Ode to the Red Jelly Thing on my Desk

Oh red, jelly thing
Though your body is not completely solid,
you help make my ideas more concrete
Though your body is not completely liquid,
you help me reach into the endless aether

Anywho. Class. I dig the whole open discussion that class turned into, but I couldn't help but feel that the time given was excessive for most people in the class. But hey, it seems that a lot of people got ideas hammered out. I'm interested in seeing what people produce (especially the tank), and I really dig the idea of making some mish-mash out of all of our projects. God knows what would happen.

As for my own project, I'm pretty set on what I'm going to do - I just need to do it. Also, I need to decide what SPECIFICALLY I'm going to make - a video game object, sure...but there are so many to choose from...ah, we shall see...we shall see.

DD4E (Dick Devils Forever)

PS: I found this silly when trying to post a comment on another blog:

By the way, the correct word was NOT "Loading..."

Final Project

Oh yeah, nearly forgot - my final project. Y'know, I really am not sure...without a theme, it's tough to decide on what to go on.

BUT...I've had this idea rolling around in my head a while - I want to take something video-gamey...and make it real. What I mean is, you know all those wonderful little item boxes/powerups/whatever you see in video games? Well, I LOVE to see real-world representations of those. Perhaps that is what I will do. I will recreate something from the video game world in the real physical world. Potential ideas include: a Mario Bros. "?" box, a Sonic the Hedgehog item monitor, a Mega Man e-tank...we shall see. We shall see.

Wise Fwom Your Gwave

Ah, bliss...it's just so...blissful!

It's true, I often neglect taking time for myself. It seems that if I'm not on campus, I'm either working or trying to hammer out something in Flash. Don't get me wrong - I dig my job, and Flash is a wonderful playground to toy around in. But I often forget how wonderfully refreshing it is to just do something for the sheer enjoyment of it. And so, last Tuesday I set aside some time for myself. Well to be honest, I did it Monday, too - but for just about an hour or so.

Monday, after learning of the change in class arrangements, I found myself at home alone. I worked on some Flash stuff, yadda yadda...and then I decided I was going to treat myself to a grilled cheese. And I did (one was Muenster, the other a nice provolone/tomato/basil). I also figured, what the heck - I'll have a beer, too. Okay, more like 2 or 3. Okay, 3. So...armed with some booze, grilled cheese, and Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations I enjoyed an hour or so of bliss.

BUT...it didn't end there. Oh no. Tuesday night, I once again found myself a little bored with copious amounts of work looming on the horizon. Shoving thoughts of work aside (begrudgingly...I kept wanting to just touch up something here and there), I sat myself down in front of an old friend - video games. You see, I love (REALLY LOVE) video games. Everything about them - the thrill of finding a new Kirby power, the satisfaction of scoring that elusive 102% on Donkey Kong Country 2, the nerd-boner that results from whipping up a soldier equipped with both an Excalibur AND Chaos Blade in Final Fantasy Tactics...err...where was I? Oh yeah. Video games. Love 'em. In fact, I credit video games for a lot of things - improving my ability to read at an early age, expanding my knowledge on all sorts of topics from the basics of city planning (thank you SimCity) to how fucking scary it is to be chased by a lava flow (Sonic the Hedgehog's Marble Zone), and overall letting me escape when times got rough.

Unfortunately, life seems to get busier the longer it goes on. I don't find myself in front of a video game system nearly as often as I'd like to. Mega Man and Sonic, once close companions, are now more like that distant travelin' hippie cousin - rarely seen, but when he IS in town, you can bet on a night of heightened perceptions. Anyway, I did it - I sat down in front of Sega's new Ultimate Genesis Collection. And for a few hours, reliving memories of days far gone, I found a small dose of bliss.

The Class that was not Here (or There)

Ugh...wish I would have seen the announcement that we were not meeting on campus BEFORE getting there. Ahhhh well.

When some big change comes along (as in, my usual Monday routine shifts), I tend to feel off. I've fought it, and I don't feel quite as off these days as I used to, but I still feel DIFFERENT. But, as I often do when I feel a little less than usual, I sat myself down in front of a video game. And my oh my...I just picked up the Ultimate Genesis Collection on the good ol' Xbox 360 - ah, memories of that 16-bit era!

