BrainsikJournal

23 March 2004 @ 2am

????, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I really appreciate the rawness and honesty, it's hard to find these days; everything is always so polished and preened for acceptance by the Audience.

To describe what that night meant is somewhat difficult. Mostly, I am in a very suffocated and stretched place in life. I have gotten myself into this bind of needing to work all the time and, worse, feeling i need to work all the time. My memory has been degrading and my clearity of life wanes. I desire love and I desire aloneness. I desire love because I am (slowly discovering myself to be) a highly sensual creature. I need touch and emotion more than I wish for. I desire aloneness because my world is so loud and filled all the time with the thoughts of what is next and what is next and what is next. The brief moment I have each morning of being able to stare out the window -- into the blue sky, or the fog, into the trees, or at the birds, listening to little but a muted city accented by mocking bird songs -- is the rare moment of the day where i feel nirvana.

You were a rare opportunity. I truly did not intend to go where we did -- but at the same time, I could not help it. I've known you so long and through so many mind states. Touching you is like touching my past: so familiar, so missed. There were no worries of bullshit in the morning, no worries of having to act a certain way or keep up the ruse of who I was that evening. You know too much and you'd have none of my games. Why bother? We've seen each other naked in so many ways. And so the ideal state was born. My loins grew hot as the rest of me grew comfortable. A movement of my hand to feel familiar flesh became a movement of my hand into carnal desire.

Our dance along the boundary of cozy sleep and comfortable sex was thick, warm nectar. I drank lust. I drank it until I came. The warmth filled me until I could hold no more and the warmth leaked out. It leaked out such pleasure I was rocked gently down by its wake.

It's getting late, so i'm getting flowery and abstract and stupid. I have no idea if I'm properly conveying my point. I hope this answered you. Let me know if you need more.

6th March 2004

azuki beans boil in a small metal pot. bubbles rattle the hard beans against the pot as if from a bellows. rhythmically they scrape the metal vessel while hot vapor quietly rumbles out.

25th January 2004

on jabber

<G> you perhaps are so much more sensitive to things. it's good, you feel subtle changes can tap into details.. but because of that you've developed a tough front to cope, to pretend like things aren't affecting you as much.. even as you admit they are, there's always a toughness shielding you. perhaps even as you explain how things hurt or how you love part of you is still afraid of how much?

<J> whoah, do you really believe what you wrote?

<G> jay, i feel like i don't know you anymore. so in a way i have no idea. that's what it feels like to me when we talk, but since you're a stranger now (in part because there seems to be a toughness barrier between us, a rigidity) i can't gauge.

wow -- i'm not sure what to say this. i don't know how much i believe this. really caught me off-guard. too busy to digest this right now -- which is a whole other symbol in its own right.

20th January 2004

Early morning ruminations: fall-out from the chasing of a passion.

To: Amy (6:32am)

Things are getting better. My NM trip was very intense. Even though she said EXACTLY what i thought she would, even perfect knowledge does not buffer the heart against rejection. I was very destroyed for a few days, but yesterday seemed to begin a resurfacing, reminded of my purpose in life for the next couple of years: following passions and discovering new abilities.

In the end, this woman I love could only say an absolutely true thing; it's all she is and why I love her. Who else could I love but one who follows her path so inspiringly? Who else could I love but one who leaves me to my own journey? This is the order of which I most desired and why I was unbalanced by the pain I felt.

I'm not sure if I should convey this to her right now. I won't. I'll let space grow and feelings wane and one day maybe I can explain this was exactly what was desired. I'm free of the unknown feelings and released into my aloneness, which isn't so lonely but full of passions to be chased.

To: Sinan (6:44am)

I am resurfacing from my strong emotions. I am seeing the light I set out to see. I have been reminded that [she] told me exactly what I told all my friends out here she would say. That my purpose was satisfied entirely and that truly this is where I want to be.

My love must follow her path as her lover must do as well. I am so busy with life and discovering my new abilities and following all my passions, as is she. This is the best for both of us. One day we may meet again and find a place and time together. But now is not that time.

