gewgaw

Do you think Marc Jacobs would design me one of these?

Also via boingboing: a blind painter with an interesting brain:

We normally think of seeing as the taking in of objective reality through our eyes. But is it? How much of what we think of as seeing really comes from without, and how much from within? The visual cortex may have a much more important role than we realise in creating expectations for what we are about to see, says Pascual-Leone. “Seeing is only possible when you know what you’re going to see,” he says. Perhaps in Armagan the expectation part is operational, but there is simply no data coming in visually.

Conventional wisdom suggests that a person can’t have a “mind’s eye” without ever having had vision. But Pascual-Leone thinks Armagan must have one. The researcher has long argued that you could arrive at the same mental picture via different senses. In fact he thinks we all do this all the time, integrating all the sensations of an object into our mental picture of it. “When we see a cup,” he says, “we’re also feeling with our mind’s hand. Seeing is as much touching as it is seeing.” But because vision is so overwhelming, we are unaware of that, he says. But in Armagan, significantly, that is not the case.

If minds can see without sight, can they think without brains? This is one way to frame AI research… if you’re into that kind of thing.

Perhaps this guy is more your speed? I can’t decide what’s more impressive – the fact that he reconstructed the Apollo computer in his basement, or that he says on his webpage “If you like, you can build one too. It will take you less time, and yours will be better than mine.” Somehow, I doubt that this is true – but thanks for saying so!

Also in the public domain… the “first open source board game”. Huh? Isn’t Sid Sackson’s A Gamut of Games chock full of such things?

Finally – why isn’t this on my phone right now? Sigh. Guess I’ll just play Torus Trooper.

Back in September I flew to Japan for the Tokyo Game show. I stayed there for about a week, hanging out with friends and colleagues from all over the world, eating delicious food, suffering from sore feet, sleep deprivation and death-march shopping. It was a great time!

This week a bunch of random connections drew my thoughts back to Tokyo. First – Souris’ post about the new Bathing Ape and Muji stores open now in NYC. While I never plunked down for a pair of Bape sneakers (it’s so hard to find a pair that fit – all the small sizes sell out in Tokyo) – I have been a long-time fan of Muji and cannot wait to visit the new store.

Beyond the clean lines of their well-traveling clothes and modular furniture, Muji’s stationary and “lifestyle” products are always a win. And once you’ve outfitted your own place with some crazy folded-paper lamps and superslim ceramic dishes – it’s these and other small, seasonal items that make the store a great destination for affordable, unique gifts. After all – who doesn’t need a set of tiny, brushed-aluminum mechanical pencils… or a telescoping toothbrush kit?

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At the other end of the spectrum, this month’s Vogue features a two-page travel piece on Karl Lagerfeld’s recent visit to Tokyo – where he oversaw the opening of Chanel’s new store in the Ginza. Apparently, his few street-level appearances drew crowds 10 deep… awed and weeping couture-lovers who parted quietly as he walked by – stopping only to gently brush his hand or the fabric of his clothes.

The article briefly discusses Tokyo’s particular take on branded merchandise – blending trash with flash, high and low, new and old (most recently in what the author dubbed the “Pricey Princess” look). Later in the magazine, the editors devoted an entire spread to this hodge-podge approach… pairing $10 tank tops and Gap denim with $11,000 boa-skin jackets and pearl-embroidered waistcoats. The price tags on these photos were a bit much, but the idea that fashion can be more than label-slavery did manage to seep through.

It’s interesting how these magazines attempt to woo the fickle pocketbooks of modern women (and men). Social issues, socialites, chemical scalp treatments… I wonder what Vogue will be like in 20 years? I hope they still do the spring shoe spread – because I’m addicted to it. PS: Marc Jacobs – how about donating a pair of those lovely mary-jane stack platforms to the closet of a struggling student? Blue, darling – to match my eyes!

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Finally – I got mail from Iain, who I worked with on Difficult Questions a while back. Turns out he wanted to introduce me to someone giving a talk on Katamari because I have “a mild, passing interest in the game and might be source of wisdom about it.”

:P

Somehow or other, I’m always discussing Katamari with *somebody*. On Friday, I had a quick chat with Jurie (the new Trillian supports voice chat – great for late night catchup) and the subject turned to story. We were talking about how narrative effects gameplay, and I realized just how strongly this hit home with me when I played KD for the second time.

Clearly, I was already a huge fan of the game. But when the localized version came out – it was an even better experience. Suddenly, the Prince’s world was full of humor and depth – and the structure of the game and its missions made sense in a whole new way. How many times do we get that opportunity – to play a game just for its mechanics and dynamics, and then later, experience these things with the story added back in?

I think I will try to design an elective exercise for the Game Design Workshop based on this concept.