When it comes to life (and Jeet Kune Do, coincidentally) we must be like water. Able to adjust ourselves to match whatever comes to us, while still retaining enough of what we ARE.

It was actually nice to hang out at the IT building for a little bit before heading home and just talking to some people in the class. Talking is good - even when there's nothing major discussed.

I'm only now noticing how fractured and random this post is. Eh, it happens. Just goes to show my wandering thoughts.

Swishpunphweet Sweetie

Alright, so I feel that my experience with the plastic bag may have deviated somewhat from the initial intended goal, buuut...you know what? I'm fine with that.

Inspired somewhat by Evelyn Glennie, I started thinking about the various sounds of a bag. There's a potential for limitless sounds in a bag - I'm willing to bet someone could even perfect the playing of a bag into a legitimate instrument. Anyway, I decided to document a very short time with the bag using audio. As I've had experience with Flash (but not with audio), I used Flash as my tool for this experiment.

First, I used Garageband to record a minute or two of me toying around with the bag. I swiped it through the air, flicked it, punched it, twisted it, and overall mutilated the thing. I ended with forming an air pocket and popping the bag.

With my raw audio, I then sliced the clip into nine 1-2 second snippets using Audacity. Then, in Flash I formed a line of columns. As you roll from the left to the right, you hear the various sounds condensed into a sort of snapshot timeline. Though the user can always scroll to any button, you always have a general idea of WHEN the sound occurred. You know the sound in the 4th bar happened after the 3rd sound, but before the 5th.

The .swf can be found here.

On a side note, I had a parallel project running alongside the bag experiment. As I learned more about sound in Flash, and after toying with various iterations of what to do with the bag's audio, I put this together. I rather like this (probably more than I like the bag experiment), and might expand it sometime in the future.

Poke the Music with a Stick

Class on Monday began with some discussion and debate over the guilt felt in leaving the room in disarray the previous week. It's very interesting to see how most of the class seemed pretty gung-ho about the idea last week, but this week are feeling a little uncomfortable with the idea. I'm in that boat, too - sort of. I don't REGRET anything, but I do realize it was pretty dickish. I try to not be a jerk, so I did feel a bit of moral dissonance afterwards. But hey...what's past is past.

As a segue into the next portion of class, we were instructed to don plastic bags over our eyes and listen to a bit by Evelyn Glennie. My initial reaction to the piece was just a "meh". It seemed unfocused, and had no discernible ending point. Lots of fake outs. As an added point against the enjoyment of the piece, paranoia began to creep in as I sat there. My mind was absolutely SURE that everybody else had since removed their bags and were staring at me. Weird maybe...but I couldn't shake the feeling.

It wasn't until we actually saw the documentary on Glennie that I was able to take in some of her work that I could truly appreciate. Her collaborations with Frith were just so RAW - she's definitely gained the ability to (despite her hearing loss, or maybe more accurately BECAUSE of her hearing loss) tap into the very essence of sound. She perceives sound in such a completely different manner and can still translate that into an enjoyable experience. Her pieces within the documentary seemed much more focused than the piece we heard beforehand.

What I took away from the film is that there's a lot going on around us that we just gloss over. Glennie's sensitivity to the FEELING of sound makes her more aware of it. In fact, I tried to absorb more of the ambient sound as I walked to my car after class. It's a jarring experience - and a satisfying one. I'd recommend to anybody to take a few minutes, find a location, sit, and just listen. Listen to everything. You know how you can widen your field of vision and not focus on anything...just take it all in? Do that with your ears. Maybe I'm alone, but for someone who's not used to taking it all in like this - it may just blow your mind.

Make Love, Not War

Actually, don't. At least not right this second - you have a blog post to read.

So, as Beth said - "everything has repercussions". Spooky how everything seems to get worked into class in one way or another. Synchronicity, baby!

I suppose there aren't really any true repercussions to this for us PERSONALLY - but there were repercussions that we may not even be aware of. Who knows how many people had a shitty day made even shittier by a jumbled up room? And really - that's not too cool...so maybe we should consider WHY we did it.

