Line & Shape, Time & Space

We Own The Sky

2008-09-25T14:00:00.000-07:00

Here is a video that Garry sent me about Microsoft's new program called 'World Wide Telescope'. They basically stitched together images of the entire night sky and made a program that you can zoom in and out of the galaxies/stars/entire systems as you please. then you can follow 'journeys/tours' made by super passionate astronomers as well as make your own tours to pass along. I think one of the most amazing things about the video is Roy Gould who talks about the project so fervently and passionately, at one point it seems like he stops talking to prevent himself from crying. It was fucking amazing.

Here is the video: if you want to get to the really epic speech he makes about the impact of the whole project on humanity...start at about 3:00

Important Points:
experience the universe, a 'magic carpet' that lets you navigate where you want to go
people who are passionate about the nooks and crannies of the universe that can make the universe a welcoming place
at heart, we are all storytellers, and in telling stories we can understand the universe in our own way and create our own universes
"when i ask how does the night sky make you feel?" "small, oh, insignificant." "well, our gaze fills the universe... and we can now start to have a dialogue with the universe. we may be tiny, but we are truly, wonderfully significant."

Suitably so, here is one of my favorite groups m83 (who makes amazingly ethereal music and is named after the spiral galaxy m83 *swoon*) with 'We Own The Sky'.

Young Hearts, Be Free, Tonight!

2008-09-16T15:28:00.000-07:00

<3 okay so after the last meeting with Don and a brainstorming session with Debbie/Connie/Saeid... I was presented with some interesting insights into how my project can go. We are still not at the point of forming deliverables and whatnot, more so diverging and converging onto appropriate and intriguing ideas.

here were some of the things mentioned:
focusing on what areas to affect change (relationships, environment, etc)
looking at why people DON'T care
how can we make it revelant that their lives
taking the surrealness of the topics-->making them personal
how the overlaying push of the project to recreate a value system/create an explanation for life/give both comfort and awareness/community/spirituality is really similar to religion
twisting our senses and perceptions
blowing up small things/worlds, making huge worlds tiny
creating a complex narrative of interconnected events
switching environments (what we control and what we don't control, ie. cities where outer space was and outer space where cities were...unfamiliarity and change in context)
REVEAL + MAKE RELEVANT

so then when i began research again, i started to look into emotionality/emotional learning and the idea/nature of the complex or simple narrative in itself. a book i found randomly discusses the natures of both scientific and humanistic knowledge, as well as the narrative as an entity. i learned this stuff:
science attempts a world that is invariant across human intentions and plights while humanist endeavors establish not truth, but versimilitude (the appearance of being real), and puts timelessness into the particulars of experience and locate it in time and place. the humanist outlook also changes from viewer to viewer (therefore creating something that can be more universally appreciated is integral)
we render the world by: scientific theories, historical explanations, or metaphorical renderings of our experience
the idea of surprise; probe what we take for granted
"our brain stores a view of the world, if unflexed we let our attention flag a little, look elsewhere, even go to sleep"
perception; to some degree, the world as we have structured it by our expectancies
dealing with the selectivity of our senses, our minds, and our language

so i did find all of those things intriguing. but what most interests me is the idea of a complex narrative (when the author uses causally unrelated narratives to work together to build thematic unity) to layout what i want people to learn. but i dont have a huge amount of experience in it and it seems kind of scary/terribly hard but i think that is a good thing. i was also looking at a book of interactive/conceptual books (haha!) that ginger brought to class. it involves examples of how you can totally change a viewer's experience of learning from a book by structuring it and creating different mechanisms for physical exploration.

some examples of complex narratives include:
- flashbacks
- dream sequences
- repetition
- different characters' point of view
- multiple plot lines converging at the end
- flash forwards
- different time frames
- pre-figuring of events that have not yet taken place
- circular plotting where we are led back to the beginning
- backwards story telling, where the denoument is shown first and
explained through the plot

so i think that could give me a lot of freedom to cover a lot of ground. now to figure out what the fuck i am going to talk about and how exactly the make it work...

here is one of the most amazing songs i have heard this year. it makes me dance and cry at the same time. ah, amazing!

relation, with 'your tiny mind' (lifelike remix)

Going Nowhere...