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Anyhow – as it turns out, the cosplay photos I’ve been holding on to (for possible publication via a project with Iain) are finally free to be shown in the public domain. Looking them over I’m still so stunned by the color and attitude of the kids as they pose and interact with each other.

These particular shots are from the first day of the cosplay showcase, and probably my favorite set from the trip. I focused mostly on cross-dressing, age and gender dichotomies (particularly in the viewer/viewed categories) and inter-player relationships. There’s also a great series of a woman cosplaying with her child, and three American cosplayers getting love from the Japanese cameras.

Oh, it really was a great trip, and I hope that I can continue to peel layers from the cosplay onion with future visits. Perhaps… by building and showing a costume of my own? I’ve been discussing Prince designs with a guy in Austin. Looking at this link from boingboing (thanks Paul!), it seems like the perfect place to start for a full-scale pattern!!!

Today when Paul came home (he was in Phili giving a talk) he had a bunch new stuff. That’s because his mom is always finding him great deals – cute clothes from high-end retailers for a fraction of what they should cost. So a trip east for him means a fashion show for me – and that’s always fun.

But today was special. In addition to his new duds, he had a present. For the holidays, his mom made me my very own two foot long, rounded pillow covered in blush-pink micro-plush!

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I’m not normally a stuffed-animal person, but I really have a weakness for micro-plush. It seems to be a fairly recent invention – so far I’ve found Snoopy, Cinamaroll and bizarro monkey guy (from Tokyo) specimens. I have no idea what they do to create it – probably something horrible, like extracting softness directly from the skin of infants. Same as in the Dark Crystal – only with less wilting?

Anyhow, this pillow isn’t just *any old* micro-plush. The fabric has been treated (with heat?) so that there are little raised polka-dots all over it… bumps about pinky-tip size that rise at regular intervals. If you press on them, they spring back slowly, in an organic but (for me) totally pleasing way. It’s like some insane, supervelvety bubble wrap.

I can’t stop touching it!

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Due to its oblong, rounded shape, my new pillow resembles a large pink sea-cucumber, or a braille piano roll. I’d take a photo and post it, but I’m feeling super tired (the pillow makes me sleeeepy). Also – I’m kind of tempted to wait until I’ve modified it – sewn on a face, some arms and legs. Plumpy, the pastel pickle? What’s her backstory, I wonder?

The only thing better than squashing bugs is listening to Aphex Twin while doing it.

I’ve been picking up James’ various releases for years now. Somehow no matter how large the delta between current and new, there’s a place for it in my life. I remember lying in the bathtub at Ahmet and Kass’ old place near Hampstead Heath, so mesmerized by one ambient track that I didn’t even feel the water turned cold around me. Years later, listening to something on an Analogue Bubblebath disc I picked up in Boston, I wondered: “When am I gonna feel this shit?” Took a particularly fiendish mood, but eventually it fit.

I’ve been keeping a steady pace this week – up at 9:30, administrivia and mail till 10, work by noon, gym by 10. I’ve had my entire afx catalog on shuffle repeat. Slowly, Analord settles in.

It has been snowing here, on and off, for days. Friday evening the snow came down at a record pace – till even the city’s army of salt trucks were outflanked.

By Saturday afternoon the back alley was over a foot-deep; the drifts along plowed streets and sidewalks often twice that high. God bless the people who go out there and shovel. It makes such a difference!

As the blizzard whirled and swirled, I walked with Seth first to get coffee and strudel, then to see In the Realms of The Unreal – a new, feature-length documentary about Chicago native and “outsider artist” Henry Darger.

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Relatively reclusive and unknown, Darger wrote three huge volumes (the largest 15,000 pages long) about a fantasy world where children battle cruel, heartless adults. In a series of small, cluttered rooms, he constructed a vast alternate reality in which the Vivian Girls (7 brave young princesses) lead an epic slave rebellion with equal parts goodness, grace and cheek.

Darger was an obsessive collector and archivist (he tracked the weather here for over 10 years, noting with painstaking detail how local weathermen failed to accurately predict it). He dug up newspapers and magazines from the trash, clipping images of children (mostly young girls) and pasting them over the pages of old telephone books. Later, he appropriated these images for use in his vast watercolor illustrations and collages.

The paintings (sometimes several feet in length) show his child-subjects in a variety of settings: frolicking with each other among strange plants and winged creatures, running through dark forests to escape evil captors, fighting alongside a few adult compatriots, choked, strung up and bleeding, and in chaotic melee…. scores of them gutted and expiring.

Especially odd, most of the children are naked, cherubic young girls who sport male genitalia. In the background – weather. Lightening, storms, billowing clouds.

