This is a response to this great post by my friend Christina for the Applications readings.

My first ITP weeks were challenging. Even though I have been working on projects created with cutting edge technology, I had never been the one developing the technology itself. My job was to feed technologists with content ideas and strategies: knowing and discovering technologies through the content filter.

From the first class of my first semester, I understood ITP were the place I had been searching for years. A place where you simultaneously create technology and content ideas. The approach we are taught here is that technology frames creative ideas and as much as ideas frame technology. The more you know how the technology works, the more creative ideas you have. The more you have creative ideas the more you discover technology.

As of the first day, I also understood the next two years are gonna be a challenge. To be creative, you must let yourself go and dive into that creative space that generates inspiration. The thing is that with technology, this is hard to achieve. There are so many codes, algorithmes, softwares to master before you can let yourself go, that I doubted for weeks I could succeed in being creative using those tools. It felt like my Self 1 was constantly thinking that I had to completely master every single technology before I could pretend creating with it.

Also, the tools we learn here are not simple tools. They are complex and elaborated computed languages that demands a lot of cerebral work to be performed. Unlike a pen on paper, or paint on a canvas, or dance, I first found it hard to let myself go and be creative. How far do you have to master a technology so it becomes an extension of your body and you hands? So it becomes part of your Self 2 impulsions? It sometimes feels like learning technology implements an intermediary in between my ideas and and my creativity. Can technological creation be spontaneous? Or is it always mediated by a third entity that you can never completely control and understand? Is technology a filter with which we comprehend society or is it simply a tool?

How can we let our Self 2 be spontaneous when our brain has to continuously process code and cerebral knowledge?

Also, how can we build interactive art and experiences that allows the public to expose their Selves 2? I have always wanted to create immersive art that generate a simple emotion and impulse inspiring the individuals’ Selves 2 to act. Not to think and judge themselves but impulsively move and react. Having people behaving spontaneously with their Self 2.

What is interesting and paradoxical is the fact that to create such simple and instinctive environments, I do have to master cerebral and logical knowledge using Self 1…

I received an invitation to go a place I had wanted to go for ages: the Brooklyn Art Library.

For this library is not like the usual one you are used to. There are books, obviously, but instead of printed and commercialized ones, they are all handmade and unique. The idea behind this store/library/art project is to gather and to preserve sketchbooks from all over the world. Artists register on the website to receive a sketchbook at home. Then, they fill it with artworks of their own before returning it to the Library. Every sketchbook is added to the database and/or to the digital library. The public can browse the sketchbooks by country, city, theme, names, etc.

This means over the last years the Library has already gathered thousands of them. It is pretty impressive to walk in the store and see all those books. It has not the same vibe as a normal library. When you walk in a room full of sketchbooks, it feels like you are standing in front of thousands of intimate moments. Knowing that every page of every book was painted or drew by hand is pretty touching. The time it took for every artist to fill a sketchbook gives a deep value to the object. And it made me imagine how amazing it must have been to live in the pre-printing era. During those times where every book was handmade. Knowing that the paper object you held in your hands was the only existing copy, and was therefore so precious.

My visit to the Library made me realized how technology can create a distance between our body, the object and the content. When you hold one of those sketchbook in your hand and flip the pages, you can not help but imaging the hand moving and tracing the lines or painting on the page. Because you can see every detail of the pen movements, you can actually imagine a body and a hand making the art work and content. Same as a painting. The content make you feel the creation process. When I hold a printed book, I do not feel any desire to relate to how the object was made. No image of the printing machine comes to my mind.  It feels cold, one book amongst thousands of identical books. It can be a really beautiful object, but it does not create that intimacy feeling you have when holding a hand written note or a drawing.

It is even more the case with digital tablets like iPads, Kindles, iPhones, etc. When you hold one of those objects, do you feel the need to related to the person who made it? Have you ever imaged the factory workers assembling the parts and building the device? Or the programmer coding on his keyboard? I never thought about this. Technology brings us closer to the content by making it more accessible. You can connect, download anytime, everywhere. But on the other hand, it distances ourselves from the object itself. The object becomes a tool, a device with functions. The object is separated from the content itself. It’s mean is to display content, but the object is not content itself. Devices are empty boxes/spaces you fill with whatever content please you.

These reflections made me realized I do want to produced technological and interactive objects that are both a device and content. Objects that merge the form and content. Using shapes enhancing the storytelling, not only shapes displaying content. The ideal interactive context is the one in which the object is the story, tells the story. I also want to build interactive experiences that create an intimacy between the storytelling/object and the public.

When I first enter the Brooklyn Art Library, it felt like I was about to meet friends. About to converse directly with souls. It is a place where you do not feel loneliness. Because thousands of people have put their minds on paper. And all those minds are there before your eyes to be discovered. The invitation suggested me to look at a sketchbook by the artist Charles Clary. I am so glad I discovered his work which merges form and content perfectly and in a unique way.

