redefining spaces in imaginary places

more string

2008-11-15T12:42:00.000-08:00

flickr photos, originally uploaded by taylor levy.

sketching with string in the dumpster

string!

2008-10-28T08:03:00.001-07:00

DSC00012, originally uploaded by taylor levy.

a collaboration with jason krugman

00 light studies

2008-10-28T07:41:00.001-07:00

DSC09998, originally uploaded by taylor levy.

shoe in block

2008-10-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

DSC00026, originally uploaded by taylor levy.

a collaboration with ted hayes

paris

2008-07-23T15:32:00.001-07:00

food

2008-07-18T09:36:00.000-07:00

2008-06-03T08:12:00.000-07:00

possible design object

2008-05-31T12:59:00.000-07:00

24 switch pixel

shadow stories - houston fence project

2008-05-28T20:27:00.000-07:00

layers upon layers. fast, fleeting, transient. messy but not. borrows and builds. light. this is one of the most interesting projects i've seen in a while. sometimes when i walk by i am with a friend who happens to be carrying gigantic scissors. (even though my photos kinda suck). the construction site installation made by architect/designers Carolina Cisneros, Carlos J. Gómez de Llarena and Mateo Pintó. words are superfluous here, it is really strong and you should go check it out in real life...or here... and see their other work on the fulton fence.

2008-05-20T07:03:00.000-07:00

2008-05-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

social software studio

2008-04-30T08:58:00.001-07:00

let the camera pick my colours
colour. caries weight of words and meaning. a complexity that is astounding. and powerful. each time it is introduced into a system, it brings these things with it. how did we come to these colours? in the beginning. attached to so many things now, but what were they once, if anything at all, when they were just...

the images on the left are stills from a program i wrote in C for Danny Rozin's class Pixel by Pixel. The program processes data from a video camera. One pixel at a time, it determines the brightness of a pixel in relation to a threshold. If the value is above a threshold, it returns a 1 (white), below returns a 0 (black). Using this new data, the program then, 24 of these pixels at a time, assigns the binary representation of this colour and prints a bar of that colour below it's 24 bit representation.

I am interested in this way of arriving at colour. i chose to introduce colour using specifically the vocabulary that we have chosen to represent colour on a computer. an audience can take it to mean what they want. but for me, it was the first time i was able to bring colour into my work in a way that was satisfying and honest.

providence

2008-04-24T07:24:00.000-07:00

mobile pics from yesterday in gp

2008-04-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

i'm all about the low rez these days... 1.3 mega pixel cam on my samsung. pieces of me

katsu - fire extinguisher ? street art

2008-03-27T06:59:00.000-07:00

this made my night

a table and a light

2008-03-25T21:18:00.000-07:00

Possible Design Object using Jelly!

2008-03-24T20:57:00.000-07:00

My new project titled Possible Design Object is a continuation of my previous work. I believe a designer's key role is to define entry points that channel data derived from interaction with the design object and serve to structure the design object itself.

My first implementation of this software is a collaborative story, text, any word or adhjksf based application. expressive, low barrier to entry, synchronous, anonymous...check out the first version...***still a work in progress!
www.fun.jellyproject.com
... On the right side of the screen is a continuous body of text. On the left side is a series of "sensors" input boxes to which users can add their own pieces of text. In order for a single user's text to be added to the group body of text, other people need to vote on it. When the number of votes on a node of text surpasses a threshold, the text leaves the node and transitions to the right side. If after a certain amount of time, no one likes the text in a node, the node eventually degrades and dies.

Last night and today in class I did two quick runs of user testing. each test lasted about 3 minutes. User testing is great! very funny and you learn a lot.

observation 1:
initial barrier to understanding a new interface. during this faze, people try to figure out what is going on, are hesitant, and testing out the application. and VERY quick to alert the bugs. are fearful of breaking anything.

observation 2:
after the first few minutes, people were writing small words...a discon-
nect between input side and output side.

observation 3:
people started writing longer input. still not a huge connection with
output.

There is an interesting challenge here. How do you build a complete system, where input from users is channeled in a way that is continuously relevant to output. How much do you want to direct output to be a certain way? Loose? Structured? Rigidity of endpoint objectives can vary. How clear do you want a the starting point to be?

At what point does "group" value outweigh "me" value to a user? Can both "group and me" values be realized simultaneously?

My professor raised an interesting interface issue today in class about my project. I'm not sure if I understand exactly what he meant. But I think he was arguing that writing text in little blue boxes on a screen is a big abstraction for a user. I am not in disagreement with him. Am I just forcing users to consent to the arbitrary vocabulary of my system? another abstraction in the scope of computers...which are already abstract? Yes, but it is immensely important to challenge pre-existing vocabularies, show that they are not fixed, break them and try new ones. even if they seem a bit funny at first. funny is good.

That being said, my users were running with the application during testing after under a minute. I think that this is pretty low for new software, that is providing new opportunities for creativity...i hope.

There are a few Possible Design Objects that I want to experiment with over the next few weeks.
- classroom educational tool...a way to be continuously expressive on a subject, no fear of being wrong, or taboo, can express when it is not your turn to talk, or if you don't like to talk.

- interface with existing design process...brainstorming shoe design.

- design idea...clock design

- price bidding model

- use system to release first possible design object...more to come on this soon...

I spent the last two weeks building the first version. I wanted to get a clean framework in place like my other software was...I spent two weeks hacking away at it in PHP ajax css... in the end it was buggy, dirty and would not be portable to run different design ideas like I was doing with my other software. The good news is, I learned a ton about web-development and that the languages used were not designed to build software...(it never realy made sense). The better new is, two days ago, I decided to rewrite it all using JELLY!!! (Kunal Gupta and Tristan Perich's web-development platform...). I don't know if you have seen this at all, but I have great things to say about their software...they re-frame web-development in a way that is about writing REAL, cohesive software, as opposed to making redundant, inefficient, fragmented nothingness...the way most websites are....websites...ugh...those things are byebye. finally a great new tool! yay jelly! so easy an alligator could do it!

velcro clock

2008-03-03T16:00:00.000-08:00

Making clocks: two goals for using technology to revisit the design of an existing tool. 1-Maximize instances for relevant user input into a design object. Opportunities for users to insert meaning and relevance that is specific to a present instance of interaction. 2-Minimize moments where the designer imposes top-down vocabularies that rely on users to consent to design premises that may not necessary or relevant at that particular moment. We should only have to consent when ABSOLUTELY necessary. minimize amount of UNDO.

People moving and patterns. We navigate the world in the most efficient way possible. In a straight line. Stopping to ask questions only when it is necessary. At a blockage, a signal, an alarm. At moments when our forward moving inertia is or is about to be challenged. Designers take advantage of this behavior, and build in patterns, short cuts that condense the pathways to certain goals. There is a problem here. There are a few problems here. The first problem is that once we hit a barrier, it is often too late to take a step back. We have already consented to the vocabulary, impositions of a designer that set the stage for the problem to occur. We don't necessarily know where those moments of consent were, or even if they were necessary at the time.

When designing a user experience, we code these scenarios, hoping for the magical moments where users seamlessly consent, when conscious attention is not alarmed, when users do not have to stop and question. It is a way to cut corners, and it makes things work for most people, but not necessarily everyone. Humans are great at adapting to new behavior. We make designers jobs pretty easy. But I think designers should have to work harder. We should not be designing patterns. We should be designing transformations that can be triggered through pathways determined by the user. This past week google decided to add the "invisible" option to gChat. This made me really annoyed. When I started to think about why I was mad, I realized that it was because google introduced a new vocabulary into their product that they were forcing me to consent to. Why today? Why now? How did they happen upon this decision (and I'm sure they did a ton of research)? But what data were they using to reach this decision? And how is it relevant to me and my experience with the product right now? I was annoyed because even if I chose not to make my status invisible, I was consenting to it's inverse, which was to be visible. And all of a sudden I was using new words to describe my user experience that were not relevant to my current interaction. This language could potentially have some implications further down the road... every pattern has it's inverse, something that you may one day be accountable for.

Technology lets us do better at addressing these problems. With new materials for design, we can build things in ways to continuously channel user input, and use data derived from that input to restructure the design of the object.

I have decided to make a series of interactive clocks. Not because I think they should be used, but because I want to show that just because something is a certain way, doesn't mean it always has to be like that. The first clock is one where users can adjust the numbers. The hands move at a constant speed, but users can change the distance between the hours. Why do certain parts of the day seem to go by much faster than others? How do we adjust a clock so that the time between hours actually looks the way it feels. Sometimes you might want more time between 2 and 3 o'clock...or maybe you are bored and need 7'oclock to come sooner. How do you design for this type of interaction? How does such an object channel input from a community? Especially a clock, how do you interact with one?

But we are not all good at the same things, we do not all have the same triggers. The goal of a design object is to grant keys to access to some transformation. We cannot all use the same keys, nor do we want to, but we are all looking for certain experiences.

Advances in technology should lead to increased instances of asking questions. (not consciously), but we should design in a way that is empowering to users of all abilities and all types of input.

A pattern and it's inverse is implicit in the design object. We should minimize these moments of consent and instead be focusing on designing the transformation. And all of the different relevant and meaningful ways to access the user experience.

some clocks

**c_03-2beadPulley designs **c_05-pegboard clock
**c_04-liquid clock
c_02-pulley bead

ice-melt switch

2008-02-24T19:23:00.000-08:00

more topology. How to transform what is in our heads into something perceivable by others, their senses, how do we ensure that what we encode will be decoded correctly by our users? and how much, if at all, does accuracy matter?

We are constrained by our senses. Constrained to the ways our eyes, ears, bodies... perceive our relationship to the world. This week I was reading a book called "Knots-mathematics with a twist" by Alexei Sossinsky and I came across an interesting bit of information. The two mathematicians who envisioned Antoine's necklace and Zuev's wild knot (two crazy knots) were both blind. Sossinsky then proceeded to talk about tests that were done with blind people who regained their sight. These people were able to see differences in 3-dimensional structures before being able to tell the difference between 2-dimensional structures. So they could differentiate a torus and a sphere but not a square and a circle. Our sensory perception binds us to certain dimensions. Dimensions that are relevant to our physical body. For instance, the sensors in our eyes are laid out on the 2-dimensional surface of our retina. This is really useful from an evolutionary standpoint, but it is interesting to think about what our mind is really capable of it is not governed by our sensors. This week our assignment for Amit's class was to build something with a switch. A single dimension, and leaving class one other thing that Amit said stuck in my head. "People do distance, that is it". I think this is a really meaningful way to look at things. Absolute values are the only thing that is valuable to us. Build whatever you want, but know that as humans, we will "sample" your innovation 1-bit at a time.

At first this might seem a bit boring. But it is really a fundamental constraint that is the basis of all innovation. Sensors on their own are not so interesting. We have millions of them, and each one of them on their own either fires or doesn't. boring. The interesting part about all of this is not the sensor itself, but instead the way these signals are processed. In essence it is a transformation from a 1-dimensional data set into, what potentially could unlock some n-dimensional representation in your brain. Artists do this best.

The role of the artist(designer) is to encode transformations from 1-dimensional counterpoints, to spaces beyond your wildest imaginations. These counterpoints are keys to infinite dimensions. The reason this can be a hard problem is because it is impossible to experience the transformation on the other end. For the best artists, this process comes naturally. And the process that I'm talking about is not trying to guess what will be experienced on the other end. I think any attempt at that is futile. We could hypothesize, but know that you cannot know. The more natural process is to come up with ways to transform whatever n-dimensional thought into something as efficient, clean and expressive as possible. And this can be anything, as long as the transformation feels natural to you. (no wrong answer). Essentially what we end up with are 1-dimensional triggers for switches on our bodies.

