Fuck Fuck Revolution
Dec. 13th, 2005 02:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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 ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
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.
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Three-Story Dance Music
Date: 2005-12-13 01:44 pm (UTC)Perhaps you ought to hang out with some models, or musclemen-body builder type people (or even better - Footballers! Firemen! Hod-carriers!) to get an insight into the being-tedium of people who THINK THEY ARE THEIR BODIES.
What I've always hated about dance music is it's linearity, it's one-story-ness, it's two-story-ness. Two-story music for two-story people.
This kind of music was only installed as an abreaction to Martin Luther King being shot.
What I've always loved is Three Story Dance Music, music that unites body brain and emotion, which is why I went to Northern Soul all-knighters for so long.
WSF Top Three
1) Exus Trek - The Luther Ingram Orchestra
2) To The Ends of The Earth - Tony Middleton
3) Don't Pity Me - Joannie Sommers.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 02:03 pm (UTC)Ah, I forgot the third "embodied" computing area; children, games... and porn.
After the successful "Beauty Week", today's entry wraps up the much talked about "Porn Week" on Click Opera.
Stay tuned for more surprises right here in this blog.
Re: Three-Story Dance Music
Date: 2005-12-13 02:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 02:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 02:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 02:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 02:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 02:35 pm (UTC)masters of the muscles
Date: 2005-12-13 02:43 pm (UTC)Re: masters of the muscles
Date: 2005-12-13 02:46 pm (UTC)Re: masters of the muscles
Date: 2005-12-13 03:01 pm (UTC)Re: masters of the muscles
Date: 2005-12-13 03:06 pm (UTC)True, it would probably change our bodies in several generations and we would evolve into these freakishly flexible and muscular people, but I don't think that's so bad.
Re: masters of the muscles
Date: 2005-12-13 03:08 pm (UTC)How to Kegel (http://www.childbirth.org/articles/kegel.html)
Re: masters of the muscles
Date: 2005-12-13 03:10 pm (UTC)Re: masters of the muscles
Date: 2005-12-13 03:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 03:21 pm (UTC)I think that you should integrate the Eye Toy and a projector into your stage act though, Nick.
Also, I disagree with your prediction - "maybe tomorrow's movies will look more like today's games." I believe the reverse - today's movies will look more like tomorrow's games. Have you watched "The Lawnmower Man" lately? Not that I'm recommending it.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 03:38 pm (UTC)Future movies
Date: 2005-12-13 03:45 pm (UTC)Perhaps the best way to add these features is to tap directly into the input and the output of the brain. Hopefully wirelessly.
I can't wait to share my dreams.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 04:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 07:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 08:31 pm (UTC)I rebel, threfore we exist.
Date: 2005-12-14 01:34 am (UTC)I must say I'm quite disappointed with it.
While I agree with your message, I feel the need to whip you for your forgivable misrepresentation of western philosophy.
While you are right by saying that western philosophy tends to devalue the body and passions, and to elevate the mind and spirit, there is a great --though marginalized-- opposition to this view, in Western Philosophy, which culminates (to my knowledge) with existentialism in Sartre.
As far back as the Greeks, there was Heraclytus who said that the reason ought to be a servant to the passions, and thus we should use our rational powers only to the ends of the body, it's needs and desires. Existentialism, in much the same way, says that our passions are not at all evil, in fact they are what bring meaning to our lives and which entice us to act and to dedicate ourselves to whatever we feel passionate about. While Plato opposed this view, well, I think he was a sad man who simply couldn't perceive reality, like one who can't notice the truth while it's right in front of him because he is too preoccupied with the quest of finding it.
Other philosophers who tend toward the body argument include: Aristotle, St. Augustine, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre; also the writers: Camus, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Kathy Acker. Of course there are many more.
While you mention Kafka and Nietzsche, I feel you don't give Nietzcshe enough credit here. I have to mention how tired I am of people talking about Nietzsche's syphilis; why not actually talk about the man's philosophy for a change. But I'm thankful that you mention his walks in the mountains. In Zarathustra Nietzsche writes, in chapter 4 The Despisers of the Body, "Body am I entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body." p40 "Instruments and playthings are sense and spirit; behind them there is still the Self." p41 "Self seeketh with eyes of the senses, it hears also with the eyes of the spirit." p41 "[the] mighty lord... called Self... is thy body." p41 "There is more sagacity in thy body than in thy best wisdom." p41 So, just from the excerpts of a few pages out of one Western Philosophy text, I can pull out a fair bit of examples to show you that you undermine Western Philosophy a bit too much.
I will agree with you however, that Western Philosophy was far behind Eastern Philosophy, and may still be, but lets give our own some credit here, some of us have been doing more then just merely letting life pass by and waiting for death -- or the afterlife -- over these last 3 millennia. There is a lot in Western Philosophy that we can use, and thank the world for that, because there is some danger in losing yourself in Eastern Philosophy for a Western reader. Eastern philosophy took off to great heights even about 3000 years ago, while ours only about 300 years ago. Much in western philosophy written before that is really child's peddling. The great problem that has stifled us is of course Christianity with it's emphasis on the hereafter and the spirit, rather than the body and the here and now. Nietzsche says to the despisers of the body: "I wish them... only to bid farewell to their own bodies." I'm glad that you enjoy having a body Momus, and that you like it." p40
(to be cont.d):
Re: I rebel, threfore we exist.
Date: 2005-12-14 01:37 am (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-14 04:21 am (UTC)Complete "physical involvement".
Finally.
http://media.revolution.ign.com/articles/670/670515/vids_1.html
Re: I rebel, threfore we exist.
Date: 2005-12-14 07:58 am (UTC)Re: I rebel, threfore we exist.
Date: 2005-12-14 09:56 am (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-24 08:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-24 01:24 pm (UTC)