initiation

2003-05-09T14:14:00.000+10:00

Title - Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Spatiality of the Lived Body and Motility.

Keywords - Spatiality. Body image. Allochiera. Bodily space vs. external space. Association. Position. On, under, beside. Orientation. Movement. Motility. Thought. Recognition. Perception. Representation. Concrete Vs abstract movement.

Thoughts -
Body Image - was at first understood to mean a compendium(summary) of our bodily experiences, capable of giving a commentary and meaning to the internal impressions and the impression of possessing a body at any moment. In his discussion of the spatiality of one's own body and its relation to motility Merleau-Ponty introduces a new notion of "body image". This "body image" is the means by which we 'locate' our body and its different parts in the world. As his analysis is phenomenological or a reflecting back on one's lived experience of embodiment he finds that we do not experience ourselves as a collection of bodily parts and organs (arms, nose, ears, tongue, eyes, etc.) located somewhere in objective space or some sort of global awareness of these parts, but rather we experience our body within the implied context of a 'bodily project' or purpose.
The body image was supposed to gradually arise in the course of childhood in proportion as the tactile, kinaesthetic, visual and articular contents were associated among themselves.
Body image can explain Allochiera.

Allochiera - Imagine being touched on the left arm, but feeling it on the right arm. It is a condition in which a sensation in an area of a limb (arm or leg) is perceived on the limb on the opposite side of the body. The key point here is that the sensation is not perceived where the stimulus was originally presented. Allochiera is a form of a technical sounding condition called Allesthesia, in which sensations are referred to another part of the body.
Allocheiria is also known as, allesthesia, allochiria, alloesthesia, and Bamberger sign. Allesthesia comes from the Greek word "allos" meaning "other," and the Greek word "asisthesis" meaning "sensation." Put the two words together and you get "sensation in the other (limb)."
We can try and understand the concept of Allochiera by relating it to the body image in terms of cerebral tracks and recurrent sensations, only if the body image becomes law instead of being a residue of habits.

Bodily space Vs. External space - bodily space can be distinguished from external space by enveloping its ‘parts’ instead of spreading them out. The body image is thus a way of stating that my body is in the world.

I am a 'lived body' who experiences space not in terms of its objective 'position' within it but rather I experience space in terms of a particular 'situation' I am in. I experience the spatiality of my body not by associating a multitude of discrete sensations into some sort of perceptual unity and locating 'it' in the 'objective' world, but as a 'lived body' engaged in a situation in a particular way, as the 'incarnate intentionality' of motility.
Top and bottom, right and left, on, under, beside – for the person who has their being in space, do these suggest we should look beneath the explicit meaning of definitions for the latent meaning of experiences?

My body no more than a fragment of space, there would be no space at all if I had no body.

The body in Movement - we can see how the body inhabits space (and time) because movement is not limited to submitting passively to basic significance which is obscured in the commonplaces of established situations.

Kant - envisaging my body or surroundings as objects in the Kantian sense, i.e as systems of qualities linked by some intelligible law, as transparent entities, free form any attachment, to a specific place or time, ready to be named and pointed out.

A normal person can, in the absence of movements, distinguish a stimulus applied to his head from one applied to his body.

Concrete Vs Abstract Movement - Abstract movements are deendent on the powere of visual representation, whereas concrete movements, which are preserved as are imitative movement. The distinction between concrete and abstract movement is reducible to the traditional distinction between tactile and visual, and the function of projection, to perception and visual representation.

Science - waits upon explanation, which means looking beneath phenomena for the circumstances upon which they depend, in accordance with the tried methods of induction.

Motile – Biology : Moving or having the power to move spontaneously: motile spores.
Psychology : Of or relating to mental imagery that arises primarily from sensations of bodily movement and position rather than from visual or auditory sensations.

Movement - is not thought-about movement, and bodily space is not thought of or represented. Each voluntary movement takes place in a setting, against a background which is determined by the movement itself

My awareness of my body is inseparable from the world of my perception. The things which I perceive, I perceive always in reference to my body, and this is so only because I have an immediate awareness of my body itself as it exists 'towards them'. The body image thus involves a primordial, pre-reflective orientation and motility insofar as I am immediately aware of where my limbs are as my body projects itself towards the world of its tasks. I am always already situated in the world and it is my manner of engaging in particular projects which reveals most clearly the nature of my bodily spatiality

It is in and through our bodyhood that we experience all aspects of our existence whether it be what is traditionally defined as "subjective" i.e. our personal intentions and inner experience, or "objective" i.e. what we encounter "out there in the world". Our bodyhood is what allows for our experience of spatiality, temporality, the intersubjective human world, and the things of the natural world. Stated differently our bodyhood is the basis of all perceptual consciousness.

Read more about merleau-Ponty @ #1 or #2

2003-05-06T20:40:00.000+10:00

Title – Andrew Murphie. Putting the Virtual Back into VR.

