Design Seminar 2

i recently bumped across an article about the sculptor Nemo Gould here on the Scavenging blog … Gould makes kinetic, robot-like sculpture from bits and pieces of objects he finds ‘out there’ within the daily stream of his real life … it kind of reminds me of where i left off in undergraduate school …

back when i had a studioSpace to create in, i would grab this or that roadSide debris and pop it in the back of my white stationWagon … road-flattened car parts, an old tire, furniture, streetsigns … anything on my ride into UMass Lowell from my parents’ house in Watertown was a silent and wiling victim for my commuter object collectivity

unlike Gould, i didn’t exactly know what i was going to make … i might stick an old shoe in a painting with polymer emulsion or the post of a stopSign would end up being a sculptural element within a full-room installation piece … i was scattered … it was exciting and ‘real’ work for me

i posted the following comment to the Scavenging blogPost as a way for me to perhaps archeologically understand some of my own found-object processes, looking through the lens of time, both backward and forward

brings a new spin to the phrase ‘collective consciousness’

interesting that the sculptor’s incorporation of found material brings a certain timelessness to his forward-looking vision

i particularly like the way Gould takes both the mechanical and natural, the metalbound and the more organic elements and melds them together … antlers, a violin, a saw handle … the collection of objects and their intersection in the form of these found kinetic sculptural compositions helps realize a semi-conscious dreamstate, an anthropromorphization through object-oriented prosthesisSystem … parts of us are what we find, i guess … we are the objects we encounter on our journey through life … or do the objects we encounter in life guide us on our path? alter our default internal and cosmic destiny as programmed at birth? did the apple alter our ‘course for adventure’ on this giant love boat of life through the decisions of Adam and Eve? or was it the PC?

i am reading Harry Frankfurt’s book ‘On Bullshit’

fascinating + humorous

i am drawn to the works of Sasha Baron Cohen ( Borat, Bruno ), Andy Kaufman ( his ‘foreign man’ character in its original inception + Tony Clifton ), Chuck Barris ( his gritty + puzzling faux-memoir ‘Confessions of a Dangerous Mind’ ) and others that seem to use performance, and particularly semi-deceptive performance, as a major part of their work

these are 2 comedians + a gameshow producer

their work delves into humor, acting, perception, performance, manipulation of an audience

more recently, in my professional life, i have witnessed the concept of theatre being used to completely baffle + bullshit a company ( not my current company, but definitely a famous brand ) … i consider the performance to be somewhat brilliant, but unfortunate for so many people that were victimized along the way … i am trying to keep this as vague as possible, while simultaneously revealing some truth that, yes, in our own lives, we can implement the concepts of theatricality, we can play a role, and in doing so we can buck the system and turn the tables ‘our way’, every step of the way, by living a beautiful lie

well, i propose that my thesis now takes another twist, another turn … i am looking at dynamic media through the lens of cyberSurrealism … my proposal, my latest turn, was that i consider life itself to be a found, living prototype … i am a usability practitioner that ‘test’s these found systems … and i am looking for the unintended use-case scenarios { uucs }, areas that can be exploited to perpetrate some sort of poetic justice in the world … sounds a lot grander than its turning out so far, at least in my thesis explorations to date … but i am basically trying to find any tiny evidences in the world that poetic potential still exists

we all have poetry in our hearts

but the big picture that we’ve created as a dominating species on this planet seems to echo otherwise

and this is a shame, a disappointment to me

and so, i want to play with these found systems, to create my own characters, to build new stories, other realities … cyberSurrealities, in fact … realities, little beautiful lies, that get planted + sown online, that grow into physical artifacts + events, and that eventually blossom + unfurl into wonderful, impossible little stories … episodes of truly incredible things … i long for the re-invention of that magic we experience as children wondering about the universe … i want to lose my shadow + fly … + i want millions upon millions of other people to re-establish their own belief systems in the impossible, to believe once again that the impossible, the unexplainable, can happen

This is a bit of a rePosting … the original post is here on AllTop, but also included here below …

Just days after birth, babies are much too young to control their vocal cords or the muscles that shape the mouth to make specific sounds. But that doesn’t stop them from communicating in their mother tongue, new research suggests.