What does this mean to us? As designers, innovators, artists... we need to assume that the materials of the future will be equipped with sensors that are attached to really good computers. With advances in technology, our materials are becoming more like our bodies. They are complete systems, systems that are described by input, output, a data-set(tendency towards some representation...like genetic map), and pathways for feedback. That being said, our bodies (until we mutate) are still bound to our 1-dimensional sensors. So at the end of the day, the way we experience innovation is still the same. We will enter the innovative scape of the future in the same body that 500 years ago stood inside the Sistine Chapel.

This week I tried playing around with those questions. Specifically, what does it mean to build with a material that senses? I started with images in my head that could best be described as "walking through sensors". How does structure define input to that structure? How is that data managed? What can it be used for? Is it necessarily reconnected to that structure? Or can it be recycled to another system?
I began by building on my previous model for discrete systems interacting through counterpoints of other systems and began to think about what the bare minimum is that you need to make use of such a counterpoint. I decided to make a "ice melt sculpture", pictured on the left, where ice would be placed at the top, and as it melted, it would activate the switches embedded in the form. I then connected it to my software model (the one I've been using for everything) so that each drip would be encoded as a new system interacting. And the resulting data would influence the visualization. I'll skip the details on the logic behind it all, but ask if you are interested. So the concept that I was going after is that water, air and now the ice melt switch (including my visualization) are all discrete systems. Each have starting point properties... the water, air molecules have a starting point, data set, density mapping just like my ice melt switch. So the innovation is explicitly a complete system, with tendencies, pathways for mutation...just like other discrete systems...

I'm not really happy with the result, but I'm very happy about what I learned from the process. I am starting to gain a perspective on how new ways of channeling data can help to create, open up, describe new types of spaces and experiences. The only thing that I really like about this is that it describes a visualization, that without this technology, I could never make myself. I would never be able to draw, that specific, unique, seemingly random moment created by this sculpture and collision of systems. After doing this once, I now have the data in a way that is visible to me, so I can do what I want with it. (I am actually very interested in doing hand drawings of data from these points of interaction. specifically realizing a pathway where I could acheive something that without a machine would not have been possible). making humans behave more like machines...realizing that intersection...

I like the idea of designing for data, what if instead of making something, the purpose of what you make is just a data-capturer...an empty space, filled with all types of sensors. All data is the same. So technically, you could apply a data set, taken from virtually anything, to anywhere you choose. this is kind of cool to me, also a huge problem, but something that I want to play with. To be more clear, I could take the data from my ice melt sculpture and build anything from it. connect it to the lights in my house. make an infinite number of drawings, visualizations. Use it to tell me if I'm hungry...

I think these are a lot of interesting questions. How do we structure a vocabulary that describes how to interact with an object, so that the data recycled back into the structure of the object is relevant?

Human expression in the future continues to involving extending, abstracting and implanting counterpoints, pieces of ourselves into the world. But now these pieces are sensors, attached to processors. So the world we are walking to has pathways for intelligence, an intelligence much different from our own.

some notes and ideas

2008-02-19T11:28:00.000-08:00

***first draft of software design model***
thinking a lot about topology, in terms of this type of data analysis. how is identity connected to relative position within a system? how can you map, model closeness of systems, a way to visualize relevant position through interacting systems. n-dimensional spheres...but doesn't seem good...just a sense (an ignorant one probably with not a lot of understanding). A system needs to be more fluid. knots are cool....um

the link above is an outline of how i want pieces to work together with more than 2 systems interacting. the models below work on same principles...but not networked.

other than that...sketches, notes and models from this week. sort of at a stuck point, trying to figure out how to put pieces of previous models together.

xicui entertainment center - content prototype 1

2008-02-14T11:19:00.000-08:00

*** here is a link to run my first demo ... this is just a draft, more to show a concept...a work in progress ***
It is important to remember that at the core of all computational processes is physical matter. Physical matter, a material, like brick, stone, grass or air. Our imprint can and should be seen in this matter. A brick wall as a discrete system, has a tendency towards expressing an inherent state. When another discrete system, such as a person comes into contact with the wall. There are pathways, channels, entry points into the system of the wall. Keys access these. Keys are everywhere…walls can be anything. You need an entry point to change the state of the wall. And depending on the wall’s natural tendency (rigidness….or high probability) towards a certain state can influence our ability to effect the wall. That being said, data stored in databases is the same as the data of walls. It is a new material however, with the ability to mimic, transform, a template to create virtually any system…and apply to it virtually any properties.
This is a really exciting idea for me, what happens when the material of computers, bits, is packaged in ways that it can be extended onto all different properties. Where the interaction between discrete systems, trying to connect becomes the structure of the system itself.

The xicui entertainment center is a building facade with 640x370 square led panels. Each led panel, doubles as a solar panel, with photo-voltaic cells that store energy during the daytime. With no light, the wall has an inherent texture, tendency towards a certain pattern. This pattern is described by 3 different categories of pixels that make up the wall. The darkest panels are the ones with the most photo-voltaic cells (let the least amount of light through. The medium have the middle range of photovoltaic cells, and the brightest have no photo-voltaic cells.

Using data from the density mappings of the 3 ranges, this program cycles through the wall, addressing each pixel, one at a time. For each pixel, the wall as a discrete entity is projecting a state (on/off), the state of the wall is not random, it is influenced by the value from the density mapping, specific to each individual pixel. The state the wall is expressing is pulled towards a value determined by the density map. Analogously, the human has their own control. A single isolated entry point, counterpoint, where a vocabulary is shared with the facade. Like the wall, the human can project a state, using the same on/off language. The human and the wall are analogously addressing the same point on the wall. Ultimately, the human has the final say on what value the current pixel will display, but if the wall is in disagreement with the human(determined by probabilities derived from density maps), this will be shown with a red line appearing perpendicular to the current pixel. The size of the line is proportional to the interaction, communication between human and wall at that discrete entry point in time/space.

The effect is one where I hope to create a new wall whose structure is described by the interaction between the human and the natural state of the walls material. A push, pull between both forces...where both discrete bodies are represented, cycle into and form an inherently transformative system.

I have been working on developing a software model in order to study innovation from this theoretical and practical perspective. I am doing, pretty much all of my design projects as iterations of this, because this is how I think we should be designing things. Data is a huge subject, what to do with it, how to clean it up is an important problem and question. I think we should be designing with this in mind. Where the things that we design are specifically to channel, and transform data. Built in sensors (entry points)....which in itself is a transformation between spaces(when you choose entry points, data is lost...), and algorithms on top of this to compute and determine how this data is used, and is recycled back into the system.

interaction model

2008-02-11T15:45:00.000-08:00

***CLICK FOR INTERACTION MODEL*****This week's assignment: "design a way, using software, to test user interaction with a system(or device)".

This was an interesting challenge for me because of it's direct relevance to pretty much everything that I have been thinking about these days. Specifically about the purpose of the things we make, and how with technological advances in computation power and shifts in materials, we should begin to restructure the process of innovation.

I have been working on developing a social software model that allows for data derived from the interaction of discrete entities through a system, to be cycled back into and restructure the system itself. I plan to use this model as a framework through which to develop my other projects, as a way to build, test and study this concept.

The link above is a visualization of the BASIC framework. I am very interested in figuring out new ways to design, redesign and study basic innovations...clocks (time is an area that interests me to model). The concept of having a goal, with multiple pathways to achieve that goal... keys (determined by human interaction) that unlock parts of a system.

The model here is based on many theoretical premises...

The foundation of innovation is to establish a counterpoint through which people can connect. Discrete entities cannot connect in the absence of a third party intermediary. This intermediary is a system and can take the form of any counterpoint through which humans can connect, language, art, literature, architecture...etc.

discrete entities represent states that undergo nonlinear transformations to a vocabulary specific to a systems through which it communicates. Vocabularies associated to systems are arbitrary representations of internal states, and thus can be accounted for with binary states...boolean algebra, and probabilities derived from this can be evaluated by a system. This is the interaction and data source that will in turn structure the system.

I am tired.

The code here is a basic framework for my concept. I have a lot more documentation on this subject but haven't found the time to put it in a blog yet. I will write more about it soon...

on windows

2008-02-10T20:17:00.000-08:00

windows. the first thing that comes to mind is uncertainty. we build walls, but are not so sure of them. not sure that they are supposed to be there. a window is a hesitation. an uncertain commitment to something rigid. an acceptance that our walls are not absolute. dissatisfaction with our tools as incomplete, indefinite, representations of our expression. windows make walls movable. open walls up to, and acknowledge the possibility that walls can always be better. if not at that moment, in that circumstance, some other. the vocabulary of windows exists for a reason, a concession, plea, that walls are indefinite.

on walls

2008-01-30T12:21:00.000-08:00

When you build something, you create a channel for human interaction. An interface that allows discrete entities to connect. Walls. People don't talk to walls. People talk to people. Through walls. Architectures embedded with symbols and meaning. Vocabularies. When walls become dynamic transformative structures, what happens to the vocabularies that used to surround them. What new symbols do they express, and meaning do they represent. How do we define, redefine vocabularies. A building facade, a series of nodes, windows. Objects suspended on a two-dimensional grid. Entry points with variables brightness, movement... When a wall becomes a screen, the nodes break free. A new dimension to a structure is added. Where do you draw the line in terms of playing with old meaning, and introducing new. genre film. Using established vocabularies of genre as a starting point, and diverging from there. Short cuts to break free from and surprise. Transformation in media happens all of the time. These conventions have already been addressed, broken, time and time again. It still interests me though what these transformations will look like in architecture, with such an strongly anchored vocabulary.

Speaking of walls and surprise. The other day a member of this class typed his thesis proposal onto my facebook wall. If we were in another time, where facebook didn't exist, and I lived in a wooden shack, I think he probably would have thrown it up on the wall of my shack with a crayon. At least that is what it felt like he was doing. There is meaning attached to the way we move around walls, and talk to people through them. I don't feel this way about other comments on my facebook wall. By that I mean other people wouldn't have written on my shack. Just this person. Everyone moves around walls differently. People make marks on them. You learn about people trhough those marks. SOme walls are more rigid. Some crumble when you touch them. Some walls let you see certain people more than others.

earn your pixels

2008-01-28T05:59:00.001-08:00

first make them
then use them.

xicui entertainment center notes

2008-01-27T08:59:00.000-08:00

some sketches for Xicui entertainment center facade in Beijing. New parameters, an old vocabulary, a new one to define, build stretch. At what point do I start to pull? a wall. delimiter of space. interior, exterior. detached. The facade of a building is a series of nodes. Fixed, suspended in space. Each node grants entry to another dimension. A world within a frame. You cannot get too close, but stand too far and you see nothing but a grain of light. a step behind it is gone. Layering of nodes, x,y,z, fluid, dimension, movement. trapped, a frame, structure. can you step out? light darkness, vision obscured, try to see more but cannot. Step out, in. navigate. move. explore. be curious. ask. step inside.

wooden pivot floor clock - clock design for visually impaired

2008-01-25T12:13:00.000-08:00

When I first began to think about this assignment, I was immediately drawn to objects with time, naturally embedded in their structure. I thought about watches that we carry with us. Biological processes, hunger, thirst, digestion, outdoor sounds...cycles...water evaporation. Cycle of degradation, change. This timeline exists in all things, but often in a way that is not easy to perceive. (too fast, too slow and unable to sense). You could potentially use the oxidation of a copper roof outside your bedroom window as a clock. But, not to tell time in seconds, instead perhaps in years. People use the sun as a way to denote time for a few good reasons it seems. It changes in a way that is perceivable by our natural, un-augmented senses. And cycles in a way that is close to and thus "sets" our own clocks(24.5 hour cycle to 24 of sun). Almost no confusion there. The sun's presence is everywhere, and can be noted as a parameter that is present in the things we design.

I started thinking about how big a role sunlight plays in living spaces. How our houses are designed to tell the time. but what about people who cannot see light? From here I got the idea of a clock that is a panel sits on a pivot on the floor (hopefully for safety reasons would be subtly and seamlessly embedded in architecture). But the model still works as a floor, desk, wrist, wall... clock. The panel pivots in according to what time it is, and subtly steers you to a location in your house where you should be at that time. (that is how the idea came to be, but it works with out those implementations).