Keywords - Representation. And expression of reality. Objectile. Machinic Phylum. Technology. Transformation. Real Vs. Virtual. Perception. Metaphisics
Different/ciation. Body. Soul. Interactions. Complexity.

Thoughts -
VR - a particular series of technologies. By and large, these occur in a form of a computer mediated space which combines various perceptual mechanisms and systems with operation systems (flight, weapon control, movement through VR space). Technologies include the helmet-and glove, flight simulators, computerised flight control systems, video guided missiles. All these express a certain relation to the real, even if its representation is fuzzy or inaccurate. Often the fuzziness or inaccuracy is part of its expression of its reality.
VR is always a machine and the product of a machine before it is a technology.

Deleuze and VR - ”representation of an action”, its qualities of modulation; its realisation of the ‘objectile’, where an object is transformed into an event of ‘continuous variation’.

Machinic Phylum - VR as a more emergent series of cultural phenomena. Ex. Technological hypertext such as hypertext, the internet, and the www an be seen as the first sprouts of the virtual age. Deleuze-Guttarian ‘machinic’, where machines are considered separate from technologies and operate autopoietically, as a series of diagrams through virtual tendencies and shifts in actual states of affairs

Transformation - VR allows us to modulate our transformations of objects into obectiles, to alter our ideas of perception, operation, and expression.

Virtual Vs. Real - the line between the virtual and the real is generally blurred within communication systems. VR technology involves, at least, a form of communication between body and machine. More broadly, meta-media includes VR technology, the internet, or cyberspace as a whole.
Virtual and reality are not oxymoronic terms. ‘The blocking out of the physical world cannot be experienced if the user remains aware of the physical generator of the data, namely the computer’. The question isn't whether the created world is as real as the physical world, but whether the created world is real enough for you to suspend your disbelief.
Just as in real life, the VR environment, in it's reactions to users' actions, should be somewhat predictable; after all, we do have "intent-driven" actions. Pragmatic considerations must be present in VR just as they are in real life.

Stable? - the threshold of perception, previously the unseen frame for a perceived ‘stable’ world, now frames itself, draws attention to itself as unstable and therefore as something that can be operated through like any other machine.

Metaphysical - VR brings to an end sensations of ‘stable’ bodies and fixed states of affairs, denies interactive reality.

VR extends subjectivites, used to tell stories, or to imitate an action. VR extends human subjectification through the imitation of an action into areas like home shopping and banking. It produces changes in relations, and is therefore a tool or weapon used to gain control.

Everything is real, so is VR. Or real enough. VR creates a totality which both overwhelms present perceptive thresholds and creates, rather than represents a total world within the world(s).

Technology - the innovation/technology in VR merely actualises, in a new formal series, an older virtual machine, which could be called the world.

Perception - the degree of perception, provided by the threshold between the clear and the fuzzy, is the power extracted from the virtual world. Simply, the perceptive extraction of the world is a matter of practices, of ethics, also art – predicated upon the creation of percepts and affects.

Different/ciation - for an understanding perception, of different/ciation is crucial. It allows for a notion of perception based upon difference and change rather than upon identity and stasis.

Body and Soul - VR’s contribution to the threshold of perception is that it expresses the obvious way in which the body and soul need each other in order to express the world

Interactions - VR, as with all interaction, is a question of a series of interactions between that registers, with each affect regarded as its own micro-ecosystem.
In comparing immersion and interactivity, attempts by contemporary literature to emulate the interactivity of VR involves a sacrifice of the special pleasure derived from immersion. In literature for example, the more interactive, the less immersive the text. On the other hand, in the VR world, immersion and interactivity do not stand in conflict.... The more interactive a virtual world, the more immersive the experience.

Complexity in VR - at the deep levels of both virtual and actual, this indicates that we are increasingly aware of relations of difference, of the way which everything is interconnected and interactive, while simultaneously endlessly individuated because everything is a complex multiplicity.

VR configures the relations between micro and macro-perceptions, bringing to light the possibility that these relations are subject to change, and that different social machines, different conceptual apparatus may make it possible to have different bodies, different souls, or different zones of clear expression without always having to submit to major reterritorialisation.

2003-04-29T18:29:00.000+10:00

Title - Horror Vacui. Constructing the Void from Pascal to Freud.

Keywords – Intense obsessions & true obsessions. Pascal’s obsession. Phobia. Agoraphobia. The silence of infinite spaces. Infinite space. Neurasthenics.

Thoughts –Intense obsessions – are little more than simple memories of unaltered images of important events.

True obsessions – combine a forceful idea and an associated emotional state. They are distinguished from phobias where the emotional state is one of anxiety.

Pascal’s obsession :he always thought he saw an abyss on his left hand side after he had nearly been thrown into the Siene. Pascal, scientist of the vacuum, practical inventor, and celebrated recluse falls prey to his own fantasies. Voltaire accused Pascal of madness on the basis of the ‘relation of cause and effect’ established from the accident, Pascal ceased any outings and lived in complete solitude.