—

By “genitalia”, I mean a sort of oddly-sketched, finger-like penis and tiny, featureless testicles… devoid of overtly sexualizing detail. Some have interpreted his work as the precursor (or result) of psychotic rage and murder… others contest this claim. But here, the subject is treated with much more distance.

On camera, various people speculate – but no one judges. Perhaps Darger didn’t know that girls were different from boys. He grew up in state homes (sex segregated) and led a life of (apparently) chaste devotion, working as a janitor and cook at local churches, and attending mass each day – often, more than once.

Alternately, could this combination of girlish innocence and boy body (along with “male qualities” such as fighting bravely, “riding the best horses”, and “standing upright in the stirrups”) be a reaction to his own childhood suffering at the hands of men? Or a desperate attempt to re-connect with his lost sister – who was adopted shortly after his mother died in childbirth, never to be seen again?

Whatever the reason, he created a strange world of hermaphroditic warriors, struggling against evil in the name of Christ. The eye-popping color and repetition of form is overwhelming to begin with. When combined with themes of flight, war, torture and peril – well, it’s pretty compelling stuff.

For the most part, the documentary eschews analysis of his technique or style – focusing instead upon the contrast between Darger’s real life and his fantasy world – his forgettable presence and unforgettable work. In parts, the works are digitally animated; elsewhere, characters from the paintings appearing in stock footage of Chicago streets. One wonders… did he see things that way, too? Did the pictures have a life of their own?

—

There seem to be a lot of connections between Darger’s childhood struggle with authority, his lifelong struggle with obedience to God, and the furious battles his heroines fought. The work feels like a commentary – a processing of bitter resentments and heartbreaking disappointments. But for Darger, it was a private, internal dialog: only on his deathbed did someone tell him his work was beautiful. His response? “Too late now.”

Did he harbor hopes of recognition? That’s hard to imagine. And if he did, would that make a difference to us? Should art be made in consideration of others (as Seth said today: a gift you give to your audience)… or made in relative isolation, compulsively, because it must be? Is it better to make something so it can be consumed – or does that corrupt it beyond measure? Is Darger’s work “pure” because it was created “outside” our realm of appreciation?

As I said earlier, I’ve been having a lot of discussions about blogging and its potential as “art”. Justin’s recent film-post generates particularly prickly comments about this – because while somewhat self-focused and arguably non-performative, it is also deliberately constructed and displayed for public consumption. Was that consumption something Justin considered, from the perspective of “what it gives” – or simply a compulsive archiving?

The fact that it is public makes such a difference. Because Justin has an audience, he is no longer “outside” – and therefore, subject to critical lenses that Darger never will be. Yet as a medium, the blog is “pulp” – which lends it an air of authenticity. Can something be both unconsidered and artistic? Or is the spontaneous (yet public) release of tensions just … a solipsistic waste of the “material” for greater work?

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Trekking home from the movie, Seth and I discussed this and other questions. At least, we talked as best we could, considering the weather. Snow flew at our faces, gathering and freezing on our eyelashes, crusting our shoes and pant legs. I slipped once and caught myself against a brick wall – tearing my leather gloves.

Once off the bus, I was struck by how unfamilar the city is during such weather. Mountains of white powder dulled every shape and sound. Entire streets faded from view, lamplight swallowed by the storm’s frantic particles. Unreal!

On Friday night I went over to Robin and Roshanna’s place for dinner and a little encouragement. Both on the verge of tenure – they have been through the final push, and remember it well.

“You’re miserable!” they smile. “Stick with it! You’re almost done!”

Seeing them was good medicine. They fed me, gave me advice, and let me run around the house like a madwoman with the kids. I really needed it.

Lily is as rambunctious and precocious as ever. Towards the middle of dinner, when conversation got serious (CS program design, enrollment issues, the historical value of blogs), she rested her head in her hands and sighed aloud. “Can someone pleeeese change the subject?”

After we’d filled our bellies full of delicious fresh Mexican food and sweet clementines, it was time for bed. Lily turned to me in her princess-pink and sliver nightgown with a curious smile. “Robin, did you bring your pjs?” We discussed and agreed that a sleepover is on the top of my post-graduation to-do list.

See her smiling and goofing for the camera here, in my first photos of 2005.

Troy Hurtubise (the bear suit wonder) claims to have made an important new discovery! Could it… really be true?

Text from Return to Darfur by Deborah Scroggins – in this month’s Vogue:

Rage is palpable in Darfur this time around, the feeling that people are spoiling for a fight. At the camp of Zam Zam, we notice a particular tension in the atmosphere. The children who usually run after us are all staying inside their huts; the adults outside have a grim, determined look. A man putting up a shelter donated by UNICEF tells me that some girls who went out looking for firewood the day before have not come back. Knowing that refugee women all over Darfur have accused soldiers and janjaweed of raping and beating them when they leave the camps, I ask to meet their parents. Another man agrees to take me, but instead of finding the parents he sits me down with a young sheik and another group of women.

