Starting at 8:15 am, I was originally supposed to have a succession of five different meetings throughout today, but wound up going to three. It was clear and sunny again, but not warm enough to melt the slush and ice on the streets.

Sometimes listening to the musicians in the subway is nicer than listening to my own music.

I had Brunch and a dessert of ice cream. I realize I do feel relieved.

I saw a runaway balloon climbing the sky this afternoon.

I went into Kmart to check if they had something and remembered that I love looking out their arched windows onto Astor Place.

Because the snow and ice was melting and the sky was clear and sunny, the streets were super glistening.

I finally went to get my eyeglasses straightened. I think their crookedness on my face was bothering my eyes.

I was looking at some buildings and noticed how beautifully the sunlight reflected off the windows from one building and bounced onto the building across it. I guess this only happens at a certain time of the day. In this case, it was sometime after 4 pm.

I walked into a stationary store and remembered how much I used to love them until Staples came along and cast them into the shadows.

There are delivery bikes with “built in” cold weather gloves!

I ate a variety of yummy sandwich sections. I love that people really went full on, even bringing in their own cutting boards, electric stoves, grills and toaster ovens for this sandwich competition. I missed it last year and am glad I finally got to experience it.

Many mini sandwiches and meetings and ice cream and going here and there all together in one day are some of the ingredients for tiredness.

——————————————————–
Some random bits from today:

Music on the subway.

ATTENTION OBSERVATION:

I decided during Thesis class tonight that I would start my process of attentively observing my surroundings and my reactions/responses, document what I can, meditate, and reflect and/or summarize this documentation creatively.

I originally was going to start tomorrow since I had decided to very last minute during class what I was going to base my Thesis on – My Personal Focus, but after looking at the class timeline, I felt starting today would make more sense in how our schedule is laid out over the next several weeks.

To track back a bit, last week I presented my Mood Board – which was a collage. I used a Tibetan Mandala as the base of the collage and added images on top of it to illustrate the mood I want to convey in my Thesis, even though I have no idea what form or theme or subject it would take on.

I decided to let the class describe what they felt from looking at my “mood board” before I went into explaining/describing it from my personal perspective. The words they used were pretty interesting and really reflective of what I tend to gravitate towards already. Even then, I suppose I still wasn’t quite expecting some of the words.

This is what came up:

Geometrical
Symmetrical
Exotic
Playing w/ perspective
Spiritual
Occult
Symbolic
Gnostic
Ritual
Mystical
Transcendental
Magical
Visionary
Musical
Premonitory
Centralized

The one word I don’t really know is “premonitory”. So let’s dictionary.com it.

pre⋅mon⋅i⋅to⋅ry
  /prɪˈmɒnɪˌtɔri, -ˌtoʊri/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [pri-mon-i-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee] Show IPA
–adjective
giving premonition; serving to warn beforehand.

Origin:
1640–50; < LL praemonitōrius. See pre-, monitorypre·mo·ni·tion (prē’mə-nĭsh’ən, prěm’ə-)
n.
1. A presentiment of the future; a foreboding.
2. A warning in advance; a forewarning.

Hmm…I have to say that I prefer “presentiment” over “warning”, but even that definition has an odd dark/negative tone. Let’s just say “seeing ahead”.

In any case, a few days ago I wrote down two important questions:

* What do I long to do that I have not yet done?
* What are my most significant challenges?

My challenges:
* Focus
* Consistency
* Creativity (or the lull in)
* Documentation
* Sharing/Process
* Practice (as in Consistency)
* Memory (not as sharp as it used to be)
* Giving myself time

I thought of daily exercises I can do:
* Vision/eye
* Meditation
* Attention/Focus (of environment & my response)
* Document
* End of day creative summary

Then I remembered the 21 Days to Form a Habit study.

So my timeline aligned with the class timeline:

2/11 – 3/3: 21 days of focusing/documenting/summarizing & making
Paper Outline
2/11 – Timeline
2/18 – Blockages
2/25 – Recital

3/4 – 3/24: 21 days of designing
3/4 – Mid Semester Critique
3/11- Mid Semester Critique 2
3/18 – 1 on 1

3/25 – 4/14: 21 days of making something interactive
3/25 – Describe each other’s work
4/1 – What’s in a name?
4/8 – TBA
4/15 – Correct each other’s paper

4/22 – In-class Final Presentations
4/29 – In-class Final Presentations 2

Mediums/Media/Tools (12-13)
Photo (Sequence)
Collage
Journal/Writing
Poetry
Audio
Video (Sequence)
Processing
After Effects
openFramworks
MaxMSPJitter
Arduino/Pcomp
Material (?)
Book

Patrick pointed out possibly having too many “tools” and constraining/limiting the projects through just a few. I figured something like dividing the 12 “tools” into the 21 days. Thought that wasn’t quite fully though out so erg…we’ll simply have to start with poetry.

Earlier today when I was researching the 21 Day Habit thing, I found this article/site online: http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog/2007/05/12/how-to-be-more-focussed/
Despite the typo, the author writes about uptime and downtime.

