source of all consciousness, all sociality, all economics, of life itself -- then what?

It may be necessary for art to die and be reborn for it to discard its inherited identity. It may be that a new art, in its interiority, its pervasiveness, its complicity, is unrecognizable. It may be.

Dear Professor Spooky, My Avatar Dog Ate My Homework

gva — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 20:17:11 -0500

As it turns out my Media Law class this semester may be held in Second Life. One reason this idea is looking cool is that DJ Spooky is already dropping science in that polygonish sandbox. Check out his course outline below -- interesting stuff for remixers, duality junkies, and Spooky fans -- and an awsome playlist in itself...

-----Original Message-----
From: idc-bounces@bbs.thing.net [mailto:idc-bounces@bbs.thing.net] On Behalf Of Paul D. Miller
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 1:18 PM
To: idc@bbs.thing.net
Subject: [iDC] sharing Curriculum

Hello everyone: I'm now at Sundance Film Festival for a series of discussions aout how new media is forcing the film industry to evolve different production models. To highlight the situation, the discussion will focus on Lynn Hershmann's film on Steve Kurtz: "Strange Culture"

But in light of the thread about teaching new media, here's the syllabus for my class on remix culture and digital media, with a focus on how people will respond to the material via PDF and remixable DVD's:

Paul aka DJ Spooky
(ps, this is sent from my cell phone, so, ahem, it aint really spell checked etc etc)

MEDIA SOUNDS: Towards a New Esthetic of Music and Art

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
PAUL D. MILLER aka DJ SPOOKY

Class notes: In Brief - “Media Sounds: Towards a Philosophy of Aesthetics in Music and Art” is a course I’m teaching at the European Graduate School as a mini residency during the summer. The school is kind of a 21st century update of the Black Mountain College: it brings together a wide variety of people from radically disparate philosophical and aesthetic backgrounds to teach and enjoy ideas outside of the academic norms.

My class focuses on sound, sound art, and their relationship to compositional strategy across different forms of contemporary art and digital media. This is the syllabus.

These materials will be excerpted and made into copies and handed out as PDF files with accompanying sound. The 100 songs will be distributed on data DVD’s and or downloaded from the European Graduate School’s Sound Bank that I’ve set up.

Media Sounds: Towards a Philosophy of Music - Syllabus
By Paul D. Miller

Afro-Modernity: Composition in Collision

1. Adorno vs Duke Ellington

2. Technologies: a time line

3. The role of sound in the culture industry

4. The Nation’s “Media Landscape” - control networks in the era of mass
media 2006, Orson Welles “War of the Worlds,” Entarte Musik, Entarte
Kunst: definitions of “purity” versus Hybridity.

5. Compositional Strategy:
Satie
Debussy
Wagner
Varese
Hildegard Von Bingen
Antheil
Ives
Xenakis
John Cage
Lionel Mapleson and the bootlegs of the Metropolitan Opera House
Thomas Edison
Xenakis
William Grant Still
Amy Beach

Nina Simone
Scott Joplin
Bert Williams (blackface) - blackface
Lee “Scratch” Perry
Hendrix
Walt Whitman
The Beatles
Toshiro Mayuzumi
Grand Master Flash
Arthur Rimbaud
Comte De Lautrémont (Isidore Ducasse)
Duke Ellington
Ornette Coleman
Pamela Z
Sussan Deyhim
Sun Ra
Yoko Ono

6. Philosophy of remix: Mcluhan, Eshun, Duchamp, Hegel, Glissant, Lessig, Dada Cinema, hip-hop cinema, Griffith, Ruttman, Luigi Russolo “The Art of Noises,” Eclectic Method - multimedia and the sound of “modernity.”

7. Multimedia/New Media: Rafael Lozano Hemmer, Scanner, Billy Kluver/Rauschenberg, Harry Smith, Nam Jun Paik, Amiri Baraka, Orson Welles

8. Sound of Science: Frequencies - the cell phone symphony, Marshall Mcluhan’s record version of “The Medium is the Massage,” The Happening - Harry Smith, Allan Kaprow, Andy Warhol, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Amiri Baraka, Ben Rubin’s “Listening Post.”

9. Standardization: The Architecture of Frozen Music: Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace vs Muzak, Norbet Weiner “Cyborg Narratives,” Vannevar Bush and the simulation of the human spirit, the world of “large numbers.”