To: Joen (7:24am)

i'm sure you were not aware of it, as i was not until now. our conversation about my love last night was a very powerful catalyst. you said something about how the woman i love would have to be one who is following her path; now everything is so clear. i am exactly where i wished to be before setting out to see her. everything is happening true.

15th September 2003 (22:35)

posted to the SRO list

Came across an AntiMob blog today. It has details on the disruption of mob events and associates the coherent behavior with acting like sheep.

Off-hand, antimob actions aren't very interesting to me. The disruption of a loosely coordinated social event is much easier than actually getting a group of seemingly disconnect people to act coherently.

Then again, maybe we should take their point seriously. Using the phrase "coherent behaviour" is pretty flowery for everyone doing the same thing. A more interesting flash mob could be one where instead of having everyone do the same thing, there are lots of different actions happening that form a larger coherent whole.

My initial approach would be to design a basic rule system that everyone is following under without giving explicit directions of what to do within it. Again, back to implicit versus explcit expression (a recurring theme, lately). Hmm, actually, now that I think about it, the "Duck, Duck, Goose!" event was a really good choice. It provided a basic rule system, but the actual result was mostly unexpected.

Does anyone know what SF MOB #3 and #4 did?

All this makes me think of the improv game where you build a machine. One by one, each person goes up and attaches themself to the current "machine". You are to responsd to the current machine's noise and movement at the attachment point via your own movement and noise. With enough people, you get some pretty cool structures.

More Ruminations : BBS -> Napster -> P2P -> geo dispersement

To take this further, one can view the current mob system as equivalent to a centralized, bulletin board system. Everyone gets the same info from the same place.

Easily the mob system could be more like Napster where a central authority tells everyone what to do, but no one knows what the other has gotten. Easily, 4 different instructions could be given at the four different bars people congregate at. Finer grained, different instructions could be given to each person in each bar.

Lastly, and most difficult to construct, the system could be designed such that the instructions that people are given require them to contact another mob member to decide on the action that will be taken. A loose set of rules could be provided and then no one, not even the organizers, know what to expect. This would be a more fully p2p mob.

But, in the end I think i like the "duck duck goose" approach best. Simple and effective. And even the p2p mob has the flaw that everyone needs to show up in roughly the same place.

Unless we want to design mobs that are geographically disperrsed ... enough.

11th September 2003 (00:30)

What is the structure of social space, particularly when dissected from physical space?

We navigate our social networks whilst also moving around the physical structures within our city. These structures are mostly static and unchanging. We create our social space around our physical space by meeting at coffee houses and bumping into each other on busses. What if we were to remove the physical features from our landscape and let the structures contained within our social space dictate our actions. What sort of structures would we find exist in social space? Is it possible to create a virtual space that allows the natural structure of social space to flourish?

Or maybe the pure essence is unmanageable. The home page to this wiki is broken down into roughly a link per line. There are descriptions of each category that serve a mostly useless, obvious purpose since this is my wiki and the wiki-links are enough information for me. But this purpose is not useless. If I was to condense the links but arranging them in a grid, or compact more of them together and use fewer lines, it would be harder for me to navigate. Why? Theory One: The act of physically moving my eye across the page takes time. During this time my brain can process what it just read. If everything was more dense, i would have to linger longer at each wiki-link, lest i oversaturate myself and not understand anything. Theory Two: the extra space and words provide visual landmarks that allow you to refind the link you want to go back to.

4th July 2003 (03:30)

Streaming from a friend's computer is a slippery metallic sort of ambient journey. I've never heard of them before, Maeror Tri. This song, Sphaira, makes me feel like I am inside an old, large, underground water pipe. The pipe is underneath a technically advanced, superconnected city. It's lights burn and the energy of billions of minds innervates the air breathed.

But I don't see the lights. Inside our pipe, as we glide along its smoothed, water stained surface, we see nothing but a darkness enveloping the lamps of our vehicle. But we feel. The innervation of above reaches down and touches our mind. The lingering scent of a banquet in an empty hall.

I do see. Through senses I am unaccustomed to using. I am like a snake relying on its narrow-band vision. Everything looks like Platonic shadows. There's faith that the sensations I am receiving are ghosts of something real. And awareness of where I am now.

