rose marshack : whyamistillawake.com

I’m compressing “Faith Healer” from Big Dipper’s Boo-Boo album. They are reuniting and playing some shows in April, and releasing an album in March. Oh, maybe you’re not supposed to know that. Anyway Rick and I do work for Merge and Touch + Go Records and sometimes ThrillJockey; we compress and write the Enhanced-CD software. Leftover knowledge from our free non-working days.

What does Big Dipper mean to me? If they are not playing in the midwest, I will fly out to see them play on the East Coast, and we all know how much I love the East Coast. YUCK. I’m not exactly sure why I’m so excited to see them. I guess they’ve just been gone for so long. And Bill has such a beautiful voice. I was tempted to try to see if we could open for them, but fuck it. I’d rather just enjoy them.

Rick, Gram, Jim, and I are going to see RiotFest 2007 - Naked Raygun and Stiff Little Fingers - this Saturday. Gram, who is 4 years old now, has special noise-canceling children’s headphones made by RJ Reynolds to protect his hearing (and ostensibly, give him his first whiff of second-hand smoke; at a concert).

I had another one of my epiphanies last night; the kind where I am at least a year late to jump on some kind of bandwagon. I decided that it would be prudent to

“Employ artistic uses for augmented reality platforms to explore ideas of sustainability.”

Things like RFID tags, GPS, etc. Cool idea, huh? Why not google Spatial Practitioners and see if anyone has been doing this for the past 5 years. Duh. And on top of it, they are doing it at UIUC, where I have somewhat just banished myself from. Maybe I did come up with something new though, and forgot about it and assimilated my interests into what my colleagues are doing here in Champaign. For example, I think that MUSIC fits in there somewhere, along with SOUND. And I don’t see much of it, that “M” word in what already has happened. How can we fit that in, and also get a more authentic version of the P word (Performance)? Maybe there is still some work left to be done.

Here’s a good crapshoot: I’m trying for the Reality Jam theme of ISEA2008 with Rick’s and my Eggpass project (phase II). They say they want augmented reality and religion. I can provide that thanks to my 3 days with His Holiness.

We are currently designing an augmented reality project that which employs a social network trace to help envision the doctrine of Pratitya-samutpada; the Buddhist principles of interconnectedness.

This paper describes data collected from phase 1, an augmented reality social network trace begun in 2004 (http://www.eggpass.org) along with the design process and initial results of this next phase.

On December 8, 2004, in a classroom on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a dozen sculpted eggs bearing the URL “eggpass.org” were handed out with three simple rules:

1. Pass the egg to someone with whom you are on a first-name basis.
2. Please explain these rules to them.
3. Please visit eggpass.org and answer a few questions.

Stanley Milgram’s work on the Small World Problem was an obvious precursor; however while Milgram’s studies involved sending a package to a specific recipient through personal connections in order to determine the links between two strangers, Eggpass was meant to be open-ended, it was our hope that the eggs would continue to be passed from friend to friend for an extended period of time, building up a complex web of relationships and tracing them via the world wide web.

Almost three years have passed since this project’s inception, and with our data (collected via php and mySQL) we now design Phase II, the ultimate goal is to explore the possibilities of using an augmented reality social network trace to visualize (“prove”) the doctrine of Pratitya-samutpada; interconnectedness.

Buddhism posits an interconnected and interdependent reality where all phenomena (actions, conditions, results) are fundamentally connected in some way. All human action affects perceived reality. All actions are social actions. It is our hypothesis that using the tools of augmented reality (GPS, RFID, SMS, and the internet), we can illustrate these principles.

Total crapshoot. Why do I know ISEA is a great conference to go to? Because Kevin Hamilton went there, and anywhere Kevin Hamilton goes is probably awesome. More deity worship.

But get this. There has to be a way to display proof of the doctrine of interconnectedness with all these new technologies. Buddhist thought especially lends itself so easily to be visualized with scientific instruments. All the Prayer-Wheel-in-a-Hard-Disks, all the 3D CG mandalas. The next step is proving that butterfly wing effect.

I know just the men and women who could help me with this. If I could get a team together of my favorite brilliant authors and scientists, I could have a really nice party with chocolate cake and then someone could figure out a really neato experiment to do and I could program it. But it’s not the 1990s anymore and they’re all spread out over … uh… Illinois and Indiana. And I’m spread out all over a gradebook.

One of my best students brought in the new Oliver Sacks book. A tip of an iceberg. A tree of knowledge. My mind turned into a vein of amazon.com for 30 seconds: which should I tell him about: temporal lobe epilepsy? Nuns? (The book Lying Awake?) Other Oliver Sacks books? He hadn’t heard of them. That movie with Robin Williams? Richard Powers? (His newest book has an Oliver Sacks character in it). Other Rick Powers books about music? DNA? Happiness? Where do you start?

I have only ever wanted to wake people up. But now I have a bunch of students in front of me and their eyes are wide open! Now that they’re awake, what do I tell them?

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My job is pushing me to create and learn and explore and create some more. Constantly. First, an 88-key midi keyboard appears in my office (a “gift”) - which scared me for a good day - and little by little have gotten used to it… and two nights ago I actually performed with it. I accompanied Hank Hofler of Oh Astro (a college of mine at ISU) and a student of his, Katchmare (?) in playing a type of music I’ve never played before - Ambient Music!! I wanted to tell everyone it was harder than breastfeeding - so hard to fit the noises in at the right time, and the notes in at the right time. And worst, to make sure that what I played wasn’t CHEESY! I’m still unsure of the rules of ambient music.

Isn’t it funny that all music systems have rules? And you have to be careful about breaking them. A good friend (I think it was Heidi from Mercy Rule / 13 Nightmares) once told me about composing music for a major label, that she is very aware of which direction her hand moves. If it moves one direction (towards one chord) that might make the song commercial and sell copies, and the other direction makes the song more “cool.” I remember having that awareness while we were on Reprise, but not doing anything about it. If we had done anything about it, we probably would have moved our hand towards the anti-commercial direction.

Oh Astro’s new record just came out - it is really awesome to listen to. As much as I hate myspace, http://www.myspace.com/ohastro - you can hear some of their songs and you should buy the album.
So now my brilliant boss (who is calling me her “colleague” which is like the biggest compliment in the world) has listed my blog under her newly created blog, http://www.knottypinekitchen.com/Sharis_Stuff/Blog/Blog.html. By doing this, she’s forcing me to write more now, because she knows I’m gonna read her blog (she’s a brilliant writer) and I’ll see mine listed up there and feel like I’m defacing her blogroll if I don’t keep mine up.

And yeah, I know this sounds like kissing up, but I’m so past that. If I worship someone, they know it. That’s just the way it goes. I couldn’t care less how it looks.
Look, the woman came into my class today and totally added so much more literary cred. I realize I can be a tourist in so many different areas. We were talking about this: You Must Be Logged In To Do That! http://www.sevensixfive.net/myspace/myspacetwopointoh.html and Gilles Deleuze and she took the conversation to a whole other level, talking about how Deleuze defines ‘the discrete spaces of enclosure, the “prison, hospital, factory, school, family”’ - I missed family! –and how we think of ourselves, and whether or not it all boils down to commercialism … one distraught student asked, “if the commercialism and marketing were taken away from all this, would it be ok then?” There are individual answers for this (hope he figured that out.)

At some point the class deteriorated into how to make money off Secondlife - and then of course my DJs started thinking about making music in there…a question was brought up about the differences between making music in a virtual world or the “real” world (think about it, you need a music-playing device near you for both, and when it’s gone or off, the music’s gone)… but this was like “Duh, of course it’s the same” to the students. Not to me though.
So speaking of worship, let’s move on to His Holiness and His Other Holiness. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend $250 to listen to the Dalai Lama’s teachings in Bloomington, IN (where Shari went to school). The teachings were on something called Atisha’s Lamp of Enlightenment which I was going to read but I read stuff about New Media instead. The cool thing about his teachings was that they sort defined and elaborated upon the idea of interrelationship (nothing exists without being referenced or tied to something else) and then if you take away interrelationship, you get emptiness. He talked a bit about the idea of compassion: two types, one you feel for your family and friends and want something in exchange and the other type, is when you care for all living creatures; it’s that second type he’s interested in.