10. The Rise of Mass Culture: 18th-19th century mass media encounter the digital world. Accumulation of multiple recording formats vs the “copy” and “found object” in the fine arts. Ontological uncertainty - Mary Shelley, Kafka, Dostoyevsky, and E.T.A. Hoffman.

11. Biological Surrealism: Towards a Vision of the Sonic Future: David Hammons, David Tudor’s “Rainforest” electronic music compositions, Pauline Oliveros “Quantum Compositions,” Daniel Bernard Roumain’s “Hip Hop Symphony, ”Brian Eno’s “Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now,” Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle and the artist as logo-centric producer, Dj Spooky’s remix of D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation.”

12. The Experience Economy: libidinal networks and the decline of geography. Nurture versus Nature - how we hear digital sound. Valentine De St. Point’s Futurist Manifesto of Lust, 1913, and the Muzak phenomenon: acousticc banality - General George Owen Squire and the rise of musical Taylorization.

End

Media Sounds: Required Reading:
1. Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky - Rhythm Science
2. Michael Nyman - Experimental Music
3. Joseph Lanza - Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy Listening, and Other Moodsong
4. Clinton Heylin - Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry
5. Simon Reynolds - Generation Ecstasy: Into The World of Techno and Rave Culture
6. Lloyd Bradley - Bass Culture
7. Christoph Cox (editor) - Audio Culture Reader
8. David Toop - Rap Attack
9. Jeff Chang: Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop
10. Luigi Russolo - The Art of Noises
11. Kodwo Eshun - More Brilliant Than The Sun
12. Ken Jordan and Randall Packer - Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality
13. R. Murray Schaefer - The Soundscape
14. Allen S. Weiss and Gregory Whitehead (editors) - Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio and The Avant Garde
15. Saul Williams - The Dead MC Scrolls
16. Lewis Hyde - The Gift: Imagination and The Erotic Life of Property
17. Norbert Weiner - The Human Use of Human Beings
18. Lawrence Lessig - Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity
19. Roselee Goldberg - Performance Art: 1909 to the Present
20. Andy Warhol - The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)
21. Yve Alain Bois, Rosalind Krauss - Formless: A User’s Guide
22. Gilles Deleuze - Difference and Repetition
23. Alain Robbe Grillet - Topology of a Phantom City
24. Rudolf Arnheim - Film as Art
25. Theodore Adorno - Essays on Music
26. John Corbett - Extended Play: From John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein
27. Leroi Jones aka Amiri Baraka - Blues People: Negro Music in White America
28. Alfred Appel - Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce
29. Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man
30. Jacques Attali - Noise: A Political Economy of Sound
31. Edmund Burke - A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
32. Octavia Butler - Parable of the Sower
33. Sheree Rene Thomas (editor) - Dark Matter
34. Russell A. Potter - Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism
35. Tricia Rose - Black Noise
36. Norman O. Brown - Love’s Body
37. R.D. Laing - The Politics of Experience
38. James Snead - White Screens/Black Images + (essay) Repetition as a Figure of Black Culture
39. Donald Bogle - Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mamies and Bucks: An Interpretative History of Blacks in American Cinema
40. Anthony Appiah - On Cosmopolitanism
41. Mark Coleman - Playback: From the Victrola to MP3, 100 Years of Music, Machines, and Money
42. Ferruccio Busoni - Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music