The sheik tells me a rambling tale about how these women were coming back from El Fasher when armed men set upon them. Then he asks me if I’d like to talk to another girl who was stabbed. I’m not quite sure who is supposed to have stabbed her or where but I agree. We find the girl, whose name is Samira, bent over the ground in a peach veil. A crowd pushes the two of us into a hut and pulls a piece of cloth over the opening. By the dim light inside, I can see that her eyes are filled with tears and her lips are trembling. Slowly she pulls up her skirt to reveal a bloody gash in her thigh. My notebook is out, but I can’t think of anything to say. I feel a miasma all too familiar from years past in the Sudan, a sense of terrible things happening that one can barely understand, much less prevent.

I know very well rape has always been a feature of war in Sudan. On that journey to Safaha, my drunken guide tried to rape me (luckily I was able to fend him off with a heavy flashlight), and many southern women have told me about being raped in the war zone. But it’s new to hear Sudanese men demanding that attention be paid – perhaps because they know human rights groups in the West have come to focus more closely on rape as a war crime, and are more likely to pay attention.

Samira is taken to MSF clinic for an examination, but before the doctor can finish, a fracas develops. A mob of turbaned, chanting Zaghawa men begins waving spears, then throwing rocks at the police. Tim decides it is time for us to leave. As we drive slowly through the crowd, the men jump onto our Land Rover, beating their fists on the windows and the roof. “Give us your voice!” they cry. “Give us your voice!”

I was reading this at breakfast today – and that last sentence actually made me cry.

In Emma’s War. Scroggins details the life of Emma McCune – a British relief worker who lived, loved, and died in Sudan. Some believe that Sudan, politically and historically, is Rwanda in slow motion. A new simulation may help students figure it out for themselves.

I wonder – would Roger be tickled, or outraged?

It will be mine!

Blogging has been the subject of many long conversations for me this week – particularly since Justin posted his intense personal account of the anguish that living one’s life in a public, confessional manner can generate. People ask me: What’s that guy’s problem? Is he faking it? Is he crazy? Has anyone told him to try a diary? Like, a notebook?

What I ask is: Did you know that he’s the second link on Google, for “Justin”, after Justin Timberlake? I jest, of course, but I think it’s important to remember that for all its pitfalls, communicating in this form has real potential.

Most blogs read like an open letter to whoever is interested… kind of like listening to a stranger converse with someone on the bus. Or at least, converse with themselves. People who talk to themselves (however odd) are often pretty interesting… and being heard is powerful!

As televised/corporate/mainstream media moves closer and closer to real-time or “live” and “reality” footage – what is the difference between ABC’s coverage of bloggers as 2004’s people of the year – and a home-made video blog entry about the star of that program? Youngest or no – she’s getting a lot of fulfillment and satisfaction out of these communications… and I think that rocks.

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It continues to be incredibly cold here. I spent most of the day indoors, working on equations and visualizations (to figure out what the hell was going on). Rob was kind enough to aid me in this quest – and then, give me a ride home.

It was snowing – but was so cold that the snow froze into tiny pellets… too hard to form larger crystals, or stick to the ground. Heavy, they headed to the pavement, where gusty winds sculpted them into beautiful patterns… like a fluid dynamics or particle simulation gone mad. Dangerous, but beautiful!

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A bunch of first-time readers wrote in this week… often focusing on my video game writing. And I realized that although I’ve been playing a bunch of new stuff, I haven’t taken the time to write down my thoughts.

Between the Urbz GBA and Riddick, I’ve been thinking a lot about simulation and characters. I’ve really noticed the punch that Riddick gets from using Vin’s shadow, voice and likeness (grounding the character in a style and attitude that is larger than life, yet somehow… authentic) and how the lack of this grounding makes the Urbz feel kinda plastic, or flat.

I’ve also noticed how flattness in a sim-oriented game (as when the prisoners in Riddick repeat lines to you even after you’ve done some craaaazy dangerous exploit) really work against this grounding. So when it happens in the Urbz, I don’t mind nearly as much. That tradeoff (between game-ness and character-ness or … mis-en-scene-ness) is really interesting to me.

Also on my mind: the unintinded gameplay consequences of poor UI or a lag in information delivery. Because I didn’t recognize that a two-pixel-wide strip of pipe hanging from the ceiling was a shower, I spent several in-game Urbz days boosting my hygiene meter by washing in a public sink. This, combined with a few other mis-handled data points gave me an unexpected taste of homelessness (or… travel in 1997’s rural China).

