getting intertextual/ramble
"the best museum experiences occur when one loses oneself in the work, when one becomes so enrapt with what's on display that time and space seem temporarily suspended and everyday reality is left behind for a while."
-Paul Schimmel, “’Live in your head’ – Ecstasy: In and about Altered States
-I see this qualification as being applicable to any interactive media experience. This author is coming from a museum curation paradigm and thus speaks of his transcendent ideals in relation to the production of an exhibit, but he is basically speaking of the “best” of any type of experience, what in reference to games Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi’s terms “flow.” The space of musical performance, and in particular electronic music, however, I feel is particularly suited to provoking this “best” experience, I feel, or even a more intense sort of “best.” Perhaps this is due to the immersive nature of the space, or the amount of stimulation that is provided within it.
In Jeff Hawkins’ “On Intelligence” Hawkins postulates that the brain, when familiarized with something, like the layout of a house or a room, does not have to work as hard to decipher the pattern of its surroundings, and thus can expend cycles on other problems, like deciphering the patterns of traffic flow in Los Angeles, understanding the implications of new forms of media on society, learning how to play Guitar Hero, etc. – The visual and auditory signals do not need to pass through as many regions of cortex in the hierarchy before the pattern is classified as recognized, and a signal somewhat like the “name” of the pattern is sent back down to the primary sensory and motor levels.
However, when unfamiliar stimuli enter the cortex, patterns that have not yet been recognized, “the unexpected pattern is automatically passed to the next higher cortical region. …The higher region may be able to understand this new pattern as the next part of its own sequence. …But if such recognition does not occur, an unexpected pattern will keep propagating up the cortical hierarchy until some higher region can interpret it as part of its normal sequence of events. The higher the unexpected pattern needs to go, the more regions of the cortex get involved in resolving the unexpected input. …Ideally, in a world that is known and predictable, …the flow of patterns happens rapidly and occurs in the lower regions of the cortex. …However, if I was in an unknown room, …unexpected patterns would be rising far up the cortical hierarchy. In this novel situation I can no longer think about [LA traffic flow, New Media, Guitar Hero, Brains] because most of my cortex is attending to the problems of navigating the room.”
Cortical pathways are being blazed, new synapses are activating; the entire mind is at work interpreting the situation, deciphering an unfamiliar experience pattern, predicting what each pixel of stimulus represents. By this model, the more stimuli, the more cortical pathways “turned on” by novel input, the less cycles the cortex devotes to external thoughts, to “every day reality.” This is flow, meditation, ecstasy, transcendence, whatever you want to call it – the suspension of time and space, loss of ego, full participation in a moment, achieved through sensory overload, overstimulation.
The fact that the combination of loud music, flashing lights, chaos, smoke and sweaty bodies found in live electronic music events is disorienting and confusing, has its analog in Hawkins’s statement that “Confusion occurs when the cortex can’t find any memory that matches with the input.” The memory does not process nothingness, just as it does not process everythingness, which is why people frequently equate the collective mind of a techno event to the transcendent experience of meditation. Likewise, we can also equate the experience of excelling at a game like Geometry Wars or other shooters – there are so many things going on, so much visual stimulus occurring, that it is immediately immersive – you cannot possibly think about anything else for even a half-second, even draw your thoughts to thinking analytically about your next move in the game, or you will break the trance and lose.
Of course, in the end, all the patterns get learned – ravers learn to recognize the tracks that the DJ is playing, the layouts of the clubs, the other people in the room, and so the setting becomes predictable and tedious; gamers learn to predict the AI patterns of the programs they are running, figure out how to exploit the various systems in use, and thus the game becomes boring and easy; people go to an exhibit and see what works are there – by the thirteenth visit it has lost some of its initial thrill.
Maybe then the brain does learn to process everythingness - if it stares for long enough, learnable patterns will emerge – what seems like an incomprehensible jumble of colors, movement and sounds will work itself into a strategy of gameplay, a map of LA, a model of the universe, a social interaction, a DJ set. It would seem to be the novelty of experience then that is what is most important for us to note as designers as something to strive to achieve – how long is something cool before it becomes trite and tawdry? Is there media that is truly timeless, that transcends these boundaries, and continues to provide rewarding and immersive experiences that will forever surprise?
I see this as a goal of generative/emergent art – a system that is constantly evolving, never repeating, varying itself infinitely – however, as Todd stated in his last post, a single algorithm will blur into a grey goo quickly – the more varied the choice of algorithm, the longer lasting the novelty. Thus infinite levels of metaprocedure with an infinitely scalable library of algorithms to blend would be required for timeless novel content that is entirely procedurally-based. So what are we left with? Good old coliberation. Interaction with other people provides constant surprise – can you ever really learn humans? If this ramble is going to end anywhere - which it is, at least for tonight - it’s going to be at the advocation of multiplayer experiences, and with this quote:
"Last year I took a 70 year-old Zen monk to a rave party. He was curious enough to overcome his dislike of the music until his face lit up with a revelation. 'This is meditation!', he shouted above the noise. Later he explained that the walking meditation he taught involved being fully aware 'in the moment' without any internal dialogue separating actions from intentions, and that the same definition applied to the dancers all around him. His branch of Buddhism had been brought from Japan where there was emphasis on the need to develop and balance the complementary qualities of contraction and expansion, akin to extrovert and introvert states of mind. His school of Zen had concentrated on contraction with the idea that Westerners were too outgoing, but he now realized that those Westerners who were drawn to his school were introverts, and their need was for free expression in the way he had witnessed at the rave."
-Nicholas Saunders, “The Spiritual Aspect of Rave Culture”