Situated projects
- Zoo project
- Community residency project
- Computational pedagogy project
Toolboxes
- A toolbox for critical thought - freeform (de)(con)struct(ur)ing devices.
- A toolbox for linguistic aesthetics - sentence sounds and synonmatics.
28 May 2011
Future Projects
Just whacking down some ideas.
Situated projects
Toolboxes
Situated projects
Toolboxes
16 May 2011
Making an errant ajusting machine
I've been asked to consider if I can turn the principles of errant gaming round to build a machine will operates on similar lines. Now, errant gaming operates on the disruption of regularity, with a regularity being restored which is nonetheless different from that which was there previously. (not necessarily, but usually).
If a machine is made with the in-built potential to adjust its regularity on certain lines, then this is already part of its regularity and shouldn't be viewed as distinct from it. The crucial point here is that the new regularity it arrives at, and how it arrives at it, shouldn't be predetermined in advance. Now, we can imagine a machine doing this - as having certain potentials in its rule sets, its mechanisms etc which aren't planned out, but wouldn't such a machine need to be really sophisticated? That is, if it's an analogue machine; performing these processes programmatically might be easier. But then how is this performed, and what's the significance of this?
I want to get away from the idea of anything illustrative - if I make a machine it needs to be problematic, it needs to be an answer to a particular challenge and to pose particular questions.
If a machine is made with the in-built potential to adjust its regularity on certain lines, then this is already part of its regularity and shouldn't be viewed as distinct from it. The crucial point here is that the new regularity it arrives at, and how it arrives at it, shouldn't be predetermined in advance. Now, we can imagine a machine doing this - as having certain potentials in its rule sets, its mechanisms etc which aren't planned out, but wouldn't such a machine need to be really sophisticated? That is, if it's an analogue machine; performing these processes programmatically might be easier. But then how is this performed, and what's the significance of this?
I want to get away from the idea of anything illustrative - if I make a machine it needs to be problematic, it needs to be an answer to a particular challenge and to pose particular questions.
27 Mar 2011
Brief notes on Errant Gaming 01 experiments
Ok... this will make no sense, context soon...
- shift from discrete to continuous time. Very slow with Sian and Kirsty, very quick with me and Jon - mainly because we observed I think! Had to quickly abandon that.
- Rummie - cards fucked up, with people having the wrong numbers. But it was all fine because of the conditions we were playing under, which gave really limited time for considering what was happening.
- Frustration caused by balloon popping - "that's part of the system" was my response, but it did show some sort of desire for it to act as an abstract system.
- Pulse chess - me playing on Kirsty's body statistics.
- Proneness to error created by limited time for consideration.
- What was the effect on Kirsty of having me running around.
24 Mar 2011
Time for NWN
What am I trying to achieve with the Neverwinter Nights time mod?
I'm trying to make time governed by some other principle other than linear machine time. Perhaps one way of doing this is tying it to the life energy of the players, rather than their activity. It could work this out through the total energy of all players present.
I'm trying to make time governed by some other principle other than linear machine time. Perhaps one way of doing this is tying it to the life energy of the players, rather than their activity. It could work this out through the total energy of all players present.
Pre-emptive reflections on pulse chess and bare life
Tomorrow, with luck, I shall receive my pulse readers, and will be able to start working out how my heartbeat mediated chess will work.
Following the lectures on biopolitics and aesthetics I've attended, I've been thinking a lot about the concept of bare life and how it relates to this project. In a sense, my working model of bare life is actually rooted in Wittgenstein, it is the infant's cry that is replaced by the expression of pain. In another, it is of course from Benjamin, the person reduced to bare life by the violence of law. I've not mapped out how this relates to the politics of the project.
So, by replacing the turn based game time with time governed by physiology, am I bringing bare life into the game of chess? This is tricky. Lewis Mumford recounts how clock time replaces physiological desire, I eat because it is 6pm, not because I am hungry. Is the swing of the turn like that of the pendulum, and is the heartbeat an expression of physiological regulation? I don't think it's so simple, the heartbeat is completely mediated by the pulse readers, and it isn't really the base unit that we would use without the turn system - it does not occupy the place of the infant's cry. But it is bringing the body into a cerebral game - like 'politeness' in Benjamin's Ibizan Sequence, it is opening up the boundaries of the conflict in the game. But the end it is doing this for is so unlike Benjamin's 'politeness', it creates the issue of conflict to be opened up - or at least that's the intention.
Following the lectures on biopolitics and aesthetics I've attended, I've been thinking a lot about the concept of bare life and how it relates to this project. In a sense, my working model of bare life is actually rooted in Wittgenstein, it is the infant's cry that is replaced by the expression of pain. In another, it is of course from Benjamin, the person reduced to bare life by the violence of law. I've not mapped out how this relates to the politics of the project.
So, by replacing the turn based game time with time governed by physiology, am I bringing bare life into the game of chess? This is tricky. Lewis Mumford recounts how clock time replaces physiological desire, I eat because it is 6pm, not because I am hungry. Is the swing of the turn like that of the pendulum, and is the heartbeat an expression of physiological regulation? I don't think it's so simple, the heartbeat is completely mediated by the pulse readers, and it isn't really the base unit that we would use without the turn system - it does not occupy the place of the infant's cry. But it is bringing the body into a cerebral game - like 'politeness' in Benjamin's Ibizan Sequence, it is opening up the boundaries of the conflict in the game. But the end it is doing this for is so unlike Benjamin's 'politeness', it creates the issue of conflict to be opened up - or at least that's the intention.
