Category Archives: Space

Weird Places

I find myself in an odd place. I’m projectless. That’s not the right word and its not really true. I have a new novel in the works, but I can’t really get to any of it at the moment. We have the comp game to work on but that’s too complicated to even look at without total concentration. The Ability-based learning model is basically on a roll and now just demands normal proceedings. The hardlabor kitchen stuff is done, cabinets in, floor laid, so now it’s time to enjoy. AS work proceeds, but I have nothing large or challenging to do with it and Masters of Flash isn’t really getting the juices going.

There’s student work to evaluate, but that’s part of the normal proceeding. I have no games to play, nothing to sit and work through at the moment, and this is just an odd feeling. There should be something to do, but I’m stuck. No hypertext to write or edit. Lots to read, but that just means there’s lots to read.

So, I’m writing this post as “the something” to do at this moment. AI seems to be something to go after with ActionScript, but at this moment, right now, I’m wondering what.

So there.

Hartford Schools

Until someone in charge figures out that it’s not the schools that are the problem, test scores and school-based solutions will be meaningless.

Rick Green is right to emphasize wasted time and human potential, especially in terms of our region, but the question or premise flooring No Child Left Behind types of policy misses the wider system in which people operate as thinkers. Until the city works, nothing else will. We need radical thinking about urban space.

Extrusion

Susan Gibb writes of Surfaces

In your meaning of extrusion, I would suggest that by its protrusion that it intrudes beyond its original delineated space. Or maybe that’s just the space it’s been assigned.

Extrude typically goes with the idea of thrusting into our out, as in the edge of a cabinet, door, or vehicle rearend. So protrusion would be a good relation. Intrude would be a judgement or interpretation as would “original space,” so I would stay away from “intrude” at this point. Are there finer points to make about spatiality in terms of extrusion. I think yes. Consider the question of “original space.” A garden is very much something that extrudes and changes shape, therefore creating a warping of the experience of environment.

We know that experience is layered. Beyond this computer screen in front of me is a stretch of surfaces in 3 dimensions. The computer screen is also at play here in its flat space (this all eventually runs back to the nature of digital space) where edges become mathematical. The edge of the chair nearby floats, more nearby than the edge of the table.

Time

Time to get back to some regular entry-writing here. Building and remodeling, teaching and engaging in a second phase pilot–have been taking up much of the fullthrottle time in my space. Been reading a book about telescopes too which has broadened my understanding of the importance of patents and intellectual property in English history and mechanical design on pretty deep technical scales.

Also looking forward to the Fall semester and near full implementation of abilities-based models of teaching and learning with some organizational help from eLumen software (that’s what the pilot’s been about). Now back to some short story reading.

Thinking about Space

There are a few new links to note on the sidebar. Ctitical Spatial Practice and an older newer link the Project for Public Spaces. Some of these will be moved into a new category as I nodularize this area of thinking, which is pretty darned vast. I’ve been gearing up to the broad subject of human geography and ecology for many years and for considerations on the relationship between screen space, architecture, designed contexts, and narrative. Time to move with this.

One issue that keeps coming up in the above regard is the notion that objects can be mapped as elements of story in time and space. Objects as perforations, as projecting surfaces. Objects as extensions. Creation as shaping a thing into, onto, and around space. Creation as extension. Of many kinds of extension and disturbance. There’s an aesthetic here.

More soon.

Enrique Peñalosa on Choice

This is interesting from The Tyee, via the Project for Public Spaces

“Bogota has demonstrated that it is possible to make dramatic change to how we move around our cities in a very short timeframe,” he said. “It’s simply a matter of choosing to do so. We could improve our air quality and dramatically reduce our emissions anytime we want. It’s easy to do. For example, we can improve the capacity of our existing bus system without adding a single bus. All it would take is a can of paint, and you’d have dedicated bus lanes. It doesn’t require huge amounts of money. It simply requires a choice.”

One reason why knowledge of the world is important is this notion of choice. On many of my drives home I wonder about sidewalks, front porches, and loneliness.

In my Composition course this summer, the students have been thinking about space, communities, and urban life. But will they think big enough in their proposals?

Design Bits

Just tried out this bit from Infinity and was astounded by the difference in quality from another I own. I practiced the routing on a piece of soft wood and the bit–six tools in one–sliced through the stock like butter. It’s big, sharp, and much heavier than my wife’s cell phone.

Comparisons are instructive here. One bit may struggle through the wood because it isn’t balanced enough or heavy enough, while another, about the same cost, reflects another kind of thinking, strategy, and study. Thousands of years of thinking can be reflected in that one object, including the physics of rotating objects. Machine thinking is an important human quality, especially if it respects the thinking potential of the user, not just his or her motions through space. It makes no difference whether it’s software, saws, buildings, or a national policy or law.

Yes, the bad guy is dead. The design of that destruction, however, leads where? Perhaps unforseen mistakes of aim.

Scripting Space

A space, perhaps a corner of a room, is significant for what you can do with it or in it. For example, you might think of any activity as a degree of freedom.

Let’s say it’s making rice. First you need water and something to put it into and something to heat it with. You need a pan, rice, water, and heat. Two cups of water per cup of rice. Fill a pan with a little less that two cups of water. Fill a cup with a little more rice. If the rice is parboiled you can go about twenty minutes. I do mine with a small palm of salt, a dash of pepper, and a couple of sprays of olive oil. Jasmine rice. Nutty, fluffy, and dry.

The directions on a bag of rice never work well because conditions matter and change. Gas heats differently, for example, and the pan–thin or thick bottomed–affects the outcome.

In IF, as John will attest to, cooking rice or tea makes for interesting thinking about degrees of freedom that require method, as in putting together a film. Even the lightest footprint of work demands a plan, plot, purpose, and nuanced adjustments.

Let’s make some tea. It’s not really that easy.

In any physical space, such as a game or digital adventure, it seems to me that options must be physical–you can’t think an option or wish a way out. The way out is a physical entity. But you could think about an option of programming and development that initiates as a reaction, like a cell kicked into action with an electric jump.

You could start with a hall. If you move down the hall, a language could react to that action, a language behind that monitoring the potentials, a listener and a builder. If one moves down a hall, allowed as a starting point, perhaps a few doors may be in order. The prescripted “you,” touches the door and the program builds something from libraries. “You” open the door. What’s there?

Dreamfall and The Sense of Inside

I’ve worked a little way through Dreamfall and it has R Tørnquist written all over it, a subtle sensibility of choice about what is and isn’t important to establishing a flow and feel in a world of vulnerability. There are new elements here: more control over the protagonist, a speedier interactivity, and darned good atmosphere.

I’ve had a few situations where combate was required. Imagine a Kate Walker who can launch some kicks and block the antagonist’s punches, and who feels bad about having to “knock a person out.”