experiment
In the not-too-distant future
I will describe keyboards to my son one day in a not-too-distant future when he asks about them. That is when he and I will ask the computer to show us some examples. We will spend a rainy afternoon making make-believe keyboards (QWERTY and Dvorak) out of cardboard and crayons and pretend to type in our queries. The computer will humor us and play along.
It is interesting to think about the ways human interface devices (keyboards, mice, etc) have influenced the way we interact with machines. As I write this, haptics are clearly leading the way into the future. Tt is even more exciting to see how much more intuitive and user-friendly using complex systems will be with access to these interfaces. It is only getting better, in that context.
On the other hand, managing our time, how much we use them, and in what capacities, will continue to be a challenge, along with balancing their use with analog activities like playing outside, for example. For now, typing and staring blankly, alone, into a glowing box in the dark is just one way to spend moments of our lives we’ll never get back. Perhaps, that is what I see as the greatest potential for haptic interface devices, such as tablets. Children are more open to sharing in the physical world with them. Whereas while using laptops they completely zone out even while others are in close proximity. Haptic interfaces allow us to be truly social while interacting with technology.
How will touch interfaces further shape how we ask for, receive, and interpret information from machines in the future?
Heroes and Icons
How do you choose your heroes and icons?
In 1977, I was 5 years old when my parents took me to my first movie but, it wasn’t just a movie, it was a drive-in movie. The movie? Star Wars. Needless to say, it flipped me right out.
Unlike most of my pals, who were drawn to Luke or Chewbacca or Han or whatever, I was obsessively drawn to R2-D2. I wasn’t just into R2, I wanted to BE R2. Something about his character, his utility, his outright usefulness in so many contexts and situations captivated and appealed to me. So, my room had models of R2 on the shelves, my bedside table had an R2 alarm clock, my watch was an homage to R2, and my birthday cakes were more than once adorned with his image in crystalline sugar.
The obsession continued throughout my elementary and middle school years. I might even say it never actually ended. I saw, and continue to see, his influence everywhere. In the functionality of tools, vehicles, and other simple machines, devices, industrial design, consumer gadgets, and systems theories.
Here’s the thing: R2′s sheer ability, willingness, and selflessness to adapt so readily, without fear or delay, to so many challenges on behalf of the goals of his peers inspired me as my family moved around. As a kid, I was constantly having to adapt to new environments, new geographic layouts, people, styles, vocabularies, dialects, the whole thing. Since that wasn’t easy, I often imagined what R2 would do, moving through situations as if I were him, though slightly taller and more maneuverable. Just the idea of him, imagining myself as having his chutzpah, gave me confidence when I needed it and, I admit, continues to influence me to this day. Silly? So what?
Imagination makes us powerful. As children we imagine ourselves as someone else, someone more capable of accomplishing what we feel we cannot. It is through these personas many of us are able to make our first, significant achievements. Whether faced with the adversity of a spelling bee, school play, or the playground rights of passage, we resort to the power of our imagination to envision ourselves accomplishing something seemingly beyond our reach. As we age, some of us seem to either pull back on this while others expand on it and, in some cases, become Jack Whites, Oprah Winfreys, and Michael Jordans.
Success pivots on something simple: the will to believe.
Independence
Unnamed pals preparing to light up the sky at a discreet location.
This year it means something personal. This past year has included a great many changes for your humble narrator. Changes he is grateful for. Changes he had consciously and patiently been waiting for and working towards. These included trading a life he had reluctantly planned for the one that was waiting for him, all along. This is a lesson that has reinforced a notion to always follow his instincts and believe, especially in the face of adversity. As a result, this new-found independence has afforded him many new experiences, uncovered new talents, and new pals. Gifts like these make the gratitude a small price to pay, he’d say.
So, with that in mind, regardless of what the word, or the holiday, meant or means to you in your corner of the world this year, Happy Independence Day. Please enjoy that photo up there that your host took of two of his new pals celebrating the way they enjoy most in a place they love best. Sums it up rather nicely. Click it for a better view. Cheers.
Honey, it really works, honey.
Since becoming a grown-up, there are many things about childhood I remember fondly but one of them I was happy to forget about forever and wasn’t anticipating having to deal with again: allergies. For my entire adult life I was allergy-free living in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. .
In Chicago, I have tried over-the-counter remedies, which all leave me feeling speedy and just “off.” But, wait. There’s a better solution: locally made honey.
Check this out: honey has anti-microbial properties and has for centuries been used for medicinal purposes of all sorts, including as a dressing for serious wounds. It’s also high in antioxidants and tastes real good on cereals, in sauces, lemonade and all kinds of stuff.