The study monitored thirty French and German newborns, and noted distinct differences between the cries of the two tiny groups. The wails mimicked the patterns, rhythms and intensity of their native language. Scientists believe fetuses start to learn the melody of ambient language during the third trimester in the womb. By imitating what they hear, they endear themselves to their mothers.

Plenty more on babies.

And as part of my running commentary and observations about translation and interpretation … I added in the following bloggish commentarium :

i also believe that laughter is something that can reveal mother tongue … we can modify our behaviors, study the specific dialect of varied regions of the word, but when we laugh, when we cry, when we express some intense emotion ( such as anger or grief ) we return to an area of honesty … we are brought back to the place where we grew up, to that area where we first learned our own voice + the voice of our own people

are there other expressions of human emotion that help bring us back to our ‘real’ selves?

for me, its laughter

my laughter, as much as i might try to disguise it, comes with the original accent of my mother tongue … North Shore, Massachusetts ( well, actually i’m originally from Watertown )

i also notice that i am almost good at correctly pronouncing all of my Rs … that is, until i get totally wound up in some sort of anger about something … mostly on the road, perhaps … but i completely lose my Rs and return from whence i came ( language-skills-wise, that is ) when i am totally frustrated and wanna knock somebody’s lights out

not that i speak The Queen’s proper English by any means

but i am keenly aware of what Revere sounds like, what Cambridge tries to sound like, that horrible stigma we have of either sounding like we’re The Jordan’s guys or a Kennedy ( bad actors study the Kennedys to master their New England accent … very bad idea … only the Kennedys talk like that … super annoying to hear top notch talent butchering our accent, just completely missing the bus altogether )

where are you from? is your accent different than you hear it from your childhood days? what aurally returns your voice to that voice of origin? how can we map voice? the delta in voice? inflection? dialect? accent? etcetera?

i took a trip out to New York City this past weekend to attend 2 seminars offered through Steve Hoftstetter’s Comedy Soapbox … both courses focused on helping comedians get serious about their work from both the business and web aspects of the industry …

a lot of fantastic advice about brand and behavior … good professional advice that anyone ‘out there’ could use for any profession … i don’t want to reveal too much here or get down into the dirt of what us comedians need to go through to make an honest living and get ahead ( laugh ), but i do need to describe an amazing event that i got to witness immediately following the 4 hours of expert insight and suggestions coming from the comedic and business mind of Hoftstetter

after we all learned the deep dark secrets Steve had to share with us … we exchanged kind salutations, business cards and shared an elevator ride descent of 16 flights back down to the New York City streets … some banter and goodbyes and then, standing still and looking up and down the sidewalk i watched the comedians, large and small, men and women each with their own demographically diverse backgrounds, heritage, life experiences and sense of funny fashion … i got to see the comedians walk off into the afternoon armed with this newfound knowledge to help better their careers and help bring joy and laughter to people all around the world ( but mostly in the United States )

it was an inspiring vision … an incredible feeling to think of our afternoon union in the sky … to get the lowdown from a selfless professional in the industry … we drank in his knowledge and advice and now we all bring this insight out into the world as we aim to kill audiences far and wide … i felt a joy, a certain powerful sense of a dispersed community, a pride and happiness … and i laughed a little to myself as i headed off into the slight drizzle and crisp air

related links
http://comedysoapbox.com/
http://stevehofstetter.com/

okay … i am starting up day 2 of The Rod Serling Conference ( the third annual to be more precise and accurate ) out at Ithaca College in upState New York … fantastic presentations … amazing reflections on this, the 50th anniversary celebration of The Twilight Zone … and although the main focus of this year’s conference in honor of Serling focuses on his most famous television project, it is well worth noting that the voice of Rod Serling, the writings and the performance of his teleplays and theatrical works, his voice is one we should all tune into and carry with us … in our heads, in our hearts, in our minds and in our daily lives

i won’t get too distracted here and weave off onto some loutangential diversionarial tactics here as i normally do ( gotta get me some breakfast soon ;] ) … but one concept, one thing that was asked at last night’s keynote by the writer and personality extraordinaire George Clayton Johnson ( Johnson wrote several episodes of The Twilight Zone, Star Trek and Alfred Hitchcock Presents … and also famous for co-authoring the book Logan’s Run … a genius storyteller and a phenomenal and eclectic keynote speech last nite … hilarious and honest and full of voice and humanity ), one question that George asked the audience as an aside was this ‘What would Rod do with the medium of the internet?’

