Fuck Fuck Revolution

[imomus]

I Dance, Therefore I Am is my new column at Wired. It describes a party at Anne Laplantine and Xavier's place last week where we danced around in front of an EyeToy camera hooked up to a PS2 and a video projector. The article is about how computer user interfaces might better incorporate the fact that we humans have a corpus, a body. It's also about the way Western philosophy (Plato, Descartes) has viewed the body as an obstruction, illusion or distraction, and how this attitude may have led us to shape our technology in ways that minimize physical involvement. Only games and children's culture have escaped this cerebral scourge, the kind of thinking which leads Paul Bloom, in the current Atlantic Monthly, to say "We don't feel that we are our bodies. Rather, we feel that we occupy them, we possess them, we own them..." (reported by uberdionysus here).



I certainly think we are our bodies, and I think we think with our bodies as much as our minds. Tomorrow's computer interfaces are likely to look more like today's games, which escape mind-body splits better than office applications. Tomorrow's computers will look and feel more like today's games consoles than today's office computers. (Maybe tomorrow's movies will look more like today's games too.)

By co-incidence, BBC World tech show Go Digital broadcast a feature today on new interfaces which touched on some of the same themes. Reporting on the Siggraph 2005 computing show held in August in the LA Convention Center, the programme looked at two new ways of interacting with computers, Microsoft's Touchlight screen, a transparent screen with a camera built into it and motion detection software (pretty much what the Playstation with EyeToy already does) and an amazing thing called the FogScreen, a computer screen that users walk into, effectively enveloping themselves in the content. Tobias Hollerer of the University of California Computer Science department explained the FogScreen as a computer screen made of water that falls from the ceiling like a paper-thin sheet of mist. Computer images are projected onto the mist from either side, and the light is reflected back, with the particles making up the fog scattering the light. Onto this thin, dry vapour cloud are projected two images, a bright image at the back and a dim one at the front. These can be projecting different views, making a 3D effect. You can also walk right through the screen without getting wet. Multiple layers of images would create a full 3D effect (for everyone except one-eyed pirates, unfortunately). Eventually, they want to incorporate objects into the FogScreen, to give a sense of touch as well.

Ah, I forgot the third "embodied" computing area; children, games... and porn. The future of ordinary domestic computing will no doubt pass through some kind of "Fuck Fuck Revolution" game. Our lazy bodies need some sort of incentive to get back to work—I mean play—after all.

Comments

Re: I rebel, threfore we exist.

[nomorepolitics.livejournal.com]

(cont.d)


Your title, "I dance, therefore I am" calls to mind an essay by Camus, "The Rebel;" in it he says "I rebel, therefore we exist." Are you sure, Momus, that it is only you who exist when you dance, don't you also feel the existence of everyone else too? I'm sure you do but haven't realized it.

For Kierkegaard, philosophy was a way of dealing with his physical and mental disabilities. The man was physically and psychologically crippled, and created his philosophy to make the most of life for himself. He expresses this clearly and consciously in his writing, forgive me that I don't have a copy of his works by my side to quote for you. He says that any philosophy is a subjective expression of a given philosophers problems, which can be bodily or psychological -- and of course the psychological state is often if not always a reflection of the body.

I want to write more, but I need to eat, the body calls. Anyway, Momus, you're a smart guy, and I'm sure if you reread the above names I mentioned, you will find that they place the body before reason --the mind. They usually express it in the terms of "Reason ought to be slave to passion" sort of dichotomy, but discussing the higher importance of the body is often expressed quite explicitly and clearly.

Re: I rebel, threfore we exist.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You're right, of course, that there is a stream in Western Philosophy that values the body and rejects metaphysics (although two of the thinkers you mention, Kierkegaard and St Augustine, were devout Christians). I've certainly been formed by the Existentialist tradition, but also by Epicurus and lots of other philosophers who were just as "Western" as the ones I'm rejecting. I recommended the work of Michel Onfray (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/2004/02/09/) here on Click Opera a while back, for instance. So yes, I was stereotyping the history of Western Philosophy for rhetorical effect, and you're right to call me on it.

Re: I rebel, threfore we exist.

[nomorepolitics.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear you were aware of the fact. I was wondering why you wrote what you did. But I am a bit defensive when it comes to dismissing Western Philosophy in general.

Yes, St. Augustine and Kierkegaard are Christians, and to a great extreme, but I wouldn't equate their Christianities with that of the church or any typical Christian. I'm sure that there's no way you can call Kierkegaard a metaphysical philosopher, he is purely concerned with his existence in this world, and he coined the term "existence" which Sartre picked up in his philosophy of Existentialism. And many have called St. Augustine a Proto-Existentialist. While I have many quibbles with Christianity, Christians, and the church, I'm not going to dismiss someone's philosophy simply because they are Christian.

I will read about Michel Onfray. Sorry, I haven't read that article yet.