But it was interesting, to game the “live a productive life” system this way… to think about how little I could actually “buy” and still get along. If I could make an Urbz mod, it would be all about living on garbage and panhandling for change. Desperately Seeking Simoleans? You could dress as Madonna, hatbox-suitcase, and everything.

It is cold here. I would attempt to describe the feeling I have now about leaving my cozy office, books, and equation-filled whiteboard (going to get some dinner).. but I think the top of this evening’s Trib page really says it all:

At least I am bundled up. I’ve been wearing my vintage Persian lamb coat all weekend. I know fur is dead – but man, it sure is warm. I have two furs- both thrifted for under $30. Isn’t that better than buying something sweatshop-new, and made of plastic?

The lining (satin) has beautiful flowers all over it. Embroidery, too. Mary M. Pleak – who bought you this lovely coat? Did you wear it to the opera? Funerals? Did you pinch the cheeks of your grandchildren while wrapped in its heavy embrace?

Yesterday was the big consciousness debate between John Searle and Alan Wallace. I attended with a bunch of students from Computer Science, and then went out with them for a “Drink and Think” that lasted till past midnight.

I actually hesitate to call the event a debate, as Searle and Wallace were basically presenting two (albeit compelling) arguments about two very different things. But let’s see if I can reconstruct both sides before comparing them.

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Wallace began by stating that all important understandings in science come from the use of precise tools. Tools like the telescope, say – which helped astronomers make detailed observations about the activity of stars. Astrologers studied the skies using only their eyes – and their theories, while entertaining, had no payoff. Galileo, on the other hand…

Drawing parallels to the study of consciousness, Wallace stated that there will be no revolution in Cognitive Science until we develop something like a “telescope of the mind”. In order to understand how people think, we need tools to help us “study the actual phenomena of mind… not just their neurological correlates”.

Meditation, Wallace argued, allows people to exercise and develop an internal telescope, with which to study patterns of thought. And in combination with current theoretical frameworks and medical technology (such as FMRI), “introspection” or “attentional focus” could be used to broaden our understanding of how the mind works.

Finishing up with several quotes from William James, Wallace questioned the way that science dis-privilages and denies the subjective experience of mind in its search to understand consciousness. If anything, he argued, it is the illusion of knowledge about our behavior that bars us from progress in this endeavor. Only by admitting that we really don’t understand “mind” can we begin to move forward.

—

Searle immediately countered with the statement that while he believes meditation can have some benefit to the individual, the payoff for Cognitive Science is hard to see. Galileo, Einstein, and others have given us tools that resulted in concrete understandings, scientific advances, and objective explanations of phenomena we previously understood only at a subjective level. But meditation?

Searle then made four basic assertions about consciousness:

• It is real. There are those who would argue that consciousness is an illusion and Searle disagrees. It is fundamental to our experience as people – and he defined it as the sense of self awareness that begins when you wake up from a dreamless sleep and continues throughout the day until you fall asleep again.


• It is caused by neuronal activity in the brain. Something we’ve discovered only recently – and it’s already having a huge impact on the way we think about and treat illnesses of the mind.


• It is a higher-order behavior of the brain. Consciousness evolved in humans and certain animals over the course of time. It is the natural outgrowth of certain biological systems and abilities within our brains.


• It functions causally. When you want to raise your arm, you will it, and it happens. Period.
  

He went on to describe the differences between epistemological and ontological descriptions of “subjectivity” – in order to argue that while the experience of consciousness is utterly subjective, it is still possible to objectively study the phenomena of mind.

So why not use meditative practices to help examine this fundamentally internal phenomenon? Because it is probably impossible to strip the subjective “surface” of consciousness away and expose the “nothing but” beneath it.

To explain: physics and chemistry give us statements like “The wetness of water is nothing but the action of molecules sliding over one another”. This explanation looks beneath subjective experience of water (”a colorless and odorless liquid”), exposing something new and (relatively) permanent, which we can evaluate empirically.

But your thoughts? How can a “mental telescope” help you make such observations or statements about consciousness? The minute you think about thinking, your thoughts have transformed – making true observations impossible.

—-

Comparing the presentations, I had some thoughts and questions of my own.

The first is that Searle and Wallace were busking for different things – “how things work” versus “why things work”, respectively. More pointedly – Searle evangelized a medical, scientific or diagnostic understanding of mental behavior, while Wallace focused how we interpret both the behavior and its analysis – drawing attention to notions of mental acuity and fitness, health and wellbeing.

Body and soul, an ancient pair of subjects… debated more and more as the pace of our everyday lives increases. Should someone who is going through a rough period take pills that make them less anxious and less prone to outbursts, or should they really… get in touch with their anxiety and frustration through some kind of talk-therapy? Is the root of mental and emotional anguish chemical, or behavioral? If it’s a combination, which treatment should take priority? Which approach (medical or spiritual, roughly) is the most therapeutic, repeatable, practical or precise?