An intersting question

And one that I hope to make part of my thesis research, prototyping and writing.

But with a slight twist.

What would Rod Serling do with dynamic media?

Perhaps nothing … maybe Rod’s contributions, the power of his voice and work, benefit most through the medium of words, of writing, of acting and filming.

But then again … these ‘new media’ possiblities open up entirely new avenues of storytelling. New ways to ask questions to the world. New statements. New ideas. New concerns for new brunette ( no, no, no … there is only 1 brunette for me … ;] … just thinking of a Billy Bragg song … but I digress, now … back to the program ).

I am hoping to answer George’s question with my work at The Dynamic Media Institute. I want to ask the world some of the strange ‘what if?’ questions that Rod asked the world through The Twilight Zone, through The Loner, and through a myriad of other amazing teleplays ( including Carol for Another Christmas ) … not all of my questions ( and not all of Serling’s ) will be war-specific. But I have a lot of questions to ask our citizens of the United States. I have a lot of questions to ask our citizens of the world. And I have a lot of question to ask to technology and humanity and literature.

This conference is pretty amazing. To be in the same room w/ so many fans. With the Serling family. To hear the Serling family talk about Rod and his contributions to society, to the world, as a writer, television producer, husband, father and great intellect … well, it just makes me realize how much we still need Rod’s voice and his amazing ability to ask questions through ‘magical storytelling’ or through ‘magical realism’ as George Clayton Johnson re-coined it.

I think we need some magic to get through all of this. Some alchemical storytelling. And we need to believe in the right stories. Because we become what we believe in. And we all need to start believing in magic again.

what’s the big idea

as part of my studies in communication design and dynamic media at The Dynamic Media institute at MassArt in Boston i spent the best part of the first year in the program exploring and rediscovering a lot of subject matter i am particularly passionate about … the second semester included a continuation of The DMI’s ‘Design Seminar’ … and in this course my classmates and i got to use mindmapping, automatic writing and other techniques to delve into the realms we might consider as the focus for our eventual thesis work in design

the program is utterly amazing … and i highly recommend anyone that is truly interested in current trends in technology, communication, expressive arts and creativity and the future of humanity come to the program and at least audit a course … i’m sure that if you stop in you will witness something that you may not find anywhere else in the world … an international and interdisciplinary union of personality and expertise all brought together for the sole purpose of contributing to the future … contributing to the future of design thought and media experience

of course, this hubPage is not an advertisement for the program … i am just excited about the coursework and it is only through my own participation that i bumped across this theory … the theory that serves as the primary focus of this hubPage | blog | what have you

and that focus, my friends, is the concept of Total eXperience Design

so, for now … more digression and background on my studies … only a slight delay ( be patient ), i promise

back to Design Seminar 2 … as part of the coursework w/ DS2 the entire class participated in a community blog to explore areas of interest and help each of us discover our passions in this space … w/ each new blogPost, students were then expected to make comments on each other’s writings … and the funny thing that came out of that particular part of the exercise, at least for me, was each comment i posted, each attempt i made to give my own perspective to someone else’s perspective … each comment seemed to help both parties involved … commenting helped me deepen and clarify my own thoughts as well as offer up some valuable thought and consideration for my classmate … a truly valuable and unique exercise in community, thinking and sharing

the results of my second semester … well, i developed a preliminary thesis proposal … or i almost developed a preliminary thesis proposal … i think that my final ( or nearFinal ) presentation just put a LOT of ideas ‘out there’ … i was concerned about the loss of texture as we move from media in realSpace into increasingly more virtual expressive spaces …

i also seemed very curious about the areas between each artform or each realm of design communication ( some might call these channels ) and i called this betweenSpace …