Automata chess
Automata chess is an experimental chess variant, in which no piece is ever taken - it is however captured in a very different sense, it becomes a roving automata following a rule determined by the player who has taken it.
I've had one game of automata chess so far. The most striking feature of the game is the sheer mental exhaustion - not only is the game many times more complicated, but each time you take a piece you have to invent a rule. Trying to think of an operating rule at all, let alone one that works to your advantage, each time you take a piece is very draining.
The trial game did also produce the result I was after - a crucial moment where the game was underdetermined. My friend had me in check, but an automata piece was going to block it after my turn. Now, when you're in check, you have to get out of it at the end of your turn, right? Or is it sufficient that another piece will move to block it? We didn't have a chance of determining this - I tried a pseudo-rational explanation of why I was right, but the fact remained this is something that would have to be agreed beforehand and it wasn't. In the end, we had to resolve it at random (which is equivalent to not being able to resolve it at all, I guess)
I've had one game of automata chess so far. The most striking feature of the game is the sheer mental exhaustion - not only is the game many times more complicated, but each time you take a piece you have to invent a rule. Trying to think of an operating rule at all, let alone one that works to your advantage, each time you take a piece is very draining.
The trial game did also produce the result I was after - a crucial moment where the game was underdetermined. My friend had me in check, but an automata piece was going to block it after my turn. Now, when you're in check, you have to get out of it at the end of your turn, right? Or is it sufficient that another piece will move to block it? We didn't have a chance of determining this - I tried a pseudo-rational explanation of why I was right, but the fact remained this is something that would have to be agreed beforehand and it wasn't. In the end, we had to resolve it at random (which is equivalent to not being able to resolve it at all, I guess)
28 Sept 2009
Passing the problem to the practice
My previous post posited a number of possible pursuits within a practice, but really failed to bring together any logical focus or even starting point. My interests in this field feel very heterogeneous and underdeveloped - there is a clear difference between believing one has an interest in a particular area, and actually being interested.
I recall a conversation between a couple of friends over fiction writing - they were discussing overcoming problems of plot, where you need to get a character to a particular point or situation in order for the plot to move on. And a piece of advice that was found to be useful was 'give the problem to the character' - find a way to get the character to have to work out how to get themselves into a situation.
Is it possible, in a similar vein, to give the problem of what a practice is to be about, what its concerns are, back to the practice. To find a way within it for it to suggest (perhaps) what it wishes to be about.
This requires from the outset setting up a logic of practice without knowing what that practice is actually concerned with, other than its own self-discovery. This methodology is arguably philosophical in the modern sense, one can imagine it folding in on itself like Descartes meditations until it reaches its Cogito. Or it might never do so, it might continue collapsing, like Descartes practice might have if a certain kind of rigour had been applied to it (like Hume later does)
By what methodology could this be achieved? My first thought was of a database. I was interested that Lev Manovich seem to place databases with the internet as being flat interlink media, contrasting with the hierarchy of a traditional OS. But a database is as much its relationships as its data tables (just as the internet is surely as much its links as its contents). That relationships can be reconfigured does not mean there isn't some kind of implied hierarchy there. The types of possible relationships are defined by the pattern of primary keys after all - if a record has no unique identifier, or its identifier is not referenced, then the record cannot be connecting to others, and possible hierarchies are limited.
The question though is - what would a practice generating program look like to the end user, what would it say, what would it suggest? I can only at this point imagine the most strange and arbitrary configuration, of splicing interests at random with no understanding implied.
I recall a conversation between a couple of friends over fiction writing - they were discussing overcoming problems of plot, where you need to get a character to a particular point or situation in order for the plot to move on. And a piece of advice that was found to be useful was 'give the problem to the character' - find a way to get the character to have to work out how to get themselves into a situation.
Is it possible, in a similar vein, to give the problem of what a practice is to be about, what its concerns are, back to the practice. To find a way within it for it to suggest (perhaps) what it wishes to be about.
This requires from the outset setting up a logic of practice without knowing what that practice is actually concerned with, other than its own self-discovery. This methodology is arguably philosophical in the modern sense, one can imagine it folding in on itself like Descartes meditations until it reaches its Cogito. Or it might never do so, it might continue collapsing, like Descartes practice might have if a certain kind of rigour had been applied to it (like Hume later does)
By what methodology could this be achieved? My first thought was of a database. I was interested that Lev Manovich seem to place databases with the internet as being flat interlink media, contrasting with the hierarchy of a traditional OS. But a database is as much its relationships as its data tables (just as the internet is surely as much its links as its contents). That relationships can be reconfigured does not mean there isn't some kind of implied hierarchy there. The types of possible relationships are defined by the pattern of primary keys after all - if a record has no unique identifier, or its identifier is not referenced, then the record cannot be connecting to others, and possible hierarchies are limited.
The question though is - what would a practice generating program look like to the end user, what would it say, what would it suggest? I can only at this point imagine the most strange and arbitrary configuration, of splicing interests at random with no understanding implied.
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