Pascal’s disease – Agoraphobia. Psychologic phobia of spaces.
In later years he could neither talk, read, walk and suffered convulsions, headaches and died at the age of 39.

Descartes and Barres recounts Pascal..”rigor and intensity of his thought, sublime unhappiness, anguish of the philosopher….a scientific spirit, who searches for the truth of phenomena with a sense of the powerlessness of science to discover the essential secret of the universe…the fear of the eternal silence of these infinite spaces”.

Infinite space – Descartes: “the ship endlessly disappearing toward the horizon, the horizon point endlessly rising,the ship infinitely close to, and infinitely far from infinity”.

Neurasthenics – Pascals diagnosis after death.
“Discovered" by the neurologist George M. Beard in 1880, neurasthenia was a nervous disorder characterized by a "lack of nerve force" and comprised of a host of neuroses clustered around an overall paralysis of the will.
defines it as an "immobilizing, self-punishing depression" stemming from "endless self-analysis" and "morbid introspection"
Beard saw a significant correlation between modern social organization and nervous illness. A deficiency in nervous energy was the price exacted by industrialized urban societies, competitive business and social environments, and the luxuries, vices, and excesses of modern life.
In the United States, neurasthenia was seen as an acceptable and even an impressive illness for men, ideally suited to a capitalistic society and to the identification of masculinity with money and property. Many American nerve specialists, including Beard himself, had experienced crises of nervous exhaustion in their own careers, and they were highly sympathetic to other middle-class male intellectuals and professionals tormented by vocational indecision, sexual frustration, internalized cultural pressure to succeed, and severely repressed emotional needs.

2003-04-28T23:10:00.000+10:00

Title – Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guttari. Chapter 9. And,
Transgressing the Boundaries Appendix A. In “Fashionable Nonsense”.

Keywords – Superficial. Nonsense. Judgement. “I don't understand the context”. Poetic license. The role of metaphors

Thoughts -

Two objectives of Fashionable Nonsense is cited as being a critique of prominent intellectuals (principally French literary philosophers) and the other a critique of trends within the American academic humanities, sometimes referred to as the Academic Left. The following two paragraphs summarize the objectives:
More, in-depth notes about the authors Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont and motives for the publication.

... We show that famous intellectuals such as Lacan, Kristeva, Irigary, Baudrillard, and Deleuze have repeatedly abused scientific concepts and terminology: either using scientific ideas totally out of context, without giving the slightest justification - note that we are not against extrapolating concepts made from one field to another, but only against extrapolations made without argument - or throwing around scientific jargon in front of their non-scientist readers without any regard for its relevance of even its meaning. We make no claim that this invalidates the rest of their work, on which we suspend judgement.
...
A second target of our book is epistemic relativism, namely the idea - which, at least when expressed explicitly, is much more widespread in the English-speaking world than in France - that modern science is nothing more than a "myth", a "narration" or a "social construction" among many others.

What is not considered when reading these often intense pieces that require often numerous re-readings is the possibility that the authors might simply have been wrong, either because they have completely missed the point or because they have confused jargon from another discipline with particular usage in science.
There are a number of fields of Science which are badly popularized and are quite fashionable or are made fashionable by the mere mention by these reputable philosophers- they include Godel's theorems, relativity, quantum mechanics (particularly the uncertainty principle), chaos theory, and catastrophe theory. These fields, often bastardised, are part of the intellectual culture.
The most plausible explanation for such convoluted writing that often looses the reader totally is that Deleuze and Guttari possess a vast but very superficial understanding, which is displayed in their writings. The depth of their writings lies in a philosophic tradition, with large bodies of writing, complete with jargon, forms of expression, and indirect references to issues considered at depth by prior authors.
Passages from Deleuze (pg.155-158) which, at first sight to anyone with a scientific background is nothing but meaningless gibberish. Yet, the problem is that Deleuze is using words and concepts that are clear to him and to someone familiar with the tradition that he is writing from but which are quite obscure to anyone not familiar with that tradition.
Some of the quoted material is hilarious - at least it is if one has a snippet of scientific literacy. Readers often get left with the impression that the authors are a bit too arrogant, a bit too ready to insist on the literal use of their preferred jargon, and a bit too literal in their reading of the passages that they quote. I get the impression that the relationship of French Literary Theorists and Science is much like the attempts of Westerners to assimilate Eastern religion. The ideas are partially absorbed and woefully misunderstood; the result is something strange and wonderful.

You don't understand the context - Defenders of Deleuze, Guttari, et al. might argue that their scientific concepts are valid and even profound, and that our criticisms miss the point because we fail to understand the context. After all, Im the first to admit that I do not always understand the rest of these authors'.

Poetic licence - If a poet uses words like "black hole" or "degree of freedom" out of context and without really under standing their scientific meaning, it doesn't bother us. Likewise if a science-fiction writer uses secret passageways in space-time in order to send characters back to other eras, it is purely a question of taste whether one likes or dislikes the use. These works are subject to analyses. Their intention is to produce theory, and its on this ground that i criticize them. Moreover, their style is usually heavy and pompous, not principally literary or poetic.