translation, as somewhat related to the loss of texture through virtualization, but more importantly, literal translation and the gigantic and ofttimes humorous, disservice word-to-word machine-like translation can do for language, this was also important to me and my thesis … you cannot truly translate a poem, right? something gets lost … either the rhythm, the nonsense, some of the meaning, i mean … there are good translations of a poem on the page, i’m sure … but no matter what it seems we lose something along the way ( and that might be poetic texture ) … i would advocate for interpretation over translation any day a the week …watching the TED Talk by Evelyn Glennie ‘How to listen to music with your whole body’ incredibly demonstrates, at one point, the important human difference between translation and interpretation … i hope to promote interpretation and to ridicule mere, robotic translation through some of my work

and i also knew that i was interested in doing unusual things with technology … that i wanted to create experiences that would make people question things or wonder if the experience they just had could even have been real

in some of my last slides … the last points of my final presentation summarized the key points in my areas of interest … and in the mix was the term ‘cyberSurreal’ … the professor leading the class ( and the program ) Jan Kubasiewicz asked if the term cyberSurreal was my own invention, and frankly, i am not sure where it came from ( i had, in fact, just invented this term as i frequently mash words together w/ a little camelCasing due to my exposure and practice with code ), but as soon as he began to ask everything seemed to make sense

i think i needed to give myself permission … it took me a year to unwind from the kind of corporate containership my professional existence shackled to me for years … i have had to live as a man in pieces for more than a decade … someone that needed to, for survival in an office ( of all places ) setting, someone that needed to sequester huge chunks of important stuff away because the establishment, the cSuite, whatever you want to call it, finds the real me ( the entire bag of thought ) a little too scary for the workplace … i don’t know, it could be my own doing really … i could be assuming that the whole package is ‘too much’ for the workplace … but i don’t think i imposed these silos upon myself … this siloing …

so it took me a year to admit to myself i was interested in cyberSurrealism … the extension of the original movement of Surrealism and all of its predecessing and postdecessing movements back and forth, into and out of the virutal and actual systems we all must live with, in, around … with at least part of cyberSurrealism i want to explore life as a living prototype … a sort of found prototype … as a performer ( and as a world citizen that needs to live in this world we were given … this hand-me-down world ) i will become a sort of usability practitioner of the world and its many systems as a found, living prototype … and from here on in it is my job to test the system and find ways to improve it

a more grand way of saying this is … through the international movement of cyberSurrealism i will act as a usability practitioner to test the world as a found, living prototype and then find areas of potential improvement and suggest ways to change the world … i hope to suggest unusual ways of solving huge problems by looking at things from a slightly different angle ( as influenced by our ‘Murray’ project in Design Studio 2 with Joseph Quackenbush,see the New Yorker article ‘Million Dollar Murray’ by Malcolm ‘Tipping Point’ Gladwell ) or by using the betweenSpace as a place of leverage … and, from a more Surreal standpoint and one that may be more literary or poetic, i am seeking poetic justice in the world through my research, prototyping and exploration of these concepts … i hope to live my life as much like a poem personified as Billy Barnum does … to seek those moments of poetry that cannot be merely translated or explained but can only be appreciated through living, through witnessing, through direct experience of that poetic moment

and that lead us to Total eXperience Design

i have many theories brewing about this topic of Total eXperience Design … i heard an excellent recent talk about multi-channel marketing campaigns, which seems to potentially be one flavor of what i am proposing to the world … but TXD is a bit different, especially when looked at through the lens of cyberSurrealism

based on Wagner’s concepts of gesamtkunstwerk or ‘The Total Artwork’ … Total eXperience Design would take a user-centered set of considerations ( maybe even a UCD approach, but it might depend on the piece ) to design everything … the entire experience … to take all sense into consideration … to take the temporal nature of the particular piece into consideration … to think about the impression the piece leaves w/ the listener | viewer | participant … the TXD aftertaste, if you will … and to think about the artifacts or take-aways that both the user and the world will have following the existence of the TXD piece in question or on display

how many times … how many times have i been to a performance, seen incredible work, live sound and theatricality … event-based experience … and then, in the end, the piece unintentionally ( without TXD consideration ) lives on only in the mind ( and conversation ) of the audience … in other words, adequate and important documentation and deliverables were never considered … the focus is so much on getting up on stage, using this or that technology, wearing this or that article of clothing, and yet there is no video or audio capture of the event to help the people of the future ( or even of the present ) understand or see the vision you created

if this were intentionally part of the plan, cool … not a big deal to document a rock show, perhaps … and that is fine … we can’t have a screenCapture of every single moment in lifenow, can we?