2008-09-09T18:58:00.000-07:00

so after changing this blog's background like 8 times, we shall get back to business.

okay, i'm not sure if i've even gone anywhere in the ideation process... but so far i've been reading a book called Space and Place: the perspective of experience which has been helpful in starting a framework for research. with the initial suggestions of presenting depth, wonder, and enlightenment in a medium that can cause people to reflect/be influenced by it... i am looking further into human experience as a whole and how it is subject to space/place, emotion, and cognitive thought.

random notations...(this is very convoluted)
starting with space/place:
centers of felt value where biological needs are satisfied
what begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we know it better and endow it with value
knowing a place: direct (experience) or indirect (learning about it)

then on to emotion/thought/experience:
emotion + thought are our two ways of knowing, how we develop experience
emotion + thought, thereby not being separate, but additive in value
our senses change our experience of the world–a soundless space feels calm and lifeless despite visual activity

then it reminded me of what someone said to me before:
"the two most difficult things for human beings to grasp are infinity & nothingness"
which was akin to a line in that book where he says "vastness is never directly perceived, the mind frequently extrapolates beyond sensory evidence." which made me think back to the project...
-what else do we assume about our environment?
-how does this cause us to be misinformed about/miss entirely?
-do we oversimplify or overcomplicate our environments?

leading to...
-what makes you feel for a place/what makes it significant?
-what mediums/environments to we occupy now, and how can they be used to inspire change/create perspective
-how can this information about spaces, the emotional content of places, and ways we experience these things benefit the project?
-how do spaces and spatial relations make you; feel sh*t, know anything?

i feel that i have pieces of something but am ill-prepared to put them together. i have a headache. but here's CSS with a cover of grizzly bear's 'knife'. please enjoy.

also, here are some images from the landsat 7 satellite layered with an infra-red imaging system (i think)

chapter one: a new beginning

2008-09-07T16:03:00.000-07:00

hello!

so throughout the summer, my project concept has diffused and divulged into different areas of concentration. it all began with an project aptly titled, "sh*t, that's deep" which discussed things that are meaningful and causing introspection... but not in the usual literature/philosophy/music/fine art avenues that "depth" generally entails. therein, i wanted it to be about the philosophies (sort of) of other worlds that were, literally, deep. ie: deep space, deep ocean, deep underground caves, and maybe deep jungle or something. i sort of became fascinated with these other worlds that we incredibly different from ours, but that were essentially governed by the same physical and biological forces.

so the continuation of this developed on the ideas of awe, wonder, and discovery–being things our modern lives don't generally entitle us to. prior to the first class discussion, i had been thinking of the inaccessibility of scientific information today. i thought i could do something that would involve making nerd knowledge more intriguing, compelling, and essentially more visually interesting to the casual consumer of information. i also made the judgment that, if people knew about these amazing, mind-blowing things, their attitudes towards things such as the environment, other people/animals/beings, and life in general would change drastically. in short, i mean to give people a reverence for life that is often forgotten in the mess of city life and modernization.

So, in class the discussion moved to the fact that this project had to be more than an artier science magazine and a cool picture book. it would be to involve opening up ones mind in a much larger fashion, creating awareness, and employing a medium that would allow for awe & wonderment in our daily lives. then it was suggested that environmental/experience design and architecture would have to be considered... which made me go SH*T! because i hate and cannot compute anything in 3d. i would like the take the concepts into consideration, but i don't want this project to go into an area that i hate working in.

SO! i'm tired of composing sentences so here are some key lines from my VPL adventure and brainstorm:
recreation the experience of: contemplation, feeling small in comparison to huge things
scale: hugeness vs. smallness
densities: empitness vs. super packed'ness
bring together knowledge/fact and emotional experience
knowing facts in a different way (experiencing knowledge on an emotional level)
epic, cathartic, about life itself, expanse!
knowledge pre-experience and post-experience
life changing experiences: often out of your control (car crash, birth, death, fate)
losing control = gaining perspective
contemplation; going to public places, watching people, outdoors/large spaces

GOALS:
contemplation
reconsideration
infinite ways to blow your mind
feel something...

you should be astounded.

i don't really know where this is going still. i want it to tackle the problem in a new ways (like how richard branson is sending people to space to be ambassadors for earth).

but here's mickey moonlight with "interplanetary music". it's great.