12th June 2003 (02:15)

A response to Neil and Brandon regarding the effectiveness of things like protests versus making companies aware you are boycotting them for political reasons.

I don't totally agree with this. I think word of mouth has a more powerful effect than we realize. I think passing around this email is a good example.

Yesterday, I saw organic Cheetos made by Frito-Lay. I have trouble believing it's because thousands of Cheetos consumers mailed them that they wanted them organic or else. I think it's because of the amount of mindshare out there talking about organics.

Action and education do make a difference. Of course, sending a letter informing a company of your actions is more energy towards your effort and I do think it's a really good idea. However, I totally don't agree that doing things like protesting don't make a difference. Companies DO care what you think, that's why the big ones have Public Relations departments. This is partly why we have fads. If everyone thinks SUVs are cool, car companies will build them. If everyone is talking about organic food, food companies are going to put out organic food.

25th May 2003 (8.5pm)

Tomorrow morning I leave for L.A. and the summer plans begin. I am feeling very positive and confident about it. I just need to keep on my toes, off my ass and focussed. Ideas and thoughts have been blogged all over the wiki (more about this below). In particular, see the SanFranPlan for summer goals and ideas.

I've been totally sucking on Friendster like a laced pacifier. It's very neat and I think it's perfect for network analysis due to the combination of being hip and being located in the Bay Area. Geography being important since I very much want to strike a deal with the company to trade anonymized data for free network analysis. (See SanFranPlan for more ramblings).

Many interesting changes have occurred since my last meeting with Megan. Yes, that girl is a frightfully powerful catalyst. I totally admire a lot of her ways (highly tainted by my perceptual lens, since I know very little of her). I'm still blown away by how much I enjoy the things she suggests or gives to me. The last installment was a CD with three clippings of This American Life on it. They were fantastic! My favorite thing about them is how artistically done they are. Sure, its a documentary, but the weaving of the audio and pace of the story is gorgeous. The stories she gave me stimulated much thought and commentary. They should probably be wikied down.

The most profound change that has been activated is a motivation to log more of my ideas. This is VERY VERY good. A long standing, horrible habit of mine has been to not write my thoughts down. I have no idea how much has been lost. It's not that I think that any of my thoughts are so amazingly grand, but I am interested in the collection of them. I want to see what I am thinking, I want to weave them together into cohesion. It's about respecting myself and listening to myself. In particular, discovering the path that I am desiring to walk and really allowing myself. Again, it's back to dialog. This was the most important thing I got out of the photo class. How having a dialog with ones own thought processes can illuminate the subconscious. I'm not sure I believe that i have this deep underlying idea that is trying to be expressed, but can't . . . . hmm, actually, that might be quite a bit of what I believe. I always feel I am unable to properly express myself. I certainly harbor an unsettling feeling of something being bottled and not being able to get out. I have this feeling almost constantly. Is there an idea in there, a concept, a way, that is trying to be known, but is unable to be discussed in words? Makes sense. Something that is interdependent on action and time and being and living.

It seems that to truly flower I need a cycle of deep expression and deep confusion: letting it out, writing it down, untangling it, then letting it clot, bunch, bottle, ferment. Too much clearity of mind seems similar to much cleanliness in home. You need the bacteria, the dirt. That's what keeps you healthy. No germs, no immune system. To harp on an overly played mantra, its the edge of chaos that harbors the interesting. <sigh>

Science speak as metaphor, thermodynamics being the underlying physics of complexity.

20th May 2003 (1.5pm) : the neighbors are leaving

The energy has gotten very dark. Yells and anger and disrespect echo against the hardwood floors of the recently emptied home attached to mine. The bestest neigbors in the world are leaving today. Their importance in my life distilled by their departure. A dry wind has blown for two days now. As they clean, the dust falls upon the moist surfaces. More cold echoes of discontent are carried into my abode by the dry wind. I want to hide and not be seen. I hate these goodbyes. So permanent. So final. An end. The darkness of their energy only makes me wish they were already gone -- or had never made moves to leave.