Required Listening:
1. John Cage - “Imaginary Landscape 1” (Original + Dj Spooky remix)
2. Ludwig Van Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 In C Minor, Op. 67: Allegro Con Brio
3. Pierre Schaefer - “Edtude Pathetique”
4. Karheinz Stockhausen - “Kontakte”
5. Pierre Boulez - Pli Selon Pli (Portrait de Mallarme) track 1
6. Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 2 In C Minor: 3. “Resurrection” III. Scherzo: In Ruhig Fliessender Bewegung
7. Luciano Berio - (Sinfonia) III In Ruhig Fliessender Bewegung
8. Charles Ives - Three Places in New England
9. Ernst Toch - Der Fuge Aus Geographie (Geographical Fugue for Speaking Chorus)
10. Marshall Mcluhan - The Medium Is The Massage (record version)
11. Hildegard Von Bingen - O Virga Mediatrix
12. Pierre Henri - Psyche Rock
13. John Cage - Roratorio (Ein Irischer Circus uber Finnegans Wake)
14. Richard Wagner - Vorspiel Zum 1. Aufzug
15. Amy Beach - “Gaelic” Symphony in E Minor Op32 I. Allegro Con Fuoco
16. Igor Stravinski - The Rite of Spring, Part II The Sacrifice - Sacrificial Dance (Chosen One).
17. Arnold Schoenberg, Ein Überlebender aus Warschau op.46
18. Elvis - Jailhouse Rock
19. Hector Berlioz - Symphony Fantastique Op. 14
20. Luigi Nono - Ricordia Cosa ti fatto in Auschwitz
21. Richard Wagner - Rheingold Prelude
22. Woody Guthrie - This is Your Land
23. Alexander Scriabin - Prometheus, The Poem of Fire
24. Dj Spooky + Chuck D - B-Side Wins Again
25. Johan Sebastian Bach - “Little” Fugue in G Minor
26. Orson Welles - War of the Worlds radio broadcast
27. Danger Mouse + Jay Z - Encore
28. The Doors - Soul Kitchen (Dj Spooky remix)
29. Hive - Experiments in Synthetic Rhythm
30. Iannis Xenakis - Analogiques A + B
31. Edgar Varèse - Poème Èlectronique
32. John Coltrane - A Love Supreme (Part 1)
33. Philip Glass - Concerto For Saxophone (Quartet version)
34. Steve Reich - Come Out (1966)
35. John Adams - Shaker Loops: 1. Shaking and Trembling
36. Duke Ellington - A Tone Parallel to Harlem (The Harlem Suite)
37. Lee “Scratch” Perry - Black Board Jungle Dub (Version 1)
38. Pauline Oliveros - Butterfly (1968)
39. Charlie Parker/Rob Swift “Cheers” (remix)
40. Madonna - Hung Up
41. Brian Eno/David Byrne - Regiment
42. Kurt Weill - The Three Penny Opera - Die Dreigroschenoper: Moritat Von Mackie Messer
43. Olivier Messaein - Livre D’Orgure: IV. Chants D’Oiseaux
44. Meredith Monk - Atlas - Part 1: Personal Climate - Travel Dream Song.
45. Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
46. Ryuichi Sakamoto/Yellow Magic Orchestra - Riot in Lagos
47. The Winstons - Amen, Brother!
48. Brian Eno/David Byrne - Regiment
49. Fela Kuti - Zombie
50. Abdullah Ibrahim - Mindif (Original + Dj Spooky remix)
51. Ornette Coleman - Free Jazz
52. John Coltrane - Om
53. Saul Williams - OHM
54. Amiri Baraka - Black Dada Nihilismus
55. Allen Ginsberg - Howl
56. William S. Burroughs - Breakthrough in Grey Room
57. Asha Bhosle - Rang De
58. Laurie Anderson - Oh Superman
59. Sun Ra - it’s after the End of the World
60. Max Roach - We Insist (Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace)
61. Charlie Parker with Strings - Summertime
62. George Antheil - Ballet Méchanique
63. Eric Satie - Vexations
64. Claude Debussy - Concerto for Alto Saxophone and String Orchestra in E Flat Major, Op 109
65. Claude Debussy - La Mer
66. Raymond Scott - Music for Babies: Tempo Block
67. Toshiro Mayuzumi - Works for Musique Concrete X (1956)
68. Rahzel - Wu Tang Live Medley
69. Yoko Ono - Rise (original + Dj Spooky remix)
70. MC5 - Kick out the Jams
71. Kraftwerk - Trans Europe Express
72. Afrika Bambaata - Planet Rock
73. Grand Master Flash - Adventures on the Wheels of Steel
74. Jack Kerouac - The Subterraneans
75. Ella Fitzgerald - Mack The Knife
76. Louis Armstrong - Mack The Knife
77. Scanner - Structural Loss
78. Talvin Singh with the Master Musicians of Jajouka - You Can Find the Feeling
79. James Brown - Coldcut Meets the Godfather Megamix
80. William Grant Still - Afro-American Symphony - Moderato Assai - Longing
81. Scott Joplin - The Entertainer
82. Double D and Steinski - Lesson 3 (The History of Hip-Hop)
83. Basement Jaxx - Where’s Your Head At
84. DeeeLite - Groove is in the Heart
85. NWA - F*ck the Police
86. The Last Poets - White Man’s Got a God Complex
87. The Beatles - Revolution #9
88. Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland
89. Herbie Hancock - Rockit
90. The Beastie Boys - Sure Shot
91. The Police - Reggata de blanc
92. Wayne Wonder - Sleng Teng
93. Count Machuki - Oh Carolina
94. George Gershwin - Porgy and Bess: 1. i (Summertime)
95. Linton Kwesi Johnson - Bass Culture
96. Pete Rock - They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)
97. Jeff Mills - Metropolis Soundtrack (Convicted to Paradise/Maria)
98. Gloria Jones - Tainted Love (1965)
99. M.I.A. /Dj Diplo - Piracy Funds Terrorism
100. Nina Simone - Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair

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Invitation to contribute to Agenda Art 2010

gva — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 12:12:10 -0500

I received an invitation from Peter Noever, director of Vienna-based contemporary art museum the MAK, to contribute a piece of writing to their annual report. Peter wrote:

The MAK has always seen itself as a place of social awareness beyond its assigned function as a site of art and a laboratory of art production. Under the heading of “AGENDA ART 2010,” we are now trying to draw up scenarios on the future of art: Which production conditions, which values in society, which extent of interaction with politics and the economy would be desirable for art? And how can these scenarios be made real? An avant-garde paper of this style can only be developed with the help of visionary minds from the fields of art, architecture, design, and the humanities.

Further thoughts from the MAK's director are available online.

Read Me

gva — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 21:04:11 -0500

As I work on the final stages of a paper for my IDMI History of Media class it strikes me that I ought to collect in one place my thoughts about material to read, going forward.

Here is that list, in no particular order.

Schrödinger, Erwin, What is Life? Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1945
Something about autopoesis, such as Maturana, Humberto and Francisco Verela, Autopoesis and Cognition. D.Reidel, Dordrecht, Holland, 1980
Something about actor network theory and/or something by Bruno Latour such as We Have Never Been Modern.

Report from Massive Change Global Visionaries Symposium

gva — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 22:19:23 -0500

Just returned from the Massive Change Global Visionaries Symposium in Chicago. As a co-creator of the Massive Change exhibition I wanted to see it in the first US showing. Another aim was to study the public event and possibly seek out some of the speakers for a symposium I'm co-organizing with colleagues at the Beal Institute. The event was eye opening and highly enjoyable.

Overall my favorite speakers were Stewart Brand, futurist and author of the Whole Earth Catalog, The Clock of the Long Now, and How Buildings Learn; Gunter Pauli, founder and director of Zero Emissions Research Initiative of the United Nations University in Tokyo (Zeri.org), founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales, and Mary Czerwinski, cognitive psychologist and principal researcher at Microsoft. Brand and Pauli were certainly the most dynamic.

Other speakers were Gregg Easterbrook, senior editor of The New Republic and author of The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse; Dayna Baumeister, cofounder of the Biomimicry Guild; Hazel Henderson, futurist, evolutionary economist, and syndicated columnist; John Todd, biologist and ecological designer, and Reginald Modlin, Director of Environmental Affairs for Daimler Chrysler.

Stewart Brand presented first and he was superb. Soft-spoken and persuasive, he is a master inter-disciplinarian and unromantic humanist. His presentation was the only one with visuals, very polished with dense information demographics, many photos, sound clips, transitions, etc. Not as typographically sophisticated as Al Gore's show but equally dense. Brand focused on the city, its pivotal place in the pantheon of human creativity, its long history and the dynamic economic and demographic forces transforming it worldwide, in every continent and across all income strata. Overall he gave a picture of optimism about the creativity and resourcefulness of human communities to solve problems.

Gunter Pauli, based in Tokyo, described some of his initiatives in designing radically green urban / industrial communities at very large scales. Much of his work is in the developing world, e.g. Gaviotas in Colombia. These communities can leapfrog past current toxic practices and install new infrastructure that uses closed-loop, "waste=food" principles to achieve high employment, zero emissions, ample food production, etc.

