place, narrative, mobile technologies, background for

Dear folks interested in place, narrative, mobile technologies,
(who may be interested in working with Robert Brandon and me on an NSF SCC pitch,
or with me and Canadian allies toward the large Canada Infrastructure Ecosystems competition)

Steven Tepper sent this article:

Experiential Data for Urban Planning
Federico Casalegno, Amar Boghani, Catherine Winfield
Innovative Technologies in Urban Mapping pp 73-80

This raises in turn the deep question of how narrative structures work to condition experience.
One way to think about "narrative structure”in a way that is more ample and futile for our research-creation is a configuration of marks or signifiers that condition the experience of the visitor.  These can be not just words on a printed page, but the arrangement of objects in space, or of gestures in an event, 

Of course, Stacey M can expand on this a lot more deeply and broadly than I can, but as a starting point, some resources could include:

Paul Ricoeur
The Human Experience of Time and Narrative

Mikhail Bakhtin
The Dialogic Imagination: chronotope and heteroglossia
Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics: polyphony and unfinalizability (and carnivalization)

Aporetic experiences of time in anti-narrative art†

The Narrative Reconfiguration of Time beyond Ricoeur
Jonas Grethlein Heidelberg University

Mneme, Anamnesis and Mimesis: The Function of Narrative in Paul Ricoeur’s Theory of Memory
Ridvan Askin

And in a lighter vein:

Beyond the Narrative Arc
By Jane Alison March 27, 2019

Mobile Technologies and Changing Spaces of Reading
Brian Greenspan, DH Quarterly


At the least, if we can think of narrative structures as more than a unidimensional “story” arc this may open up richer dialogue with experimental architecture, dance, performed music, post-dramatic theater, responsive environments, mobile technologies.


Contact me if you’re interested — I have a window now till June 18.
Xin Wei

iStage

More detailed overview  of iStage attached and in Dropbox.


The School of AME’s Motion Analysis Lab / Intelligent Stage is a research lab and performance space + theater-grade hardware + custom software dedicated to responsive immersive environments and studies of whole experience.  This blackbox space has multiple infra-red and visible light tracking cameras; microphone array; standard, short throw and floor-scale projectors; 8.2 Meyer speaker system, hardware matrix for video and sound (Dante).  We optionally use integrated Optitrack motion-capture system and custom wearable sensors. The blackbox is equipped with a 32’x 48’ AeroDeck Harlequin sprung floor.  The grid, 14’ above the floor, allows for easy access to the equipment for quick changes for a collaborative environment.

The computing platform consists of 4 Macintosh workstations and a suite of Mac laptops and minis for standalone installations, plus the SC software framework (based on Max/MSP/Jitter/GL+Javascript and OSC) that allows researchers to build a wide variety of experiments that can map to a variable configuration of hardware.


Also in
Dropbox\ \(ASU\)/Synthesis/Synthesis-Operations/equipment/iStage.pages

aerial work

Thanks Luke, It’s now in Synthesis/equipment/Space 3.0

+ 
(a daughter of my tgarden, tg2001, and grandaunt to sc :)

trapeze-artist-aides strapped visitors of all ages and shapes into harnesses.
they were slung into the air…some laughing like crazy

while we beamed the data from accelerometers sewn into their translucent tails 
to max+nato/jitter+supercollider 



+ 
circa 1990 I saw Project Bandaloop do wonderful aerial work back near Capp Street Theater int he Mission in SF 
during the Street Performance festivals

+ 
there were lots of aerial dance works since there were so many climbers in SF who were also dancers when they weren’t up in the Sierras .
but one of my friends was part of the support team at the tragedy with Sankai Juku  in Seattle a few years before…

+  Einsteins Dream overhead cam looking down 23 feet onto the sand
with  visitors wading as if underwater through the projected ripples to the umbrella:

initial reflection from lifescale prototyping PSCAS workshop @ Synthesis

Dear Participatory Steering friends,

Thanks Beth for putting together the folders already in Googledrive.

Initial notes are in the Participatory Steering  Google folder:


Here’s a snapshot of my own refraction of what I heard and saw…I try to sketch
an aspirational project in anexact terms (to borrow from Deleuze), to see if any of this
resonates, before re-angling and digging deeper….

Of course we will sift together and refine concepts and vocabularies, and 
add contextualizing references  as we sort out different goals and audiences, 
and who pitches what to whom.   I think it is healthy to expect a few distinct 
sets of goals that will have incommensurate requirements on how to navigate toward them…
eg academic studies (amenable to research agencies of states), 
versus practical work (amenable to development funds / ngo's).

Different epistemic cultures / discourse communities will expect different archives and discursive logics.

I’m happy to work appropriately to address different communities.



RConstituting Objectivity, Bitbol, Kerszberg, Petitot

Alternatively, one could start from  “process people” like Laozi, Zhuangzi, Whitehead, Deleuze, instead, and bypass reconstruction of scaffolding that may not be necessary if we pass directly to an ontogenetic, processualist approach.