A simple square panel, a pivot (ball) on center underside. On upper surface a raised marker to indicate 12.
8 discrete time positions, (edges and corners...but can use distance between floor and edge as a way to precisely tell the times in between).

You can use your body to tell time (stand on clock and "feel time"). Or you can use a blind walking cane to feel the surface, angle of surface to ground according to pivot.

The pivot rotates according to the time of day.
12:00->top edge is flat on ground.
3:00->right edge is flat on ground.
4:30->bottom-right corner is on ground. (with equal space edges adjacent to corner)
1:10->top-right corner is on ground, but adjacent edge space between ground and wooden surface is less between upper edge than on right edge...

My in class idea used the cycle of wet cloth drying to tell the time. I thought that this was an ok solution, but one for very rigid constraints. Hang a wet cloth in the morning on an elastic rope. At earlier times of day when the cloth is wet, when you prick the elastic, it is a higher note...later, cloth dry, lighter, lower note. Problems: higher learning curve, (even though I like the idea of evolving a relationship with objects), maybe not so precise(needs controlled air, temp conditions), uses two variables...tactile "wetness of cloth" but also sound "prick elastic", to broadcast time,...not so necessary or efficient (unless there are more constraints).

simple communication model - v3 - icm final

2008-01-16T20:44:00.000-08:00

CLICK TO WATCH PLAY

Can two humans communicate in the absence of a third party intermediary such as language, art, technology...?
I built this model in order to explore how a reduced system of communication operates. Innovation, a counterpoint for two humans to connect. Project, extend themselves into the world, connect and thus recreate themselves and each other. I want to make things. In order for me to do this, it is important for me to explore the principles behind the way systems operate.

Data derived from simple rules give rise to complex systems.

A structure built with a controlled randomness. Determined by two pixels (can be replaced by two humans), each continuously projecting one of two states (white/black). When both are same, a square is drawn within the system. The system uses the screen size as starting point parameters and then maps onto a cylindrical structure. The starting point parameters are controlled by the probabilistic relationship between two pixels. (simple communication model). Some parameters controlled by this are... square size, location to center axis...(-/+ radius * this dimension), the height of the cylinder is mapped to a sine wave(also controlled by these values), as is the rotation of the structure along the x,y,z axis. Each pixel within the dimension of the screen is reconstructed using this system. The drawing ends when every pixels is reached.

Here are a few screenshots from a piece I just finished. I realize (yesterday my friend Hall pointed this out to me :) ) that in my model of "simple" communication, I ended up with something that is ironically obscure, abstract and difficult to communicate. Nonetheless, it is a process that was helpful for me in understanding a system. And hopefully someone might enjoy one or two of the pictures.

For more about this visualization model, based on reduced, simple communication, see previous entries.

some notes

2007-12-17T09:35:00.000-08:00

Turn things inside out. Scatter contents across the floor. and take each piece, one by one, put it back together, build something break it and do it again. My computer died an hour before my last class and a final presentation a few days ago. I am a bit embarrassed to say this but I am really happy. I want to use this as an opportunity to rethink the way I use it as a tool, where and when I need it, and when I don't. Figure out ways to turn computers inside out and sprinkle the things they do throughout the architecture of the physical world. We don't need these big heavy meaningless objects that waste space. search for places to embed and distribute computation. Here are some of my physical models, sketches of concepts behind my projects. I spend a lot more time with these, exploring first, than I do actually writing the code that often is the final result.

Otar

2007-12-10T07:32:00.000-08:00

Alive and trapped deep inside each and every one of our computers is a character. A character that we cannot see, hear, feel or touch but is nonetheless present to mediate each and every one of our interactions through computers. This character is named Otar. And we have decided to set him free.

For our intro to physical computing final project this semester, Alex Abreu, Amit Snyderman and I decided to make a physical toy that you could play with and use communicate with your friends over facebook. What we ended up with is a narrative communication toy named Otar. If you read on you can learn more about what that means, and the process that went into this creature's creation.

Otar is a fuzzy, squeeze toy that connects to your computer's usb port. When you squeeze, Otar's stories come alive in a desktop widget. (* a screen shot of this is on left.) When you squeeze Otar, you flip through these stories, pick one you like, caption it, and then send it to a friend on facebook. Now, on both your and your friend's profile, you share an Otar flipbook. A story that you have started to build, using Otar's images as a language.

Language is imprecise, vague, imperfect and open to interpretation. Different communication tools have different languages associated with them. Otar is a tool that thrives on imprecise communication, and using narrative to understand and explain our relationships and each other.

Where does the name Otar come from?
Sometimes fun things come from not so fun places. The name Otar comes from the word teratoma. (an integral part of our brainstorming process…I will leave googling the term up to you…and I apologize if you are offended). Otar is your computer's teratoma. We took him out, gave him a name and a story.

The most interesting part about this project for me was creating a system that extends all boundaries of language, age, class, literacy level... As long as you can squeeze, you can play with Otar. This simple, easy to use modular system is extensible to a myriad of possibilities for implementation.

some of the technical behind the Otar
Building Otar involved building and figuring out a bunch of separate technical components and then eventually putting them all together. The front end code is written in Java, the back end is written in Rails, both speak to the facebook API. We use the RXTXcomm with gnu.io to talk to the serial port through Java. A pressure sensor and pump is embedded within Otar to transmit serial data to the arduino(a temporary prototyping solution...eventually to be moved onto a smaller chip). We do the majority of our serial processing off the chip and within Java. The entire squeeze range from resting to max-1 squeeze is mapped over a series of 10 frames of Otar's images. A max squeeze, you will send you to a new, set of 10 sequential frames.

We wanted to make Otar's two (desktop/facebook) GUI's as small as possible. And we had endless deliberations about every pixel that went into each component. Mouse send button? or just enter key? Alex did an amazing job of figuring out how to use, and work with all of the GUI components,and figuring out the poorly documented java facebook api...especially for desktop applications (of which there are very few). Amit is our backend rails and other fun surprises guru, including the hilarious and often dark and twisted images. All are open to your own interpretation of course!

Humans use their bodies to communicate.
Otar is fun. Otar likes to tell stories. Otar likes to share. Otar is not human, but contains human parts. Learn his stories, take parts of them and use them as a tool to rebuild stories of your own.

simple communication model - v2

2007-12-10T07:21:00.000-08:00

How much data can you derive from a this simple system? 2 pixels. 2 states. communication. center panel is a visualization of the interaction between left and right pixel. When both pixels are the same, a pixel of their colour is output. The pixel decreases in size depending on how many times it takes for both to be the same. Behind it is a coloured square. (more of the coloured square is revealed when there is miscommunication).

run the code.

This becomes a visualization model, not only of simple, realized communication, but also missed communication.

This simple probablistic ruleset is being used to reconstruct a panel in my 2d screen. If this ruleset can be extended to the screen, where else can it be applied? What other models can it build?

If you map the 2d screen onto a cylider, you have a new dimension, a new space to work within.

Problems that I have with these images...
1. the colours need to go away. Any colour other than black and white have an arbitrary relationship to the system. They are usefull now in terms of seeing what is going on, but I ultimately need to get rid of them.
2. I'm also struggling with another assumption. I need some parameters that define the "space" within which this system is operating. Right now the starting point parameters is the screen. If I map it to a cylinder that is another decision. It would be interesting if I didn't have to make this decision, and the ruleset would be able to do it for me. These are more things that I am thinking about...

code (won't render because opengl)

narrative meaning presence awareness

2007-12-08T06:58:00.000-08:00

How and where are these themes embedded in systems of communication? How, where and why do they manifest in physical objects? Basketball nets. Simple pure objects. Points of connection. Interaction. With their own language, dialog and narratives that surround them. The design of this object plays a significant role in this, basketball nets alter a landscape, and remain when the game is over, they are raised above eye level, accessible but out of reach, pressed against the constant sky as a backdrop. No matter where you are in the world. I became fascinated with this in China, baskteball nets at the shaolin temple, in courtyards of mansions in Shanghai's french concession... The narrative that surround these objects persist, even when play is over. And no matter where you are in the world, these objects hold as entry points to those narratives.

simple communication model - v1

2007-12-05T21:44:00.000-08:00

the black white parody. technology as a mediator for communication. how do 2 distinct entities communicate? I decided to reduce this down to a model that expresses the bare minimum of communication. Two objects (pixel 1 and pixel 2), two states (white and black). How do they know if they are the same? In order for this communication to happen, there needs to be some 3rd party system. one with physical, perceivable symbols, semantics and a way to sense and express those. So last night I made a mini model to visualize this system. The 3rd party intermediary (center panel). A counterpoint for both entities on each side. The program continuously randomly generates a black or white state for each pixel, checks to see if the pixel colours are the same, and if they are draws a pixel of the shared color. If they are not, nothing is drawn. The end result is a pixel map of "realized" communication. Right now, the pixels values on each side are being generated randomly. But you could insert humans into this system and get the same result. is it possible for two people to communicate without this 3rd party? whether that be language, oral, written, art, technology?... do we ever truly know each other? HERE IS A LINK

embedding content in existing material

2007-11-16T07:29:00.000-08:00

A sensation of some aspect of the physical world is a key. This key is a segue to some other dimension of content (in your brain) contained within and stimulated by that key. Material in the physical world is finite. Each sensation of this material (i.e. sight, touch, scent, auditory) via pattern recognition is finite. The possibilities for sensation combinations, patterns, subsets of existing material is infinite.

Cameras are sensors that are becoming as ubiquitous as eyes. They fit in our pockets, embedded in phones, computers. And even more as they can go places where our eyes cannot. Cameras are extensions of our physical bodies. The camera is a new sensory tool.

Cameras can sense and quantify patterns, keys from the physical world. They function in a way that is inherently different from the human eye. It is important to view the camera, not as a surrogate for eyes, but instead as its own sensor. One that sees things differently. Instead of trying to create software to use cameras to mimic the way humans see, how can we build software to use cameras as a tool to help us use our eyes differently?

The quantifiable sensations of cameras can be used as keys to segue from physical world material to a new realm of content. This content can exist within the infinite space of the digital world. So...the eyes are to the brain as the camera is to the computer/internet.

As cameras become increasingly ubiquitous, how will this reshape the material of the physical world? The physical spaces inhabited by humans are built as extensions of our senses. We construct our world to smell, hear, taste, touch,see...but cameras are now a part of the human. Will we start building things for cameras? How and where can we construct, change, reshape our space as a place for the human plus camera? Where can we use cameras to help us gain access to content that is otherwise invisible to the naked eye?

There are an infinite number of applications for this principle. Some ideas that I was toying around with this week for my softness assignment...what if you established a database of quantifiable patterns, and an algorithm to scan through an image to find patterns in a database. Lets say I have a picture of my friends in front of a brick wall. And some company decided to codify the values of the brick wall within a database, so every time a photo was input that contained their designated brick wall value...that would be a pass-key into some other form of content. A way to embed branding within physical world materials...a scary thought. Things to keep in mind. Even though code is precise, this process does not have to be precise. This degree of imprecision, inaccuracy in pattern recognition is a valuable tool. Along these lines, I began to think of instances where the visual material is already bound, controlled and quantifiable. The first thing that came to mind was frames in a movie at a theater. What if a movie was released where you were encouraged to go in to the movie with your digital camera to take pictures of the screen. Then later on, if you ran those photos of the frames through the database, you could access via those images (which are keys)...another dimension of content. What if you do this with paintings at a museum? A digital image of a painting could be a passkey to some other dimension of that artwork.

