Surfaces

I don’t know much about this but it would seem that bounded space perceived as infinite on a cross section ( the top of a table) could be figured as having points that are all even numbered and positive. Right? That is, every instant you cut in half would turn out to be 2, 4, 6 et cetera without the need for a five, which gums things up. What sort of a fiction would develop from this, anyway? What sort of poem? Is such an infinity likely? Or would this negate parabolas and velocity?

As I’m behind in my reading (whatever that means), I’ve started No Counry for Old Men and just refinished No One Writes to the Colonel (Thanks, Carmen). But I keep coming back to the mysterious world of milled wood and am worrying over why Joe Lieberman persists in making a fool of himself.

Extrusions also bother, much like the issue of infinity. A corner is an extrusion. All edges extrude. But what does that mean?

Magnetism

It’s been a strange couple of weeks. As many know, I hit a deer in my wife’s Subaru at 45 mph last week and I want to thank everyone who inquired as to my health. I must admit to a new respect for the vehicle given the impact in proportion to the damage. The insurance company and the body shop have done a wonderful job cleaning up this mishap. We’re now driving a loaner Jeep Grand which eats gas like our dog K eats biscuits. All it needs is a missle launcher to complete its massive appearence.

I also want to thank Kent Robbins for coming to my aide after I toilet-rolled a newly installed redoak floor with a 200 or so pound belt sander. It takes a special skill to sand a hardwood floor and K dropped everything and drove in next day and sanded the whole kitchen in a matter of hours with the belt, super edger, and buff sander. It only took me a few hours more to rag on a nice Provincial stain. In addition, my daughter’s friend A had to be rushed to the clinic by my wife for a long wait over horrible stomach pains. Lots of good deeds as the world crumbles on larger scales.

In addition, someone stole our Ned Lamont sign from the front of the house, the first political sign I’ve been proud to display. My wife heard a a car door slam at midnight and a car peel away. Next morning the sign was gone. Another knock against Joe Lieberman in my book. Just silly.

The company one keeps does matter. How we magnetize can change the earth’s rotation. (Yet another reason why poetry matters.) I know this intimately.

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.

Story and Carpentry

Okay, so it’s damned hot, even now at about 9 on a Monday. Yet it’s been a little cool here at the weblog. The kitchen remodel has, of course, expanded to include the removal of two floors underneath the existing laminate, and some rethinking because of hidden pipes in the wall where I was going to add a stud and a 32 inch wall cabinet. The vent pipe from the basement curls out from the wall about five inches from the ceiling and was hidden by the old span of cabinets. But that’s the way things go with a house you didn’t build yourself. In addition, the old cabinets had to be removed with a reciprocating saw because they had been tightly framed around and attached to adjoining wallboard and studding from the other side of the wall. I have to carefully refit those cabinets in the garage. Anyway, drawers have been built, doors, and everything’s mostly square. The doityourselfer job I’ve clocked at about 70 dollars a cabinet (6 cabs in all plus a red oak floor and a new wall) minus the extra dollars for installation by a pro.

In addition to this, the kids are doing a bangup job on their digital stories, catching on quickly to the software’s keyframe concept and timeline, but the more important concept of the storyboard, I find, is the critical concept: having an idea of an entire project from its parts and the hands-on control of paper, pencil, and sequence. Again, back to planning, preparation, and simple sketches (pedagogically and logically, this is where the good stuff works itself out). People love to dig into the cool tools, but it’s the simple expression of visual planning that will make the timeline easier to deal with. Lots of server space for video is helpful too. We’re working with smart and creative highschoolers and liking it a lot.

Digital Story and Language

John and I completed our first session with the students enrolled in the Tunxis China Institute. Mornings they work on Mandarin. Afternoons they’re with us, developing short digital stories on the themes “Who am I” and “Who are We” for counterparts in China. I can see wonderful connections here for learning language, since in our version of digital storytelling much of the concentration is on the interpretation of the personal and spatial. Some of this will deal with the basics: sport, music, lost objects. These will also have meaning in Chinese. Loads of interesting possibilities here for teaching, learning, and making relationships.

What are those things in that photograph? Now what are they in Chinese?

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?

Storytron

I’ve been watching the Storytron development for some time now. But Susan Gibb is actually doing brainwork in the building environment, SWAT. She’s developing some fine ideas for approaching the Crawford vision of interactive storytelling. Following her into this and playing with Storytron, I imagine, will be an electric process. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with and look forward to working with the environment, as well.

The questions I have are all conceptual, such as what happens when story doesn’t develop.

Tuned stay.

This snip from the website is of particular interest

You also want these choices to amount to a satisfying story, with a beginning, middle and end, albeit which specific beginning, middle and end those will be depends on the player’s decisions. You have several tools that let you do just that – making sure, for example, that the pace stays right, that the story doesn’t end before all the threads are resolved or continue after they are, that certain key events happen at designated times and so forth.