I would like to explain my absence, both mentally and physically, over the last 5 days (without apologizing, as I am typically inclined to do by some kind of instinctual politeness): on Friday I was informed that my cousin had died unexpectedly. The surprise of the news overwhelmed all my other concerns, even though it was a relatively small emotional shock for me considering the violence and proximity of the event. Obligations and relationships are suddenly shifted and seen in high contrast to each other. In an email I wrote to a friend I described the experience as hitting a land mine and then watching the explosion from both an internal and external perspective, frame by frame, paying close attention to the gaps between images, wondering how so much can happen between images, when the shutter is closed. Yesterday I attended her funeral in Ventura and completed the parabolic arc of my metaphoric existence as a reflective projectile. Now I am back on the ground, far from where I started, a bit burrowed in but glad to be alive. Thanks for understanding.
Participants so far:
Brad, Jen, Tripp and myself
First meeting:
Wednesday the 21st from 5 to 6 PM
Discussion:
Introduction through the first chapter. Please bring questions and comments.
So much stuff to do... bring it on.
1. Extended Patholog
I would like to see Patholog develop as a platform that bundles in the capabilities of blogs and moblogs while focusing on community-building network functions.
2. Auto-Cartographic Socio-Spatial Network Imaging System
Your body is the brush, the world is the canvas. Get moving.
3. Collective Responsibility Games
Your movements are tracked. You are tied invisibly to others. Work together or die.
4. Object Historical Chain View or The Auto-Documentarian Product
An object links consumers, retailers, distributors, manufacturers and laborers through the course of its history. Enable the object to trace its path back and illuminate the connections between people. Each person that touches/interacts with the product is a node in a narrative.
5. Social Geometry
Track individuals inside the lab. Project a map of the room on each wall. Each map interprets the position and movement data of the individuals differently. 1. track movement leaving paths that create a web. 2. Draw circles around individuals, ellipses around couples and polygons around groups. Each person is represented by a color and their social statistics are tracked on a display: time spent in each size group, who they spend the most time with, etc. 3. um... I haven't decided yet.
6. People Pool Table
Again tracking individuals inside the lab but this time people are cues. Spread throughout the visualization of the lab are the other 15 balls, the cue ball and in the corners and sides are the "pockets." People cues have to run into cue balls and pocket the balls.
Michael Naimark's provocation or summary of my interests:
"games that are on all the time."
I want to design interactive experiences that engage me so that I want to "play" them myself. Describing the form I believe these experiences will take starts out with a collection of vague design goals/interests, from that cloud of abstraction I will distill the projects and applications that are the most interesting to me.
Reflecting on my own habits of play, I notice a pattern in my attention span for video games over the last 5 years: I play intensely for a short period of time and then abandon the game, often within a relatively short distance from the end. The cause of this habit may have many sources, but the significance is profound in the way that it informs my conceptions of design. I rarely lament the "failure" to finish the game, instead I evaluate the success of the game and my experience with it based on my feelings of whether I extensively mastered the game mechanics/controls/agency and the game space/world. So, settting aside narrative/story issues, my desires within a game are: 1. expressive 2. exploratory.
Pursuing satisfaction in an abstract creative space for collaborative expression and communication.
I never get tired of Block Jam. Expressive gaming. Abstract yet concrete and tangible.
Many gamers are environmental hackers. They test the limits of each system that they interact with, meticulously manipulating objects and space, searching for new and surprising configurations, especially those ones unintended by the developer. What exactly are they looking for? Emergence.
http://www.clui.org/
http://www.rodencrater.org/
http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html
On the back of the syllabus I drew a triangle. At each angle I wrote two words:
1. mobile/portable
2. social/network
3. location/narrative
Then I wrote all possible combinations by choosing one of the two words and preserving the (arbitrary?) numerical ordering. There are 8 combinations that all sound somewhat similar but evoke something different. My current favorite is "mobile social narrative". I already have a vision for it in my mind.
We are defined in an interesting way by our mobility. (Remember the pseudo-statistic that goes something like: 99% of people live within 5 miles of the place they were born? probably not true but an attractive mythology to those seeking a way to inflate the importance of their own limited travel) As we move into the present we leave a trail behind us of the space that we used to occupy.
"They stood in a time-corridor whose perspective showed the world around them in an event-pacing of greater frequency, hence the man-shaped tubes winding up and down the streets marking the passage of pedestrians."
-from page 209 of John Shirley's "City Come A Walkin'" (1980)
We are defined in an interesting way by our social interactions. Invisible and visible paths of signals link individuals together as they communicate intentionally and unintentionally. What percentage of this do we sense? What percentage of sense do we consciously perceive? What percentage of perception do we remember?
We are defined in an interesting way by our experiences. Events are often thought to string together to form the narrative of a life. I cannot catalogue all the classifications of events here but if you can think of it then it counts.
So what is a "mobile social narrative" then?
Auto-cartographic socio-spatial network imaging system.
I'm not kidding.
The earth has been explored and mapped in exhaustive detail... I don't desire to do that to people in any literal fashion. I would rather allow people to become instruments improvising a performance in a creative space.
I dream of unlimited geographies defined by the individuals that trace them in sensorially unbounded environments. Populations explicitly organize or allow emergence to control their connections. Players explore the creative limits and collaborate to witness the aggregate effect of their movements.
This is an invitation to all interested parties:
I'm starting a reading group this semester. The first book that our community will devour is Douglas R. Hofstadter's classic Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.
The idea of reading a book and discussing it amongst friends really appeals to me at the moment. While it's nice to have the additional motivation of the obligation to the group to propel you as you read, the most powerful function will be the dialogue that enlightens us all. Sounds fun huh? There's no credit for this other than your own satisfaction within the social sphere that you share this experience with and the innate value of reading such an insightful work of thought and literature.
The only requirement to join the group is that you actually have to read the chapters that we are going to discuss before we meet. It's not like there's a test or a grade, it's just that the other members of the group are not your own personal Cliff Notes. Plus, I would really like to know what you think of the book as you read it, you may see something the rest of us miss and it would be sad for us to... uh, "miss" that.
This is the first week of class so the reading will be light (and if you join a little later it will be easier to catch up): just cruise through the Introduction and stop right before Chapter 1. In my copy of the book this is pages 1-32.
Some subjects that are touched on are highly esoteric. But don't worry! Take notes if you want and make sure to write down questions that you have. That's why we have discussion. We'll meet sometime second week and work through the most challenging and interesting issues. The meeting will probably last an hour, be highly informal and incorporate various foodstuffs and libations (supply yourself or generously donate to the community). We'll try to sketch out a loose meeting schedule for the rest of the semester as well. The weekly load will be 2 chapters or about 60 pages. Easy? Indubitably.
Everyone is invited. Just read the book is all I ask. I expect that the group will stay relatively small. As I write this I know of 3 people including myself that will be participating. If you want to join, grab a copy of the book, contact me (comment here, email, phone, in person...), start reading and thinking.
Oh. And even though our method of recording time seems incredibly subjective and arbitrary: have a great new year!
"the drive to eliminate paradoxes at any cost, especially when it requires the creation of highly artificial formalisms, puts too much stress on bland consistency, and too little on the quirky and bizarre, which make life and mathematics interesting."
GEB, page 22-23