There was lots of other stuff but I’m going to sell that information on my paying site (just kidding). Robert Thurman (Uma’s dad) spoke one night at the conference and he was hysterical. People gave him a standing ovation. Both he and the Dalai Lama are great at making these types of teachings easy to understand for westerners. I’ve experienced some other Tibetan teachers and they are not always as accessible. Of course when I first heard Thurman, years ago, I had no idea what he was talking about. So maybe I’m getting advanced.

The basic thing to know for a western scientist is that Buddhist studies (about meditation, happiness, etc.) go completely along with current neuropsychology and cognitive psychological research, so much so that there are always studies going on with happiness and The Brain and How You Connect them. (and this is the subject of Rick Powers’ new book, I’m told… can’t wait!!)

I could say something about taking vows at the end of the lectures. We got to repeat a nice poem at the end of the lecture, which just happened to be my favorite poem. That and the Dalai Lama said it in Tibetan and the audience followed along in English. That pretty much floored everyone. People around me were bawling. I was so touched I had to call my dad and tell him about it. It was very nice.
His Other Holiness and His Better Half visited us on their way to Springfield Il - Ian MacKaye and Amy Farina, the Evens, are again on tour through the midwest. They stopped by to give us an hour of their time - it is so great that some bands are still touring. Back in the day, we’d be travelling around constantly and seeing our friends in different corners of the world. Now I guess we just have facebook. Or ichat. I’m trying to remember what we talked about for that hour. An hour of conversation with Ian MacKaye should count as about 1 year of graduate school. He makes you think that much.

How do these people get so smart?

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I’m going to become part of the peeing antibiotics into the earth problem I think. How the hell can I get so sick?

Here’s some food for thought that I assigned my students.

<http://smg.media.mit.edu/papers/Donath/SociableMedia.encyclopedia.pdf>.

I’m starting to like making them read. I hope they enjoy it. I even told them about how if you’re going to be a professor, you need to start getting exhibitions and papers written in journals and presented at conferences.

My whole goal at this point of teaching is to make them want to learn something before I teach it to them. How hard should that be?

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Poster Children 8387

Originally uploaded by Robert Loerzel

I love being able to search for myself on flickr!

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Wow! When the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art has a party, it really HAS A PARTY. We just played in a giant, gorgeous tent outside the museum, blocking the entire front staircase. IT was SO COOL!!! Actually it was kinda hot in the tent, since it was 90 degrees outside.

This was part of the Intonation Festival - Rock bands playing at the museum in conjunction with this “Sympathy for the Devil” exhibition which is really cool. The museum is 40 days free right now, you should just go and check it out. There were hundreds of people milling around the exhibition that day while I went in there - probably thousands in and out of the tent as we played. What a great 20th anniversary show!!

And what a dream to play the song “Modern Art” that Rick wrote 20 years ago, in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art. Can it get much better than that? I wish I had good photos, and I totally forgot to take a picture of the audience. It’s hard when your 3-year old kid is staring at you from the audience.

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I drove David Foster Wallace’s ex-girlfriend to Normal, Il, to take a train to Albuquerque. I only found out that she was David Foster Wallace’s ex-girlfriend as I was driving her. I only knew her as my ex-Tae-Kwon-Do student. But today in the car, she said, “Oh, remember I told you my ex-boyfriend (whom she talked about a couple of times before) used to work at ISU. His name was David; he taught in the English department.” But this time she said, “Maybe you had heard of him?” Like through my faculty links now, I might have heard of him.

I sort of choked and said, “UH…. well…. … Infinite Jest was a very nice book.” Trying to stay on the road.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be David Foster Wallace’s girlfriend - or ex-girlfriend? She talked about how he and Rick Powers used to get compared to each other.