The most interesting use I’ve ever heard of for honey is as a natural remedy for seasonal allergies. According to various natural health practitioners, pollen found in locally-grown raw honey works over time to desensitize the body to allergens much like traditional allergy shots.
It’s working for me. The season so far has been allergy-free, even amidst rumblings from pals that it is unseasonably allergy-ish, and I would like to thank the local apiaries for selling multiple varieties of the stuff – it has saved my sanity and will make my summer completely enjoyable. Thanks, all you bees and beekeepers out there.
Improvised Deconstruction
A few clicks is all it takes
The kooks you don’t love me
From the bottom of my heart from the wasteland you’ve got everything going to plan man
De-de-duh-duh-duh-duh-de-de-duh-duh
Experience
Experience is the move. The move to a new understanding, a motion towards a richer perspective. We spend our lives chasing it, striving to open up new opportunities for it, while surrounding ourselves with those who have it. A simple thing shrouded in a complicated skin, we crave it. Like water, we want to sit by it, live next to it, walk along it, sail across it, swim in it, drink it. Be it.
So many things contribute to the quality of our experience. Our choices in friends, careers, and habits are shaped by our interests and desires, which are likewise shaped by the friends, careers, and habits we allow into our lives. The cycle is fascinating and seemingly both within our control and without it at the same time. Perhaps, that’s what makes it such an elusive yet tangible thing all at once. The best things seem to work this way. A combination of choice and fate at work all at once. The simple wrapped up snugly in the complex.
Those of us with great experience generally tend to take it for granted while others seeking any at all wonder how to obtain it. A wise woman who mentored me once shared her secret to gaining experience, while ensuring its quality. She said,
Listen closely to the perspectives of someone who has not done something before. Their perspective is still fragile and open to influence. When we have experience, we tend to close our ears to amateurs, thinking we have a grasp of a skill or trade. Amateurs have an advantage in the potential of discovering things we missed along the way. Amateurs may in fact have much to teach us. Experience alone doesn’t optimize opportunities for innovation and discovery. Only openness to experience can.
Dropped is in
This 10-minute short film is made up of clips found on YouTube by Chris Beckman, who collected clips of people dropping their video cameras and edited them together into this artful masterpiece:
Behind the Scenes: WIND
Behind the scenes with the Exploratorium, A Curious Summer and Tinkering Unlimited as they prepare to work with young learners to harness wind’s invisible power through discovering where it comes from and how to predict its behavior while studying aerodynamics and lift. Through tinkering with wind-powered machines and vehicles, such as a paragliding wing, turbines and sailboats and designing kites and gliders, this hands-on experience will open new doors into the mysterious power of WIND.
Tinkering School: Day 8
Go cart design, assembly and testing by the inimitable Team Tinker with snippets of boat model design and other moments of singular, whimsical tinkering mastery. Thanks to Moby for his song, Porcelain.
Tinkering School: Day 5
A few clips from the 5th day of Tinkering School:
Elite Gymnastics @ the Medusa
James Brooks and Josh Clancy are Elite Gymnastics
Elite Gymnastics is James Brooks and Josh Clancy. The duo have been receiving quite a bit of national attention for their brand of chillwave tunage. From the New York Post to Pitchfork, these two are getting positive reviews. Minneapolis’ own City Pages had this to say:
…a trance-inducing quality to them, akin to sitting in a darkened opium den listening to ’80s dance hits stream out of a telephone receiver, off in the distance, softly yet persistently.
Check them out for yourself below and if you likey you can listen to more via their MySpace page and/or download their Real Friends EP for free here:
10 Second Film Festival: Sticks
More than 3000 enjoyed the 10 Second Film Festival
Thanks to the Soap Factory and MPLS.tv!
Watch ‘Sticks’ in its entirety below (14-seconds):
pixelier: antes y dispues
Bergey made some things that inspired me to start tinkering with stills digitally and call it pixeliering, which is a meager attempt at adding an element of painting to digital images:
Click on that first image right there to see before and after examples larger and more in charger:
This is cool and I like the way the digital mixes together with the analog. These are very time consuming to make so I only have a few of them to show but this is one of my favorites, so far:
Asleep
This is just the fat trimmed off a project I’m working on: a multimedia installation about people asleep in public spaces called, appropriately, “Asleep”:
rAndom International’s latest: Audience
Audience, the latest media installation from rAndom International, is outta sight – as the viewer walks through it, the mirror-fellows track them, making each viewer the “focus” of the piece as they are reflected in each little mirror:
