Tactile Eyes
Correspondent:: hexanthic@techemail.com (Den Mu)
Date: 1 Nov 2004 15:03:18 -0800
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EYE-THROUGH IMAGES
THE POST-ALPHABET FUTURE
The real world of digital reality has always been post-alphabetic.
Probably because the letters of the alphabet were too slow to keep up
with the light-time and light-speed of electronics, the alphabet long
ago shuddered at the speed of light, burned up and crashed to earth.
Writing can't keep up to the speed of electronic society. The result
has been the end of the Gutenberg Galaxy and the beginning of the
Image Millennium. Images moving at the speed of light. Images moving
faster than the time it takes to record their passing. Iconic images.
Special-Effect Images. Images of life past, present and future as
culture is fast-forwarded into the electronic nervous system. Images
that circulate so quickly and shine with such intensity that they
begin to alter the ratio of the human sensorium.
This is probably why artists, scientists and engineers from Xerox Parc
have created a creative installation titled Experiments in the Future
of Reading (XFR) at the Tech Museum in San Jose, California. All the
experiments in the future of reading project have a very practical
purpose: to suggest new consumer products for post-alphabet society.
Here, the alphabet is blasted apart and creatively reconfigured by
the shock-wave of electronic culture. Touch screens fill with texts
which shift at any moment to follow another story line: single words
that open up into continents of lost dreams; paragraphs that recombine
into novellas; stories that compress into a single emotion. Or huge,
gleaming light-tables on which are displayed graphic puzzles that can
only be solved by physically tilting the table back and forth by
hand, watching the letters of the alphabet slowly roll across the
screen, forming new creative combinations. Literally, hand-writing
for the new electronic cave-dwellers. A paradigm-shift in the form of
ideas for new consumer products in which writing itself bubbles to
the electronic surface, searches anxiously for its lost chain of
(alphabetic) signifiers, dances hesitatingly across the old literary
divide between metaphor and metonymy, finally realizes that words are
on their own in a liquid digital world, and comes to life as
light-through and sound-through and eye-through electronic words. The
words slide up and down, mutate one to the other, creating new
digital meanings. Pixel events, light-screen language, and soundscape
texture.
Or, consider my personal favorite. A children's book telling the story
of a cool cat doing the jazz scene in San Francisco. Except this
time, rather than reading the book, you play the reading. Sit in a
comfortable armchair equipped with micro-speakers (with a
mega-computer tucked away behind the chair), open the book, run your
fingers over the pages, and the sounds of jazz on the written page
suddenly surround-sound your ears. The cool cat at the Purple Onion,
at the Hungry I, or at an after-hours club down by the docks. In
traditional reading culture, the eye was privatized, shut up inside
the privacy of the central nervous system, isolated from the other
senses. In the future of (electronic) reading, the eye goes public.
It reconnects to the other senses, notably to the ear and the hand.
Tactile Reading. Touch the page at any point and the sounds of jazz
being written about can be instantly heard. You are actually in the
sound field of the book. Move your hand closer to the page or further
away, and the sound intensifies or fades accordingly. The end,
therefore, of passive reading, and the beginning of in-depth
participation in the electronic book. The future of reading will be
fun. It will be experimental and immersive. It will be unpredictable.
It is a full-body, full-mind, full-ear, full-eye experience. It will
certainly involve the complete ratio of the senses. Instantly, you
are the reading.
Or are you? If this project is about the "future of reading", then
what's really being read? Not words rolling off light tables or books
as soundscapes, but the eye of human flesh itself. Seduced by
electronic reading as a packaged consumer product, the eye is
externalized in the transcendent form of a light-object, a sound, a
liquid consumer graphic, a simulacrum of ocular perception.
Virilio's "sightless vision" or a game of alphabet soup?
CLICKING-IN TO THE GLOBAL SHOW
Did you catch Quantum Project on the net? According to its promo: What
the Jazz Singer did the age of talking motion pictures, Quantum
Project will do for the Internet as the global cinema.
Quantum Project is the Holy Grail of the tech future, that magical
point where two previously separate media --cinema and the Internet--
touch and spark and converge. More than a made-for-TV movie in the
Matrix mode, Quantum Project is the planet's first big budget
Hollywood style made-for-the-Internet movie. Here, Hollywood crosses
Silicon Valley, and the result is digital cinema with a big twist.
Because what's really converging in Quantum Project is not simply two
media - one millennium new, the other twentieth-century old - but
something much more interesting. Here, the real software of Hollywood
- its star system together with its high-intensity promotional culture
- merges with the streaming software of the Internet to produce an
Internet cinema that is global, immediate, and intense. When
Hollywood promotional culture meets the planetary distribution system
of the Internet, the result will be the world instantly retooled as a
global cinema. When the world becomes a global show, the Internet
will finally be experienced as popular consciousness. It will have
its stars and its stories and its tragedies and its scandals and its
blockbusters and its failures. The Internet will be the geist of
electronic life. Going to the Internet will be the ticket to the
future.
