Michael Bussiere

Ottawa Business Journal article

2010-07-30T10:25:00.000-07:00

Yet another (fun) feature article on the possibilities of telecollaboration.

"Cottage industry: Making the most of your working vacation"

Cottage Life article

2010-06-17T06:31:00.000-07:00

Here's a bit of a mention in the Summer issue of Cottage Life magazine. I love it in spite of its brevity because it's about working from my favourite place!

"How to work from the cottage"

Winnipeg Free Press article

2010-06-17T06:26:00.000-07:00

Here is an article from the Winnipeg Free Press featured on June 17th 2010:

"A cubicle as big as the world"

WFP

ePortfolio in New Media course materials

2009-11-15T10:38:00.000-08:00

I have designed and directed an intensive study of new media history, theory and practices called the Diploma in New Media/Sonic Design for the School for Studies in Art and Culture, Carleton University, including 2 digital media labs and a substantial online and video-mediated presence.

"Media and Technology in Art and Culture" was the diploma's introductory course. I have posted the course outline plus sample course notes from the first lecture here:

I produced a series of documentary videos for this course entitled “Prototypes”, an introduction to the history of electronic media and the exploratory worlds where art, science, technology and culture meet. The following episode is presented in the first lecture:

Finally, I'd like to show you some of the amazing projects created by the students for their honours e-Portfolio:

Alison was a chip architect at Nortel who wanted to study interactive media. This is her incredible project: The Connections Project.
Maya wanted to work in digital animation. She is now a grad student at Ryerson. Here are some of her works: Maya animation.
Andrew was a music and film student who was fascinated with immersion and interactivity. He created a presence-sensitive environment in OSX. He is now a grad student and TA at SFU. Here are his storyboards and code: Immersion.

Addressing multiple classrooms (part 1)

2009-01-29T10:41:00.000-08:00

These videos present a series of virtual classroom examples set among locations across Canada. Classrooms and studios are connected over thousands of kms. using a variety of networks, engagement methods, and studio technology. The intention is to provide a level learning experience to students both in the room and at the remote location. It was also a goal to improve the AV quality of the experience by employing television studio technology and production techniques.

First example here:

or....

Click here for a QuickTime anthology of all examples!

The first event took place on October 25th 2001 and connected the Luscar Digital Recording Studio of the Banff Centre for Continuing Education, Banff, Alberta (Mountain Time) with Ottawa(ET). The studio falls under the jurisdiction of the Creative Electronic Environment (CEE), a unit of the Banff Centre for the Arts that supports the utilization of electronic media by artists and faculty. As the first event in the series, my goals were simple: to experience a connection with a classroom from a remote location; and, develop a feel for the enhancements and inhibitors inherent to this particular method of communication.

The participant group was an undergraduate course in computer music at Carleton University, with approximately 45 students concentrating on a specialized diploma in sonic design and media art. The video conferencing classroom room was furnished with desk mics, 6 large suspended monitors, front and rear cameras, and a control lectern. Clearly retrofitted from a conventional classroom, the space is an excellent example of how not to design a cyberspace portal. All capture and presentation technology was oriented from the ceiling, discouraging a natural feeling of penetration into, and from, a remote location.

Carleton’s facility utilized a V-Tel H.320-based video conferencing unit served by 6 ISDN lines leased from Bell Canada . The Banff system, known as the Client Learning Environment (CLE), is built on a VCON ViGO H.323-based CODEC . This portable unit was developed as part of the BELLE (Broadband Enabled Lifelong Learning Environment) partnership led by the Alberta-based Netera Alliance, with shared funding under the CANARIE Learning Program. BELLE's objective was to develop a prototype educational object repository. CLE was installed in the Banff’s Luscar Studio for this event. The incompatibility with H.320 was resolved via the University of Ottawa’s Accord gateway that served as the multipoint control unit.

The primary content set for this trial included standard audio and video, but also extended audio inputs and data. The class lesson included a discussion of the video conferencing setup itself, with numerous questions from students regarding its configuration. A Banff associate audio engineer provided a tour of the Luscar studio and fed the CLE a variety of musical projects and test materials. Luscar is built around a Euphonix CS-3000, 56 channel digitally controlled analogue console with a 24-track digital recorder. A demonstration of leading edge computer music software was provided by its developer. The lack of VGA inputs prohibited the connection of a second computer to the CLE. A solution was found by simply utilizing a camera and second monitor. An LCD monitor could be used and the inherent scanning in such a set up would be avoided.