Why would anyone compare those two? Jesus Christ! It would be like comparing Night and Day.
My life gets very intense sometimes. Maybe that is why I cannot sleep.

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Ryan’s Battle Serve - Volley 1Originally uploaded by imagepractice

ISU vs. UIUC : Photoshop Tennis! 

My friend Ryan Griffis at UIUC (I don’t even know which blog or website to put up for him, he’s so prolific; let’s try http://www.yougenics.net/griffis/) agreed to have his Image Practice class (which meets at the same time as mine!) play Photoshop Tennis with my Art/Music/Theatre 388 class! It was fantastic!

Here are the results: http://flickr.com/photos/12356252@N05/ ; the user on flickr is imagepractice. If you scroll up from the bottom, you’ll see the progression of events; these are students who are just learning photoshop. In my evaluation of what went on formally, I think that the UIUC team worked a lot more with photorealism; you can see the correct shadows on images they placed.

By far the best part, though, was how wired the students were in the class. I generally hate any type of competition, but this was very fun. The atmosphere in the class was electric! I wonder if it was the same over at UIUC? We at first were going to to iChat with the other class so we could “meet” but the video didn’t work due to restrictions at UIUC, but I think this was fortuitious; in not meeting the other class, I think it provided more of an unknown opponent. At the end of the class, the students who didn’t know photoshop well seemed way more interested in learning it, so we’ll have tutorials next week.

All seems to be going well! I am wondering, where is the catch?
I guess the catch is that I’m so consistently excited about my job and teaching that I cannot sleep very regularly.

A wonderful volley from the UIUC team.

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http://www.eddostern.com/runnersWOLFENSTEIN.html

actually this might not help.

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In my Arts Tech class today we reviewed chapter 2 of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (he’s such a brilliant man!) which really is about “Amplification through Simplification.” Your art (or whatever you do) could have further reaching effects if it’s less personal. I have a some really great students in the class and they have lots of brilliant things to say!

But then I presented VTS (http://www.vue.org) which I think is a fantastic way to talk about Art Education (which is now even being used for teaching doctors to be more holistic in their diagnoses of patients, lawyers to be more understanding of their clients, etc.) - and a fantastic way to watch people get more engrossed in art, and also to develop critical thinking skills.

Unfortunately I’m pretty sure the class didn’t understand what this had to do with teaching them how to use digital tools to create art better. To me, it teaches them how to decide which tools to use, and what art to make. We’re not at the using the tools area yet. Maybe I should tell them this on Thursday.

This is the age-old problem that art schools have; the students don’t understand that we’re not going to teach them trade-school stuff. My friend Aaron explained that the students sometimes cannot see the whole puzzle; and we’re handing them the puzzle pieces. Great way to explain it!

Then I went home and made a 7-year old kid cry in my Tae Kwon Do class. I told him he wasn’t ready to test for his next belt yet. He absolutely wasn’t, and he could be paying a lot more attention in class. So he cried, and then I felt terrible. I tried to tell him that this is not about him as a person, he’s just not at the point in the journey where he’ll get the next belt.
I’m trying to become more of a hardass. I think people will respect me more for it. I probably will, too. But it’s going to be difficult and painful.

The most wonderful teaching of the day was this: the little 7-year old kid, with tears in his eyes, went back into the class line and continued practicing. It made me pretty weepy. So I announced to the entire class that someone wasn’t quite ready to test yet, and they may have felt sad, but they got back in line and kept working, and everyone should give them “two claps.”
And later on, in practice, I made the little guy laugh. But I know he probably still felt bad when he got home.

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Does someone want to explain this to me? How can I teach this to The Kidz when I cannot understand it myself? http://remixtheory.net/

I’m on a “No Electronics After Sundown” kick. Except for the internet tonight because I have to get my lesson done for tomorrow. With teaching, it’s hard to know when enough is enough.

Tomorrow I will present Visual Thinking Strategies to my “Architecture of Participation” class as a form of art education which teaches critical thinking and also elicits participation from those who usually would not. VTS (and other art education) has even been used in training doctors to learn to better listen to and diagnose their patients.

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