What if I wrote a blog full of "What If" questions?

What If Questions....?

1. What if our arms grew out of our hips?
2. What if octopi had arms and humans had tentacles?
3. What if humans urinated paint?
4. What if you could really see through the back of our heads?
5. What if cigarettes tasted like candy cigarettes?
6. What if scented candles smelled like fresh cut grass?
7. What if we could only see in pictures?
8. What if Crystal Lite was really made of crystals?
9. What if your intestines were made of pipes?
10. What if Australia was more wet?
11. What if we used dumb waiters instead of stairs or elevators?
12. What if English Muffins were England's only export?
13. What if Air Jordans were actually lighter than air?
14. What if your car stopped when a deer looked at it?
15. What if Canada was a fascist police state?
16. What if Douglas Firs really produced fur?
17. What if lamps pulled light in and when you walked in a room you turned them off?
18. What if everything were made of Legos?
19. What if George Bush had been a good president?
20. What if pumpkins carved you?
21. What if your tv watched you and mimicked you?
22. What if we rode in trees instead of in trains?
23. What if we kept receipts and tax forms in museums as art?
24. What if America actually got invaded by it's enemies?
25. What if we laid eggs with Emperor Penguins in them?
26. What if we fed babies with elbows instead of breastfeeding?
27. What if we just wore all of our clothes around all of the time?
28. What if Germany won World War I?
29. What if we dirtied our houses instead of cleaning them?
30. What if the Confederacy had won the Civil War?
31. What if everyday we changed our names?
32. What if the Apple Pie Organization had broccoli on it's feet and in it's boots?
33. What if instead of writing books, people were tattooed with the words?
34. What if you could actually drive on the information super highway?
35. What if we washed our kids mouths out with steel wool?
36. What if we wok, not run?
37. What if we could program our minds?
38. What if Prime Rib was cut from Optimus Prime?
39. What if our fingers were crayons?
40. What if Jesus was actually Satan?
41. What if fire alarms caused fires?
42. What if "kitty litter" was what a wasteful non-environmentalist feline left behind?
43. What if microwaves emitted tiny little tidal waves?
44. What if you opened walls instead of doors?
45. What if air ducts were actually small woodland waterfowls that shot out air?
46. What if
47. What if
48. What if
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50. What if

Lessig's "Free Culture?"

In response to a particular section of this: (http://www.firasd.org/scrapbook/books/lessig/freeculture.txt).

I have taken a music/record label copyright class before, so this is not the first time I've heard of some stupid copyright laws. I have no problem with inventions and other commercial goods being copyrighted. However, when it comes to music, movies, and other media along the same lines - this is where I start to get a bit up-in-arms. Do you know why? Because these things are supposed to be "art." Art shouldn't anything to do with big corporations, capitalism, or even money for that matter. If you are in the "art" field in order to make money - you're in it for the wrong reason. Art is about feeling, emotion, not being a millionaire. Familiar with the term "starving artist?" If your occupation is "art," you should be more than happy to have someone interested in your work, period. If your work is good and you reach the right audience, you'll be able to be successful. I want to work in the music industry, but I just cannot take the fact that it has turned into a greedy, overblown, fascist machine run by slick, corporate money-grubbing assholes that don't care about anything other than making money - how about making good music? This is exactly why I don't listen to "pop" music - it has no soul, it's all image and glam, and money. Of course, I agree with Lessig in regards to the idea that the illegality of copyright circumvention devices is ludicrous. They can be used to many good ends - for example especially my personal wish/hope that they could be used to put big movie and record companies out of business and put the personal creativity back into the hands of the people for the first time in many, many years and quit shoveling their mindless corporate drivel down our collective throats. In the case of the "Aibo" dog, I not necessarily surprised as much as I am as astounded that this even happened. Just imagine buying a computer, changing the background and some other trivial things that merely "personalize" it and then showing a friend how to do it. Well, looks like in the future any form of individualism and personalization is considered a copyright infringement - looks brighter already... Furthermore, the only people who seem to give a damn about this are Mr. Rogers (who is now deceased!) and the poor people who are being sued by the RIAA. Nobody is talking about this, why? If you want to call yourself an "artist" you need to be more concerned with quality rather the price tag. Honestly, I just don't get it - I'm an artist myself and I don't ask for a penny - my music is available for free download on the internet and I'm proud of that - I want it to go as far as it can - and to as many people as possible and they don't need to be rich.

William Gibson - "God's Little Toys" and his idea of "recombinant"

This article is in response to this: (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.07/gibson.html).