What Hollywood does best is streaming mythology with electronics,
bundling charismatic stars and advanced (imaging) technology to
produce a celluloid vision of life in the high-tech future. In these
sometimes wonderful, sometimes haunting cinematic images, electronics
is directly downloaded into the human imagination. For its sheer
consumer appeal, nothing beats it. Cinema is iconic, fascinating,
seductive, and, of course, often extremely profitable. Consumer
electronics of a special sort blown up to the size of an IMAX screen.
Maybe this is why the secret dream of all the Palm and PowerPc's and
interface devices of the world of consumer electronics has always
been to leave behind their purely instrumental work-day role as
enablers of fast communication, becoming instead real players in the
creation of human dreams--interfaces to the stars. Which is why
Quantum Project can attract such a crackle of media excitement.
Because what is really a quantum project is not just digital cinema,
but the future of consumer electronics. Following the thread to the
stars is the quantum project of the global show. Interfacing hot
consumer electronics with cold cinematic stars is the future theater
of eyeball culture.
But, of course, digital cinema won't leave the Hollywood star system
unscathed. Because let's face it: the real stars of digital reality
are special effects. Cool software programs that realize impossible
perspectives: special-effects sequences that can be so fascinating
and seductive because they always deal with reality hyped-up to the
point of hyperreality. Matrix bodies moving faster than speeding
bullets. Star War warp jumps. Morphed flesh. Streamed vision in every
movie. Invisible digital editing in every televised newscast. And
this is just the way it should be. In the age of the Internet, we are
already living in a special-effects culture. Fast communication.
Speed economy. Java memories. Linux open-architecture as a model for
living by the dot.com generation.
The seduction of special effects is where the Internet has the jump on
Hollywood. And this makes sense. Special effects is what digital
cinema streamed on the Internet does best. The future stars of all
the Quantum Projects of the future, therefore, as special-effects
hybrids probably being dreamed up right now in the image-factories of
the global cinema. Producing digital stars for the global show,
therefore, as one future of electronic society. Not the Jazz Singer,
but clicking-in to the Digital Eye.
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http://www.file.org.br/english/destaq_webfilms.htm#
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http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/kirsch.html
Correspondent:: hexanthic@techemail.com (Den Mu)
Date: 2 Nov 2004 12:17:32 -0800
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If you noticed that article from MIT was quite pathetic.
The Brazilian website though amatuerish was more in spirit of
understanding the idea that Kroker was trying to express.
Forget about America folks it is finished.
Correspondent:: hexanthic@techemail.com (Den Mu)
Date: 4 Nov 2004 01:36:55 -0800
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http://hexbodhi.tripod.com/mylife/id5.html
Scroll down the page
BOB what do you think of Belfast? (The northern Irish city with urban
warfare all the time)
How about Melbourne Australia...
The question is do you even think anymore or do you just look forward
to creating your own capitalist system?
I may be getting older everyday and I must acquire more mature traits
to remain your friend and I see how easily I can make you tired of my
mess.
Here is my question
Why do I find Linus Minimax so annoying?
Is there some kind of cultural differance between us?
His insistance on his stance towards things are NERDY.
He is a snob
I smell him and I don't like him what is it I am picking up on?
I THINK YOU GAVE UP ON ME.
Correspondent:: purple
Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 19:02:47 -0500
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On 11/4/04 4:36 AM, in article
426f26af.0411040136.1eb91d3d@posting.google.com, "Den Mu"
wrote:
> I THINK YOU GAVE UP ON ME.
No, your account is still plenty full. It takes a very long time for me to
give up on somebody. Look how long I've been on alt.slack.
The Great Bob Dobbs
Correspondent:: aleuphoric@canada.com (Linus Minimax)
Date: 8 Nov 2004 12:12:11 -0800
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> Why do I find Linus Minimax so annoying?
>
> Is there some kind of cultural differance between us?
> His insistance on his stance towards things are NERDY.
> He is a snob
> I smell him and I don't like him what is it I am picking up on?
1. Linus Minimax is an apocalyptic who prefers to counter political
hopes with gradual annoyance and amused taunting rather than the kind
of heavy cyclotrons of masks-of-almost-wearable-intensity one usually
finds in a "place" like this.
2. The 'internet-posting' department of "Linus Minimax" is less the
meat than my non-web scribblings and scrabblings. My 'insistance' is
the internet forcing me to write things which are mostly unreadable
from a 'whizzing over the net' trajectory-of-view.