The role of metaphors - Some people will no doubt think that these authors are interpreted too literally and that the passages quoted should be read as metaphors rather than as precise logical arguments. Indeed, in certain cases the "science" is undoubtedly intended metaphorically; but what is the purpose of these metaphors? After all, a metaphor is usually employed to clarify an unfamiliar concept by relating it to a more familiar one, not the reverse.

Food for thought – “…..the intellectual value of an intervention is determined by its content, not by the identity of the speaker, much less by his or her diplomas.”
Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

2003-04-27T14:34:00.000+10:00

Title - Smooth and the Striated

Keywords – Haptic. Smooth space. Striated. Orientation. Location. Linkage. The abstract line. Contours. Horizontals. Verticals.

Thoughts -
Haptic doesn’t establish an opposition between two sense organs but assumes that the eye may fulfill a non-optical function.

“one can back away from a thing, but it is a bad painter who backs away from the painting he or she is working on”

Smooth – is both the object of a close vision and the element of a haptic space which may be as much visual or auditory as tactile. The first aspect of the haptic, smooth space of close vision is that its orientations, landmarks, and linkages are in continuous variation. Examples are the desert, ice, seam local spaces of pure connection.

Striated – relates to a more distant vision, and a more optical space.

Orientations – change according to temporary vegetation, occupation, precipitation. There is no visual model for points of reference that would make them interchangeable and unite them in an inertial class assignable to an immobile observer.

Orientation, location, linkage are present in the most famous works of nomad art : twisted animals have no land beneath them; the ground constantly changes direction.

Striated versus Smooth – where there is close vision, space is not visual, or rather the eye itself has a haptic, non-optical function: no lines separate earth from sky, which are of the same substance; there is neither horizon nor background nor limit nor outline or form or centre; there is no intermediary distance.
The desert, sky, or sea, the unlimited first plays the role of an encompassing element, and tends to become a horizon: the earth is thus surrounded, globalised, ‘grounded’ by this element, which holds it in immobile equilibrium and makes form possible.

The effect, the line is abstract when writing is absent, either because it has yet to develop or only exists outside or alongside. When writing takes charge or abstraction, the line downgrades and tends to become concrete even figurative. The abstrct line is the affect of smoth space. It cannot be defined as geometrical or rectilineasr. What should be termed abstract in modern art? A line of variable direction that describes no contour and delimits no form.

Take a system in which transversals are subordinated to diagonal, diagonals to horizontals and verticals, and horizontals and verticals to points (even when there virtual). A system of this kind, which is recitiliear or unilinear regardless of the number of lines, expresses the formal conditions under which a space is striated and the line describes a contour…….On the other hand, a line that delimits nothing, that describes no contour, that no longer goes from one point to another,…is constantly changing direction, a mutant line without inside or outside, form or background, beginning or end and that is alive in continuous variation – such a line is truly an abstract line, and describes smooth space.

2003-04-23T11:05:00.000+10:00

3D spatial models of Great Buildings

2003-04-23T10:58:00.000+10:00

Title – Mark Burry. Gaudi, Teratology and Kinship.

Keywords – The Freak. Monstrosity. The Sagrada Familia. Metamorphosis. Morphogenesis. Polymorphism. Geometry. Organic architecture

Thoughts –
The Freak – yields both pleasure and horror of ourselves as beings through a simultaneous expansion and contraction of our understanding of normality, a ‘narcissistic’ delight at the shape of our own externality. Are you a freak?

Surfaces – real virtuality, where surfaces are being read as the boundaries to form, qualities that hover between the beautiful and deformed. Surfaces provide clues and threats of violation and corruption through the concealment of their potential.

Monstrosity – inhabit the domains of the natural and the supernatural.

The Sagrada Familia – established in the mid 19th century Barcelona to give voice to the Holy Family during times of profound change and increasing social dysfunction. The ‘ Cathedral for the Poor’ is dedicated to Joseph as a paragon of moral virtue and the patriarchal head of the family united. The building is gothic rigorously in both scope and layered meaning. Photos

Geometry - Gaudi employed second order geometry for the composition of portions of the Church. The fundamental characteristics for second order geometry is the way non-coplanar straight lines can variously describe warped surfaces that is masked by the apparent free-form composition. The surfaces can be fragmented into individual components which, when combined, form a seamless whole. The fundamental characteristics for second order geometry is the way non-coplanar straight lines can variously describe warped surfaces masked by the apparently free-form composition.
The animation within geometry is suspended as carved material, a static representation of kinship, variety and perfection.

Organic architecture – a problematic misnomer. Buildings in their static condition are anything but organic, free-forms are no longer free but fixed following through its translation to built building. Often organic means that the built free-form may do little more than bear characteristics that can be attributed to natural form. The gene pool. Using organic experimentation in architecture algorithms are used to generate the exact simplest morphogenetic relationship. Here is some of Gaudi's organic arcitecture

Animated hyperboloids #1 #2

Hyperbolic paraboloid, and other brilliant shapes.