Here's a helpful third party commentary [http://www.planeta.com/planeta/02/0209gaviotas.html]:

Pauli, in some ways a younger version of [Paolo] Lugari, has some spot-on things to say. He is most definitely on The Right Track. Kind of a permaculturist-social-justice-guy with a penchant to use fairy tales to illustrate his points....
...ZERI's focus is on taking things that are considered "waste" and finding new uses for them.
...The trick to "zero emissions" is to use the "waste" of one of the five kingdoms as food for another.

In person Pauli is outspoken and imaginative, frequently alluding to his work with children and seeming to celebrate these same qualities in them -- they don't filter their ideas of what's possible. Not an easy personality, but much better than that. Pauli was on stage with Reginald Modlin, Director of Environmental Affairs for Daimler Chrysler, who was cagey, dry, and sycophantic. No surprises and few big ideas from the global manufacturing giant.

Next were Dayna Baumeister and John Todd. One very interesting moment of that talk arose through a question afterward by Stewart Brand regarding GMO's -- actually he scooped me as I was going to ask the same question. Brand pointed out that certain bacteria swap genetic material all the time, and that many scientists who understand biology thoroughly, including stellar minds like E.O. Wilson, are less disturbed by GMO than others who are not trained in biology. Todd gave a thoughtful answer that GMOs are a distraction in that he's more interested in the symphony of ecological relationships, rather than the admittedly interesting soloists or featured organisms.

Jimmy Wales and Mary Czerwinski offered slightly differing views on emerging digital media. Most telling comment in that session came from Wales who imagined that the open, volunteer-driven model of wikipedia would be a temporary architecture that would soon have to be replaced by a more restricted and conventional model. To his surprise, the need to install controls on the model never materialized. In fact he continually has to explain to the media that the organization's controls are less restrictive than they imagine. Simple rules, like requiring individuals to be members for four days before they can edit, have effectively dampened most of the troll-like behaviour in the system.

In the last session Hazel Henderson held court and Gregg Easterbrook held his own. Henderson captivated the audience with ideas such as unmeasured value creation within the "love economy," and the need for broader alternatives to the money-based economic indices, like triple bottom line and the Calvert Henderson index. Both speakers dealt with notions of wealth and politics, and the overall picture was one in which material prosperity has shown steady increases in recent decades. The passing of Milton Freidman was noted and some audience members noted that we've never really tried pure market economics because of massive subsidies for entire industries, including oil and gas.

“Theoretical Primer for Emergent Media” presented at Enterprise 2.0 event

gva — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 10:30:15 -0500

I'll be giving my Hyperpolis presentation and leading a discussion on the idea of "emergent media" as part of a Toronto event beginning 6:30 tonight at the Gladstone Hotel.

Hosted by Tom Purves, the gathering will feature speakers and general discussion on the idea of "Enterprise 2.0" The idea is to look beyond today's mostly consumer-oriented applications of "Web2.0" and "social media" and ask, What do these same technologies portend once they infiltrate the business world? How will these new media forms change everyday work, the structure of firms, and the way companies innovate?

The event has attracted a lot of interest from the Toronto area tech community who are plugged into these ideas, and has been scaled up from a smaller venue to the stately Gladstone.

For more information or to sign up for (free) attendance, visit this wiki: http://barcamp.org/Enterprise20Camp

Designing Systems with Emergent Behavior at BayCHI

gva — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 22:10:18 -0400

A recent Bay Area ACM SigCHI panel on "Designing Systems with Emergent Behavior" featured Tim Brown (IDEO), Peter Merholz (Adaptive Path), Larry Cornett (Yahoo), and Joy Mountford (Yahoo), and was moderated by Rashmi Sinha.

Peter Merholtz blogged his thoughts here: www.peterme.com/archives/000793.html

Core77 offers a rundown of the event here: http://www.core77.com/blog/events/design_for_emergent_systems_4821.asp#more

And the organization's event page is here: http://www.baychi.org/calendar/20061010/

Waste > Food

gva — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:54:59 -0400

The Living Planet Report, released yesterday in Beijing by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), says in plain language that "people are turning resources into waste faster than nature can turn waste back into resources."

If everyone consumed as much energy, food and other resources as the average Canadian, humans would need more than four Earths to support their lavish lifestyle, says the report. Per person, Canada ranks fourth behind only the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Finland when it comes to using resources. To view the report, visit panda.org/livingplanet .