—

The second thought is about the relationship between these two areas. At one point, a faculty member from the Cognitive Science program asked Searle about free will – and how, if at all, we can move on from understanding consciousness to understanding the meaning and morality of free will.

It seems to me that dilemmas of free will or “moral choice” are what lie between medical health and spiritual wellbeing. Pills fix the symptoms, but the choices are still there. Without a framework that accounts for one’s choices, one’s drives and responses to those drives – even the treated are paralyzed. I found myself wondering what a collaboration between the diagnostics and healers might do to shed light on the moral quandaries of modern man.

—

The last thought is about the nature of presentation itself.

Wallace, a somewhat formal or “academic” speaker, held forth from behind a podium and used PowerPoint to illustrate his ideas. He quoted several philosophers and scientists – at times, reading whole paragraphs aloud to the audience from his slides.

Searle, on the other hand, stood in the middle of the stage, hands in pockets – improvising without aid of a projector or laptop. He strolled back and forth, sauntering even – chest out, with an air of resign. His colloquial language and matter-of-fact statements (”I know what consciousness is – I live it!”) put listeners at ease. Within a minute of his introduction, he had the entire hall laughing and smiling.

In the end – I found Wallace’s arguments to be more rigorous and compelling, from a technical point of view. I believe it’s more supportable to say “We are pretending we know what consciousness is and where it comes from and should consider alternative studies and paths to understanding” than “I know what consciousness is when I see it”. I’d even go so far as to agree with Wallace that underneath it all, Searle’s arguments are faith-based.

But as discussed here – faith-based arguments resonate. Speaking from one’s own authority is immensely powerful; people will follow, if you lead. And depending on your delivery, they will do it smiling. Both men presented arguments based on thousands of years of philosophical and spiritual thought – but the one who joked and bristled (carrot and stick) was by far the favorite.

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Needless to say, the discussion left our group unsettled – introducing a “disunity” that we talked about late into the night. Once again I realized just how much I love being in graduate school, and how much I enjoy talking with my peers. Praveen, especially, had a lot of interesting and insightful things to say.

I will miss this kind of thing, after I leave.

LiveJournal went down!

Interesting – just from a techical perspective… but also, a sociological and even political one. So many voices – silenced! What would happen if we could not talk to each other this way anymore?

What is up with this weather? Yesterday felt like spring: 50 and raining, with a slight breeze. When I woke up, it was a gusty “mix” at 35. Walking to lunch, snow.

By 6 today, standing water was freezing solid, as temperatures dropped below 10 degrees in a matter of hours. Elsewhere in the US, flooding, tornadoes and landslides drove people from their homes. And that’s not the half of it.

Flipping channels to find the Daily Show (tonight’s lead story: the WMD debacle), I heard this random snippet of dialog on TLC:

“Of course, there have been no satanic human sacrifices here in this town, but thanks to the efforts of Dr. So-and-So, if there ever are, the police force will be ready.”

Enough! I’m going to bed

What is the value of a secret? What is secret about your identity? What you do, say and think – if you share these with people (via a blog, for instance) or experiment with them (in a game, chat room, or nightclub)… are they still you? Or are they something different? How do the creation and revalation of self feed back upon themselves?

An interesting NYT article focuses on how secrets and society have changed with the advent of simulated, virtual and online personas:

“It used to be you’d go away for the summer and be someone else, go away to camp and be someone else, or maybe to Europe and be someone else” in a spirit of healthy experimentation, said Dr. Sherry Turkle, a sociologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Now, she said, people regularly assume several aliases on the Internet, without ever leaving their armchair: the clerk next door might sign on as bill@aol.com but also cruise chat rooms as Armaniguy, Cool Breeze and Thunderboy.

Most recently, Dr. Turkle has studied the use of online interactive games like Sims Online, where people set up families and communities. She has conducted detailed interviews with some 200 regular or occasional players, and says many people use the games as a way to set up families they wish they had, or at least play out alternative versions of their own lives.

One 16-year-old girl who lives with an abusive father has simulated her relationship to him in Sims Online by changing herself, variously, into a 16-year-old boy, a bigger, stronger girl and a more assertive personality, among other identities. It was as a more forceful daughter, Dr. Turkle said, that the girl discovered she could forgive her father, if not change him.

“I think what people are doing on the Internet now,” she said, “has deep psychological meaning in terms of how they’re using identities to express problems and potentially solve them in what is a relatively consequence-free zone.”

These are deep questions – and there are no simple answers. There’s a lot to study and learn (from ancient arguments about self-perception, to philosophical treatises on the mind and body, to discussions of post humanism and modes of modern self-performance). And everything is happening so quickly!