2003-04-23T10:54:00.000+10:00

Titile – Pia Ednie-Brown. The Will to Animation.

Keywords – Skin. Animation. Generative processes. Explicit movements. Emergence. Dynamic synthesis. Texture. Mould. Fold. The Process of Becoming.

Thoughts –
The Will to Animation – A concept out of Nietzche’s ‘Will to Power’. This concept is built through a capacity for supple transformations that are politic and relevant to the animated forms of power that mould political landscapes.

Animation in architecture – buildings involve explicit movement, generative processes, using animation software and notions of curvilinearity.

Skin – exhibits a willingness to remain sensitive to its engaging materials and conditions. It has the capacity to deform without falling apart and to transform without falling apart.

Texture – a tendency of variation, a variable consistency.

Mould - the rigid mould. Submissive and servile. Deviation and deformation from the mould become invalid, illegal. The politics of the flexible mould is one of an affirmation of the force of expression in its multiplicity. A mould with flexible skin.
Deleuze’s paper Postscript of Control, ‘Confinements are moulds, different mouldings, while controls are a modulation, like a self-ransmitting moulding continually changing from one moment to the next, or like a sieve whose mesh varies from one point to another”.

Folding – an object folded inside out is rotated through the fourth dimension. Actual form is immanence as it has folded out of itself.

Miss Fed.

The process of becoming – the will to animation is not a matter of rushing out to make things move, but a question of the terms through which architecture becomes animate as a technology in itself. In animation architecture realises its potential as an animated diagram; a diagram in the process of becoming.

2003-04-23T10:53:00.000+10:00

Title - Mark Goulthorpe. Misericord to a Grotesque Reification.

Keywords - Animation. Cinematic movement. Stytlisaton. Cultural psyche. Problems in represntation. Sequence of movements. Conceptual understanding. Emerging mathematics in space - the Aegis Hyposurface. Autoplastic. Alloplastic. Misericord.

Thoughts -
Actualising the virtual : capturing the cinematic movement, and the literal capture of movement effected by a new technology. Technological change becomes intersting only as it infiltrates cultural psychology and suggests new patterns of behavior and expectation. Perhaps it is not stating the obvious to suggest that animation animates and produces an effect in us, as psychological rather than simply a physical manifestation. Consider animation in both a productive and recptive sense and may be contrasted with stylisation.

Stylisation - imposes order and approximates the living form to geometric shapes, animation brings these shapes to lifewith movement and expression.

New forms of cultural imagination, the new sense that has brought the notion of time being simply a sequence of frozen movements. The temporal sense of computer generation seems to ssuggest a much more fluid sense of animation, form held as a parametrically unstable elastic potential, a sort of conceptual trembling.

Conceptual understanding - vital to our understanding of animation effects is that the uncrtainty of response carries over from the perceptual to the emotional spere....A fresh effect depended on changes evolving based on the psychological reactions to be engaged. It is the psycological effects communicated by the electronic economy that seem to offer more potential than the image of frozen mathematics.

Aegis Hyposurface - where patterns are deployed as endlessly unstable derivatives, oscillating between hypnotic and hallucinogenic modes, the limits of optical sense, and fading between figurative and abstract patterning. The emergence and dissipation of pattern, ornament and writing is floated, travelling back and forth across modes of thought.

Autoplastic - presumes a determinate relationship between environment and creative receptive 'self'.

Alloplastic - denotes a malleable relationship that suggests a mode of cultural reciprocity.
fom autoplastic to alloplastic. a concise definition.

Misericord - A small shelf provided in the middle ages to offer respite to monks an prayer. Taditionally carpernters were given freedom to carve the invisible misercords, and used to animate monks both mentally and physically. The tactile shapes teases the contemplative imagination. In the world of animation the misericord enthuses a system of faith in frozen mathematics and seems to be a substitute for an engagement with the psychologies of perception released in the technological change.

2003-04-23T10:49:00.000+10:00

Title - Animated Techniques : Time and the Technological Acquiescence of Animation.

Keywords - Animation as a visual prosthetic. Canvas based art Versus Animated imagery. Time. Cinematic Modulation. Software. Bernard Cache. The Physical inanimate. The freeze frame.

Thoughts -
Visual art crisis : began in the 20th century where painters explored the creative form relative to time. Using cinematic techniques. The difference between canvas based art and te technical requirements of animated imagery caused a divergence that in turn created the 'art' form known as animation. Animation has furthered the perceptual qualities of time beyond the static arts. Animation is purely cinematic, it visualises the transformation of form directly tied to processes of fabrication and economics of production. It is a by-product of working with systems of variabilty and adaptability. The art form whose actualisation trasnspired through an openness to technological change

Cinematic Modulation - the backbone of contempory time based arcitechtural design.

Animation - metamorphose freely in both form and narrative. The examination of character follows a trait that animation has become popular by the popularity of Disney studios and has mainstreamed the arrt form into popular culture.