I can not wait to have my own sketchbook on the shelves.

I embarked on a ship that crossed the waters. It took me away. I could see the city vanishing in a progressively distant glow. We passed by Liberty, garbages, boats and huge metal girafes walking along the shore in the horizon. The bay was colored in a rainbow of grays, browns and glossy blues. The wind was refreshing although coming from an unknown direction, changing its course every minute. When we reached the center of the bay, I no longer felt the desire to watch the disappearing city we had came from. Its magnetic skyline had suddenly lost its gravity force. I turned around and had a glance at the horizon. Through the buildings I could see it. The opening towards the sea. The smell of the eternally troubled reached us. I was no longer closed to the city, I was heading towards another land, closer to the edge.

The ship docked at what looked like an abandoned port. A place where nothing really exists but everything passes by. A space where nothing remains still but where things are carried away in an eternal transition status. Walking out of the ship felt like entering a dormant no man’s land. I could see buildings and houses but not sign of life. No emotional attachment to the structures. Like if the human beings inhabiting the premises did not bound to their land. Streets were empty. Houses were quiet. Cars were parked. I wondered aimlessly for a while. Entered a shop selling goods from another world. Back on the street, I followed the sidewalk line in search of a place to sit and rest. It led me towards a very calm street where shop windows were barricaded. It was hard to tell if shops were still trading but closed or if they were definitely abandoned. Some men were sitting on staircases guarding the stillness of life.

At the end of the street I saw a sign. The Book Cafe it said. I noticed the piles of books and old encyclopedias on sale and displayed outside, and walked in. It felt like I was far away from the city of millions. The place had this country side vide that makes you feel home. Things were out of place. There were books everywhere. Vinyles. Cassettes. Dust. People were sit on old school sofas, hanging out and reading. Enjoying a biscuit or a cafe. It felt like I was away from where I was only 25 minutes ago. That I was now in a place with no time. In a time zone outside the city frenziness.

My trip to Staten Island made me realized water is a strong boundary. Twenty minutes on a Subway is not the same thing as twenty minutes on a boat. Even is Staten Island is a borough of New York, it is not like the other boroughs. It is so far away in time and space. People living there are in a different time zone. And The Book Cafe is the perfect place to feel that impression of being far away. Of embarking on a trip that leads you to nowhere else than to yourself. Surrounded by your thoughts or great old school music. Staten Island vibe and the Book Cafe made me want to write literature.

Cross the water, walk in the void for a while, find the cafe, enter and chose a random vinyle to play. Enjoy.

They were all wrong
For the Earth is not round

In this book, Ferris takes us on the journey of astronomical thinking: Aristotle’s geocentric approach, the ptolemaic model, Newton’s laws of motion, Eisntein’s revolutionary e=mc2, Hubble Space Telescope, etc. Every chapter helps us understand that, as scientists develop their approaches, every small scientific step is but one giant leap for mankind.

Ferris explains us thinkers had to distance themselves from the perfectionist approach of Plato to go towards confronting ideas to facts and reality. Discovering the Earth is a sphere or understanding the distance between the Sun and the center of the Milky Way is done by the combination of two things: observation and concrete experimentation. This is where the book gets really interesting. We discover so many wrong ideas that dictated science until someone could prove by experimentation they were misleading. The main way to prove so is by using and developing technology. Thus, the book does more than only drawing the map of men’s knowledge on the skies. It is a book on how humans have always built themselves technical frames of thought to understand the world and deal with their own fragility.

Technology is the lens humans have always used to try to make sense of who they are and why they are here. Scientists have spent years developing telescopes lenses or mercury thermometers before they could use them to read reality properly and make sense with it. Until recently in history, humans were using technology mainly to try to understand the celestial word and nature. Nowadays, technology is not only used by scientists, it forms the daily framework of the majority of us. Almost every gesture we make now depends on it. In between the stars and us, it feels like there is now a meta reality that has been constructed with technology. We humans have now created a virtual interconnected celestial world and it is through this world we are now trying to live our lives. Is technology still helping us to comprehend reality or has it built a reality of its own? Ferris books does a great job at explaining how technology has helped us understand nature. But does technology still do so? Or is it bringing us further from it? I do not understand the mechanics of the universe, but I really appreciate I can navigate it though. Where is technology leading us to?

Some details on the speakers of the September 11th class:

Fred Wilson invests in networks that transforms industries. On the Board of NYU. 

Joanne Wilson does not invest in ideas and only once it gets moving forward. When we know where the company is going (35% in food).
Food52
Window Farms
everpurse
new media, other things. On the Board of the Highline.
Non profit organisations in education.

It is all about in the person. Strength. Ability to convince. You have to believe in them. Product-centered person. Salesmanship combined with product interest.
Formula: 25k to 50K. Expect at own 1%. Side letter she will continue to be able to invest. Crowd funding is a key component to show if the business is viable.