There didn't seem to be much of a reason for our shenanigans to the class as a whole. Personally, though...I had heard the class after us remark how we were rude for not putting desks back in orderly little grids. To me, that would be a minor inconvenience - not even worth complaining about. In fact, I'm not a fan of complaining in general - seems to me that if they were annoyed by this, they could ask nicely if we wouldn't mind reordering the desks. So the catastrophic shuffling of the chairs was a message - "HERE'S something to complain about."

Peace offering...yeah, we may have screwed up some days. If the class can reach some sort of consensus on WHY we did it, it may be wise to explain our reasoning. Also, we could explain the experimental nature of the Seeing Sideways class and mention that we were curious as to how they would respond. Of course, I dig Aaron Thalmann's suggestion - food is the eraser of ill will, after all. Y'know, maybe we could write them a letter of explanation amidst a giant pile of foodstuffs as a sort of offering. Savage? Perhaps. Enjoyable? Definitely.

Sensory Deprivation

So, our task was to cut off a sense for 3 or 4 hours and report back. Cutting off my hearing seemed the most plausible, so I picked up some earplugs (beautiful fluorescent orange Winchester hearing protection, by the way) and began. It was jarring at first - even a tad uncomfortable, but I began work on a few school projects.

About half an hour or so into it, I actually came to like closing off my hearing. It was very freeing to be able to focus more on my drawing. Of course, I kept getting songs stuck in my head and couldn't really listen to them. Thinking about having songs in my head, however, got my mind thinking in another direction - the difference between being BORN deaf, and GOING deaf.

Though I wasn't 100% deaf with the ear plugs, I was more like someone who had gone deaf, rather than someone who was born deaf. I wonder - would I feel better losing my hearing, knowing what I was missing...or would I feel better being deaf all along and not having anything else to compare it to?

Outside of that thought, I don't think that this assignment really hit me. I understood what was likely to happen - that we would be experiencing the world in a different way, changing our perspective, etc. etc...but I just couldn't get into it. Perhaps if I had pushed myself further - COMPLETELY eliminating my hearing, for example, or actually venturing out (which could have been rather dangerous...) - I would have gained more from this. I tried, but I don't think I got a ton out of this assignment.

Annnnd, part 2. Create-a-Sense. Hmmm...let's think here...

How about tactile gustation (okay, technically a combination of two EXISTING senses). How do we usually taste? We taste using taste receptors and a little boost from our good ol' olfactory senses. But think - what if we could taste things just by TOUCHING them? It would work much like regular taste - we'd touch an orange and our brain would say, "Hey! That's got a little tang to it, sport!" The difference would be that we could activate it, just like a light switch. On. Off.

Another benefit to this would be that we could preview something before actually eating it. You see, my version of tactile gustation is very fleeting - since we can turn it on and off, if you don't like the taste then BAM! Turn it off. And though we're well past this, think of how useful that may have been to early people scavenging for food. Poisonous items wouldn't be so deadly if the poison wasn't actually ingested.

Anywho...that wraps up this post. Now go - imagine a world of grubby-pawed people tickling fruits to garner a taste.

Naughty Chairs

Class, as always, was an experience. Unfortunately, we didn't spend as much time talking about our own "What If...?" lists as I would have liked. It's always fun to catch a glimpse of the minds of the others. Which reminds me - people seem to be so clammed up in class. I'm a firm believer that in simply talking about just about anything (our beliefs, our interests, whatever) can possibly lead to some mental strengthening. I mean, having your beliefs challenged may cause you to try on a different perspective - or it may wind up strengthening your existing belief. Eh, anywho.

The three elements - Creativity, Innovation, and Inquisitive (or was it Inquire?) - it seems like a simple concept, and I would imagine that every person in the class has some sort of intuitive understanding of them. All the same, it's sometimes good to get things down in writing to, y'know...solidify thoughts.