Animation software - of the mathematical paradigm utilises the continiual advancements in mathematical understanding and calculation of form. Algorithms create a selection of animation features used by architects to ex
plore the generation of animate form. These techniques are located within the scientific realm of change where time is quantifiable and reducible.

Bernard Cache .

Change in architectural form becomes defined relative to frames of animation and time is treated as an applied dimension removed from the more traditional freeze frame.

2003-04-23T10:47:00.000+10:00

Title - Mark Burry. Beyond Animation.

Keywords - Animation. Cinematic walk through. Architectural space and time. Movement. Film. Multi-dimentional. Morphing. Layering of space. Artificial construction. Spatial linking - the cartesian grid. Language. Illusion or reality?

Thoughts -
Animation is used as part of the development and representation of ideas.
used as a device : part of an iterative design generation or as an evaluation procedure.
used to animate real buildings : with the inclusion and automation of movement around and through the building. This is a relatively extreme process compared to the traditional physical models that place absolute reliance on our cognitive and interpretive skills.

morphological shifts : perhaps morphing from a cube to a sphere. Shifts in structural form through movement, where time is taken as the fourth dimension.

Cartesian space : space is not easily represented beyond the third dimension. Animation is used to provide evidence of the restrictions of our abilities to represent this.

Dilemmas in space : from the book 'The Third Policeman', by Flann O'Brien.
the thinness of space : a diagram on a piece of paper.
atomic theory would have us believe that an individual who makes heavy use of a bicycle will, in time, become part being part machine in proportion to the degree of exposure.
earth's shape : the earth is not spherical but sausage space; the four cardinal points of geography are just two. North and South, apparently, are essentially the same given that circumnavigation in either direction has the same outcome.

Language defined space : the world is a location where we catalogue experimental outcomes. To successfully communicate these results we need to construct a common language so that our explorations can be collected and ammalgamated.

Morphing : using a computer to adjust the characteristics in order to represent transitional states. The outcome is to lay iterative changes, collect these changes and map the environment.

Cartesian : a framework. grid. benchmark. A reference system where size, shape, orientation simultaneously define form in object space.

Language : try and verbally describe a morph!!

Animation is not a technique of illusion unless the algorithm or information was altered prior/during programming.

2003-04-07T14:24:00.000+10:00

essay evolution

Space is essentially that which is imagined. Constituted by a patterning of imagery. The imagination is continually active in ordinary perceiving and organizing these perceptions into a space-making pattern. This is true of physical space.

Immanuel Kant's most original contribution to philosophy is his "Copernican Revolution," that, as he puts it, it is the representation that makes the object possible rather than the object that makes the representation possible. This introduced the human mind as an active originator of experience rather than just a passive recipient of perception. The imagination is the sufficient cause for every mental activity.
It is Kant's productive imagination which synthesizes into concrete the manifold of sensory apprehension and acts of perceiving or comprehending. Without this imaginative grasp, he realized, there would be no coherent sense experience.
The imagination is the cause for every mental activity.
The first theory is that the fundamental activity of the mind, called "synthesis," is an activity of thought that applies certain concepts to a previously given perceptual datum from experience.

Thus, Kant still says, as late as page 91 of the first edition ‘The Critique of Pure Reason’,
"But since intuition [Anschauung] stands in no need whatsoever of the functions of thought, appearances [Erscheinungen] would none the less present objects to our intuition".

2003-03-31T20:53:00.000+10:00

Title - Francisco Valera. The Emergent Self (Chapter 12).

Keywords - Emergent self, biological identity, autopoiesis – self-production, cellular, neurons, cellular automata, virtual self, deconstruct, Buddhism, selflessness, egolessness, knowledge, life and death.

Thoughts -
Emergent selves are based on ungrounded processes. A paradox appears between the solidity of what appears to show up and this groundlessness.
The immune system is not spatially fixed, its best understood as an emergent network.

Virtual identities, us, a phenomenon so productive that it doesn’t cease creating new realms : life, mind and societies.
The virtual self is evident because it provides a surface for interaction between other selves and mediums, it cannot be located i.e. delocalised.
I have various identities that manifest in different modes of interaction. These are my various selves.
Western tradition has avoided the idea of a selfless self, of a virtual self. The egolessness, or selflessness, is the core of Buddhism.

Cellular automata are simple units that receive inputs from immediate neighbours and communicate their internal state to the same immediate neighbours.

“Deconstruct the notion that the brain is processing information and making a representation of the world. Deconstruct the militaristic notion that the immune system is about defense and looking out for invaders. Deconstruct the notion that evolution is about optimising fitness to live in the conditions present in some kind of niche”.