The event was characterized by a 1-2 second perceivable delay that made conversation clumsy, although overall stability meant a natural continuity in the lesson plan. There were occasional freezes and pixilated video effects. The audio suffered when a signal was rich enough to saturate the bandwidth. A test off Luscar’s console sent a variety of instrumental (mono) mixes to the CLE. It was discovered that an overly demanding audio track would cause sound to deteriorate into an indiscernible garble. In addition, inexplicably, the “density” of the mix (number of tracks, signal characteristics) also provoked this breakdown. Microphones left open at both locations also led to intolerable audio.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the experience was the feel of the communication itself. The delay and lack of open microphones created the biggest feeling of detachment. I was unaware of any student reaction during the event, although it was later expressed to me via email (from the proctor) that the class was very engaged throughout. Except for the occasional conversation, which was shut down by neighbouring students, the class was attentive. I occasionally prompted a reaction to insure that participation was holding.

Addressing multiple classrooms (part 2)

2007-03-01T17:14:00.000-08:00

I returned to the Banff Centre on November 27th 2002 for the final event of phase one. As was the case at the start, this event connected Banff with a class in Ottawa for a studio tour with demonstrations. The CLE was again deployed, this time with extended audio, VGA and NTSC video inputs via a mixer. Cabling allowed for a walk-about from room to room, with a floor crew including a switcher/director, two cameramen, and a floor director. On this occasion, students in Ottawa were located off-campus in an auditorium of the National Research Council. While the NRC is a primary node of CA*net3, Banff’s connectivity was again influenced by local network activity. However, the point-to-point connection exhibited dramatically improved audio and video quality.

Students were again given a demo/tour of Luscar, plus the Rice Studio television and video production facility. Rice includes a fully-equipped 2500-square-foot studio space with cyclorama and computerized lighting board. The production complement includes a Panther dolly, portable crane, and an extensive lighting package with both Tungsten and HMI lamps. Visually, the project now began to approach broadcast quality.

A number of significant production issues emerged from this early event, all of which relate to the merging of public performance space with cyberspace. By introducing production techniques derived from television and cinema, as well as developing original solutions, phase two of this project will address the following objectives:

Lighting. A challenge exists when illuminating an audience/participant group for a broadband performance. Large projections, monitors, performers and a participatory on-camera audience all require specific solutions be resolved within the same physical space, and cyberspace.

Audio. Increasing the capacity of audio transmission to a stereo (and possibly surround) format, to better suit musical events, and to create an ambient envelope that more readily expresses the feeling of a physical space that has been virtually “transposed” from one location to another.

Classrom/Performance Space Design. Human nature draws us to eye contact in any interactive relationship. It is therefore necessary to devise a solution that allows for large-scale presentations and human scale interaction to coexist within the same space and within the same virtual event.

Audience/Participant Engagement. When does a group of active participants become an audience? The issue of encouraging and maintaining involvement is affected by the size of an audience. Through an evaluation process, this project will seek to determine when that threshold has been breached, and will also experiment with various creative methods of “reaching through” a portal to engage participation at another location. Focus groups will vary in size and complexity in order to determine data with respect to a continuum of engagement.

Remote control Options. To what degree can a remote participant group/audience influence capture technology at another location? The issue of allowing for a degree of remote technological intervention not only allows for refinements, but also further encourages participation.

Conclusions:
Experiential cyberspace, and indeed all computer-generated realities, can be defined simply as a light source with associated audio elements. Comparisons with other light-source media are therefore unavoidable. Interactive teleconferencing requires sophisticated production values to hold its own against the formalism and refinements of conventional television, cinema, gaming, etc.
Finally, there is the issue of public deployment, and the eventual opportunity to test a streaming method to make such an event readily available to a larger audience on the Web. In this instance, new issues such as content and participation controls, bandwidth management, and so forth, enter the equation.

Here's the concept

2007-02-28T07:51:00.000-08:00

"Viral Resonance (Vr) is an experiment in telematic electroacoustics. The work will utilize vintage electronic music gear, a double bass, metallic percussion, an anechoic chamber, and a large resonant architecture gallery, plus teleconferencing CODEC manipulation to create one huge instrument. Musical performers populating a 10-gigabit lightpath will transmit reverberation-free musical signal from a National Research Council lab to the two-storey Azrieli Gallery across town. A team will capture the Vr instrument as it provokes the acoustical responsiveness of the gallery and return a stereo pick-up to the performance space in the lab. Visitors to the gallery will experience a musical performance by performers in absentia, and the performers will hear music separated from its natural resonant habitat."

"PLEASE STAND BY....."

Addressing multiple classrooms (part 3)

2006-11-25T16:22:00.000-08:00

On April 9th 2002 audiences in Ottawa and Kanata Ontario were connected with St. John’s Nfld. (Atlantic time plus one half-hour) in a large-scale interactive performance event. Carleton University’s sonic design students presented creative projects in digital media and performance, and collaborated with musicians at Holy Heart High School in St. John’s for what is believed to be the first musical work composed for a multimediabroadband event. Of all the events in the series, April 9th was by far the most elaborate in terms of programming and technology.

The event was co-produced with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the Virtual Classroom of the Communications Research Centre (CRC). Dr. Martin Brooks of the NRC’s Institute of Information Technology led the technical team. The CRC “BADLAB” was set up as the master site, with Carleton and St. John's connecting to CRC as interactive sites. The event’s backbone was CA*net3 (http://www.canet3.net)7. The BADLAB, St. John's and Carleton U were all connected to CA*Net3 via CRC GigaPOP8, Memorial University of Newfoundland GigaPOP, and ONet GigaPOP, respectively. Three high-end Pentium boxes running Linux utilized ISABEL, a conferencing application designed to create multi-media, multi-point distributed events. (See Figure 1)

Three workstations were set up at Carleton, with two running as separate interactive sites equipped with cameras to capture the audience and the performers, and the third to act as flowserver and stream the multimedia. This flowserver in turn connected to the CRC flowserver to compensate for limited bandwidth to the Architecture building. CA*net3 was accessed via the university ethernet whose bandwidth provided 10 Mbps of transfer, although actual transfer speeds were affected by general network activity on the campus at the time of the event. The single workstation in St. John's would connect directly to the CRC flowserver.

A principal goal of this event was the merging of interactive cyberspace with a public performance forum. Large projections were utilized to create a sense of presence in the main audience venue at Carleton. Data projectors cast light on adjoining wall surfaces, offset by a 90-degree angle. (See Figures 2 and 3). ISABEL provides multiple programmable window sets within each projection. This, for example, made possible a kind of theatrical depiction of actors facing one another in a naturalistic conversational style. However, the scale ofthe projections produced a kind of cinematic amplification. Furthermore, roving cameras allowed me (as director and animator located across town at the CRC) to remotely “reach” into the locations and provoke participation from the audience. Indeed, the traditional distinction between audience and performers was deliberately blurred through a variety of engagement devices. The main venue on the Carleton campus was not an electronic presentation space. The closest ethernet port was several meters outside of the site in a small meeting room. The 10Mbps nominal connection speed at this port was seriously hampered by general network activity on the campus. This resulted in a recurring freeze effect to and from Carleton, although the CRC Kanata to St. John’s connection was unaffected. A fundamental challenge exists in locating a public performance facility that is directly wired to broadband. Such a facility would also require professional caliber presentation systems found in conventional theatre, stage or television production.

Two responses were particularly noteworthy. The usual shyness of being on-camera was very evident among the students; and, the default posture was to attempt eye contact via the videoconference. Participants tended to address projections rather than cameras, tending towards eye contact and facial images. Participants had to be occasionally directed away from the virtual facial image of a conversational partner and towards the camera lens. The makeshift venue also produced clumsiness with respect to more normal videoconference interaction. Separate monitor kiosks would allow an individual to 12 engage in cyberspatial conversations on a more human scale; with split video feeds generating the large-scale audience depiction. Issues relating to theatrical lighting, audience illumination and large-scale projections also require some kind of solution. The challenge in using Linux-based computers was the non-commercial, nonthoroughlytested nature of the operating system. Applications, drivers etc. were rife with incompatibilities, with devises such as the data projectors failing without warning.

Connecting rural schools

2006-02-15T10:17:00.000-08:00

I served as a CODEC evaluator and team member on an incredible project that connected 5 schools in a sparsely-populated portion of Northern Alberta.

The following is taken from RACOL: Rural Advanced Community of Learners.

"One of the major challenges to rural communities in Alberta is to provide high quality education for their inhabitants. With the evolution of broadband networks, it is now possible to facilitate even more effective learning for distanced students.

The Rural Advanced Community of Learners Project (RACOL) is developing a model of teaching and learning that exploits the potential of broadband networks and advanced digital technologies. Rather that falling into either of the synchronous or asynchronous distance learning camps, RACOL exploits the best of each. Capabilities such as broadcast quality digital video, streaming media, electronic whiteboards and educational objects will aid in the facilitation of effective learning and address the needs of students in rural and remote school districts.

The Fort Vermilion School Division (FVSD) is the focal point of the RACOL project. FVSD is located in the North Western corner of Alberta, a very rural area. The most serious educational challenge for the Division is the delivery of a quality and equitable high school program. There are 6 small high schools in the Fort Vermillion jurisdiction, some as small as twelve students. The schools are so geographically separated that there is no opportunity to combine them into one or two larger facilities. For the past 6 years the jurisdiction has been using audio graphics to synchronously deliver 8 academic courses to all high schools. Although this technology has been fairly successful, teachers and students have indicated some dissatisfaction with this learning environment.

Students have said that they feel isolated and have indicated that they would like to see what their teachers and the other students look like. “Teachers feel disconnected from their students because they cannot see their faces and judge their reactions,” says Superintendent Ken Dropko. “Because the audio graphics only facilitates voice communication, teachers can’t gauge if students are lost or following along on a topic.” The Fort Vermillion teachers often find themselves falling into “presentation mode” because of lack of feedback. Also, due to very limited bandwidth (soon to be fixed by the implementation of the Alberta SuperNet) there has been limited ability to develop digital presentations (e.g., PowerPoint) and to share digital resources with students.

How does RACOL address these concerns? Each high school is being equipped with a Virtual Presence Learning Environment (VPLE) that each can originate and receive broadcast-quality video and audio. Students or teachers at each location see the teacher/presenter on one large monitor and the students on a second large monitor in “split screen” mode. Two smaller monitors also display these images at the back of each room. Each location also has a SMART Board™ 3000i electronic whiteboard, a visualizer and CD-ROM/DVD/videotape player. Anything displayed at one location is automatically displayed at all. Each student has a question button and an “I’m lost” button. Each VPLE also contains 4 Polycom Via Video™ units that enable students at different locations to work together in small groups. Everything that happens synchronously is stored and made available to members of the class asynchronously via streaming video. A special application has been developed to allow a student to switch between the image of the instructor, the students or the electronic whiteboard while the sound continues, and to bookmark locations in the stream for later review. One of the major tasks, of course, is to work with the teachers to help them use this technology effectively.

Dr. Craig Montgomerie, RACOL project leader and a professor in instructional technology at the University of Alberta says, “Through this project, we want to provide the best possible learning experience for students. We are starting with students in northern Alberta and hope to eventually expand to students in remote schools across Canada and abroad. We expect this project will set a new standard for distance education.”

The two major partners in RACOL are the Fort Vermilion School Division No. 52 and the University of Alberta. Other partners include the University of Calgary, the Banff Centre, Sonic Design Interactive Inc., the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and Netera Alliance. This project would not have been possible without the tremendous financial, technical and in-kind support from CANARIE Inc., Alberta Infrastructure, Alberta Learning, Alberta Innovation and Science, Smart Technologies and Apple Canada."

slowly eliminating the outer world

2006-02-14T09:03:00.000-08:00

Fuzzy boundaries. A subtraction of one's acoustical surroundings can be dizzying. Those entering the space are warned of possible side effects such as loss of equilibrium. The effect is not the result of any impact upon the inner ear, but rather the disorientation that stems from an absence to the ears of a responsive space. In this way, it is kind of an inversion effect from what Frank Biocca described as "empathizing with the physical world [through VR], of getting a sense of moving beyond empathizing just with other individuals...." but with reality in general. In the anechoic chamber, the individual experiences a subtle empathy with themselves and their co-habitants. The ear becomes acutely aware of the partner's body, one's own hands, serving as reflective surfaces. One becomes acutely aware of the inner processes of the body generating an ambience to the ears. Cage's famous anecdote told over and over again (in "Indeterminacy") about visiting the anechoic chamber and hearing two sounds (one high = nervous system, one low = blood flow) returns one to the consciousness of being the one great unifying reality engine. Hence, the empathy and sensation of complete connectedness.

actions

2006-01-04T21:33:00.000-08:00

1) a P2P electroacoustic music improv on Ca*net4 utilizing the CODEC in the manner of a signal processor, and a remote location as an old-fashioned reverb chamber. Intention: to create one big instrument on the network, and render a seamless, telematic electronic music performance.

2) install 2 polycom units into 2 coffee houses in two cities, positioning large displays on walls at table level - no explanation or instructions. document reactions. Keep it simple.

there's a very fuzzy boundary between you and the world

2005-12-21T13:11:00.000-08:00

There it is....the statement I've been looking for. for Lanier, evidence of the fuzziness comes from VR; in my experience, it comes from distributed lightpath performance.

Frank Biocca discusses this idea further with Lanier:
"So you have two things that appear to be interacting in your discussion. On the one hand, there's a sort of a breakdown within the boundary of the subjective and objective perception, of the world's mental models and the physical models, and other related distinctions. On the other hand, there's sort of this growth - and you mentioned this in the past - this growth in one's ability for empathy. But here, as I listen to you now, I realize I was thinking more in terms of empathy, in terms of modeling other people's subjective processes. You are also talking about empathizing with the physical world, of getting a sense of moving beyond empathizing just with other individuals...."

Kovacs Unlimited

2005-12-20T18:08:00.000-08:00

I'd like to return to Kovacs. I have thoroughly admired and enjoyed his work for a very long time, and am always looking for new remasters of his broadcast repertoire. Cool to read the Lanier reference, one visionary acknowledged by another.

Here is another excerpt from Lanier's Journal of Communications interview regarding VR as an agent for an expanding consciousness:

"In the everyday world, the physical world, specifically, as you go about your business, there's a very fuzzy boundary between you and the world, a boundary that can never be clearly defined. There's no definite wall between the objective and the subjective. But in the virtual world, the objective world is defined in a computer program. The objective world is completely defined. You know exactly what is, so therefore, the subjective world is whatever else there is. Suddenly, there's a clear boundary for the first time."

Kovacs played with the "fuzzy boundary" in many inventive ways: characters in pictures hung on walls moved and broke through the frame; an invisible girlfriend would disappear as she disrobed; faces were blended together in split screens; bathers disappeared out bathtub drains; etc.

I'll post some images shortly......

VR and the Expansion of Perception

2005-12-19T11:31:00.000-08:00

"I think virtual reality does have a remarkable quality in that it gives people an experience that is rather angel-like, floating as the consciousness point in this variable world. I think that - if nothing else - at least it demonstrates the existence of consciousness, which is not necesarily apparent in everyday experience. I should maybe go into that a little bit more...."

AN INSIDER'S VIEW OF THE FUTURE OF VIRTUAL REALITY
by Jaron Lanier and Frank Biocca
from the 'Journal of Communication', Autumn 1992, 42(4), pages 150-171
(Kovacs reference on page 167).

was Ernie Kovacs the first video artist?

2005-12-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

Kovacs exposed the mechanics of televion broadcasting to a mass audience, and ultimately created a new video signal-based proscenium. What could simply be labeled as special effects were indeed radical insights into the unique attributes of an unconventional televised spatial physics. More remarkable perhaps is the fact that Kovacs utilized comedy and music theatre as a vehicle for reaching an emerging audience mesmerized by the new medium's luminosity, and its capacity for stretching the optic nerves into myriad spatial realms.

Jaron Lanier acknowledged Kovacs as one of the "few wonderful early visionaries in television".

Ernie Kovacs was the first video pioneer. Nothing virtually nothing today compares with his tamperings with our perception of spatial reality. Pity us now, TV occupies us with CSI, music videos (commercials for pop stars), and reality (staring at ourselves through makeovers and renos and small claims courts and fake adventures). It is up to the lightpath to provoke the next evolutionary leap forward in perception and spirit by dazzling us.

quotable

2005-11-21T18:35:00.000-08:00

"Unlike print, television doesn't transmit bits of information. Instead it transports the viewer - all television becomes dream."
Dr. Edmund Carpenter, Anthropologist

"Television is by its nature illogical as well as disorienting"
Arthur Berger

"My eyeballs absorb only blue-filtered light."
The Misfits, TV Casualty

"Television is chewing gum for the eyes."
Frank Lloyd Wright

"Television is a clean slate, a chance to do something new and decent. At least we can try."
Robert Lee

"In the age of television, images become more important that substance."
S.I. Hayakawa

"When television becomes an old technology we will really understand and appreciate its glorious properties."
M. Mcluhan

quotes compiled courtesy of Paul Williamson

+Television: A medium. So called because it's neither rare nor well done."
Ernie Kovacs

Paik as mystic?