In my inbox, two announcements arrive, back to back. Thursday, Paul Resnick will be presenting a colloquium entitled “Motivating Contributions to Online Communities” here in the Communications department. Friday, Alan Wallace and John Searle will debate the meaning of conciousness and human experience, as framed by Buddhist traditions. After this – email from Justin, masterblogger gone AWOL.

Hmmm. Must be something in the air.

The other day Justin sent a note that his friend Ellen had been playing a lot of Katamari. A few days later, Ellen sent us a note saying “Check out this Katamari.” Turns out she’s not the only one!

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In my full conversation with Daniel (paraphrased on page 2) I tried to link the phenomenon of gameplay “remindings” to opportunism, and the fundamental human drive to pattern match, plan and learn. This is actually something Phil Agre worked on quite a bit as a graduate student (the testbed for his thesis was a game!), and part of the message in Raph’s new book as well.

It’s hard to say for sure what causes remindings, let alone why we have them, and how they work (on a biochemical/biomechanical level). Cranky suggested in an email today that remindings occur when the affordances of real world objects are changed to account for game-related experiences with similar (simulated) objects. If that’s the case, what we do shapes what we know – and what it is possible for us to reason about!

Ian pointed out another perspective, which hangs on the idea that humans try to automate activity, creating behaviors that run in the background. That would free up working memory and attention for solving new, important problems (or… daydreaming). In this scheme, remindings would occur when a behavior was signalled by new input… sometimes mistakenly. Things like “intuition” and “analogy”, then, might just be signal processing errors which panned out in the end!

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Regardless, my hunch is that we seek to apply familiar solutions based on physical and emotional feedback. This can lead to loops of behavior that seem counterintuitive to others. Sure makes us hard to debug, huh?

And harder to simulate! There’s plenty of AI research focused on building knowledge-rich systems to do complex, opportunistic, analogical reasoning. Maybe a feed-forward design, like the ones used on the robots, would work better? It would certainly be cheaper… once you figured out how to write the drivers and design the logic.

I suppose the danger is that your program would spend a lot of time spacing out and considering odd options. But… that seems pretty human to me.

*smile*

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Speaking of smiles – looks like even World of Warcraft inspires super cuteness. Awww!

…you’re gonna be in Amsterdam at the end of the month, Lambiek is having a party to celebrate the opening of their new store (Kerkstraat 132) – just doors away from the old location (119). Before and after photos posted in the newsletter illustrate that this was long overdue:

If I’m not mistaken, all of the store’s previous addresses have been on the same “straat”. I never got the chance to visit 119 – but the new space looks much better for browsing (an essential activity at the world’s oldest and best comics store).

PS: Kees and Angie – I should visit soon!!!

Justin’s web page is like a giant katamari of memories. For a long time now (ten years!), it’s been gathering steam – amassing links, absorbing information, collecting together the flotsam and jetsam of his emotional life.

I wonder. If the King of All Cosmos were to spit out a Royal Rainbow and suck Justin’s web site into the sky – what would it’s rollup stats look like? Probably lots of writing on technology, travel, religion, love, sex, friendship and illness. A smattering of posts on fashion and hair, food preparation and home repair. The snakes, snails and puppy dog tales of a 30 year old boy’s life.

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I guess I’ve always thought of Justin as busy – in both senses of the word. Moving around a lot, harried at times, full of ideas and energy and drives that compete for attention. So it made sense that his web page mirrored this – growing especially cluttered in times of stress and frustration (like that phase where he posted “notes” from his Treo into a cramped, stuttering sidebar).

But now it’s all quiet. White space, with a Google search bar. Go ahead – try it. See how many hits you get for Tibet, Howard, or sprout. If your memory is good, you can read about things from a loooong time ago, in just a couple of clicks. A game!

We talked at length yesterday about new ideas and directions for his writing and schoolwork, but I have no idea what he’s up to. It’s jarring to see the space go from gush to hush – but I guess that’s appropriate. Justin brings a little disunity to the lives of the people he touches. Just enough to spark discussion – and maybe some re-arranging of your own.

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I was actually busy and boring most of today, coding and hanging out at the office. Focus and dilligence were much improved. Aside from a few emails, brief chats and a short nap, I was able to keep breaks to a minimum.

I still get a bit lonely, though – when it’s late, and I’ve been working by myself all day. Sometimes, when that happens, I look at my photos. But today I decided to make the latest papercraft project from the Katamari site.

The King of All Cosmos’ Nose

Put it on your nose and run carefully, so as not to drop the nose. The longer the nose stays on, the cooler you are. Please play this game in a safe area.

The nose comes in three sizes: Mommy, Daddy and Kid. It’s super easy to make – you can assemble it with just a single piece of tape.