Lineup for IDMI’s Hyperpolis 3.0 conference

gva — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 12:35:22 -0400

Below are the themes and speakers of a conference, hosted by the Integrated Digital Media Institute and Othmer Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies at Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, where I'll be giving a presentation based on the ideas in my paper with Robert K. Logan, "Designing for Emergence and Innovation." More background may be found at http://idmi.poly.edu/

The Production of Politics Thursday October 19th 11am to 2pm

Richard Rogers, Director, govcom.org, University of Amsterdam

Tom Keenan, Director, the Human Rights Project, Bard College

Karen J. Hall, Humanities postdoctoral fellow, Syracuse University

Atopia (Jane Harrison and David Turnbull), Urban research and design office, New York

The Art of Work in the Age of Post-production Thursday October 19th 3pm to 6pm

Rev. Luke Murphy, Artist, VP of Technology, MTV Networks

Greg Van Alstyne, Senior Research Associate, Beal Centre for Strategic Creativity, Ontario College of Art & Design

Ruth Ron, Architect and new media artist, Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Florida

Blogging: around the table Friday October 20th 11am to 2pm

Jodi Dean, Teaches political theory at Hobart-William Smith colleges and maintains jdeanicite.typepad.com

Geert Lovink, Media theorist and activist, University of Amsterdam

McKenzie Wark, Author of the Hacker Manifesto and teaches media studies at Lang College, the New School

Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University

The Politics of Production Friday October 20th 3pm to 6pm

Michael Liegl, Ethnographer, University of Munich

Eric Redlinger, Musician, network administrator, member of Share collective, New York-Montreal-San Diego-Wiesbaden

Michael J. Schumacher, Composer, performer, director of Diapason sound gallery, New York

Katherine Carl, Co-director, the School of Missing Studies, New York-Sarajevo

Sterling, Greenfield, and the Patchy Internet of Things

gva — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 20:27:44 -0400

I've heard Bruce Sterling taking issue with Adam Greenfield over the title of his book, Everyware (in this great IT Conversations podcast). I was a bit surprised, then, when in our OCAD lecture Sterling gave a big boost to Greenfield's book and said that they talk all the time and are now good buddies. Hey, things change. In any case that's not why I'm writing.

At some point I plan to take up Sterling's original argument, and maintain that the arrival of dataspace (as we call it at the Beal Institute) AKA the Internet of Things will not involve "everything" and "everyone" and "everywhere" -- it will be patchy and spotty. And I agree with Sterling that it may take 30 years to arrive. But I'm not writing about that either.

Actually I'm writing to point out a hard to find and thin but interesting discussion board about the emergence of ubicomp in Greenfield's site. Some nice examples of weak signals or whatever in there -- so, like, check it out.

A Science of What Can’t Be Done

gva — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 22:01:41 -0400

My friend David Coole recently took his masters in architecture and has been advising me about the graduate degree experience. After building an impressive career in film and video production, including supervising post production for Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, he decided to enroll in architecture school.

In a recent discussion he proposed a necessary new science: a science of what can't be done. After decades -- centuries really -- of the science of what might be possible, its time, he thinks, for a science of the not possible.

Alchemists for centuries attempted to turn lead into gold. Others attempted to create a perpetual motion machine. For years the belief exceeded the practice. Only after a scientific theory proved it wasn't possible did the resignation sink in.

What do we currently believe might be possible some day, and what damage and waste are flowing from this?

David believes that if we maintain an unflagging belief, for example, that we are just a short distance from undiscovered methods for remediating our destruction of the environment, it gives us licence to continue business as usual. Where has all the discussion of superconductors and other fantasy technologies taken us?

Let's say we could go back 1000 years and ask: is it possible to have a clear, room temperature solid? It's easy to think could not have imagined glass. No cameras, no eyeglasses, no airplanes, no windows, no , etc.

I'm intrigued by this for another reason. We can't truly discuss one -- what is possible -- without knowing about the other -- what isn't. We are beginning to understand more about our own cognitive and physiological limits as we build a fuller picture of what our forebears inherited and gave to us -- that is, to what point has evolution delivered us thus far?