……..an appetizer for thought.
Knowledge coevolves with the knower and not as an outside, objective representation

2003-03-28T08:37:00.000+10:00
link to mc2. my connected community
and to sandbox wiki. wikiness

2003-03-27T13:29:00.000+10:00
check out this for self-organisation constructivism

2003-03-21T19:29:00.000+10:00
this is the link to the research register for the tute texts lit. reviews

2003-03-21T19:26:00.000+10:00
Title - Daniel N. Stern. The Interpersonal World Of The Infant.
Introduction & “The Sense Of An Emergent Self” (Chapter 3)

Keywords - Nonverbal, internalize. cognition, self/other, perception, non-linear processes, motion, affectivity, emergence, sense, intensity co-construction b/ween parent and child, syncrony, timing, affect, sensation, separation of self, dealing with the nonverbal, internalising, behaviour,fantasies, action tendencies, preferences, values, intensity, thinkers heightened arousal, continuity as a sense, imitation, subjectivity, empathy, the sense of verbal-self, The narrative self. The verbal self. The sense of an intersubjective self. The sense of core self-with-another. The sense of a core self. The sense of an emergent self. Midcdle, upper-class, mostly white. Soul, Subjective experience. Systemic. Ontology

Thoughts -
Contextualizing the developing infant.

Primary Consciousness : not self-reflective, not verbalised. Lasts only during the present moment that corresponds to ‘now’.

….a traditional thought : ‘a sharp separation between body and mind exists’.

An Emergent Self : experiencing being alive while encountering the world (or yourself) at any given moment. An awareness of the process of living an experience.
A sense that comes into being during the first two months. A sense of organisation in the process of formation, a sense that remains active for the rest of life.

Continuity : a sense, is a consistently found continuity, since the sensation of going-on-being emerges only when an experience is brought forward into a present moment. Flow of action. Connection of series.

Cultural Variables : facial expressions, or lack thereof; vocalizations, or silences; body orientations; physical distances; gestures; ways of being held; the rhythms, timing, and duration of acts and activities.

Subjective experience : infants live a very subjective life, filled with changing passions and confusions. They struggle with blurred social events that presumably are seen as unconnected and unintergrated

Parents view young infants : as physiological systems in need of regulation. As fairly developed people with subjective experiences, social sensibilities and a sense of self that is growing. Authorititive shields.

Amodal perception : to take information received in one sensory modality and somehow translate it into another sensory modality.
Abstract representations that the infant experiences are not sights and sounds and touches and nameable objects, but rather shapes, intensities, and temporal patterns – more global qualities.
Developing a correspondence of a present experience with something prior. Present experience would feel related in some way to experience from elsewhere.
Amodal perceptions, based on abstract qualities of experience and vitality affects and constructive efforts based on assimilation, accommodation and association are the processes by which infants experience organisation.

Vitality Affects : properties of people and things, such as shape, intensity level, motion, number, and rhythm, are experienced as global, amodal perceptual properties, suggesting that things will be experienced directly as categorical affects(angry, sad, happy,).
Elusive qualities of feeling and changes in motivational states, appetites, and tensions - kinetic terms like ‘surging’, fading away’, ‘fleeting’, explosive’, ‘crescendo’, ‘bursting’, ‘drawn-out’.

Actions : self-generated actions and sensations are the primary experiences. The emergent property of things, in the beginning, is an action-sensation combination where the object is first constructed in the mind by way of the actions performed on it.

Pleasure and Unpleasure : the most salient and unique aspect of human experience is the subjective experience of pleasure (tension reduction) and unpleasure (tension buildup).

States of Consciousness : drowsiness, alert inactivity, cry, regular sleep. Different waking states of consciousness serves the role of organising focus on subjective experience.

Perceptions and Cognitions : where social experiences is viewed as a subset of perception and experience.

2003-03-19T12:36:00.000+10:00
great link for emerging self antibody
and another.....Mahler and Stern

2003-03-18T10:07:00.000+10:00
Title - Mark Rakatansky. Motivations of Animation.
Keywords - Territory. Map. Animate. Character. Vector. Motivation. Characterizing. Believability. Transformations. Gestures.

Thoughts -Isnt the art of animation animating what isn’t? Likewise the art of art? A painting is just pigment on canvas, an essay just ink on a page.

Buildings : A building cannot move as a body moves, a building is not a body. Dull. Unanimated.

Iteration : No iteration no animation. Animation cells iterate to provide animation and movement in the characters as the characters respond to the difference from cell to cell.

Vectors : A vector is not just a physical force it is said to be ‘directed’, to be ‘oriented’, to have some ‘sense’. This sense, this orientation, is its motive force. A vector is motivated, like a gesture is motivated, as a relational complex of motivation, a dialogical motivation, not as a reflection or illustration of a single motive.
The word ‘direction’ is sometimes replaced by ‘direction and sense’ to denote the fact that a vector is an oriented line segment which points in a particular sense.

Character : Character is not just predetermined and then repeated, but rather that the character is discovered through the responsive iteration of its multiple characteristics throughout the project.
If you start with character, you will probably end up with good drawings. If youstart out with drawings, you will almost certainly end up with limited characters, caught in the matrix of your limited drawings….For identity you do not draw differently, you think differently

2003-03-04T10:34:00.000+10:00
Title - Massumi. Parables for the Virtual. Movement Affect Sensation
Keywords – Affect. Incorporeal. Dynamic unity. Movement. Habit. Sensation. Transition. Intensity. Virtual. Quantum Mode.