Yes, you.

I know it’s a bit late to ask, but how about sending me little New Year’s greeting? Take a photo of yourself, wearing this nose (alone, with friends or strangers). I’d like to assemble a gallery of snapshots, so that when I’m bumming late at work, I can look at them and laugh. As you can see, I’ve already tried mine out. I won’t encourage you to wear it anywhere dangerous – but unlikely places will surely make me giggle. Hopefully, you will too!

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!!!

As I was typing up this entry, I got email from Xiola – the gal with the crazy knit Katamari hats! Looks like I will be able to order one (green) for a really reasonable price! She’s asking me about the yarns, colors, and the order of colors in the pattern – and says she can have it ready in a couple of weeks. Yay! My ears get warm just thinking about it!

Today I broke my program. I meant to – needed to, in fact. But it’s broken, and I have to leave it for a while (go eat, see a friend, eventually sleep).. and that bothers me.

This probably marks me, in the world of programmers – as some kind of wuss. I had to work up to it – breaking it a little at a time, fixing and breaking, cautiously – like a cook fiddling with a recipe over many many meals. It stressed me less and less, and eventually I was experimenting for real. But it was hard work getting there.

In between breaks, I took breaks – chatting with Justin about blogging (as in – the activity and its implications for a person such as Justin) and Karen… about blogging (she wants to start a blog with some folks from her food writing class). So I figured I’d take this break, and blog a bit myself.

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I guess the thing that bothers me about broken code (and things, in general) is disunity. When I move to a new apartment, for example, I become totally unsettled. I’ll stay up late into the night rearranging furniture, pictures, knick-nacks. Sometimes it will take me days – weeks – MONTHS to get the layout just right. Sometimes (as with the living room in my current apartment – which has always felt wrong to me for lack of properly sized couch and side chairs) – I never get there.

Working with a limited budget (ie: stuff I find or thrift) makes it even harder to “solve” room design problems… so I’ve learned to live with a mild discomfort. But with things like code, or web pages (which are really code), or art (which is code too… if you think of the pixels or lines or molocules of paint as tiny bits)… I get much more anxious and focused on “finishing” or “getting it right”. This can lead to churn (and is why the Sims games are so deadly for me. I literally will spend hours just building and arranging houses).

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Over the years I’ve gotten better – especially in group work, where you *have* to let stuff go and hope for the best. But with this, my last solo flight in graduate school, I still get a bit obsessive. I feel it happening, and I get frustrated at my frustration. So meta – Ian would be proud (sorry, bad pun)!

Obsessing also leads to withdrawl – which makes me feel like a nerd and a weirdo (or rather – makes it more obvious to me that I am a nerd and a weirdo). Thus – the phone calls. But at the height of my frustration today, I actually needed to *do* something – something more than just talk.

So I stood up, walked to the kitchen and made myself a cup of peppermint tea. Then I went to the “lounge” (really an open space filled with leftover furniture, a printer and some TVs for AV viewing) to sit and stare outside.

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That’s when I realized that the space was horribly laid out! Desks against the wall so you couldn’t sit at them, couch sideways from the giant bay of windows that looked out onto the white, sunny snow and trees in our courtyard, windowshades drawn (some skewed as only vertical blinds can skew, giving the whole space a seasick look).

So I fixed it. It took about 15 minutes, and I got a little bit of agression out (the desks were heavy). Half an hour later, one of the graduate students was sitting at a desk with a book – having some popcorn and enjoying the afternoon sun.

If only it were so easy with the thesis!

Ah well – no Katamari hat for Robin!

When I bid on an item on Ebay, I usually choose my top price, bid that, and avoid re-bidding. I figured that if I saw the Katamari hat here in Chicago, at my favorite odd-items boutique, I’d pay about $100 for it… about what I’d pay for a nice, handmade purse or a funky new pair of flats. I padded it a bit, posted my bid, and let it go. For a while, it looked like I was the only person who wanted it that bad. But yesterday, while I was afk, “Fatbug” eclipsed my initial bid, and won the prize.

On the one hand I feel a little sad – had the timing been different, I could have bid another $10. But then (with shipping) I would have spent ~150 on a knit hat that *might* actually fit me. Don’t get me wrong – when I made my bid, I meant it. But as the pricewar striptease progressed- I felt kind of silly. “Robin”, I asked… “wouldn’t you rather have a DS? Winter is here – but summer is coming! Think of all the time you’ll have to play when you graduate!”

Right now, idle hands are hard to imagine. But I bet I’ll have some time for new projects, when all is said and done. Anyone want to teach me how to knit?

Better yet – anyone want to help me build one of these… with a certain, uh… theme?

… it was still snowing!

And then, the sun came out.