We need to understand that we are not at the end point of an evolutionary process. We are embedded in a co-evolutionary process. We're not done, and we're not alone. Those facts are the starting point of a new science of the what can't be done and why.

“Designing for Emergence and Innovation: Redesigning Design” Accepted for Publication

gva — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:38:53 -0400

Along with my co-author, Robert K. Logan, I'm pleased to report our theoretical research paper "Designing for Emergence and Innovation: Redesigning Design" has been accepted for publication by the journal Artifact.

The reviewers said the paper makes a significant contribution and found it "challenging and thought provoking... I really enjoyed the acedemic style -- it got my brain cells working."

With editors from Copenhagen, Illinois and Indiana, Artifact is an international peer-reviewed academic journal targeted to researchers, practising designers, and manufacturers. It is focused on the vast changes that computers have brought to design.

"Artifact does not draw an artificial line between the virtual and the physical. It strives to illuminate the problems and possibilities of their interaction. The journal does not frame digital design as a design discipline such as industrial design or graphic communication, but assumes an open position. The aim of the journal is to promote transdisciplinary design research, encourage cross-fertilization, interconnections, and crossbreeding among different scientific disciplines, the design industry, and the arts."

Artifact's policy permits us to post our original paper online in advance of their official edit. Look for the original paper soon on the web site of the Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity. (Or by request from gvanalstyne at faculty dot ocad dot ca).

McLuhan reverses our intuition about sound + vision

gva — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:03:47 -0400

We tend to think of visual information as instantaneous or simultaneous, and audio as time-based, linear, successive. I do, at any rate.

To underscore this assumption, let's say I'm reviewing a designer's portfolio. I can "read" a visual image almost in a moment -- I make a snap judgement much like that analyzed in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink.

I see a cassette, video tape, quicktime file, or what have you, however, and its a different story -- I know I need to make a time investment. I immediately have expectations for what I want to get out of it. Call it experience economy "ROI". Actually, Bruce Sterling, who incidentally will be speaking at OCAD on October 2 (yes, you heard right), puts it best in Shaping Things: he says in an age of 'Gizmos', our relationship with objects is governed by the "opportunity costs" and "cognitive load" of the user.

Anyway, back to McLuhan. In the Playboy interview (see link below) and everywhere else in his writing, he puts it this way:

"The man of the tribal world led a complex kaleidoscopic life precisely because the ear, unlike the eye, connot be focused and is synaesthetic rather than analytical and linear. Speech is an utterance, or more precisely, an outering, of all our senses at once; the auditory field is simultaneous, the visual successive." (Mcluhan's 1969 interview in Playboy)

This seems striking. I understand and agree with McLuhan, yet my portfolio judging example above tells me the opposite. In some way, both readings must be true.

SHARE: supporting collaboration in new media communities

gva — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 21:34:20 -0400

Here's a reference from one from my fellow grad students:

SHARE.global
http://share.dj/global/

* new york
* montreal
* wiesbaden
* san diego

SHARE is an organization dedicated to supporting collaboration and knowledge exchange in new media communities. Local SHARE groups hold free, open jams and workshops in their communities. Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into our system, improvise on each others' signal and perform live audio and video. SHARE furnishes the amplification and projection. SHARE happens weekly to monthly in cities around the world. Interested in starting a SHARE gathering? See the do it yourself page.

Nice compendium of location-based games

gva — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 16:14:31 -0400

Here's a nice compendium forwarded by David Frackman, a fellow student in my Integrated Digital Media program:

http://www.in-duce.net/archives/locationbased_mobile_phone_games.php

“Design is creation for reproduction”

gva — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 00:03:01 -0400

Note to self: complete this post by quoting my original post from massivechange.com: http://forums.massivechange.com/viewtopic.php?t=15

The Birth of “Interaction Design”

gva — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 15:47:11 -0400

The term "interaction design" is attributed to a number of different parents, some from the academic and theory world and others more rooted in client practice.

Another example comes from the recent book Designing for Interaction by Dan Saffer. There is also a "Definition of Interaction Design" post in Saffer's blog. The book offers the following account:

Back in 1990, Bill Moggridge, a principal of the design firm IDEO, realized that for some time he and some of his colleagues had been creating a very different kind of design. It wasn’t product design exactly, but they were definitely designing products. Nor was it communication design, although they used some of that discipline’s tools as well. It wasn’t computer science either, although a lot of it had to do with computers and software. No, this was something different. It drew on all those disciplines, but was something else, and it had to do with connecting people through the products they used. Moggridge called this new practice interaction design.