2005-11-09T14:55:00.000-08:00

I love this quote taken from an essay by John Hanhardt of the Guggenheim Museum:

Video art imitates nature, not in its appearance or mass, but in its intimate "time-structure" . . . which is the process of AGING (a certain kind of irreversibility). Norbert Wiener, in his design of the Radar system (a micro two-way enveloping-time analysis), did the most profound thinking about Newtonian Time (reversible) and BergsonianTime (irreversible). Edmund Husserl, in his lecture on "The Phenomenology of Inner Time-consciousness" (1928), quotes St. Augustine (the best aesthetician of music in the Medieval age) who said "What is TIME?? If no one asks me, I know ... if some one asks me, 'I know not.' "This paradox in a twentieth-century modulation connects us to the Sartrian paradox "I am always not what I am and I am always what I am not."6 -Paik, 1976

Unfortunately, the endnotes are missing, but the entire essay is readable on the official Paik website.

vibration

2005-11-07T19:00:00.000-08:00

Stockhausen's unique signature brand of mysticism originates with his early manipulations of electric signal. His electronically-enabled deconstruction of the human voice reduced it to purely physical raw material free of semantic meaning. This led him to the electric body of his post-apocalyptic masterpiece work Gesang der Junglinge. His influence on Nam June Paik further clarified this idea into a new form of video physicality.

McLuhan's mysticism

2005-10-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

McLuhan's philosophy "was influenced by the work of the Catholic philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who believed that the use of electricity extends the central nervous system" (Wired, Wolf, 1996, p. 125). According to Wolf, writing in Wired Magazine, "McLuhan's mysticism sometimes led him to hope, as had Teilhard, that electronic civilization would prove a spiritual leap forward and put humankind in closer contact with God" (p. 125). McLuhan later reversed himself, calling the electronic universe, "an unholy impostor,...'a blatant manifestation of the Anti-Christ'" (p. 125).

Readings and references (under development)

2005-10-10T23:15:00.000-07:00

Paul Benedetti and Nancy DeHart, editors. Forward through the Rearview Mirror: Reflections on and by Marshall McLuhan (Prentice-Hall, 1996)

Michael Benedikt, Cyberspace: First Steps (MIT Press, 1991)

Martin Brooks, John Spence, MusicGrid: A case study in broadband video collaboration (http://firstmonday.org, 2005)

Michael Bussiere, Leonardo Music Journal 13 (MIT Press, 2004)

John Cage, A Year from Monday (Middletown: Wesleyan, 1963)

Cage, Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music. Ninety Stories by John Cage, with Music. John Cage, reading; David Tudor, music. Folkways FT 3704, 1959.

Cage, Silence: lectures and writings by John Cage (Wesleyan University Press, Hanover, 1961, 1973)

Erik Davis: TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information

Dan Graham, “Opposing Mirrors and Video Monitors on Time Delay", Postmodern Currents (Prentice Hall 1996)

Tom Gunning, "An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the [In]Credulous Spectator" in Viewing Positions, ed. Linda Williams (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1995)

Gunning, "The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde"; in Early Film ed. Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker (British Film Institute, 1989)

Carl Jung, from The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Collected Works, Vol. 8

Jaron Lanier and Frank Biocca, "An Insider's View of the Future of Virtual Reality", from the 'Journal of Communication', Autumn 1992, 42(4), pages 150-171

Marshall McLuhan and Bruce Powers, The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century (Oxford University Press, 1988)

Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite (1968)

Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck (MIT Press, 1997)

Marcos Novak, Cyberspace: First Steps (MIT Press, 1991)

D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism (Rider and Company: London, 1949)

S Zhai, What’s in the Eyes for Attentive Input. Special Issue on Attentive User Interfaces, Communications of ACM Vol. 46 (2003)

mission statement 2

2005-10-09T21:09:00.000-07:00

Turn off that damn TV!