X

On Apr 10, 2019, at 7:49 AM, sxw asu <sxwasu@gmail.com> wrote:

Constituting Objectivity: Transcendental Perspectives on Modern Physics

Editors: Bitbol, Michel, Kerszberg, Pierre, Petitot, Jean (Eds.)


is a very interesting and profound project — see abstract below.  But it’s no accident that they call this project  constituting rather than historicizing objectivity.  So I’d be interested in how Andres (sp?) differs from Bitbol, Petitot et al.  It’s a  distinction that I’d like to understand better in conversation.




In recent years, many philosophers of modern physics came to the conclusion that the problem of how objectivity is constituted (rather than merely given) can no longer be avoided, and therefore that a transcendental approach in the spirit of Kant is now philosophically relevant. The usual excuse for skipping this task is that the historical form given by Kant to transcendental epistemology has been challenged by Relativity and Quantum Physics. However, the true challenge is not to force modern physics into a rigidly construed static version of Kant's philosophy, but to provide Kant's method with flexibility and generality. 

In this book, the top specialists of the field pin down the methodological core of transcendental epistemology that must be used in order to throw light on the foundations of modern physics. First, the basic tools Kant used for his transcendental reading of Newtonian Mechanics are examined, and then early transcendental approaches of Relativistic and Quantum Physics are revisited. Transcendental procedures are also applied to contemporary physics, and this renewed transcendental interpretation is finally compared with structural realism and constructive empiricism. The book will be of interest to scientists, historians and philosophers who are involved in the foundational problems of modern physics.

sc for Improvisatory event, LASG Toronto 2019

See: http://topologicalmedialab.net/xinwei/papers/slides/sc_improvisatory_event

Improvisatory events using sc, a software suite for composing continuously-evolving responsive environments

1 March 2019, OCAD, Toronto Living Architecture Systems Group Symposium

Brandon Mechtley, Connor Rawls, Julian Stein, Todd Ingalls, Sha Xin Wei Synthesis @ ASU

Re: Only one sc.texture.rotate: SC Texture Rotation objects

This is an interesting challenge for Max.  The scaled coordinates is interesting — after all, jit.matrix objects cast cell values  0..255 to 0.0..1.0.   But at this point it seems like we are doing Live/Cycling74’s job.  If I set up a conversation with Live / Zicarelli, can one of Todd or Brandon carry it on?  Maybe it’s time to show this to Luke first for an opinion.  He may simply ignore matrices and just go to GL, but then again he doesn’t seem to teach his students  very much (Mas, Swift) media processing compared to DC/

 I don’t know how we can get around the differences that Todd points out without re-writing every sc.texture object with some pre-processor…— which seems infeasible, or prohibitively costly in execution.

Mathematica uses its elegant pattern-rewrite  (LISP-like) , late-binding semantics to define objects by concept rather than implementation.  For example one big different between Maple and Mathematica is that 

Maple has ugly and confusing synonyms based on implementation rather than function, e.g. sin(x) was a numerical operator vs Sin)x) was symbolic (could be symbolically differentiated or integrated.).   In  Mathematica, we have 
Sin(x)
and an operator N[_] which tries to numerically evaluate down the parse tree whatever expression is inside it.  E.g. 

Sin[x] ~ Sin(x)
N[Sin[x]]  ~  sin(x)

Good language design relieves programmer having to keep track of numerical efficiency implementations at the function or variables level.


On Feb 27, 2019, at 2:40 PM, Todd Ingalls <TestCase@asu.edu> wrote:

i think instead of simple we could use another term but it is not possible to decide which one to use  based on arguments. we could put it in one and have  a switched called accelerated or something but not sure how confusing that would be 




Todd Ingalls
Research Professor
Assistant Director
School of Arts, Media and Engineering - ame.asu.edu
Synthesis Center - synthesiscenter.net
Arizona State University
Stauffer B 245
ame.asu.edu/faculty/todd

On Feb 27, 2019, at 12:20 PM, sxw asu <sxwasu@gmail.com> wrote:

In general can we please name objects
using full words (no abbreviations!)

and with descriptions of what they do.

Also instead of * and *.simple

can we please fold them into one object named
sc.texture.rotate

let’s  NOT clutter up our name space w synonyms.

If you insist on optimization, find a way  hide both versions under the hood and invoke the appropriate version by scanning the arguments
typed in by the programmer.

Xin Wei

Niklas Damiris: Insights from quantum physics and finance for alternate economies-ecologies

Synthesis Presents

Niklas Damiris
Insights from quantum physics and finance for alternate economies-ecologies

5:00 - 6:30 PM February 14
Stauffer B204
Arizona State University

How can insights from quantum physics refresh our approach to our profoundly intertwined ecological / economic challenges?  I argue that the quantum appears weird only because we interpret it through entrenched cybernetic categories like ‘information’, ‘feedback’, ‘observation’, and ‘data-base’, which become problematic in a world characterized by indeterminacy, negative probabilities, non-locality and measurement effects.  Furthermore, this world is not confined to the small as is often claimed.
 
I propose that we institute a new ecologically attuned economic practice based on finance approached as a quantum phenomenon.  Such an endeavor presupposes that those who participate in it ‘have skin in the game’ and their aim is not to discount the future, but to enable it by facing courageously its indeterminacy and the freedom it affords.