Yesterday before class I was lucky enough to visit "Material Connexion"...an amazing library of materials. I say lucky because they don't let you in unless you have a pricey membership...but since our topic for Softness this week was "materials" our professor Despina arranged for us to go...many many thanks. At the material connection, I saw material by a company called Microtrace that made me think of these things. It is a company that sells microscopic id tags embedded in paints, dyes, resins... that you can mix with your product's material to give it a unique code. Then you need a reader to detect the code...(microscope, uv light...why not a CAMERA?...)... All of the codes are kept in their database. I'm sure you can imagine the context under which such a material was developed...(and same for pretty much all materials I would think)...the military. But it is used now throughout many industries for brand security. visit their site if interested www.microtracesolutions.com. After leaving Material Connexion...I had 3 hours to do my project for the week. It was actually quite fun because I had spent a lot of time thinking about it and I knew exactly how I would model the concept. here are some images...and the concept overview.
Went to the pharmacy, bought a white t-shirt and some colourful thread. Took some photos of the thread and then got bounds of their normalized RGB values. Started with one colour...and wrote a program that would scan through a video to check if that colour existed. Then I did the same for another colour thread. Then I sewed two tiny square boxes of each colour side by side as a "pattern" on a shirt. Then I had my program alert me when the "pattern" was recognized. So every time the video tracked one colour with the other one in a pixel near (through a threshold)...it would alert you on the screen by saying "you are SOOO cool". This is a pretty simple model of this concept, but I plan on exploring it further...

interaction cybernetic loop illustrated through art as innovation

2007-11-09T20:53:00.000-08:00

here is the link to my presentation notes

ergonomics and digital photography

2007-10-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

this week's assignment was ergonomics. The human experience is described by perceiving and evaluating change. Relationships, differences between one sensory perception and the next. I have been interested in playing with the idea of building a space where change is incorporated into the process of making. A more human, ergonomic approach to innovation, maybe... The core of this idea came from a past ICM project. I became interested in the relationship between the viewer and and the screen. And how and why you could take a static 2d image, and by extending lines from it into space (locked to your mouse)...you could create a focal point. Just this slight amount of extra information, you could perceive an entire 180degree perspective on a 2d plane I then started to think about what other information would you need to give a 2d object 360degrees of dimension. From there I built a cylinder that would read in a 2d image, and map the pixels to the surface of the cylinder. my 2d image input was video. Then I made the object on screen dynamic according to the light that was coming in from the video camera. So the video image would not only map to the 3d cylinder but from there onto some other position in space. At this point though, the image was still a video of me, my hands and what ever was present in front of the camera at that moment. This was cool for a second, because I had achieved my initial programming goal. However, it got boring really quickly, and I got really sad that I had made something very uninteresting. I spoke to my classmate...(and krony) Alex about my work. He pretty much affirmed that nothing about this was ergonomic, and that making an image of yourself more 3d on screen is not interesting, but he encouraged me not to get frustrated and to keep plugging away. So I kept at it, and thought about what I was doing, and what I liked and disliked about it. I played around with my code, experimented a bit and started to realize that the most interesting part about this was the aliveness of the object on screen as something that responded, adapted form immediately to my physical environment. I began to ignore the projected video, and focus on the form. From here I went back to the theme of ergonomics. I became interested in the idea of how the physical environment could interact something inside a computer. How the image on screen could respond to light, so immediately that by moving my hands in front of the camera, I could virtually sculpt what was on my screen. The object on screen suddenly felt very alive. I decided to instead map something else onto the form, instead of the video image, I decided used first, plain colour bitmaps, and then I started to project my digital photos onto the cylinder body. I continued to read in video, using those reads to transmit sensory information about my physical environment but only as a means to transform a digital image. I realized at this point that I was playing, sculpting, morphing my digital photos on screen. This started to become really fun. I played around with the code some more, played with the sensitivity to light, immediacy of response. I began to look through my digital photos on my computer, and choosing ones to put into my project. I would let them spin around the cylinder, interact with the camera, light...and once I had them in a position I found interesting I would take a screen shot. My favourites were the ones of faces. More specifically there was something cool about taking some of my pictures of people in rural china and sculpting them into this system. I am interested in playing more with this. figuring out how to export vector formats and maybe printing them. Here are some stills of the project. Here is source code...still needs to be commented...sorry...link

organic forms in urban landscape

2007-10-19T06:33:00.000-07:00

Every day on my walk to ITP, I try and take a different route. Today at Bowery I turned left onto Bond. A building that had been under construction for a while was now complete, as indicated to me by a doorman guarding the entrance. As I gazed into the mirrored facade, an image of the past was reflected on the new. Organic, dynamic, emerging from foundations of the past. The new building pressed up against the old. Where are they different? Where are they the same? The structures, though stark in contrast, do not forget their ancestors. Those who brought them to life, and live within it. Alive on their own, bound to respective times and spaces, are allied by humanity.

What is interesting to me right now is relationships. Changes of state. between old and new. The stark juxtaposition between two distinct times, pressed up against each other to share a space. As humans we operate on changes of state. What comes to mind is something that Vik Muniz said in Red's lecture a few weeks ago. When the eye sees, it sees change. When examining a painting that is a static image, you approach from afar, adjust your footsteps to find an agreeable view point, constant slight changes. Flickers. This can apply to sound as well. You cannot freeze a sound. When we hear, we hear change, a fragment of a wave from one state to another. An isolated point on this wave is nothingness. We need two things, we need a relationship.

How can you describe this relationship. It is an interesting space. The intersection of one space and another. Most often this space is so subtle, it goes unnoticed. But it is when a gab is more prominent, that we are most challenged, forced to see, prompted to grow, able to understand. What does change look like? How can it help us understand.

beautiful ironic awkward decay...understanding in progress...notes...

2007-10-17T20:52:00.000-07:00

here are some of my thoughts from the past few weeks. on space, energy, waste, advertising, the internet. they are in note form. **on the left are images of an advertisement that I noticed the other day on my way to itp. An allegory to the things I have been thinking of. The advertisement lives. Posters pasted to, decaying, scratched, alive and dying in the physical world. On walls. walls that I could walk by, touch. Texture, of a new world explicitly superimposed onto an old one. An ironic, awkward display that is very meaningful to me.

The content of the ad is some AT&T thing that you can send a text message and they will send you back some graphical representation your "virtual space". A pretty useless concept, but for me at that moment, the experience of it's execution was very powerful.

*********link to pdf on advertising/waste/diagrams************

from modules to connectors to networks to energy. things are starting to come together. This week, our assignment was to think about energy. It lead me to a lot of different things, a challenge to put them all together, but a challenge that is important to face.

Innovation: humanity reaching, extending, abstracting, physical body and mind through time and space. This action is reciprocal, for every time we build, we rebuild some piece of our self. Innovation is a form of communication. Communication amongst human minds and bodies together. Energy flows through the pathways built by innovation. It is our goal to energize, and in order to do this we build, and connect and continue. Humans are efficient, dynamic, adaptive, continuously evaluating and then re-evaluating our spaces, our constraints and our connections. We build connections, innovate, discover and then enter new spaces.

Humans are inherently efficient. We have a tendency towards order, path of least resistance. Waste results from inefficiencies in technology...constraints... I don't think it is attached to or dependent on any form of subjective morality. i.e. I don't think you can point fingers and say that X is bad because they are polluting Y, or you are bad because you use too many paper coffee cups. All of our waste is interconnected. Ingrained within our every day processes. All things consumed and produced generate some degree of waste. It is comparable to electrical resistance value inherent to a physical substance. We are always looking for the path with the least resistance. This tendency is not moral, it is inherent to humanity, it essential to survival (and gives some hope that maybe we won't destroy our world and our selves). We don't waste because we are bad people, we are neither bad nor good. We are efficient. We will use paper cups as long as it is more efficient to do that. We are constantly making computations that evaluate risk in terms of cost/benefit of a situation. And we choose path of least resistance. We will keep using oil until it is more efficient to use some alternate energy source.

This week while thinking about energy, I became interested in "intangible" waste as opposed to "tangible" waste. Even though both are in many ways connected, I was focusing mainly on waste that occurs as a direct result of bad design. For me, bad design occurs when an innovation is not connected to humanity. i.e. the reciprocal cycle of innovation and recreation of humanity is one of high resistance (over time that the product began it's inception, throughout time consumed, until it is destroyed).maybe this is a simple equation...

ENERGY CREATED/INNOVATION LIFE = RESISTANCE

(high resistance = bad design, low resistance = good design). In many instances it is hard to measure the ENERGY CREATED value, because that energy can exist in tangible and intangible forms. If a product does not connect with humanity at some point in it's life cycle, whether it be physical or psychological, it will generate waste.

Examples of this are everywhere. The most classic example is of the artist or innovator who struggles their entire lifetime (expends all of their energy) to work on some concept that at that time is unable to reconnect with humanity. If time stops here and all of the artist's work is destroyed upon their death, including all impressions, influences of that person passed through to other people, then this cycle is of high resistance. But if the work persists through time, resistance decreases. *(art can transcend time in forms that are not necessarily physical...memory...influence on other ideas...cause/effect...enter new spaces...).

Once technology is available, innovations are in place for communication pathways exist to enable energy to flow more efficiently, waste will be reduced. The ultimate goal of humanity is efficient flow of energy. Waste is everywhere and exists in many forms. A form of waste that I was thinking about a lot this week was

ADVERTISING

Advertising is a construct of the rise of consumerism in the physical world. It is inherently linked to the technological constraints of the physical world.
- Companies started to be able to manufacture things that a greater number of people could afford. A growing middle class, and lowering manufacturing costs occur congruently. It is at this point that people began to realize that you could create a demand...i.e. make a connection with a consumer where one did not previously exist. So you can sell things that are not directly related to some literal human "need", i.e. A t-shirt is a direct extension of the human body. It serve to protect, shelter, keep warm...an extra skin.
A designer t-shirt not only connects with the human on the realm of the physical body, but connects with humans on a psychological realm, that is indirect, and difficult to quantify.

This concept, that humans can connect to a product on some psychological realm that may have nothing to do with actual product is the foundation of advertising. The ability of the human mind to form connections, and extend time/space, is so powerful and significant that it can be used within the physical world to supplement, compensate and even outweigh things that are otherwise constrained by physical limitations. A physical limitation is an inability to form a connection with humanity. So, even if a product is "good", it will be wasteful if it doesn't connect with people. These limitations often stem from boundaries inherent to physical space.
SPACE IS CHANGING.
The internet is changing our space.
The internet is a virtual space, uninhibited by limitations in the physical world.
The physical world is a space, constrained by it's own set of boundaries and limitations.
There is an intersection between the physical world and the internet. Where a new space is formed. I am extremely interested in exploring where this intersection, this new space. Exploring it's constraints and figuring out how to build within it.

Back to ADVERTISING

The reason I have become interested in advertising is because it is a word that is thrown around in order to describe ways to quantify the intersection of physical and virtual space. Everyone talks about "ADVERTISING" as a way to monetize virtual space.
As I mentioned before, advertising is a construct of the limitations of the physical world.
The internet alleviates these constraints. The internet is evolving in such a way (with facebook most notably) as a platform form organic connections. These connections begin with human2human connections and extend from there. And it is the connections that we form ourselves that are the most useful, efficient and powerful.

So what role, if any, does advertising play in this new space?

As I walk down Broadway I see so much waste, huge stores with all of this junk in them and no people to connect it to. Yes people do buy things, and there are ways to distribute prices, put things on sale...but it still creates surplus and waste. The internet provides the means to connect people with products in ways that are more efficient. The physical world will be transformed. Brick and mortar collapsing. But what are we going to do with all of this new space???
maybe house people... new spaces and extensions of...environments to connect. in a world of increasing technology and communication, what is the future of art? If art is a form of communication, will it be lost as innovation leads to transparent communication. Is it obsolete? or is are sacred, ubiquitous, invulnerable and inevitable? What will it look like? How will art be produced, consumed, valued? What new, abstract spaces, environments will this lead to? Mike Nelson: a Psychic Vacuum. Developing physical environment that transcend time and space. Let humans connect, feel, actively explore and tell stories.

umbrellas and changing colour shoes

2007-10-15T18:23:00.001-07:00

the pComp mid term. our group has been working on getting an umbrella to translate rain drops into tones. We are connecting 6 piezo mics to the umbrella surface, when a mic is activated, we read in the signal and generate a square wave. Right now we are using the arduino to generate a tone, by increasing the frequency of the square wave. I've gotta say it sounds pretty awful. We've had some challenges. Volume control is one of them. We also want to be able to generate multiple tones so that they are additive, overlapping. The sound is still going to be pretty limited, but we are also considering hooking up pipes and solenoids, kind of like a wind chime, so that when a mic is activated, it activates it's corresponding solenoid which "bings" on it's corresponding metal pipe chime. Not sure yet if we are going to switch gears to this yet. We are still in testing faze. Here is a pic of some umbrella research and progress. I have also been working on another pcomp project from another class. This one also uses a piezo mic as a sensor except it works with colour changing shoes. Today I helped work on the code, determining when in relationship to time intervals and time between steps (speed) to determine resting rates and when to turn the shoe on. I like sneakers so this is a fun project.