It's not that I object to television per se, but I'm seriously concerned about the ease with which one can subjugate the mind to huge amounts of entertaining illusions, courtesy of a unilateral addictive medium [particularly when the shedding of one's habitual identities is challenging enough]. I want to build an alternative living screen world featuring the freedom to move [where the psyche is spatially liberated and unfurled as I've experienced it].

mission statement 1

2005-10-09T01:09:00.000-07:00

My personal surroundings are shared with human neighbours, a lodge of beavers, black bears, fish, birds of the boreal forest, loons, Canada geese, emerald frogs, raccoons, deer, and countless rodents and bugs. 220 lakes dot Val-des-Monts, Québec.

I have a pizza dish attached to a white pine aimed at an Anik satellite, ready to receive 500 channels of distraction. It is disconnected. I prefer a nightly ritual of direct sky observations beginning at dusk, through twilight, until the appearance of the Milky Way. It is the ultimate hi-fi reality channel. I give thanks for these surroundings, this natural bowl of pre-cambrian shield and water, my universe, the here and now sans bruit. [thanks as I imagine the woodland indians gave thanks]

When I cancelled television service 10 years ago in favour of the here and now, I was harassed for 6 months by the service provider wanting to know my reasons. I should have told them that my mission was to subvert the very thing they were trying to sell me. Their adamant transnational free market drug dealings was reason enough for suspicion, reason enough for me to fight them, to punish them for marketing a spatial addiction that scrambles the here and now into a calamity and floods the visual cortex with false identities.
It's just a matter of paying attention.

Being where?

2005-10-01T19:32:00.000-07:00

Walled off from the outside world until middle age, except for luminous portals throughout the house, portals to an outside world of fragmentation and compression… hallucinogenic consensual renderings of space, populated by actions, Chance first encounters his own image on a (large-screen) television, seen through a plate-glass window of a store. What is the sensation? Out of body, photocopied, dissolved, leaving human remains of an immaterial man, jarred back into the body by the pinning of flesh and bone between two cars. And what of space itself?

Chance the gardener saw himself in the hallucination; zazen , it is all me! Not quite yet: “It is just like television, only you can see a lot further.” [look far enough (through Hubble) and see 'round the curvature to the back of one's own head? Is this the deep space honest-to-goodness "real" thing?]

lagging further

2005-09-29T15:17:00.000-07:00

[I HAVE SOUGHT TO ARTICULATE this sensation of jet lag with words failing repeatedly, BUT CAN AT BEST BORROW FROM D.T. SUZUKI AND HIS DESCRIPTION OF SATORI: “A SORT OF MENTAL CATASTROPHE” . OR JUNG’S ILLUMINATION OF THE PSYCHE as something THAT CANNOT BE LOCALIZED IN SPACE.]

.....it was a fantastic series of elegant interconnected events that led me to this....but I'm not quite ready to tell you the stories.....

all of us, all at once

2005-09-27T13:14:00.000-07:00

“Today, the instantaneous world of electric information media involves all of us, all at once. Ours is a brand new world of all-at-onceness. Time, in a sense, has ceased and space has vanished.”
1966 from On McLuhan: forward through the rear view mirror.

“Everything at once, no matter when/where we are?”
John Cage, A Year from Monday
(Middletown: Wesleyan, 1963) p.89

JOHN CAGE, THE AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE COMPOSER AND DISCIPLE OF D. T. SUZUKI, REFERRED FREQUENTLY TO MCLUHAN AS A PRIMARY INFLUENCE. IF WE COMPARE MCLUHAN’S STATEMENT REGARDING SPEED-OF-LIGHT MEDIA WITH CAGE’S poetry of Zen, WE SEE A COMMON INSIGHT REGARDING THE COLLAPSE OF SPace/Time. Are these two ways of expressing HYPERSPATIAL SPEED-OF-LIGHT PARTICLES OF EXPERIENCE? DO these 2 statements begin to illuminate the causes of the jet lag sensation described yesterday??