My attentive (as I can be) observations today:
* I can still manage uptime on only 3 hours sleep, including considerable physical exertion, but I do still feel tired after
* It was clear and sunny when I awoke and throughout the day
* It was slushy out
* I felt extremely nervous talking to the class about my thesis idea, though I was told I looked relieved. I found this interesting.
* I saw 2 young (possibly 20-something) women at a public phone booth on Broadway. One was holding the receiver and slamming it down on the hook several times. I guessed that she lost her quarter. It was rare to see anyone at a phone booth, especially ones in three 20s. I’m assuming most people in this age range living in the city have mobile phones.
* A homeless man accompanied by a large black trash bag was panhandling in the subway car I was in. When he passed I noticed he did not have a belt and his pants sagged low. However his coat/ top layer covered any area above that sag. I realized that he was possibly unintentionally fashionable in the ways of young men/boys who sag their pants way low these days.
——————————————————————-

My creative summary:

Started
Sleepless
Sad and scared
Finally slumbering briefly
I awakened to early morning ringing
And clear blue with shine in the sky
Outside, it was slushy and slippery
beneath our heels and our wheels
Making our way as we carefully felt our footing

See something, convey something
In transit and transitioning
Like “old phone” as a ring tone
And the phone booth as a dinosaur of modern convenience
A parlance of stance
Silly sagging would be fashion
But in this instance, fit is not an option
Neither is no fit or let it slip

* I realize there is a disjuncture in this poem and I would like to come back to it and work on it. I will leave it as is for now.

21 Days to Form a New Habit

ATTENTION & FOCUS/VISUAL EXERCISES/MEDITATION/CREATING & MAKING

2/11 – 3/3
3 weeks/21 days of focusing/documenting/summarizing & making
Paper Outline

3/4 – 3/24
3 weeks of designing

3/25 – 4/14
3 weeks of making something interactive

Instead of a full sound “walk”, I decided to record a subway ride. After the recording, I manipulated the sounds to try and reflect some of the feelings I gathered from the sounds – as opposed to just the naked sounds themselves (and the bits of my voice over). I managed to shave down a 20 minute journey into about 7 minutes.

Sound Traveling (mp3/16.4mb)

Sound Traveling (wav/This file is HUGE 72.3mb!)

On My Rooftop

In No Particular Order

The constant low pitched whir of the kitchen exhaust piped from the restaurant below.

The random short whoops of a police siren.

One long whoop whooop.

Buses stopping and going, compressing and decompressing to lower their steps for people to enter and exit. The beep that accompanies it before the doors open and close.

Truck idle while parked, continuously throughout and just behind my right shoulder.

Planes going to and fro.

The rustle of the Christmas lights against the coarse rooftop floor.

Cars moving at nominal speed

Squeaking car brakes.

Wind swirling about.

The ding sound of a text message notice on my phone.

A car passing with music playing, possibly a ballad – and it faintly fading.

Another car passing with music louder, maybe a pop song, can’t it’s hard to tell.

The church bells of my phone alarm.

Rooftop Recording(m4a)
Rooftop Recording(mp3)
(Apparently it didn’t record while I was sitting still & listening the first time, so I make a 2nd attempt while I was writing down what I heard).

Taking this idea, roughly:

And coming up with this:

Making the holder that we wound up not using.

Since we didn’t quite have silicone, we used pleather.

WHY?
Why am I making a thesis?

Interests/Attractions/Gravitations/Elations/Inspirations:
Non-duality
Lucid dreaming (a form of the above)
Time Travel
Space Travel
Intuitive Processes
Child-like Curiousity
Synesthesia
Bright Colors
3 Dimensional Wood Puzzles
Holography/Holographic Projection
Mirrors
Hypersonic Sound
Sound & Noise
Sustainability
Green Energy
The World/Earth as one big bubble that we all inhabit
R. Buckminster Fuller
Nano (super super tiny tiny tiny)-technology
Altruism
Consumerism
Neuroscience
Computer Vision
Augmented Reality
Magnetic Levitation
Gears and Mechanisms
Information made accessible to the masses
Light
Space (physical, mental, ethereal, outer, inner)
Personal Faith
DIY

I’m interested in how people formulate their perspective,s how their experiences inform their perspectives and perceptions and how their perspectives and perceptions in turn inform their experience. What I’m greatly interested in is what sort of mechanisms/tools are use to shift one’s perceptive, whereby changing and shifting their experience.

Abstract:
http://www.nonduality.com/whatis.htm

http://www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html#dreamcontrol

Lucid Dreaming in the NY Times

Necker Cube

Peter Pan

Fred Alan Wolf

Concrete:
How Stuff Works
All Five Wood Puzzle

Orb, James N. Sears

Danny Rozin’s Mirrors

“Signature Chair”, Tim Hawkinson

Tape Measure Clock

MC Escher

James Turrell on Wikipedia

Salvadore Dali

Wassily Kandinsky

Automatons

WHAT am I trying to do/make?
A physical medium that initializes a sense of nonduality, utilizing sound, mirrors, light, computer vision.

WHERE?
If I don’t have a portion or the entirety presented at ITP, then at some sort of gallery space.

WHO?
For those who have both visual and auditory cognition/

HOW?
That’s one of the bigger questions – after “What?”.

There is a cylindrical space within the Play Room at Rusk that I would really love to put to use. It used to be a computer area until it was decided the computers went through more abuse than maintenance could handle. It’s currently being used as a random storage area.

The inner walls are white and there is a fixed half circle table in there. It would be awesome if we could project into the space to make some kind immersive interactive space. However, I realize there are some challenges with where the projector can be mounted without being completely blinding to the person in there – as well as other space and technical set-up challenges. Still, if there is some way……it would be awesome.

Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity

Wikipedia entry for General Relativity

Basically, if I were to move at the speed of light (or 299,792,458 meters per second), time would seem to be moving more slowly for me, compared to someone on Earth. One hour for me would be x-amount of years for someone on Earth time.

More footage of the NIME performance at Southpaw on Dec. 15, 2009. This was shot by AJ McGuire (http://ajmcguire.com)

tek(s)neSonic performed for NIME at Southpaw from teknevision on Vimeo.

ITP winter show 2009 from adafruit industries on Vimeo.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/23/highlights-from-nyus-itp-winter-show-2009

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2009/12/22/itp-winter-show-2009-our-favorites/

ITP Winter Show Afterparty @ Santos, Dec 21st 2009 from Winslow Porter on Vimeo.