ICM_06

2007-10-15T11:28:00.000-07:00

This week in ICM I have been playing around with ways to interpret 2d images, taking them, and mapping them in 3d space. I built a structure that reverts back to the zoetrope. I want to eventually use this structure to build and interpret forms, hook to camera, create responsive series of images...As of now if you click the links below, you can maybe see the potential of the functionality. but as of now I haven't built anything pretty.

***faze 1***

***faze 2...will prob crash your browser***

building a network

2007-10-03T13:16:00.001-07:00

This week in Softness, our group assignment was to build a network. Coming up with an idea was an interesting process. What makes something a network? Does it have to be more than one thing? What is the smallest network? the biggest? What about networks that grow, regenerate? How does a network help define, or redefine the space upon which it operates? side thought...The most valuable component of the information on the internet for instance is not data itself, but it's relationship and connections to other data.

We wanted to figure out how to make a network physical, networks are often built on intangible connections. Over the last few weeks at ITP, I have quickly realized that in order to understand something and learn about it, it often helps to build it and have it exist within a space that you can relate to. Even if you are doing it on a small scale, it really helps to make something that can identify with on a physical human scale. ***It is easy for an idea to stay in it's conceptual form, in your mind. However only when you make that idea real, does it address some aspect of humanity...as humanity itself is dependent on the inherent relationship between mind and body...blablablaaah

We decided to write down all of the flights we had taken, compile the data, buy a globe, put pins in all of the places (nodes), paint it white (first we labeled it with tape), then we removed the tape and connected the nodes with strings, each string represents a flight. Some cities are more densely connected than otheres
Throughout the process we talked about using conductive thread, LEDs and Sound, but then we realized that by adding these things didn't really add to the initial concept. Or provide more significant information.

The most important thing that this project made me think about was how a network helps to define or redefine a space. In this case, we chose to paint the globe white so that you are no longer looking at colours, words on a map or lines that stand for borders. The world is being transformed by new connections, overlayed with new networks, defined and redefined. You are looking at a network of connections that forms a new space, transforms the globe. It is a new way of looking at information and gathering data and a new way to see the world. literally.

An interesting comment that Liz made that stuck in my mind was when she mentioned how when she returned home to Ohio, a lot of her friends there hadn't had similar experiences to her in terms of places she had traveled. An inherent quality of a network is that you are either a part of it, or you are not. When you look at our globe, you can get a sense of whether you are a part of, or you are alienated from the network.

oh yeah...and we also thought of getting a bunch of string, tying it all together and giving every one in class an end and making everyone find the other end of their string...("you're welcome" for not doing that :) hehe).

ICM_04

2007-10-02T07:42:00.000-07:00

This is a program that I wrote for processing. It reads in a 2d image and stores the x and y values of the pixels it reads in an array. Then it redraws the array of black pixels, starting from their x, y point of origin to a vanishing point according to x,y position of mouse and a z position in space. In some of these images I have a semi-transparent plane in space to designate the "back side" of an image. This process involves looking at a 2 dimensional input, examining it from a 2dimensional perspective (the user's mouse navigates x,y plane...z position is fixed). THis allows a viewer to view in a 3d space, more specifically within a range of 180degrees. ***what more information needs to be added to complete the 360degree range? ...maybe instead of seeing screen as a square, see it as a continuous circle.hhmmm. ok...but what's the point. lately I have been interested in the principle that human senses perceive change as opposed to static input...i.e. you cannot hear a fixed sound, to hear sound you hear change in sound (you cannot freeze it)...An image on the other hand seems as though you can freeze it, but the other week when I heard the artist Viktor Muniz speak, he said something about the eye perceiving movement. he used the example of the way a person sees a painting at a museum...by approaching at it from different angles, and eventually getting to the right position for the eye, and then moving in and out. the eyes are constantly moving and evaluating input in fragments that are pieced together by the brain. humans perceive change. a point and direction, but not one without the other. would be interesting to create within a space that is not fixed, but instead one that encompasses this principle. consistent change, points and directions...like the way people work.

me and alejandro decided...

2007-09-27T17:10:00.000-07:00

Our world is made of spaces.

<-here is an example of two spaces

spaces interact with other spaces, forming new spaces.

Constraints. A space can be defined as a subset of constraints. Constraints help to define a space, rules, boundaries, walls. Innovation is navigating constraints. Abstracting rules, and boundaries so that you can interact with, exist, use a space.

<- this is a human.
A human is a space.

<-this is a human with their physical and virtual space. Notice there is a space where the two intersect.

<-this a a diagram of two humans with their respective virtual and physical spaces. Notice the space where those worlds intersect.

<-lets bring those humans closer together, increasing the strength of their connection. connection

<- This defines a new space.

Lets build for this space.

ICM_03

2007-09-27T08:48:00.000-07:00

Here's some work on reading in images and imposing movement. I want to continue with this process. Code was running really slow. will continue and optimize methods for next week. Not sure yet where I'm going with this yet but want to explore movement, vectors in static images. here you can see the process...the more colourful image goes through every 3 pixels and draws a line through space. The other one goes to every 15 pixel. The colour depends on the colour value read in from the input image.

making cows explode

2007-09-25T07:03:00.000-07:00

This week for pComp I worked with Amy and Alex. We made a cow explode. In flash of course. We started with a pressure sensor, which we attached to one of those baby snot suckers, plugged it into an arduino that we programed to read the voltage difference from the sensor. That data was then transmitted to flash. Hard to get it working on my mac at first, but after installing some files in the right place it worked. Flash read in the value, and we got the cow to swell and shrink in direct relationship to squeeze of the pump. Analog reading, very cool. Still need to work on making it into a game. Hopefully get two pumps and two cows going at the same time. But it was fun. Then on the way to school I saw a full size cow. She was looking at me as if it knew what I was up to. So I took her picture.

<-list of applications for the sensor chip. I was disconcerted to see that blowing up cows was not named.

<-the booger pump action

making a module

2007-09-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

so this was a tough one. thinking, rethinking, simplifying, oversimplifying. binary, polar, yeses and nos. why don't I make a module of everything, that does nothing. after lots of playing with new tools, finding some aluminum and building little sculptures...(pictured below). I knew I wanted my module to be contained. a closed environment, with a lifespan of it's own. yesterday I was talking to Jason at ITP (shout out for idea)...and he was playing with a little metal ball/building a switch with a pen, when he said..."I want to make a switch with a ball". and then it clicked. my closed enironemnt "module" could have a metal ball in it. The user interacts with the module by aligning the metal ball in a way to close the circuit, and turn on the light contained in the box. I went to the store and bought some acrylic to make a box. Before I was working with a soft plastic sphere. I don't like round things. The box was much better. I even got this insanely powerful plastic glue called methylene chloride. it is intense and worked wonders after a few initial blunders. actually breaks down the chemical properties in the plastic and then rebuilds as a whole. very effective. I wonder what it does to the inside of my lungs. just kidding. so I spent way too much time working on the power source. a AAA battery suspended with coils inside a pill container glued to the inside of the box. Some colourful acrylic pieces to reflect light/turn the module into a more challenging interactive game. I spent way too much time on the battery thing. need to rethink the design, it sucks and is probably breaking as I write this. I also had problems finding a metal ball, started as you can see in the pics with an acrylic one, drilled a hole in it and started to wrap wire around it. That didn't work. Then I woke up today and went to an old electronics/computer store on my block, and the people were very nice and gave me an old mouse. i took the ball out of that and removed the wire for use. I also would like to build it again, without additional plastic, wires, just a simple ball, light, battery in a clear box. keep it simple. I will soon seal the box and the module will start it's life, be used and one day die, then it will just be a box.

ICM_02_theProcess

2007-09-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

Computer art software/tools are for the most part locked into the process of simulating fine art mediums in the physical world. The pen tool, the brush tool... With computers, we are working within a new set of boundaries. Let's invent our own tools, adjust their properties and then use them, in a limitless space. The relationship between the artist and their piece is no longer bound by physical space. Can navigate dimension, light, perspective. Hand eye coordination is no longer a limitation.
This is just a first step in series, but the lower image is 2d, then gets to 3d, then i took last weeks work and used that as a tool(replaced it with the pink box).endless possibilities. excited to make it more usable. oooooooooooo those cuhlas are oooogly

alSculptures

2007-09-15T16:46:00.000-07:00

aChronicle

2007-09-13T06:05:00.000-07:00

A small, black, hand transcribed book chronicling the night from 8pm to 4am of Saturday, September 8th in the year 2007. Flipping through the book either from beginning to end or jumping from page to page tells a story. Each page has a message, a text message, a piece of communication sent by one of you to someone else within the real world from a cellphone.

This is a document of that message, that moment. Physical. It it tells a story, a version of one, a history, pertaining to an isolated moment in time. From here each page is open. Open as an finite piece of space. You can add to that space, build on it, by drawing lines. A new dimension. Every person who opens the book can add to a page. A drawing of their impression of the text, instant, visceral and more complete.

The consumer is also the producer. Technology is the means to bridge this gap. This project addresses the fundamental human desire to document themselves, store knowledge. Extend some version of the physical self onto the world. It takes a traditional book, and uses technology to change the way that it is made. The experience of the book is augmented, changed. Text messaging is a new language. A shift in communication. A different use of language, somewhere between oral, and literal. incorection of the gramaticallly. This project preserves the traditional design of a book, and the variable is hidden within this form.

***Thanks to all who participated!

spiderman sighting

2007-09-11T20:28:00.000-07:00

the streets are safe. phew.

UESUESUES

2007-09-11T05:19:00.000-07:00

The best flattery.

imitation.
limitationLESs

congrats NC

ICM_01_theProcess

2007-09-10T14:39:00.001-07:00

10002 my new jia

2007-09-10T12:35:00.001-07:00

pCompLab1

2007-09-10T12:35:00.000-07:00

pComp lab. What are all of these little things. They look like bugs. I hope they are not alive. Lets make them alive. The red solderer sucks. After 2 hours spent thinking I was the worst solderer in the world, stubbornly determined to succeed I realized. Then I got a good one. buttons are fun. Especially when they make things happen. instant feedback. rewarding. I like. The on off switch in step 2 vs. the step 3...digital vs. analog? accounts for "infinite?" points in range between off and on? Aaah saturday.