This is not my introduction to Mr. Gibson as I read Neuromancer - a weird sci-fi novel, which I recommend, a number of years ago. I first found it interesting that he mentions William S. Burroughs, as it seemed to me that Gibson sounds a little like a mix between the latter and Hunter S. Thompson (not a bad thing). He begins talking about what he calls a "recombinant," that is, a project that uses bits and pieces of other's material and puts it together in a new innovative collaboration. I knew I'd heard the term "recombinant" before, and I thought it something to with biology. A quick search on dictionary.com proved my hypothesis correct. A recombinant is a "cell or organism whose genetic complement results from recombination" or genetic material can be recombinant when it results from new combinations of other genetic material, (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/recombinant). However when you look at the definition, it is clear why Gibson is borrowing (ha) this word to define some sort of cut-up/mash-up remix project. What I found to be particularly interesting is the fact that I just happen to know of a "project" that fits his example almost exactly. It also just so happens that project was founded and is operated by yours truly. My project is called Algiz BC, (http://www.myspace.com/algiztribe) and it is definitely a good example example of what Gibson meant by "recombinant." With my project I take samples from different songs, movies, and field recordings and combine them together to make something entirely new and different than they were separately. What makes it different from a typical remix or a DJ physically mixing two records together? I only take small samples and clips from each of my sources and I use a lot of them - there are no loops, beats, etc. thrown in to carry the compositions, at any given time you are hearing anywhere between 1 to 8 different tracks of audio samples overlapping or fading into each other. Both of the compositions I have created so far (two others are currently in the works) are very long (about nine minutes and fourteen minutes respectively) and are very ambient in their overall structure and feel. The idea behind this project is simple - I just took simple samples from songs and movies that I liked and mixed them into each other; while distorting some of them to make them sound stranger than they did before, in order to create something completely new. However, for me, I tend to think that the most interesting aspect of the project is that is neither guitar or beat (read: bass) driven and furthermore it employs the usage of a number of folk instruments including flutes, bagpipes, percussion, mouth harp, etc. I made a fairly strict conscious decision not to use guitar at all, because to put it quite plainly - I am bored with rock-based, guitar-driven music. There are not enough people doing anything experimental and strange enough to keep my attention any longer. I love weird psychedelic rock/proto-heavy metal, but I've never heard anything recent that's cooler than German Oak's self-titled album from 1972. When I said the project wasn't bass driven I didn't mean it didn't involve the use of electronic influence and samples - in fact, I embrace them. The genre itself is constantly evolving and experimenting - reinventing itself - this is the same with Algiz - but enough, if you are interested, go listen to my project.

Presentation Series: Scott Snibbe

Last Wednesday, October 24th, a special guest speaker was lined up in lieu of regular N100 lecture. His name is Scott Snibbe and he is an artist - of sorts. He does, in fact, create works of art - but they aren't paintings or sculptures. Mr. Snibbe is a interactive artist, an artist who creates works of art that have immersive qualitites. Rather than being static visual objects, Mr. Snibbe likes to create art such that every individual can participate; and moreover, even have a totally unique personalized experience. The first work he showed was an "installation" which showed beams of light on the ground illustrating an individual's "personal space." If a person were to walk on it alone - nothing would happen. However, with each new person on the installation, the beams of light move to encircle each person's own space. Thus, the more people on the installation, the more the light has to change to adapt. Another type of art he does is screen based, many of which can be accessed at his website: http://snibbe.com. With these works he attempts to let people create their own dynamic art using stars, squares, and other shapes. Most of the programs are easy to use and quite enjoyable. Perhaps the most interesting of Mr. Snibbe's works are the ones in which he uses people's own shadows and movements. For instance he has a wall installation where people walk by and their shadows are caught in infinite loops that continue to pass by on the wall until another person "touches" the first shadow - which causes it to "melt" off the wall indefinitely. A second variation of this is another wall installation which shows a tree and a lion. The object is to catch the falling fruit off the tree without moving too much. When the person begins to move too much, their shadow turns red and the lion is alerted and will eventually attack the person's shadow and "kill" it.

I think the idea of interactive art is very exciting and quite frankly I'm surprised that there isn't more of it around already. I'm not exactly sure if Mr. Snibbe is one of the big pioneers of the field, or has just managed to gain more of the spotlight - but either way, I'm a fan. I especially like the idea of having these sort of works at boring places where people have a lot of waiting around and time to kill - like airports, train stations, etc. Not only could these sort of works be enjoyed by all different ages and kinds of people, but they would help to engage children as well so they aren't being troublesome and obnoxious. I thought Mr. Snibbe did a pretty good job of presenting his work - though he seemed a bit nervous and shy. I learned that a lot of psychological data and considerations go into creating projects like these. It makes perfect sense why they would use information such as proxemics (the study of personal space) and cultural ideals (different cultures have very different concepts of personal space), I just never thought about using them for something like this. I hope that Mr. Snibbe's work will help open up new ideas about what public art is, how it can become interactive, and where said art is viewed as "socially acceptable."

Marshall Mcluhan: "The Medium is the Massage"

I just read "The Medium is the Massage" last week and it is rather unlike many others. I suppose it's almost more comparable to a child's picture book than anything else. The overall emphasis of the book to show that media uses the actual physical form in which it is presented (the medium) to really get across the real goal or point of the picture, sculpture, painting, etc..  Interestingly enough, Mcluhan uses this overall idea of the book to sculpt it into something more than a book - it's an experience, a work of art.  The manner in which the book is presented makes it more interactive than just reading a simple text book.  One quote from the book says, "The stars are so big, the earth is so small, stay as you are."  This quote also touts of the book's other themes: individualism (particularly in a creative capacity).  Mr. Mcluhan "wrote" (well, sort of) a book unlike many others - a book with the goal of getting people to realize that they are being molded by not only the media they take in, but especially the medium of said media.  This is something that might not occur to a lot of the viewers of a specific work, because it's perhaps many times a sub-conscious afterthought (as we are concentrating on the work itself).   Mcluhan asks us to dig deeper and think about why the artist/designer/etc. choose the medium they did - how would it be different if they had chose another?  Mcluhan is able to take something as simple as a photograph and present it in a such a way that you actually view it differently - you view the meaning.  The meaning is the way it massages you - and The Medium is The Massage.