but we should at least, as artists and designers, consider the afterlife of a project or event … is there an item we would want to give the viewer | participant to help them better understand the intended meaning of the piece? to understand it after the show, after the opening? or to maybe read a year from now and in deeper yet delayed reflection suddenly understand the work in a different light?

or maybe it is what it is and that’s that … that would be fine as well … just be considerate … consider the audience, the participant, the viewer, the user, the audience … and think about what you would want them to say, how you want them to talk about your work, how you hope they understand and speak about the content from a variety of levels

but we can think about TXD as gesamtkunstwerk augmented by the latest art and technology movements

TXD = g+DM ( gesamtkunstwerk + dynamic media )

these are my preliminary ideas about Total eXperience Design

strangely enough … as the days march on … i am finding artifacts from my previous lifetimes that all seem to scream at me, ‘Of course, cyberSurrealism! Of course!’ … the voice of Jan then standing right nextdoor to the rediscovered talking artifacts, arms crossed about chest w/ dressCoat on ‘this is what you must do’ and a whisper from an unknown source says, ‘this is your destiny’

sometimes i wonder if Joe and Jan and Brian might have known from the day of the interview that Spring preceding my acceptance into the program … that my discussion with them about user-centered design methodology, performance art, poetry, installation work … maybe at that point they might have guessed there was already something there that at least pointed to Surrealism

i have casually studied Surrealism for years

did Surrealism succeed as a movement? as a literary movement? as an art or visual movement? as a performative force in the world? as a lifeStyle or as a political movement? and if it succeeded or failed, what does that mean for cyberSurrealism? how would i need to position ( or rePosition ) cS to insure its success? at least, in some ways, as a thesis project?

i will NOT be satisfied if this idea of cyberSurrealism succeeds and stops with my own personal passions and academia … i truly want this to be a politicalkunstaftêndreisel … a poOMft! … bang, tick, crooOOONschtarken! … i want this to be as notorious in documented format as Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and multiChannel Marketing … this is NOT just for sh!ts and giggles … i mean, there will be plenty of preRecorded laughs to be captured + released, this is for certain + sure … but cSi ( cyberSurreal international ), this is soMe serious sh!t!

sometimes, i’ve found, if you pretend enough … if you walk around a certain way, if you ‘talk it up’ as they say … well, sometimes pretense then becomes reality … i am hoping that pretense will not only become reality but that my efforts transcend and extend the notions of Surreality into this new and powerful zone of cyberSurreality we have all already been experiencing now for at least a decade, if not longer

people throw sheep at each other on Facebook

friend is a verb

netiquette, tweetiquette, connectiquette … new terms rise and fall everyday … this sh!t changes our language daily and infiltrates our own mindSpace + conceptions of what is real + what is pretend, fake or phoney … or at least ‘not real’ …

at any moment, on any given Sunday, you could receive personal or professional communication simultaneously from :

• a person in a face-to-face conversation ( increasingly rare)
• a phoneCall via landline or mobile technologies
• SMS or text message on yer celly
• an email either thru email client or webmail service … &/or … on your computer or on a pda | mobile platform
• instant message from 1 of 20 or more IM services | clients
• Skype … or other new hybrid experiences that combine text, audio and video
• web meeting technologies
• snailmail
• messages directly sent to you through the new telepathic technology protocols ( ttp ) and direct extraterrestrial messaging ( dem )

how cyberSurreal + overwhelming is that, right?

well, anyhow … to bring things to an eventual point in this post, let me explain this

i have strange ideas

i always have had them

in a professional officeLike environment where you + i typically need to survive + make a living, these ideas are too strange to even express without completely altering my own professional brand @ the officePlace

i mean

people just look atchya like wtf?