Jet lag

2005-09-26T10:26:00.000-07:00

THE SENSATION OF DISTRIBUTED SPACE IS ONLY POSSIBLE WHEN NETWORK TIME, OR LATENCY, IS MINIMAL AND THE QUALITY OF SERVICE IS THAT OF CA*NET4. IN OTHER WORDS, MINIMAL LATENCY REDUCES THE SENSATION OF DISTANCE AND SEPARATENESS. HOWEVER, A PARADOXICAL SENSATION EMERGES WHEN A POPULATION DWELLS IN SEPARATED “REAL WORLD” SPACES, YET SHARES INFORMATIONAL SPACE VIRTUALLY IN NEAR-REAL TIME. When I have vacated a distributed space after long periods of occupation, I have EXPERIENCEd A SUBTLE SENSATION OF RE-ENTERING WHAT COULD BE CALLED NORMAL SPACE. It can only be compared to jet lag, “Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage” as Damien describes the sensation in Gibson’s Pattern Recognition.

P2P

2005-09-25T14:06:00.000-07:00

Let’s discuss another INFORMATION SPACE: the TELECONFERENCE. BY DEFINITION, THE TELECONFERENCE IS NOT A TRANSMISSION OF INFORMATION, WHERE CONTENT RADIATES FROM A SINGLE POINT OF ORIGIN. IT IS RATHER AN UNFOLDING, SHARING, OR DISTRIBUTION OF SPACE. TO RETURN TO BENEDIKT, MCLUHAN’S LIGHTPATHS DO NOT RESTRICT FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT, BUT RATHER ENABLE MOVEMENT OF PRESENCE.

Walking through the wall

2005-09-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

Walls block movement through the perception of impedance: they are not restrictions to movement, but to mind. This notion allows us to interpret architecture as information, from which follows that media could potentially act as architecture, as long as the medium is used to define a space. Light shining on a wall conveys the presence of the wall; but, where does the wall go when that light source is also a content source? How does the "idea" and experience of the proscenium differ from the "idea" and experience of cinematic reality?

Hitting the wall

2005-09-22T07:44:00.000-07:00

THE PROSCENIUM ARCH IS A VIRTUAL BOUNDARY BETWEEN AUDIENCE AND PERFORMANCE. THE PROSCENIUM ACTS AS AN ABSENT WALL WHOSE PARADOXICAL PRESENCE IS MADE MANIFEST BY CUSTOMS OF BEHAVIOR THAT CONCEDE RESTRICTED MOVEMENT. IT IS, IN EFFECT, THE PRESENCE OF AN IDEA. COULD IT THEREFORE BE ARGUED THAT ANY BOUNDARY OF SPACE, SUCH AS A WALL, IS ESSENTIALLY INFORMATIONAL UNTIL ONE ATTEMPTS TO PASS THROUGH IT?

Another bright idea!

2005-09-21T06:57:00.000-07:00

Marshall McLuhan’s classification of the electric light bulb as a medium reinforces the idea of information as substance. McLuhan derived this proposition, or probe, from the fact that visible light is the only thing we truly see. The modulation of visible light by whatever that light reflects off of converts that surface or object into a form of content. In other words, we do not actually see objects or surfaces, we merely see those objects and surfaces as content conveyed to the eye by means of the medium of visible light. The exception to this is when the eye experiences both the light source and the content as one in the same, as in the case of television or cinema.

Light, Space/Time and the whole damn thing.

2005-09-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

CORE CONCEPTS
As Michael Benedikt tells us in Cyberspace: First Steps, space presents itself to us in the freedom to move. This is true for the 3 spatial dimensions of our world, theoretically true for the 6 or so dimensions of the subatomic world, and who-knows how true for the strange dimensions of strings we may discover when CERN comes online.

Light is the universal medium of all space, and converts all things seen into a form of content. Remember McLuhan's reference to the electric light bulb being a medium? Let's take this further.....speed of light.....Hubble....deep space. Q: If Hubble presents the mind with images from the greatest visible distances and spans of time, and if the sources of Hubble's imagery are possibly long vanished, then what makes these astronomical realities "real"? Deepest space becomes an idea, no-thing more. For that matter, if (the speed of) light does in fact constantly convey to our minds objects as they existed (however close in proximity to the viewer, as things effectively in the very very very near past), then, again, what is "real"? Do we therefore live "real" life in the very very very very recent past? The absolute present moment is therefore something that originates as an experience in and of the mind of each individual.

N.B. topmost image depicts the entrance to the Muslim prayer room in Heathrow, enclosed behind 2 automated steel doors with a tiny window for the curious....

Welcome to Marsville

2005-09-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

Let's begin with some fundamentals.....Tell us what you think about the future of television, performance, and the WWW. Check out the Marsville TV link to see one idea.......