3. I think the biggest problem with communicating over this medium is
the permanent entanglement of "information/ideas" with "personality
self-advertisement". I advertise myself annoyingly in the hopes that
that part of the interpretation will be unpleasant....... the smart
reader will ignore it, the dumbass reader will attack it and then I'll
know they're a dumbass. I don't mean you, though, because you
question yourself, and you accuse me of things I shouldn't ignore.
Plus, you seem to not give a shit how you seem, which is the only way
out of that particular Klein Bottle.
4. I am a nerdy snob half of the time, but I blame it on the "Ad
Absurdum" text-virus that has no soul, and I'll kill that asshole if
necessary.
5. "Slobbering Anus" kicks my ass every time, but is not translatable
into print.
6. The smelliest reason is that I don't believe in anything, and
that's always annoying.
Correspondent:: hexanthic@techemail.com (Den Mu)
Date: 9 Nov 2004 15:42:33 -0800
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>
> 1. Linus Minimax is an apocalyptic who prefers to counter political
> hopes with gradual annoyance and amused taunting rather than the kind
> of heavy cyclotrons of masks-of-almost-wearable-intensity one usually
> finds in a "place" like this.
That is relative so I'll just pass that one.
> 2. The 'internet-posting' department of "Linus Minimax" is less the
> meat than my non-web scribblings and scrabblings. My 'insistance' is
> the internet forcing me to write things which are mostly unreadable
> from a 'whizzing over the net' trajectory-of-view.
That was a little condescending, but I get your point.
Unless you meant it both ways.
> 3. I think the biggest problem with communicating over this medium is
> the permanent entanglement of "information/ideas" with "personality
> self-advertisement". I advertise myself annoyingly in the hopes that
> that part of the interpretation will be unpleasant....... the smart
> reader will ignore it, the dumbass reader will attack it and then I'll
> know they're a dumbass. I don't mean you, though, because you
> question yourself, and you accuse me of things I shouldn't ignore.
> Plus, you seem to not give a shit how you seem, which is the only way
> out of that particular Klein Bottle.
I use the same strategy you use, except I am less sophisticated.
You are right I don't give s shit about how I seem, which has gotten
me in or out of trouble depending on what I did.
> 4. I am a nerdy snob half of the time, but I blame it on the "Ad
> Absurdum" text-virus that has no soul, and I'll kill that asshole if
> necessary.
What does Ad- Absurdum have to do with this?
Is that a joke or you for real?
> 5. "Slobbering Anus" kicks my ass every time, but is not translatable
> into print.
Is that some joke to be more cordial with me?
well it is kind of working.
>
> 6. The smelliest reason is that I don't believe in anything, and
> that's always annoying.
Well that is true cause the word believe is just effectual for me not
so heavily conceptual.
(I use informal language I am not very punctuated with my syntax or
any kind of grammarian disciplines)
Do you know how many times I verbally abused people like Bonecho,Glow
and every other forum lurker who is still with us?
Yes I know I was wrong.
There is plenty you could teach me that I would never know.
Don't think I am not capable of being a colleague of yours.
What are intelligence agencies following you around or something?
Correspondent:: aleuphoric@canada.com (Linus Minimax)
Date: 2 Dec 2004 01:41:40 -0800
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> 2. The 'internet-posting' department of "Linus Minimax" is less the
> meat than my non-web scribblings and scrabblings. My 'insistance' is
> the internet forcing me to write things which are mostly unreadable
> from a 'whizzing over the net' trajectory-of-view.
>> That was a little condescending, but I get your point.
>> Unless you meant it both ways.
Always all ways I guess.
> 4. I am a nerdy snob half of the time, but I blame it on the "Ad
> Absurdum" text-virus that has no soul, and I'll kill that asshole if
> necessary.
>> What does Ad- Absurdum have to do with this?
>> Is that a joke or you for real?
I'm fatally interested in his strategies, perhaps. I don't quite
trust him.
> 5. "Slobbering Anus" kicks my ass every time, but is not translatable
> into print.
>> Is that some joke to be more cordial with me?
It's the damn truth I tell ya. Slobbering Anus is much closer to the
roots of language than anything I ever wrote.
>> Do you know how many times I verbally abused people like
Bonecho,Glow
>> and every other forum lurker who is still with us?
>> Yes I know I was wrong.
>> There is plenty you could teach me that I would never know.
>> Don't think I am not capable of being a colleague of yours.
I definitely don't think that! If you're trying to 'wear the
universe' you already are.
>> What are intelligence agencies following you around or something?
I figure they could be if they wanted to, but that it would be more
expensive than it was worth. As well, worrying about it is more
psychically expensive than its worth, but I like firing off
speculations of escalating paranoia, to see how far it can get while
retaining some sense or humour. If they think I'm worth their time
monitoring they're stupid, unless its to learn a thing or two. I'm
not going to explode any hardware.