A recent paper by Wakkary and Budd traces the term's birth to Terry Winograd's “From Computing Machinery to Interaction Design” in Peter Denning and Robert Metcalfe (eds.), Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing:

In recognizing the impact of the increasing role of computing in people’s lives, Terry Winograd at Stanford University was among the first to identify a design practice whose outcome and focus was a qualitative process rather than a thing or an object. He labeled this new practice “interaction design.” Winograd identified the need to focus on the perceptual and psychological aspects of human experience by rooting interaction design equally in graphic design, psychology, communication, linguistics and computing science.

And my fellow instructor at OCAD, Martha Ladly, suggested Nathan Shedroff in a recent discussion about this question.

Thoughts from the readership of this blog are welcome. To be continued?

------

After posting these definitions I received an addendum in the comments field, which I want to add here, to reward the commenter, amend my original post, and stimulate discussion:

Bill Verplank would like some credit as well... From his website:
http://www.billverplank.com/professional.html

"From 1986-1992, he worked as a design consultant with Bill Moggridge at
IDTwo and IDEO to bring graphical user-interfaces into the product design
world; he started calling it 'interaction design' instead of 'user-interface
design'."

Everything Originates in Fire

gva — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 20:29:55 -0400

My friend Alex Busby just returned from Chennai, India where he was working on visual effects for a feature film. He related to me a philosophical concept about connectedness that he encountered there.

This view touched on everything from microbiology to the tangible realm including details like the chambers of the heart. One of the central ideas was that fire transforms inanimate substances and compounds into living ones -- it is a catalyst. It is held to be the most primal of the elements.

A ritual using coals and lighting fires from other fires was part of the experience Alex described. I hope to learn more about this. Perhaps it is connect with Ayurvdedic medicine or Vedic thought.

Another current to investigate (according my colleague Bob Logan) is the Greek philosopher Heraclites.

Metabolo Metaphors

gva — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 15:30:14 -0400

I thought about creating a place where I can list examples of metabolo in contemporary culture, as I encounter or think of them, and expand on them later. This post is that place.

Examples:

Flock - the browser I'm using right now
Media ecology - a young discipline pioneered by Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, and others
Rabid media attention described as a "feeding frenzy." On this note, one relative of the slain child Jon Bennet Ramsey said the media attention was "like having a wild animal attached to your face."
Macintosh's pulsating status light -- like a sleeping animal's breathing
Linkrot - apt... if not pretty

MIT Media Lab's Scratch: a programming language for animation, games, art

gva — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 22:33:28 -0400

I had a great meeting recently with Britt, one of my former students from the Institute without Boundaries. She had returned from visiting the MIT Media Lab where she toured the school and met Mitchell Resnick and others.

One project she told me about later was Scratch, a programming language for animation, games, art - From MIT Media Lab comes Scratch, a new programming language that lets you create your own animations, games, and interactive art.

Scratch is being developed by Resnick's Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the Media Lab, in collaboration with KIDS research group at the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. The language builds on the Squeak programming language, developed by Alan Kay and an open-source community of colleagues. Scratch will be available for public release later this year (2006).

Metabolism: The sum of all biochemical processes involved in life

gva — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 09:54:10 -0400

Definitions of "metabolism" from Answers.com

me·tab·o·lism
n.

1. The chemical processes occurring within a living cell or organism that are necessary for the maintenance of life. In metabolism some substances are broken down to yield energy for vital processes while other substances, necessary for life, are synthesized.

2. The processing of a specific substance within the living body: water metabolism; iodine metabolism.

[From Greek metabole, change, from metaballein, to change : meta-, meta- + ballein, to throw.]

Selected translations for: Metabolism

Dansk (Danish)
n. - metabolisme, stofskifte

Nederlands (Dutch)
metabolisme, stofwisseling

Français (French)
n. - métabolisme

Deutsch (German)
n. - Metabolismus, Stoffwechsel

Italiano (Italian)
metabolismo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - metabolismo (m)

Español (Spanish)
n. - metabolismo

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - ämnesomsättning