so i’ve always had this conflict of interest

and i think most creatives ( + i kind of hate that word ) experience this dichotomy

there’s what you do for money … and then … there’s whatchya do for love

or whatever ya call it

what you do because you just need to do it

you can’t even explain why you think up the stuff or what its for, but if you don’t do it you typically fall into a depression + feel a LOT less alive + like yerself

it sncks if you don’t pursue these ideas, the ones that aren’t for profit or for the corporate marching mediaStream you get paid to participate in at yer dayGig

so, now …

at a certain point, some of me slipped away

creative continuum helped me realize that i should embrace the looser, creative side of my personality

a side of me that was getting washed away by the day

dynamic media institute is rescuing a huge part of my soul that’s been drifting into a prePended afterlife

i need to embrace madness

society will pull that classic trick on ya, right? like in Catcher in the Rye

Holden Caufield, in the end, well … he’s put away, right? even though we see the world through Holden’s eyes throughout the novel, even though we can clearly see that there is a LOT wrong with the world, well … its that whole rubber an’ glue thing now, ain’t it? Holden points, and in the end it bounces back and gives him the crazy face, puts him in a place that will protect society from ‘deviant thought’ patterns … and unacceptable thinking …

happens to McMurphy too, right? in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest … of course, McMurphy escapes at the end a that one though, right? ;] or at least that’s the legend that he and The Chief decide to tell through their euthenasiactivities ( hope i didn’t ruin the flick fer ya, but if you haven’t seen it yet you deserve it )

people are told they suffer from a disorder or syndrome each + every day of our lives

and why?

to sell expensive pharmaceuticals, to keep society safe, to preserve our ‘civilization’, and the list goes on

well, er, ehm, screw that

society is the one w/ the disorder

look at this place

take a quicktour of the automated application we’ve created

preemptive attacks to get them thar weapons of mass destruction

nationBuilding, that’s my favourite ;]

and the forced + spoonfed spread of democracy

now ain’t that America?

we’ll build our little pink houses overseas to keep a watch on the profits ta that there pipeline

we’ll profit off of our own obliteration by sending over the BWContractors, yeah, we’ll help ya out ( but first, bombs away! and them thar bombs cost a bit a dough now, don’t they? )

anyhow

life is already surreal

life is already even cyberSurreal

i’m just going to point out and magnify things a bit an’ help define the new psychopoeticyberpolitical revolution

more to come

cyberSurreallyyours

. ls .

i don’t know what that block of text under your Facebook Profile pic is supposed to be anymore … maybe just a blurb about yourself … not sure it matters …

but my underPic blurb simply states ‘Lou believes that poetry will save the world’

i think my point is that, with the incredible level of disorder and disfunction we encounter in our greater ( heh ) worldSystem … a rather undertrusted, underrated force … like the power and message of poetry … could be the real answer … NOT political intrigue … NOT war … NOT diplomacy … NOT anything else … just little ole poetry, sitting there the entire time, RIGHT under our noses

well

my new bestFriend on Facebook … Sherry … sent a FB message with HER opinion as seen below :

You are wrong (my opinion,of course) it is music that will save the world, however, you do have to have poetry or lyrics to go along with the music!

i couldn’t help but use this as an opportunity to further explore my original statement and to really try and figure out which of these 2 forces, poetry or music, could potentially save the world ( maybe a coalition of the 2 would be the most powerful ;] … who knows? ) here is my response to Sherry … enjoy :

Sherry … thanks for engaging me on this level … i apsolutely LOVE trying to figure out what will save the world ;] … its true though … and, you know what? i write and perform music at times, i also try to write poetry … either one could save the world … but i really love that you brought this up … thank you SO much …

music or poetry … poetry or music … hmmmmmm

i sometimes think that all creative activity is somehow mystically linked or related on a certain plain … f’rinstance … i recently did a watercolor for a friend … i hadn’t painted in years … but i went out and bought the materials, did a LOT of sketches, and pulled an all-nighter to get it done by the deadline specified ( present for his wife for her nth birthday, right? ) … i was very ‘in tune’ and in heightened awareness mode as i proceeded to paint and for some reason it felt like my mental model might be akin in some strange way to how a sculptor needs to think … each stroke, in watercolor painting, needs to be carefully planned and executed … no ‘paint by numbers’ activity, by any means … but you need to be a LOT more precise in a watercolor than you would ( or at least than _i_ would ;] ) if you were to paint in acrylic, or better yet, than you would need to if you were painting in oils