2007-06-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

2007-06-25T19:32:00.000-07:00

because I like kicks

2007-06-18T06:41:00.000-07:00

today I got to play with a dog for the first time in 5 months. it stole my basketball outside my apartment. and then it had to take a shower. the basketball that is. golden retrievers smell a lot worse in china than they do at home. I chatted with the dog's owner for a bit. Trying to guess what he was saying because it is uncool to speak anything other than Shanghaihua. It's a turf thing. I also "wan wan"ed with my Shanghainese friend Kura. We went bowling and ate pizza. apparently I'm lihai. The bowling alley was near the football stadium and was packed, even though it was 1pm. The guy bowling next to us was drinking a white russian. He had most Xs and few /s. I explained that it was a reference to a guy named "the dude" in classic american cinema. Kura found the reference funny which, with anyone else would be very surprising except Kura has 5 sisters and a brother. He calls himself stupid and lazy and communicates very well in english, a vernacular interlaced with onomatopoeias, much like a comic book character. His Mom trades football players and his Dad is a ship captain so he has traveled quite a bit outside China. very rare. He talks to me about country people, animation, chinese jails and how he didn't fail out of art school this semester because his aunt is some "high up" woman who made his school change his grades.

over cereal, soy milk and japanese cardboard flavored tea. Talia and I read the times on our powerbooks at 6:30 every morning. our senses of humour have become depraved to say the least. living here and reading about how china is poisoning the world through toothpaste.

here are some cut outs from an article that I read in the new york times last week about china and the death penalty. yes these clippings are out of context. go and find the article if you want.

on the death penalty in China...“The Olympics is not the only reason,” Mr. Kamm said in a telephone interview Friday from Hong Kong. “When you execute somebody wrongly, and a lot of people have been executed wrongly, you are going to make a lot of people unhappy.”

a classic "if...and...,then..."

“The lower courts have to be more prudent now,” Mr. Ni said. “If a case is sent back for a retrial by the highest court, it not only means the first judgment is wrong, but also a matter of shame for the lower court.”

when the olympics and death penalty share a sentence. competition is fierce.
差不多差不多差不多。。。that's about all I have to say.

brother squares lines and a really fast train

2007-06-18T06:30:00.000-07:00

is the grass more green in outer space?

2007-05-01T18:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, wu yi kuai le! Finally made it over to the other side of the river. What I had heard was a clean, civil, sparse Pudong was packed with people, travellers from all over China, many of whom were seeing Shanghai for the very first time for the Labour Day festival. It was insanity. Photographers everywhere trying to sell you a picture of yourself in front of the pearl tower. Talia and I found this very puzzling at first. We soon realized that most of the travellers from the middle of China can't afford a digital camera. A quick snap from a photographer at the Pearl Tower is a definite cost effective way to document your trip to outerspace. Because trully that is what it must be like for many people. A trip to outerspace. Imagine going all the way there with your life savings only to you return home to discover that your picture didn't come out. In Pudong that can be avoided. I also saw a woman throw herself in front of a van while holding a baby. It all happened very quickly but I knew right away that she did this on purpose in order to extort money from the driver. A few weeks ago I watched a Shanghainese movie called The postmodern life of my Aunt. There was a scene in the movie where a woman bought a vase and then threw herself in front of a car so that the vase broke and then tried to get the driver to pay for the vase (or her inflated price of it). Yesterday this woman's foot became jammed under the front wheel of the van, the driver would not budge while people swarmed around, yelling at him to back up. Thankfully the baby was fine, did not even make a peep. And the driver also was unfazed. I was not. horrified to say small things.

Back on my side of the river there is grass and also pandas.

why didn't my pre-school have swords?

2007-04-21T06:23:00.000-07:00

Not even the wildest imagination can do China justice. Things here are consistently beyond the realm of the conceivable boundaries...or whatever I understand my imagination to be. Whenever I expect something to be a certain way, even if I am pushing limits, boundaries are broken. I am consistently baffled. Baffled is not even the word. There are no words, no categories no communication tools that I know of to explain this. But it is nice to know that things like this are out there. Challenging me over and over again to restructure the way I think, understand and see the world. And it just keeps happening. Over and over again.

This is my trip to Henan province. I traveled here yi ge ren for 4 days. The center of China. No English. Fighting to communicate at every moment. Stories and adventures. They will come in time but first there were little red dots.

Thousands of them. Stretching beyond infinity across the vast landscape of Shaolin. Order and chaos aligned. Questions and solutions. Pain and sheer simple joy.

The first day I woke up at 5, did Kung Fu training, climbed a mountain and discovered a small Kung Fu school. They welcomed me. I bought them a basketball because there's was broken. We played and then I watched them train. The bigger school where I was staying was more regimented and intimidating. I think they only sleep for 2 naps a day between 2-5am and 12-3pm. A 7 hour hike that I thought might never end. It finally did in a parking lot, 30km away from where I needed to be, a fight in Chinese with illegal taxi drivers, roads under construction, dinner with kung fu coaches. Dodging 3 year olds with swords in the dark. The army never stopped. where/when do they sleep. I'm really not sure.

Laughter. Frustration. China treads a fine line. The train ride home was 11 hours. I waited until the last minute to book my ticket and when I got to the station in Kaifeng, there were no seats or sleepers left. I was forced to buy a standing ticket. Without a clue what that meant, I nervously boarded the train. Exhausted from my trip and expecting to be shoved into a cattle car to stand for the whole journey. This could have easily been the case, but once again my imagination was wrong.

A ticket to one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. My standing ticket meant tht I stood in the aisle of the train, between seats. Between people of all ages, speaking various dialects from somewhere near heart of China, all travelling east, all staring at the funny looking white girl. Trains are really nice in china. This car had about 10 small LCD screens and was playing some cheesy kung fu flick. I stood in the isle, sweating and exhausted while I had to move myself and my bag out of the way every 30seconds to let the food cart, or some person on their way to or from putting steaming hot water into their cup of ramen. As I stood there, the end of the movie was playing. And I have never in my life seen people so utterly captivated in anything in my life. This was clearly a cheesy, amateurish Kung Fu comedy. And when I looked around everyone from the three year old jumping in her seat, to the 80 year old man with his slippers on, to the jaded teenagers, to the migrant workers with big swollen fingers, to the quiet student off to visit his girlfriend. Everyone was completely enthralled and laughing hilariously outloud for the entire time. Never in my life have I seen an audience so captivated. So simple and shocking.

In the world that I was born, there is no such movie, or anything else for that matter, that could so effectively grasp the attention of so many people and cause them all to laugh. A big real loud hysterical laugh. This was China.

writer's block

2007-04-06T02:46:00.000-07:00

up by Baoshan lu is a block that honors famous Chinese writers. And these two women hold it down. lots of statues, cool things to look at old people to talk to with birds. David (my friend from Argentina) and I explored and he also held and tried to steal a really fat baby. We bought these tiny comic books with amazing pictures from the revolution, they are really old and some have library cards. The ones we bought seem, from the pictures, as attempts at capturing aspects of western culture and history. I am interested in being able to one day decipher the interpretation. till then it is fun to make believe.

I am so good at making pancakes it is stupid

2007-04-06T02:25:00.000-07:00

no really. I am the best pancake maker in the world, and I don't mean to brag, but I really am. It is like those kids that grow up playing basketball on court where the left hand side is all rocky and then when they get to a good court they have a really good left hand... That was me with pancakes. Chinese kitchens are not made for brunch, but by the 40th pancake I was a golden brown flipping machine. This was one of my best days in Shanghai. I had all of my students over to my apartment for brunch (BReakfast + lUNCH = BRUNCH I explained) the Sunday after we finished our final class. I cannot begin to tell you how warm and welcoming this group of people were to me during my first 6 weeks here. I began teaching every sunday 5 days after I arrived and every class they took me out and showed me a new type of food and showed earnest interest and appreciation for everything I taught them. They brought me flowers, a wooden musical box, and then one of the older students, who I called Boss...brought me a beautiful Chinese Tea Set. Even though I do make the best pancakes in the world, I don't think they really liked them. Chinese people really only do like Chinese Food. But Talia likes them and so did Lynn and Veronica (who came over and sampled and hung out as well). Oh and by the way...they made me take more awkward pictures than my Mom & Zaida combined...

suzhou

2007-04-06T01:55:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, Joe's friend from school named Eugene invited me to accompany him and his friends Angel and Jade to Suzhou to visit I.M. Pei's new museum. I met them in the morning at Angel's apartment, met her family and her adorable son Aiden, who according to his mother speaks Aidenese, his own dialect of English, Mandarin and maybe a little Shanghaihua thrown in there too. I was really impressed and wanted him to tutor me/steal his flash cards so that I could learn my fruits and veggies...but I didn't because he was 3 and it's not nice to steal from babies, even in China. We drove to Suzhou...went to the IM Pei museum first. The street lamps in Suzhou are amazing by the way. The museum was incredible. A look at what I think may be a foundation of Chinese aesthetic, in its most pure form. Stripped down to its core, with nothing to embelish or distract. The space captures a feeling. A very refreshing sentiment compared to an overwhelming Shanghai. Then we went accross the street for noodles. They laughed at me because I ate very slowly. Then we went to a Humble Administrator's garden and according to Eugene he must not have been very humble.

faces and places

2007-03-16T19:30:00.001-07:00

Falling in and out of this alternate reality, what was once seemed safe and real has become a mere illusion. Speaking of illusions, Suzhou. IM Pei made walls that make beautiful shapes.

Vincent Van Gogh

2007-03-16T19:21:00.000-07:00

On Sunday mornings I wake up at 6:45, trudge to the subway, ride it to chifeng lu (fight to avoid falling asleep and missing my stop) and then take a taxi from the train to New Oriental English School to teach 13 Chinese students English for 4 hours.
2 weeks ago, two new students joined my class. One of them was a man named Tany, and the other a girl named Vincent. (Yes, Vincent, Yes, a girl.) It takes some training but after being here for a certain amount of time, you learn to believe your ears. At this point I started to wish that the night before I had not printed out 13 copies of the lyrics to the Johnny Cash song "A boy named Sue." Unfortunately that was not the case.

We sang, we cursed, we laughed, all in oblivion and fortunately for me, Vincent thing never came up.

The next week in class, we practiced casual conversations (the kind you would have with some one you meet for the first time). As the class practiced with each other, I made my way to the back of the class to find out a little bit more about Vincent. At this point, I couldn't tell if she was really young or really old... odd yes, but sometimes that happens. So I went up to her and prompted a "mock" casual conversation. I extended my hand "Hi, my name is Taylor, what is your name?" She replied "Vincent, nice to meet you..." She then told me that she was a high school student, age 17 and even though she is by far the youngest in the class, her English is one of the best. Something about Vincent was very intriguing, so I prompted some more questions. Here is our dialogue that followed.
T:What do you like to do on your free time.
V:Experiments.
T:No I meant on your free time, you know, when you are not in school.
V:Yes, I like very much experiments.
T: ok...(sketch) what kind of experiments. I am not sure I understand...
V: biological.
T: ok...well do you do these experiments at home...at school...? (I was thinking along the lines of creepy crawler and easy bake ovens...but then she replied).
v: I go to America in May for my experiment.
T: oh really! That is exciting. But I still don't understand. What kind of experiments do you do?
And then she rambled off some obviously rehearsed description that went something like : polypeptide...cell cluster...sacchride...those were the only words I could pick out and remember . But it was INTENSE and I was even more intrigued... I end up finding out that after taking a biology class when she was 14, she had an idea for a project and started working on it, then a Shanghai medical university took interest, and she has continued her work there for the past few years. "professors find my work very interesting" she told me. ANd apparently she is going to some International Biology convention in America to show her work.
I realize at this point that I definitely have some sort of child prodigy on my hands. She is hilarious, nerdy and quirky. So I asked her how she got her English name. And she replied..."oh...you know...painter...Vincent Van Gogh".

Before the end of last week's I asked everyone what they would like to cover this week (it is the last class). The class was silent, but I noticed Vincent in her hot pink winter coat fidgeting a bit in the back. I call on her. She answered in three words. "rock and roll".

if only I could be so cool.

