« October 2005 | Main | December 2005 »
November 27, 2005
Filth.
Just finished Sartre's Nausea. Pretty evocative work.
The title really spells it out... that sick feeling you get when things become too vivid - screaming existence, while clearly insubstantial. Being and Nothingness... blah blah blah. Seems all these things suffer from a lack of extension. The process just falls apart. Maybe this is true as a result of cybernetics - fluid networks - abstract relational node-based transducer systems. Or something equally quasi-sensical. Sensationalism. Again and again i hear people denounce philosophy for fear of introspection. Bullshit? Bullshit. Introspection breeds schizophrenia. Bisected consciousness. Destruction of language - social castration. Im not looking for the meaning of life, but for the reason of question. I think. I was playing with a few thoughts on the train this morning... mostly concerning electricity. Which makes absolutely no fucking sense. And waves. Which also make no fucking sense. Issues of control. Yea, these things are pretty silly and obtuse, but when you relate them with networking... social networks, conceptual info-networks... whatever... It all ties in to Top down classification - something language is very good at... in a lazy way... as opposed to the more fluid relational stuff. But electricity flows, it can be contained in a vacuum, but is always in flux. Entropy. diminishing returns.
Posted by alex at 10:48 PM | Comments (1)
November 26, 2005
"A great menace weighs over the city."
Midway through Sartre's Nausea—right to the list of most enjoyable books I've read. I find comfort in his writing—his style. It is like my own. Expository. Conceptually, the work is dated, barbarian—as compared to his later work, to the popular post-modernism of the now. Still, the treatment is biting, a stark reality—to borrow another two words from the guy. I wonder how many actually do feel a semblance of nausea—that hyper-vivid stomach-churning jab from your inner perspicacity. Sometimes I can sense a distinct smell, neither pleasant nor otherwise, but clearly alien. Colorblind synesthesia.
Posted by alex at 01:53 AM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2005
del.icio.us is the new google.
on tagging...
tag-tagger
tagsonomy
de.lirio.us
Clay on ontology
toetag
simply
freetag
cloudalicio.us
and of course
del.icio.us
flickr
livejournal
ontology is shite.
random cool stuff...
sonic finger-texting
touch-typing
Posted by alex at 08:53 PM | Comments (2)
Tag the system
Flickr. Del.icio.us. Ning. Tagging is the relatively new [about 2 years old] implementation of a dynamic and multidimensional organization structure for digital content. There is no shelf on the world wide web, so the same constraints need not — cannot be applied. Classical thought describes a top-down approach to labeling content — as can be seen in such organizational systems as the Dewey Decimal System. This was mostly brought on by Clay Shirky's lecture in my Tuesday Applications class.
My problem doesnt lie so much with tagging as the overal human information organization paradigm. Big and lofty, right? Tagging is great, but there are a lot of holes.
>> Anyone can tag anything whatever they want — errors and all. Mallintentions and all. A mess of synonyms and misspellings. That said, what is communication but a big confusing labyrinth?
>> Problems arise when grouping created and visited content. There is no real way to compare these things — as in combining del.icio.us tags with flickr tags. Metadata would make this kind of cumbersome.
>> The tagging solution is still but 2 dimensional. Information needs to evolve dynamically to compliment the explicit user. A multidimensionally dynamic nuclear system.
>> Visualization is poor.
More on this subject later.
Posted by alex at 07:01 PM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2005
And another project. ITP is on blast.
Posted by alex at 10:00 AM | Comments (1)
November 07, 2005
New Toy
Meet the fish-eye.
Posted by alex at 08:36 PM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2005
Two new projects in the works. Check them out
And be sure to check for hyperradiant.net
Posted by alex at 01:12 PM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2005
On Design
Lately, I've been questioning the directions of interactive and immersive design. This is a huge and slippery topic — one often brought up to no real conclusions. I feel that the current players in design don't have a clear — or adequate, really — vision. The industry — and by osmosis pop-culture — is poluted with banal euphemisms, aphorisms, buzz-terms. 'Information architecture', 'immersion', 'designing experience', 'form over function'. These concepts and terms are thrown around without true introspection. There is a difference between innovation — designing for future — and designing for functionality. Of course, one must take into account existing product and the immediate needs of consumers. Ideally, precedence would be divided between the two, giving more oportunity for paradigm change — which is the essential target.
My reason for trying to articulate my thoughts on this subject come from my distaste for a gross amount of 'innovative' works. Huge Hi-res image/video instalation is pointless. If an immersive experience is saught after, how could a 2-dimensional array of pixels ever attempt adequacy? Even wrapping around the viewer. I find this outlook futile. And whats worse, existing technology is so often bastardized for these causes — inadequate and bulky works — that are largely not at all innovative. I denounce the work of Clifford Ross. I denounce all the minority report-like interfaces that require a piece of glass. Whats the point? In the same setting, an opaque touch LCD would work just fine. In contrast, a 3D interface would be much more suited for 3D control mechanism. And not to suggest that such a 3D interface would have no use, as the opposite is true.
I recently read an article in 4d Space - Interactive Arcitecture, that brought up historical value. The author maintained the integrity of a given work lies in its ability for historical transendance — and not the technology it employs. This concept is difficult to manuever, as clearly the technology is inescapable, but the aesthetics are the issue. There is much talk of masking the technology, and escaping the prison of the cargo-cult — something that is extremely valid.
Posted by alex at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)