BIO

Niklas Wild Damiris is a theoretical physicist turned economic theorist.  He lived in Silicon Valley for over 25 years working as research scientist in well-known think tanks there including: Xerox PARC, Apple Advanced Technology Group, IBM Almaden Research Center.

He co-founded start-ups in Silicon Valley including: Pliant sociotechnical systems, Capitalizing Communities, and Streme quantum cognition.

Dr. Damiris has been a visiting scholar and occasional lecturer at Stanford University for many years, as well as : Consulting Professor, Laboratory for Monetary Research, Department of Economics, University of Lugano, Switzerland;  Special Assistant to the the Dean of Humanities, University of California Santa Cruz;  Visiting Professor, Copenhagen Business School;  Corresponding member of Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation, Paris;   Affiliate Researcher at  the Topological Media Lab Montreal;  and Affiliate Researcher at Synthesis ASU.

Chair of Arts & Sciences : Behavioural Matter Calendar 2019 / France, LADHYX Polytechnique … UC Davis

A friend of Oana and mine —  Jean-Marc Chomaz, Director of the LADHYX Hydrodynamics lab / École Polytechnique ( the top science and technology school in France) —  has formed the  "La Chaire arts & science", with partners funded by the Carasso Foundation.  The attached PDF has a calendar of events for 2019.

NOTE in particular the conference on Garden + Sky + Water June 12-15 in Paris.
and the workshops and events in Pompidou and UC Davis on behavioural matter.

We probably cannot project to these events this summer, but should visit, at least stay in touch with Jean-Marc, et al.

Xin Wei


The Chaire arts & sciences is pleased to present some of its 2019 main events :
-  the Behavioral Matter project in partnership with EnsAD and the Pompidou Center (Feb-Mar);
-  the Exoplanète Terre initiative (presentation on March 22 at EnsAD), in partnership with a dozen cultural organizations in Île-de-France; 
- the interdisciplinary conference Garden the Sky Water from June 12 to 15, to explore our relationship to water in the sky and in the atmosphere from a scientific, artistic, philosophical and ecological point of view;
- our first Summer School in September -  an intensive week of hands-on workshops at École Polytechnique, jointly organized with UC Davis and EnsAD.

Looking forward to see you!
Begin forwarded message:

Subject: :: Chaire arts & sciences :: Calendrier 2019 / Main events
Date: February 7, 2019 at 8:19:24 AM GMT-5

Bonjour,

La Chaire arts & sciences est heureuse de vous présenter ses temps forts 2019, parmi lesquels le développement du projet Behavioral Matter en partenariat avec l'EnsAD et le Centre Pompidou (fév-mars), le lancement de l'initiative Exoplanète terre le 22 mars, en partenariat avec une dizaine de structures culturelles en Île-de-France, l'organisation d'un colloque interdisciplinaire Garden the Sky Water du 12 au 15 juin pour explorer notre rapport à l'eau dans le ciel et dans l'atmosphère, ou encore la tenue en septembre de notre première Summer School - semaine ateliers de recherche par la pratique à l'École polytechnique, conjointement organisée avec UC Davis et l'EnsAD du 9 au 13 septembre 2019.

Au plaisir de vous y retrouver,

L'équipe de la Chaire arts & sciences

Evan Thompson et al: The Blind Spot of Science Is the Neglect of Lived Experience


Aeon 8 Jan 2019 essay "The Blind Spot of Science Is the Neglect of Lived Experience"
by Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson

The problem of time is one of the greatest puzzles of modern physics. The first bit of the conundrum is cosmological. To understand time, scientists talk about finding a ‘First Cause’ or ‘initial condition’ – a description of the Universe at the very beginning (or at ‘time equals zero’). But to determine a system’s initial condition, we need to know the total system. We need to make measurements of the positions and velocities of its constituent parts, such as particles, atoms, fields and so forth. This problem hits a hard wall when we deal with the origin of the Universe itself, because we have no view from the outside. We can’t step outside the box in order to look within, because the box is all there is. A First Cause is not only unknowable, but also scientifically unintelligible. 

The second part of the challenge is philosophical. Scientists have taken physical time to be the only real time – whereas experiential time, the subjective sense of time’s passing, is considered a cognitive fabrication of secondary importance. The young Albert Einstein made this position clear in his debate with philosopher Henri Bergson in the 1920s, when he claimed that the physicist’s time is the only time. With age, Einstein became more circumspect. Up to the time of his death, he remained deeply troubled about how to find a place for the human experience of time in the scientific worldview.

These quandaries rest on the presumption that physical time, with an absolute starting point, is the only real kind of time. But what if the question of the beginning of time is ill-posed? Many of us like to think that science can give us a complete, objective description of cosmic history, distinct from us and our perception of it. But this image of science is deeply flawed. In our urge for knowledge and control, we’ve created a vision of science as a series of discoveries about how reality is in itself, a God’s-eye view of nature.

Such an approach not only distorts the truth, but creates a false sense of distance between ourselves and the world. That divide arises from what we call the Blind Spot, which science itself cannot see. In the Blind Spot sits experience: the sheer presence and immediacy of lived perception.

…