poetry and music have a special connection

and both can be a bit elusive or abstract … music being potentially THE most abstract medium, sometimes open to SUCH drastically different interpretations per piece that it can be frightening ( just watching A Clockwork Orange { or reading it } might be enough evidence … I don’t think that Beethoven intended to inspire violence through his compositions in any way, shape or form )

on one level, i think i picked poetry thinking of the creator of the poem … from the vantagePoint of ‘the poet’ … i wholeheartedly think that a poet writes, rewrites and published a poem ‘for the world’ … i could be wrong … i am actually quite certain that each poem could have an entirely different audience in mind, a different pupose or intentions … i just hadn’t thought this deeply about it until you chimed in ( thank you )

a musician, on the other hand ( why do i generalize about these things? why do i feel like i can generalize? is this a form of ‘ism’ ala racism against creative types? against painters, musicians, poets and mimes? i hope not. and i know its simply not ever fair to generalize. that we do so typically out of fear or disorder as a means to try and take back control by developing systems of meaning or something … i need to watch myself a bit more i think ), the act of writing a song, recording it, releasing a single or an album, touring, performing, etcetera … this ALWAYS seems a lot more egoCentric to me … more about the brilliance of the musician … more about connecting w/ people, but NOT just to connect + create that common bond through music ( that is a phenomena, an amazing one, and what you MUST be alluding to in your response above, right? ) … to add to a fanBase or following … a Pied Piper-like, even TwitterLike, thing that is difficult to fully describe the dynamics of

but, you know what?

here ya go … i think THIS is where music might be on equal grounds with poetry … here we go …

i guess when i read a poem, i’m reading the poem … sans writer … maybe THAT’s why it seems SO selfless and giving and potentially more powerful as a force in the world to save the world and its amazing ( but often misGuided ) and beautiful people

in the case where the music is being listened to ’sans musician’ … maybe even in a ‘randomPlay’ scenario … thousands of songs on that wonderful microjukebox we call an iPod ( or another MP3 player at that, right? but the iPod being the most elegant of the batch … the best, no? ) … randomly accessed to surprise your senses on that new ‘hit’ … its like a drug thing … i wouldn’t know thank gawed, but it seems like a drug thing to me … but perhaps through the format of a pre-recording at least, that 1 step of removal might be enough to remove the ego of the musican and make it another extremely powerful force to save the world

seems like a good reason to start another PollDaddy poll ;]

thank you Sherry

thank you for reaching out like this

i owe ya 1

aight, amidst the hustle an’ bustle of the midevening shift here … i was poking through my notebooks from the last few weeks an’ found this little idea here i thought would be worth an entry on the DMIS2 blog … check it out …

so, my thesis once again revolves around a batch of ideas that come together under the term ‘cyberSurrealism’ … the concepts are coming together nicely, now its time to actively prototype … or at least come up w/ a gameplan for prototyping activities comin’ up in the Fall ‘09 y’alL … oh yeah …

one of the veryFirst projects i got superExcited about had to do w/ seaShells converted into cellphones … not in a blogEntry on this site yet, the idea is that 3 to 5 shellPhones will suddenly appear out and about in very public places around Boston … some people might have the inclination to pick up the shells without any instigation, to investigate this misplaced natural object in an urban environment … or perhaps to even hear the sounds of the ocean … not sure …

