An essay on video

[imomus]

I thought I'd give you something a bit different today: an essay on video. This is actually a little introduction to the workshops I'll be giving next week in Venice at the Teach Me event. (Nice to see my friends Åbäke are also on the programme!) In the clip I talk about "the post-bit atom", a phrase I coined back in 2000 to talk about the way computers were teaching us a new respect for non-electronic forms.

The Post-Bit Atom (13.6 MB non-streaming Quicktime movie, 3 mins.)

Since we aren't all computers just parsing each other's syntax, I think a video essay—with its "muscular" information about tone of voice, facial expression, movement of eyes and eyebrows and so on—is a good example of how bit-information is rounded out by atom-information, and depends on it. Ideas come out of bodies!

If you want a good old-fashioned disembodied text-essay, though, my new piece for Wired is here. Actually, since it's about a digital photo of a note in which the president of the US asks if he can have a break to go and pee, I suppose it's also on the theme of bits, atoms, and embodiment.

Comments

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

that was fun. made me smile. like the "revenge" bit. :)))

gonna play my dirty keyboard like a maraca now.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

If you haven't yet seen it, you might want to have a look at this essay (http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~ullmer/papers/tangible-bits.pdf) by Hiroshi Ishii, who's been talking about these sorts of things for a good 10 years. It's old hat, but still having an influence.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

This part may particularly appeal to Momus-style Japanologists:


Ishii met a highly successful PDA (Personal Digital
Assistant) called the "abacus" when he was 2 years old.
This simple abacus-PDA was not merely a computational
device, but also a musical instrument, imaginary toy train,
and a back scratcher. He was captivated by the sound and
tactile interaction with this simple artifact. When his
mother kept household accounts, he was aware of her
activities by the sound of her abacus, knowing he could not
ask for her to play with him while her abacus made its
music. We strongly believe this abacus is suggesting to us
a direction for the next generation of HCI.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

With all due respect to Ishii, his ideas are rather limited. The idea of "tangible bits" at the "human computer interface" is just the idea of putting a physical slider on a digital recorder, so that people have something tangible to fiddle the bits around with. My concept is, I think, much wider than "the coupling of bits with graspable physical objects". It's that the digitisation of all human culture has led us to a selectivity of attention every bit as narrow as the one Cage criticised when he drew our attention to the way the classical music tradition can't hear silence, can't, in some cases, hear (or notate) timbre, and can't even hear single notes, only the relations between them. I then extend this to a critique of Western Platonism, disembodiment, etc. And then show how computers might be re-valorising non-electric and non-electronic sounds (if only to extend their own capabilities and dominion).

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

Well if you don't blog your own horn who else will, I guess.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to sound big-headed... Ishii's work is much more practical than my waffle, and I will no doubt offer votives to him in future every time I open a digital door with a physical handle that really turns.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

And I don't mean to sound argumentative. But it may be helpful to you to know that if you use the phrase "post-bit atom" with people who involved in technology design, they will think you are quoting Hiroshi Ishii.

His quote about the sounds of the abacus is rather close to the statement in your video clip, no?

Actually I posted the link playfully because I thought it would provide fodder for some Momusian speculation on the Japaneseness of embodied interfaces. If there's one area of Japanese strength in computer science in the last 15 years, this is it.

[(Anonymous)]

If there's one area of Japanese strength in computer science in the last 15 years, this is it.

Absolutely. I was recently on a tour of several research labs in Japan, and in every single one there were people working on cute robot creatures that you could talk to. (To do for example such extremely useful things as telling the thingy to change the TV channel for you. So much better than actually using the remote yourself..)

der.

[(Anonymous)]

i really enjoyed this video, it is something i have thought about myself. that thing you do with your tongue is extremely distracting however.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Talking, you mean?

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

that thing you do with your tongue is extremely distracting however.

< cunnilingual inference > I bet you hear that all the time. < /cunnilingual inference >

As for concept of the Post-Bit Atom, I find that possessing a cat heightens one's sense of purely acoustic sounds. My cat, for some odd reason, refuses to acknowledge digitally produced sounds, and so I find myself experimenting with other means of grabbing its attention: rustling bags, tapping things, half-opening carbonated drinks bottles to allow the gases to escape slowly, etc.

[happylantern.livejournal.com]

Agreed!

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't laughed so hard in ages, thanks. The comedy awards are yours this year i think. Keep it up.

[luxetumbra.livejournal.com]

Men in Land of Samurai Find Their Feminine Side (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/21/AR2005092102434.html)

[(Anonymous)]

the video as processed by an auto-summarizer: waffle waffle waffle look, these things as things make funny noises! waffle

(btw., is the livejournal interface broken? I have to "open link in new window" to get to the comment entry field, it doesn't open just by clicking..)

[jina---.livejournal.com]

this is a very tidy library... you should seen mine.

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.gordonmonahan.com/music_from_nowhere.html

http://www.gordonmonahan.com/Mult_Mach_Matrix.html

more acoustic sound from (formerly) electronic things.