Vincent is a 17 year old girl going to Albuquerque in May to do biology. And I know that people in the west can be pretty harsh about things like that, especially if they don't understand at all where you are coming from. I don't want her to be made fun of, but I also don't want to make her self conscious. Fortunately I have a pretty good "shoe in" to the conversation because of my own name, which definitely "walks the line". So tomorrow I think, after we rock and then roll, Vincent and I are going to have a little talk.

remembering a friend

2007-03-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

Chris, Webby, The Webster, Chrisy, a voice that will be remembered for ever. It was unique, it was his own and he made sure it was always heard. Kind, sensitive, passionate, adventurous, opinionated, and strong enough to make himself vulnerable. Chris made a point to and succeeded at living each day for himself and also for others. Those of you that were fortunate enough to know him, know how true this is. We will all miss him, his voice and his just being there. All my love and support to friends back home. I will be with you soon.

and now for some reason I now smell like gasonline

2007-02-27T01:01:00.000-08:00

Woah! now that was some day. Started off on the right foot. Woke up, did some work, conquered a new juicer/blender machine, went to a new gym for the first time and from there I went off to buy a bike, ride it to JiaoTong University to register for my Chinese class, and then go home to do work. Simple, fun, easy...you would think. In China...not so much. Everything up until after the gym was great. Then I went to find a bike store, which on a scale of 1-10 of getting lost (10 being ...I could be in Albequerque right now and I wouldn't know it...and 1 being oh...that's where I buy my groceries). At this point I was at about a 5, not so bad for me by China standards. (we will use this scale again later). In any case, with a little bit of trouble, I find the store, find the bike I want...a shiny looking, cheapest one they had, bright yellow bicycle (zixingche). My bike, my basket and my lock cost a meager (200RMB)30$. And I was on my way. After a few petals I realized that I had bought what had to be the crappiest piece of crap bike on the face of the planet. No. Seriously. Two blocks later I was sweating, it was so hard to petal, it felt like I was in a spinning class and shanghai has no hills. On top of that every time I petal with my left foot it makes an annoying clinging sound. I sound like an ice cream truck, clanging away, and I'm drenched in sweat for absolutely no reason. I think for a second about going back, but I'm halfway to my destination and I realize that even if I did go back to the store, there was no way I could explain what was wrong. So I continue on, figuring that it probably is just a really bad bike, and that I'll get used to it and have really strong legs in a few weeks. A few blocks later, I am stopped at a curb and a guy on a bike is trying to tell me something. I have no idea what he is saying but he tells me to pull over into an alley way. Finally I understand that something is wrong with the back wheel. He pulls out a pump and I figure he is going to pump it up. Instead of doing this, he takes the whole tube thing out of the tire, tries to put air in it, spits on it, bubbles come out, and I see that the thing is broken. So he rips it off the bike, and now I am a little freaked out because I am in China and some dude just disassembled my bike. He takes out more tools, unscrews some more pieces and then thankfully pulls a new tire out of a box he was carrying. As a side note, this whole time I am thinking how lucky I am that this guy is helping me and how nice people in China are. About five minutes later I am good to go and am ready to give this guy 20RMB for his help. I got to give him the money and he says he wants 100RMB. I tell him that I don't have more money...(even though I do but I need to it buy my books, plus that is over half what the new bike cost me 20minutes earlier!). After a few minutes, where I felt painfully bad and guilty, because the guy really did help me out, he let me go after giving him 20RMB. I felt really bad, but honestly... Then I finally found the school, registered, left, got 9 on my scale of 1-10 lost on my way home. But found an awesome building that I will definitely take some photos of soon. I am thoroughly exhausted. My piece of crap bike is locked up in the stairwell...I never want to look at it again. Or until tomorrow. And I have yet to figure this out but for some reason I reek of gasoline.

Oh yeah and yesterday I ate frog. TWICE

2007-02-25T16:16:00.000-08:00

On Saturday after registering for a 6 month intensive Chinese class at JiaoTong Daxue, exploring an electronic market...yes I was a kid in a candy store...huge nerd. The word for Apple in Chinese is Pinguo. I found software for 4$ that I will buy soon...not in the budget yet. Then we went to Taikang Lu in the French Concession. At lunch at a place called Commune. not much more than a concept. but would be nice in summer time. Walked around artist galleries and boutiques in the area. found a wall and some buildings that I really liked. On the way home I did a duet with the taxi driver.Yesterday I had my English class. The students are amazing, nice, cool...I had a funny moment in class where we were talking about the beach...you know the story about Seany on the beach when he was little driving his toy cars all over the woman in the bikini...(the one that has been told billions of times over dinners) In any case, it is one of those stories that each time it is told, it is funny, but I always say before it starts...not this one again! Well I told the "not this one again" story! Mommy and Daddy you would have been proud. I am not sure if the class understood, but I definitely got some giggles and blushing out of them. (I should add they are all in their 20s). Seven of my students took me for lunch. They are all really nice, we had a great meal that they ordered and remembered what I ate for lunch the last time I went with them (which was 3 weeks ago), and specially ordered me some of those same dishes that they knew that I liked last time. Little do they know that I am probably the least picky eater in the world, but it was an extremely nice gesture. On top of my special dishes we had a really great fish dish and a "mystery dish" that came to the table on a sizzling plate covered with a wet towel. I asked my students what it was and they all kind of looked at each other blankly, not knowing the English word. They started to say a word that sounded like "food"...so I was like...yeah I hope it's food (under my breath). I said is it fish? they said no. I said is it meat? they said no. The colour was white so I knew I was not about to consume a beloved canine friend. And I figured it was some type of sea food. I took a piece onto my plate and inspected it further. At a closer look, I became suddenly intimidated. It reminded me of the cow's eyeball that I disected in grade 9 science class. I had a slight panic, because it looked really chewy and I had a vision of me taking a bite and then spending the rest of the meal chewing on the thing so that I didn't have to spit it back onto my plate (which is actually an ok thing to do here...napkins are hard to come by and spitting is quite ordinary). I still don't feel comfortable with that...and I hope I never do. In any case. My students were all staring at me, so I had to take a bite. And it ended up being one of the yummiest things I have ever eaten! really tender and delicious! Then all of a sudden the word that they were struggling with before turned from food, into froog and then finally I said oooooh...it's FROG! And everyone agreed. I was very happy to have shared that experience with them!After class I hung out with a friend and then we met up with Landon, his fiancée Marissa (two montrealers) and Talia. We went out to eat and told them my story and had a great time ordering frog again for time two in one day! I'm all froggied out now.

there's NO art in shanghai

2007-02-24T06:43:00.000-08:00

moganshan lu galleries yesterday.
and some more today.
some random pictures. Pones that one of the van is for you! graffiti is legal here, though it is hard to come by. lots of empty walls. I worked and walked very hard to find this. and I'm not being facetious.

aboot a boat

2007-02-24T06:39:00.000-08:00

we hung out in our boat all day, hired some crew, a captain, a cook, made uniforms. everyone who wasn't on board was jealous. it had a steering wheel and everything!

Sanya, Hainan

2007-02-20T23:48:00.000-08:00

rule of thumb

2007-02-20T22:43:00.000-08:00

Whatever you think makes sense. Just think the opposite. And in China you'll be just fine.
Old people are like young children. Young children are cared for like old people. I am not so sure what the intersection between both ages looks like, where it is or how big a space if any there is in between.

business beach

2007-02-20T21:52:00.000-08:00

If anyone wants to make some money… You know the beach game Paddle ball...also known as ProKadima, MotCot, my favourite sport. Bring them to the Island of Hainan during spring festival and sell them on the beach. Chinese people love activities, they cannot do nothing, and they love table and regular tennis. Need I say more?

what's a zorb?

2007-02-20T21:14:00.000-08:00

What the heck is that thing? Don't tell me there's people in there...no way! What are they doing?There is no way ... Yeah #$%^ right!?!?!?

I wrote a bit before about population control in China, but in the last week I discovered where all the people in China actually come from. They fall from the sky. Every few minutes, if you look out onto the horizon of the South China see, you can catch a glimpse of a giant bubble falling to the earth. Inside each bubble is a man and a woman. Wonderbeings from outer space. Every once in a while they float to shore and are greeted by a crowd of people, excited to welcome the new arrivals to the earth. The Wonderbeings are on a mission to save the planet. And they will one day. I just haven't figured out how yet. But I asked and they seem to have it all under control.

Questions? Comments? Feel free.

beach family friends boat

2007-02-20T21:02:00.000-08:00

just sit still

2007-02-20T19:28:00.000-08:00

On a more serious note, I don't at all mean for any of this to sound as though I am poking fun at Chinese culture or people. I am just sharing things that I find interesting, weird, unique and entertaining...in an attempt to make the world a wee bit smaller for all of those I miss dearly. I am in no way passing judgements on this place that I am new to, find fascinating and know so little about. I want to share my experiences in the most entertaining way possible. And this will help me learn. And as a side note... trust me that by me being here, lying on the beach in a little bikini, attempting to blacken my skin, sleeping, reading, relaxing, mumbling random chinese phrases under my breath to practice...like "jiu bai jiu shi jiu hao"...means 999 and is my address and took me days of reciting this happily over and over so I could say to a cab driver...chinese people are equally and if not more entertained, curious, shocked, confused by me. On the beach, Talia and I took one for the team. We smiled for photos, were patient with random people who came to speak with us and those that loitered around staring. So here are some of my own pictures and impressions to share with you.

For me this is a picture of the quintessential Chinese family. It makes me very happy...almost as happy as that little boy looks!

the little emporer that couldn't

2007-02-20T18:19:00.000-08:00

I wish I had a visual for this one but unfortunately I do not. Words will have to do the trick. Our trip to Sanya coincided with the week leading up to the Chinese New Year. The biggest and most important holiday in China where many Chinese save up all of their vacation days throughout the whole year just so that they can use them at this time of year to be with their families. Family in China is very important. From what I have observed so far, it is THE most important part of this culture. It is actually quite touching. But on a more or maybe less (we will see how this turns out) serious note, as you are all aware, Chinese people are only allowed to have one child. With countless hours on the beach, countless people and families to observe, some side effects of this law began to emerge.

Let's begin to talk about the Little Emporer Complex. The complex begins on the beach in Sanya with a boy named Winner. Winner is a boy of about 10 years old. He wears a striped t-shirt that is stretched tightly over his body that reads Winner across the chest. Winner's entourage puts Vinny Chase's to shame.

For an entire day on the beach, Talia and I observed the activities and rituals of Winner and his Entourage.

Phase 1. Buy a box. Phase 2. Cut a hole in it. ....just kidding.
but seriously.

We first noticed Winner being lifted up by his armpits by his mother, hanging there like a dead fish (and Winner is by no means a small 10 year old), his father struggled to remove his pants. And the grandparents stood around to watch.
Then it was time to go for a swim. Winner's Father escorted him to the water, and stood behind him as though trying to force him in. Winner wouldn't budge. He stood there planted for what seemed like hours. Entourage by his side as he refused to go in the water.
Time to leave the beach. Walk Winner away from the water's edge. He had not budged the whole time. Mother holds him in the air. Winner dangles. Father puts on his pants.Mother puts him down. Father picks him up. Winner dangles. Mother positions Winner's flip flops beneath his feet. Father lowers Winner into his flip flops. Winner takes 2 steps. Winner's feet are sandy. Father lifts up Winner. He dangles. Mother removes flip flops. Mother rinses flip flops off in the ocean to wash off sand. Father lifts Winner up. He dangles. Mother positions Winner's flip flops beneath his feet. Father lowers winner into his flip flops. Winner takes 2 steps. Winner's feet are sandy. Father lifts up Winner. Repeat until off the beach. Entourage surveilles ritual.

snuff is a thing of the past

2007-02-20T17:27:00.000-08:00

Last week Talia and I took a trip down to Hainan. An Island in the South of China. In time I'll tell about the Island, the trip, our glamorous hostel, steaming hot pomelos, zorbs, the little emporer that couldn't, matching hawaiian outfits, sandcastle architects, and our new friends the Cowboy and his Lithuanian Compadre...but first I want to talk about Snuff.

We stayed at a hostel, right by the beach. The place was awesome. Writing on the walls guests from all around the world, 40s for 5kuai a pingr, and an owner named Peter who sells sunscreen for far too much money, but he really knows how to look after his guests.