Thoughts –
Affect : (p27) produce effect on. Used loosely as a synonym for emotion. Affect=intensity. (p35) The simultaneous participation of the virtual in the actual and the actual in the virtual.
The autonomy of affect. If there was no excess the universe would be without potential, pure entropy, death. Structured things live in and through that which actually escapes them. There autonomy is the autonomy of affect
(p36) When it is punctual, it is usually described in negative terms, typically as a form of shock.
(p41) Confidence is the emotional translation of affect as capturable life potential; a particular emotional expression and consciousness of one’s perceived sense of vitality.

Incorporeal : not composed of matter. Immaterial.

Personality : (p2-3)The concept of “personality” signifies subject formation according to formulated terms of ‘coding’.
Coding personality can be thought of in terms of positioning on a grid.
the grid : a system of structured or numbered points or squares printed on a map, forming the basis of map references. A network or pattern of lines.
The body corresponds to a position on the grid defined by a minute overlapping of each term with a bordering position.
>>The body can be defined by its position on a grid. This model has the ability to link body-sites into a ‘geography’ of culture tempering the tendencies of ideology.
>>Cartographic graticule. Network of lines defined on a set datum.
How can the body perform its way out of a defining framework that is not only responsible for its very construction, but seems to initiate/prescribe every move selected from a limited set of terms i.e. coordinates on the grid?

(p 8) Personality is an emergent quality of movement. The distinction between literal and figurative is not logical 0 Vs.1 binarism. ‘Passing into’ and ‘emerging’ are dynamic unities.
(p10) A dynamic unity has been retrospectively captured and qualitatively converted.
>>Can space be standardised by measurement? How big is space? Before measurement there was air and ground, but not space as we know it.
Ground is not static just as air is not an empty container.
The ground is full of movement, tremors and quakes, as full as the air is with weather. The ground is anything but stable. It is a dynamic unity of continual, folding and uplifting. Measurements stop the movement in thought, just as it empties the air of weather.
Space - a grid of determinate positions.

Movement : (p6)Concepts of movement. An object with a flight path, as a linear trajectory is made up of a sequence of points or positions that the object occupies one after the other. Between one point on a line and the next, there is an infinite number of intervening points. If the arrow occupies a first point along the path, it will never reach the next unless it occupies each of the infinity of points in between them. It is the nature of infinity that you can never get to the end.
The in between positions are logical targets – possible endpoints. The flight of the object is never immobilised , we stop it in thought when we believe its movements to be divisible into positions. Freezeframe.They can enter into our bodies as sensation and liberate insight through feeling.

Habit : (p11) Natural law. An acquired automatic self-regualation. It resides in the flesh. It is said to be “cultural”. Habit which is automated and material can pass for “natural”.

Sensation : (p13) Sensation is never simple…. the feeling of having a feeling.
(p14) Sensation – a resonation, or interference pattern, filling the emptiness with its complex patterns. Complex …..not composed of parts. It is composed of the event that it is . A complex dynamic unity. The movement remains continuous. It remains in continuity with itself across its multiplication.

Resonance : seen as converting distance into intensity. It is a qualitative transformation of distance.

The feeling of having a feeling – The perception of having a perception
Sensation Vs. Perception
Memory + Sensation + Perception . Occurring without characters/properties. Without form or content. A memory without content? = could it be pastness?

Transition : each transition is accompanied by differing levels of capacity – a change in which powers to affect and be affected are addressed by a next event.

Intensity : (p25)non-conscious, self-governing. Outside expectation and adaptation. Spreads over the generalised body surface. Interloops that travel the vertical path between head and heart. The relationship between levels of intensity don’t conform or generate exponentially but rather they resonate, interfere, amplify. Verbal expression can amplify intensity. (p29-30)Something that happens out of mind in a body directly absorbing its environment.
(p33)Intensity is immanent to matter and events, mind and body. It cannot be experienced, it generates and regenerates ate every suspended moment. Cannot be captured.

Virtual : (p30)a realm of potential. Potential where the future combines with the past, where outsides are infolded and sadness is happy.

Quantum Mode : (p37)Each individual has there own. Various forms of indeciciveness in logic are joined by emotion on the psychological level, resistance on the political level.

Mime : (p40) A mime decomposes movement, cuts its continuity into an infinite series of sub-movements punctuated by jerks. At each jerk, the potential is there for the movement to veer off in another direction, to become a different movement. Each jerk suspends the continuity of the movement, briefly, to quick to perceive but decisively enough to suggest a veer.

food for thought : approximate aesthetics & digital incompossibility

2003-02-25T20:22:00.000+10:00
a brilliant link to fractal geometric designs : geometry junkyard

2003-02-25T20:00:00.000+10:00
time is changed

2003-02-25T19:50:00.000+10:00
a blogging good time!