Showing posts with label death cab for cutie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death cab for cutie. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

World Systems of Data: The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

As humans continually process behind the filters of the mind, in a time delayed way this becomes our mind map. Through extrapolation we will always have a data or information excess - just as we carve away at our brain pathways and build ourselves as children. (West, in the Mind's Eye)

We expect to do this with data -- it is inevitable that we will always tend to produce more data than we can handle unless there are some mighty leaps in technology and they will be overwhelmed again as soon as deployed -- like Washington State's Highway 90 was.

"It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds"
- Death Cab for Cutie

If not immediate in the moment, the mindstream is like a continuous movie of processed interpreted experience. For a sense of this applied over time take for example "Cutters" the person who is the subject of their own continuously filmed movie does not have time to watch the entire thing replayed.

L. Flordi mentions that the data collection from the new Large Hadron Collider at CERN will produce 10 petabytes annually. Google's whole storage system is 5 petabytes.

This author is saying that automated agents will shape thinking about being what existence is, ontology that is, because they will help try to produce a frictionless infosphere arising from the cause of intological friction - in this case meaning the flow of information, where when why how what and why not and what not etc.

I think a lot about this sort of thing. How restrictions can backfire and create new republics of alternative thinking, little subworlds, with all their own laws and rules. Then these worlds pick up the cool factor like Jim Morrison and they take over the paradigm which is exactly what Morrison did with his songs and poetry.

As far as our inability to keep abreast of our information processing and management needs, not even wants, remember Blake advised, "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." We may only learn to collect what we need when we have overextended our storage and retrieval capacity so that it becomes a burden.

The first level of human computer interaction is likely to be close to our person -- the near digitalmindskin will rule the level of datamonitoring almost as fluidly as the function of bare perception. In fact it may appear as a scene. (Digital Mind Scene)

In the catagory of it was not just a force of pretechnological cultures... It should be widely accepted that for some of us the world has never ceased to be a teleological system. See living system ESP research at the University of Cambridge: www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/psi/delanoy/node5.html

References:
In the Mind's Eye: Visual Thinkers, Gifted People With Dyslexia and Other Learning Difficulties, Computer Images and the Ironies of Creativity by Thomas G. West (Author)

Flordi, L., "A look into the future impact of Information and Comunication technlogies (ICT) on our lives", The Information Society. 2007, 23.1, 59-64.

Art:
Philip Sugden
15. The Enigmatic Universe at Sakya Monastery #4
http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/psugden/19.html

Linda Lane
Palace of the Water Garden
http://www.art.com/asp/sp-asp/_/PD--11666468/SP--A/IGID--11666468/Palace_of_the_Water_Garden_Fountain.htm?sOrig=CRT&sOrigId=10579&ui=1BDC9757629045A2845CE3476DC0E765

Afterwards:
Sand 2007-05-11 10:01:52
You seem to be aware that one of the prime functions of the nervous system is to act as a filter to discard input not co-relatable with pre-organized data. The brain, after all, deals with inputs already filtered through the other sense organs which have been conditioned by experience to automatically discard irrelevant data. Discarded data, insofar as I understand it, is perceived as noise and has no perceptual capability to contribute to or modify existing cognitive collections.

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LL 2007-05-12 08:45:07
Digital Mind Scene is a way to express the appearance and feelings someone who is plugged into information at greater depth will feel. There are probably better ways to express it.

Nobody thought feedback from a guitar amp was music until Jimi did it with artistic grace and style. And it is music. In just the same way discarded or unintelligable data can be concieved to be a magical creative source.

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Sand 2007-05-12 09:36:31
All sorts of innovative sounds become integrated into music at various times. Amongst others the 1812 Overture used actual cannon firing and John Cage became famous by presenting silence as a musical experience. A motionless artist sat in front of a piano to create this effect. I have not yet heard if different musicians might have sat differently before their instruments to "play" this piece nor whether has been adapted to unconventional instruments.

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LL 2007-05-13 06:23:25
Sand, rest assured that I am playing John Cage's piece right now.


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Sand 2007-05-13 08:40:59
And I am listening with great appreciation since your innovation requires no instrument and has attained the status of conceptual art.

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LL 2007-05-13 21:06:54
J Sand - what a fabulous response. I can hear the applause now.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Pray for Infomation - Death Cab for Cutie? The Thermals?

Pray for Information?

Searching Google (is that redundant?) on Death Cab for Cutie I found this image of the band holding up a sign "PRAY FOR iNFORMATION" Which lead me to the following blog entry:

"Most of the signs, however, feature contemporary slogans--some familiar, all straightforward and others terrifically witty. Death Cab for Cutie did three signs for the shoot: "Speed the Collapse," "Dissolve the Senate" and, riffing off the band The Thermals, "Pray for Information." (A helpful sidebar explains the provenance of each slogan.)" http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041018/frey


Link rot and the fact the auction is over means I will have to snoop around to discover what "Pray for information" means in this context. Why? Because popular culture informs directions culture is turning even as a hyperreference.

http://yahrah.blogspot.com/2006_05_11_yahrah_archive.html
My cultural informant is paz y amor - a teacher, he quotes the lyrics as:
"pray for a new age

pray for information
i can hope, see
even if i don't believe"

"pray for a new state
pray for communication
i can hope, see
even if i don't believe"

THEN the song tosses in this little paradox of a line.....
"and
i believe...i think.....i don't know"

Interesting mix of prayer, information, and belief. Followed up by a little Spy vs Spy image.

http://www.undertheradarmag.com/protestauction.html

Ok - it's a reference to Track 8, God and Country from The Thermal's "F****n A" album - Who are the Thermals?

The Thermals: Hutch Harris (vocals, guitar); Kathy Foster (bass instrument); Jordan Hudson (drums).Recording information: Avast Studios, Seattle, Washington (2004).
http://www.towerrecords.com/product.aspx?pfid=2983208&title=Fuckin+A+%5BExplicit+Lyrics%5D+%5BDigipak%5D+*&artist=The+Thermals

For those of us living under rocks - and "Avoiding the Rush" Death Cab for Cutie are: Benjamin Gibbard, Nick Harmer, Jason McGerr and Chris Walla
http://www.barsuk.com/bands/deathcabforcutie