China is the only place in the world that I would let a really dirty strange man, who doesn't speak a lick of English rub an unidentifiable green goop from a plastic water bottle on my feet and ankles while I lay on the beach.
After my first few nights in Sanya, my feet and ankles were eaten by mosquitos, the bites were so bad that I felt like sunburning them the next day to distract the itching. I didn't really care that much because I was having fun, but this man walking by me on the beach noticed my feet and came to inspect the bites. (just for the record it looked like I had some crazy disease). In any case, he tried to explain to me something in Chinese, Talia and I got parts of it, he looked pretty concerned. Then he pulled out a bottle of green goop, dusted the sand from my leg and rubbed a little bit of it on some of the bites. Then he continued explaining stuff in Chinese. I got him to write what he was saying and doing in my little black sketchbook...(something that I have been doing whenever I have a question about anything but am unable understand the answer because of the language, I ask the person to write it down in the book. Then later I ask Fiona, my Chinese tutor what it means...I LOVE SURPISES) In this case, I was hoping that it didn't say that the green goop is poison, or I had some exotic disease and 48hours to live. At that point, my one foot started feeling better, and the kind man put some more goop on the other foot. I thanked him and he was on his way. My feet started feeling much better and I was left with some mysterious message from a stranger on the beach. I still haven't found out what the message really says. I have a feeling that the man that wrote it probably didn't go to school. But for the time being, my feet feel better and my only hypochondria moment was two nights ago I had a crazy migrane for about 3 hours...I was convinced I had malaria or some crazy tropical disease contracted in Hainan and that we were never going to be able to explain that to a doctor, never mind to the cab driver who was going to take me to a hospital, and then have to air lift me to an English speaking country. Luckily Talia made me some spaghetti with tomato sauce and then I felt better.

Speaking of hallucinations, lets get back to Snuff. On one of the nights in Sanya, Peter started to unveil his bag of tricks, that I'm sure he uses to entertain young, naive and adventurous western travelers. At this point Talia and I were hanging out with our two new friends the Wandering Cowboy and his Lithuanian Compadre. Peter broke out a bottle of snuff, then another, and then another...each time more exotic. We let the boys test it out. But whoever thought Snuff was a thing of the past...go to Sanya.

kids with guns

2007-02-10T05:22:00.000-08:00

love and war. I'm happy I caught this.

backwards but making sense

2007-02-10T05:11:00.000-08:00

in china they ball

2007-02-10T04:42:00.000-08:00

for serious.
last night we went to a canadian 5a7 at the 4seasons. then to a place called matt's house. then velvet. then Talia and were persuaded to go off to bar rouge with two strange old men (just kidding daddy...they were just strange, and old and men). but the dj was amazing, seriously ...they really know how to play good music here. the club scene is definitely something to write home about. It is nice when bars have little gimmicks....like at Time in Montreal...for those who are unfamiliar... they throw napkins in the air. At bar rouge they light the entire bar on fire. The bar is a big square and I am convinced that each corner is occupied by a woman (kind of like the older woman star of "Kung Fu Hustle". I don't feel like elaborating more.
I woke up this morning at 730 to study chinese. our tutor came at 1030. then I wandered around the french concession all day, bought a marker, took some pics, procrastinating preparing a lesson plan for tomorrow. We are flying to Hainan for a few days tomorrow at 6.

bookstores in china smell the same as they do at home

2007-02-10T04:21:00.000-08:00

a surreal experience is to be wandering alone, lost in people's square, thousands of people and all of a sudden you hear someone shout out "Taylor?..." Coincidences are easy to come by in China. once again the world is little. Yesterday I was wandering around people's square after a meeting with a Frenchman who owns a production company here. He told me about a foreign bookstore...I got lost/distracted looking for it, but then was saved by the girl that works at the french consulate (my first friend here). I finally found a bookstore, not the one I was looking for, but a better one. It was two stories and sold art books. The bottom floor was traditional chinese books. Perusing, I passed by a nerdy little boy with glasses and boogers drooling from his nose sneaking a peak at a book on chinese erotic art. made me smile. then I went upstairs and found some great design books. all in chinese but pictures are worth much more. so I won't waste the words. Here are some shots from today.

today I walked and then some more

2007-02-06T06:19:00.000-08:00

today my mission was to find a bank and orient my self in this disorienting town. it was intimidating, long, tiresome (*see image on left). Apparently it's not cool to be a foreign bank in china...but it is cool to be a hostess at a restaurant while picking your nose. I also discovered jungle gyms for old people. I thought they were bullies at first. but they were just concentrating really hard. Talia met a girl named Clairol. We tried a new fruit. I almost got hit by a bus. (Nana and Zaida...the picture on the right is where I was walking when you called me.) Tomorrow is another call center day.

a giant piano

2007-02-05T02:56:00.000-08:00

so we live in a compound. sort of. It is called Spring Garden and is located at Loushanguan Lu Changning Lu jiu bai jiu shi jui hao lou qi shi san. It took me until yesterday to remember that. There are lots of buildings that are very tall and very green. We have guards in funny uniforms that smile when we walk past. little rock ponds. And best of all giant "lawn art" sculptures with the encompassing theme of musical instruments. Every day when I leave my house, they serenade me... except for today because I was working in my own makeshift call center. Yes, I sat all day on the phone giving Chinese people in Shenzhen English tests. Very exciting. Exhausting. Boring. Hilarious. At one point in a role playing interview scenario I was pretending to be a receptionist at a doctor's office. The man I was speaking to was pretending that his leg was broke. I told him that I would make him an appointment with Dr...kfjs...uh...fumble fumble fumble (I am supposed to be the one with good English)...and all I could think of was Bob. "Dr. Bob can see you tommorow about your broken leg." I had to bite my cheek to avoid laughing. That is all for now.

shanghai is number 1 minus the spitting

2007-02-05T02:46:00.000-08:00

Wow. Shanghai is an amazing city. Haven’t been able to put my finger on why just yet, but there is something about it that I really love. The past few days that I have been here have been overwhelming to say the least. I still haven’t gotten over the jet lag… it is 6:45 in the morning and I have been up for about an hour now. I am a walking zombie, not the b-rated horror type. Just a regular zombie minus the toilet paper.

Surprisingly enough, being in China makes the world seem smaller than I could have imagined. Within the first five days of being here, I had a meeting in the French Concession and afterwards ran into a guy from San Fran that I met on the flight over. His name is Joseph, he is 22 and he is a devout Jehova’s witness, I’m talking door to door preacher …(not so allowed in China), but he learned some Mandarin back home so that he could facilitate his teaching. My point is…there are 18million people in this city and I managed to run into 1 on the street. To all those mathematicians out there…I don’t need to say it…but to those who are not…those are some slim odds. And if we are still on the subject of coincidences, Talia and I had a party on Friday night and one of the guys that showed up was the guy that Jenny (my cousin) met when she was here and was supposed to get me in touch with. She didn’t but… je me suis débrouillé tout seule.

Last night Talia and I were hungry (no surprise). We decided to go out and explore and try and find some food. So we set out walking, it was about 7pm, and we just walked and walked forever soon to realize that this city keeps going on forever. It is a giant china town, that no matter what corner you turn, it never EVER ends. I am very happy that Talia, likes to wander, look at stuff, take a long time browsing through everything and is probably tied with me in terms of indecisiveness. She is not quite a Gemini, but her birthday is close. Nonetheless, you can imagine what it is like with the two of us walking around with visual stimuli overload. I bought some spicy raisins from a weird store and then we saw and stopped at a little store with steam coming out of it to grab dinner. The two of us stood there, enamored/confused/trying to figure out what was going on. There was a woman with a steaming cauldron, an area loaded with all types of meets(or something), tofu, seaweed, veggies, noodles…everything from stomach lining to foodSURPRISE!… We stood there for a few minutes trying to figure out the system/commit…but before we could decide, a man put a basket in each of our hands, and we started to pick out the things we wanted in our concoction. After we were done, we gave the stuff to the cauldron woman, she cooked it in a giant pot with everyone else’s food. We paid 5.50 RMB for dinner, which is about 75cents. It was really really delicious…best chicken broth I have ever had…super spicey…even though I would probably go without the some of the choices next time…it was a really good first encounter. For those that know me, I am a very adventurous eater, will try everything once, and I figure, if everyone else is eating it, I can eat it too!
Then after we got all of these crazy fruits from a stand. A guy tried to rip us off for some corn, and we of course…(you cannot leave home without doing this)…picked up some 5RMB dvds on the street.

Yesterday I had my first day of teaching. I teach Sundays at 9am at a place called New Oriental. I showed up half an hour early…nervous as anything, but when I got there, I was helped out by some really nice and friendly people that work at the school. They helped set me up in my classroom…then chatted with me about Yao Ming and the Rockets…stevie franchise(my old school fave.) and TMAc who every one here loves. All of a sudden I realized it was 915 and no students were there…I asked where everyone was, and then they realized I was in the wrong classroom. They helped me grab all my stuff and run up to the right one where all my students were patiently waiting my arrival. I have 11 people in my class, all really nice from ages of 20-30. My nervousness for some reason went right away and I got straight into teaching. They don’t speak English as well as I thought, but after I figured out the level, things became a lot smoother and their jaws came off the floor. After two hours it was time for lunch break…they all rushed over to me to have me go out for lunch with them. I went with half the class. They took me to some Chinese fast food restaurant where the menu was all in Chinese so I just told them to order me anything. This was bad because they were so nice and wanted to make sure it was something that I liked. By the end I had no idea what I was getting, but I ended up with some dumplings and a bowl of soup (tasted like hot soy milk…but was really good)…supposedly popular breakfast food and one of the girls said…”very good for women”…then the boy laughed. The whole thing was hilarious. By the end of the day I was completely exhausted. Then had to hop into a cab home for a 2 hour Chinese class.

I started taking intense Chinese lessons with a tutor…here name is Fiona and she is hilarious. She is also Alissa, her boyfriend Dave and Michael (the doctor’s son)’s teacher. That is how I met her and she now comes to our place. Every lesson makes my head feel like it is going to explode, but it is really fun in some screwed up sadistic way. I am working really hard trying to learn this language, it is more difficult than I could have possibly imagined.

Other than that…things are very overwhelming, but I am really enjoying it/working really hard. Just being here is hard work in many ways. Sorry if I have been out of touch, I am trying to get the swing of things and I will be better once settled.

This is my phone number, you can call me anytime, day or night…would love to hear any voices.
+ 86 13636382364
Notice the last number is 4…in Chinese that is pronounced si (kind of like çe in French). In any case, it is also the word for death. 4 is the number u are not supposed to have at the end of your cellphone number. Hehe. Ooops. But maybe that is why it was so inexpensive. I am very proud though because I got it all by myself!

long walks on mountain tops

2007-01-26T06:51:00.000-08:00

2+ hour hikes alone atop enourmous mountains in middle of colorado = amazing = not so smart = professional night sleep = why didn't I bring a camera? = I wish my eyeballs had sunscreen on them = most incredible day ever!

wandering around living relics

2006-11-25T10:31:00.000-08:00

Ludvo or Luds or Austropol, Ost, my Nana's soft voice struggled with the exact name. We wandered through The Valley of Lost Cities, a modern day memorial to the European cities lost in the first two world wars, searching for the place my Great-Grandfather was born.

With the help of Ido (the best, kindest and most hooked up tourguide in all of Israel...seriously though...on the ball and loving it, every step of the way) my family arrived at the gates to my great-grandfather's village. Lubar and Ostropol are their real names. And those two names, carved into a stone monument, towered above my Nana who stood beneath a black umbrella in the pouring rain. I realized at that moment, after days of wandering through Jerusalem, touching the water source beneath David's City, the ground of the Holy Sepecul, eating tilapia from the Kinneret, and now standing on two frozen feet within the Valley of Lost Cities at Yad Vashem... that my two frozen feet were standing within a modern day relic. A place that would one day be destroyed...and years later its remains would be rediscoverd, reinterpreted and a past would be revisited. Contained in that one isolated moment in time I became aware of an overwhelming span of time... the past, the future and a tiny speck of presence.