As for the final little chair display (which I would name Roman Chairs...or maybe Roamin' Chairs - you see, it reminded me of a chair orgy. But it also seemed like the chairs could also be milling about, doing their thing...Roamin' around, y'know?), I felt a little awkward with it. No, actually - I take that back. It seems to me that I hear entirely too many complaints on any given day. Not even about major things, either. About stupid things - like having chairs not lined up in perfect rows (as was the case last week). Showing the next class that they could have a lot more to complain about - I enjoyed that.

By the way...Beth, make this pretty.



That's all for now. Until next time.

“Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.”

Uatu the Watcher wonders...

1. What if we had only three fingers?
2. What if we’re all sitting in a Petri dish under a giant microscope?
3. What if we knew the date our existence would come to an end?
4. What if newspaper editors really DID have ink in their veins?
5. What if some of us had super powers we took as regular senses?
6. What if every story we’ve ever told actually exists in another reality?
7. What if, assuming the above is true, authors and artists weren’t really GENERATING original ideas as they think, but are simply plucking something out of another reality?
8. What if we could record what babies dream?
9. What if everything you’ve known, every little bit of your history, was a dream?
10. What if you woke up from that dream and forgot, as many people do with dreams, everything in your life up to this point?
11. What if we were given a set amount of currency from birth and could never earn more?
12. What if everybody on the planet just froze for a few seconds?
13. What if American never claimed independence from Britain?
14. What if we could actually see civilization from Roman times? Would we be disappointed?
15. What if planets are to all of existence what atoms are to us?
16. What if Gutenberg had died in infancy?
17. What if the world switched a single global time without time zones?
18. What if somebody HAD launched a nuke during the Cold War?
19. What if we could condense air particles super tightly instantaneously to be able to literally walk on air?
20. What if modern bands actually wrote their OWN songs?
21. What if other areas of our brains suddenly “unlocked” and we could tap into MUCH more mental ability?
22. What if grass, tired of being trod upon for so many millions of years, developed the ability to exact revenge?
23. What if the planet could speak to us in a language we readily understood?
24. What if a global EMP-type of thing permanently killed any existing electronic devices?
25. What if an actor suffered some sort of mental break where they became locked into the persona of one of their characters?
26. What if we were a technologically advanced, but cannibalistic society?
27. What if a “soul” could be transferred into digital data? How big of a hard drive would that require?
28. What if a slumbering creature from the deep suddenly awoke?
29. What if a popular religious text was originally written to be an early fantasy novel?
30. What if death was popularly accepted as just another existence? How would that affect the generally held fear of death?
31. What if every monitor, every cell phone, every mouse click sent your biological data to a master database deep in the crust of the earth?
32. What if Baskin Robbins had 32 flavors instead of 31?
33. What if we could see radio waves – heck, what if we could see ANY type of additional portions of the electromagnetic spectrum?
34. What if we absorbed information from everything we eat?
35. What if easy-to-run airships were commonplace?
36. What if digital data could be hidden in atoms? Could we encode data into paint? Paper? Bottles of air?
37. What if it was Yoko, not John that was shot?
38. What if I call you a spoony bard?
39. What if curing cancer intensified the overpopulation problem?
40. What If every person held the belief that all other people were more important than themselves?
41. What if there was land where oceans are, and oceans where land is?
42. What if gemstones and crystals and the like held a specific power within, but we’ve just not developed the ability to sense it or draw it out?
43. What if we never developed the ability to record music or video? How would our appreciation of live music and performances change?
44. What if my own thoughts leak out for everybody to hear? What if it’s all just one big joke against me?
45. What if the princess wasn’t in another castle after all?
46. What if you had put the frozen egg on something other than a white paper plate? (Posted to Fred’s blog)
47. What if the bad-assery of your chops developed a cult following? (Posted to Ryan Kincaid’s blog)
48. What if the egg had been fertilized? Would you have still tried to eat it? (Posted to Matt Oelker’s blog)
49. What if we saw the original, live piece, and felt the "lesser" digital camera shot was superior? (Posted to Ryan Sellick’s blog)
50. What if someone had solved it right off the bat? (Posted to Janna Selmer’s blog)

And a bonus!
51. What if Blogger decided to warp the formatting after copying and pasting from Word?
52. What if Blogger mysteriously auto-corrected the formatting error after I copied and pasted again?