… but, at a certain point each shellPhone will simultaneously play a cheesy cellphone dialtone while bioluminescently pulsing … hopefully enough encouraging stimula to provoke interaction with the shells … participants that pick up the shellPhone will immediately be confronted w/ a soothing but autoAnnoying answering message service that prompts the user to leave a message, send a text, take a picture, etcetera … all data will be stored at a remote location and be published to a website and the entire peformative installation will be recorded by a smallish videoCrew per message location ala Alan Funt’s Candid Camera ( videoCapture, w/ permission, will also be posted to the site and trends will be calculated, data retrieved, behaviors changed by either the artist or the user-audience-pariticipant pool ) …

and then

stemming semi-directly from that idea is another project i am proposing to christen w/ the name

the cyberSurreal lifeGuidanse System { or cSlGs fer short ;] }

the inspiration for this is you, the general public, walking this way and that, everyone so enthralled by the mobile device in hand that brings you all those superSpecial SMSs … all that text … we are a society that is sometimes ( most times ) led by technology, led by our cellphones, led by text ( perhaps text or type being the original technology to lead us ) …

i don’t know how many countless times i see people walking down the street, crossing the street, bumping into walls, people, anything, as he or she looks down into the device in the cradle of their hands … these little machines get more lovetouch than your average insect from what i can tell … everyone so enthralled + immersed in this peripherallife that comes an’ goes through the magic of mobility … never a dull moment … never a moment … never a … nevermind

so, the idea is this … on a similar oceanic theme ( i have already picked up 2 clamshells for technoManipulations + modification | enhancements ), participants will be brought to a special place for the afternoon … they will each get a shell, this time NOT a shellPhone, but instead a cSlGs or cyberSurreal lifeGuidanse system … this device will automagically send messages to the participant-user, instructions really, that will range from purely geoLocationDirectional ( turn right, walk for a few yards in that direction David ) to more encouraging feedback ( you’re amazing! i am not sure how you do it, but you manage to focus on everything so nicely and still remain so sexy and delicious! ) to discouraging feedback ( what’d you do that for Steve? I mean, what were you thinking? ) to philosophical ( with each step you take, you accumulate bonus spending points at the Chili’s in Danvers, Massachusetts ) …

and that’s that

i already had about 8 ideas for prototyping and projects and now here’s another one … i can’t believe it, but i think this idea has potential to be fairly thick and fun too

piece

Dude,

I am SO glad that we talked recently … I know I’m really trying to figure this thing out, right? This whole, independent consulting or ‘next step’ side a life … But I think our conversation and these photos made me realize how deeply concerned we both are about poetry … Maybe even about the loss of poetry as we move forward from the industrial age into the information age and beyond … Ya know?

For instance, what could be less poetic than a bunch of accumulated data? Right? And yet, from day to day to day that’s what we’re asked to focus on … Show me the data … And we need to interpret the data and do all of this analysis an’ sh!t … Well, er, ehm … Pardon my French, but Fnck the Data! We should all just trust chance and all the things that are so totally out of our control and we should, perhaps, zero in on something we may have all lost along the way …

I think there is a distinct difference between the concepts of knowledge and wisdom

Knowledge = the accumulation of facts, figures, evidence … The absence of poetry … Just the facts ma’am … That sorta thing, right?
Wisdom = the higher understanding we achieve when we accumulate information, but then destroy the information and rebuild or reconfigure or reSomething until we’ve come to a better understanding of some aspect of the world we live in, the people we know, the rhythm and texture of our lives on Earth ( and Mars or some other preParadasial stop on our journies during our physical existence )

I’ve always opted for the use of wisdom … For a deeper sense of trust for the poetic … Which is not something you can logically defend on a daily basis … Which is something I refuse to defend, but just use to my greater advantage when dealing w/ certain people ‘out there’ in the ecoSphere of our career

Just some random thoughts I thought I’d share in light of your observation ‘But its the poetry of the thing!’ … Beautiful passage … You give good email ;]

***

As a quick + dirty sidenote + afterthought … perhaps I have been a bit unfair in my rather extreme positioning of data vs poetry … for instance, depending on your interpretation there may, in fact, be data residing right in your dataSet … and it would be our job, as creatives and as design professionals + poets, to find the poetry buried in the data … to find that ‘crack’ we were talking about early on last semester ( Spring 2009 ), the crack that Leonard Cohen sings about in his song Anthem … the crack that lets the light come through … but, i still am of the mindset that the data alone, that batch of raw information itself is probably the very furthest thing from the truth, from the wisdom, from the poetry that sits in the corner + hums into its comb and waxPaper kazoo of sorts … the poetry that follows you on twitter