(1.75pm) p.s. alison just came over with pink and blue eyes.

18th March 2003 (10.5am) : "finger tips on a table"

An email to megan:

"? human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase. Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, peopled hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to the death." -Salman Rushdie

That is It. Hmm, can I borrow that book afterall? Sounds perfect.

I have always been fascinated by the idea of spatial dimensions. You can think of a creature living on a piece of paper. If you are to stick your pencil through the paper, it would percieve a line, starting from point, slowly growing wider until it reached the thickness of your pencil. If the creature was to walk around the "line" it might perceive that this line is really a circle.

At any point in time, the creature can only perceive a mere slice of your pencil. How could it possibly imagine Megan who is holding the pencil? I've thought of the "true" world as some multi-dimensional world where seemingly disparate pieces are actually connected, and other pieces, slices, we see are connected to wholes of which we never experience. At any given moment we are only aware of the slices which have passed through our personal universe. Unable to begin to ascertain what the whole looks like.

Science has often been beautiful to me because, in some way, it is the art of building from slices a picture of the whole. The way in which astrophysicists infer the shape of our universe is a metaphorical example of this approach.

Talking about dimensionality is always easier with drawing. Have you ever tried to visualize, or conceptualize 4-dimensional space? Without using time? From line, to square, to cube, is there a pattern? To hypercube?

17th March 2003 (1am)

An email to soren:

I was re-reading the liner notes for Xenakis' "Kraanerg" (the one performed by the ST-X ensemble with DJ Spooky writing the liner notes and on the quadraphonic ADAT). It's all about stochastic processes (of course). I was thinking, this is really a sort of old way of thinking when taken in light of a complex systems viewpoint. Things are not collections of random processes, as he is viewing it. It's strange, because all of his examples seem to me, good counterexamples to the idea of stochastic systems. He used cicadas and a protesting crowd. In partciular, he mentioned the wave of slogans washing across the crowd. How is that stochastic!?

Anyway, i could gruel on about this. Ideally, I would like to generate a music based on relationships (which, as far as I understand, is all music is anyway), but the idea being interaction between sub-pieces generates the whole piece. Now, I have no idea how to go about that, so instead I am thinking of something more obtainable. :)

I am messing around with genetic algorithms for my class right now so I am thining about how I can use them to make "music". My current idea is to generate a random collection of bits. Call this the music. If I dumped that to /dev/dsp it would sound like static. So I would have the GA evolve this random bitstring. So what are the criteria for a fit piece of music, or really, I am thinking a fit, short waveform. Maybe 1 second long. Genreate these and use them later either by hand or with another algorithmic process. I am thinking I could envoke the requirement that the waveform is smooth. An unsmooth, clicky waveform is less fit than a smooth waveform. Use crossover and mutation and all that jazz and slowly converge on a smooth waveform. By smooth, I just mean that bits line up within some threshold. Ya know what I mean? I just don't want clicks. I am curious what this will sound like. I will probably need more criteria to make things more interesting. But, the knobs on the GA may be able to produce a wide range of results. I have no idea. GAs seems to be quite chaotic processes.

Anyway, if you have any ideas about what could constitue a healthy, fit, waveform (or if you have an idea for a larger chunk of sound). Tell me. (I guess this would be GA manufactured microsound stuff).

11th February 2003 (3pm)

What am I interested in now?

Well, taking this photography class has really bit me in the ass. I am thinking a lot about what is art and the interesection of art and science. In particular, I am really interest in the intersection between art and complex systems.

I took a photograph of the duck pond at UNM. It was an evening shot, so I had a 30s exposure. I didn't think anything would turn out (the meter said >2 under proper exposure). Well, the negative looks pretty good (still don't know how to make prints) and in it you can see the trails that the ducks were making in the pond: pretty sweeping arcs. I think they may have been following the topology of the water waves propagating from the fountain. Definitely going to make this a project for a roll of film. Try some longer exposures, and this time use a tripod so the photo is straight. :)

Photography as art seems EXTREMELY difficult. Trying to say a lot using a world that you have (potentially) little control over is very difficult. Sure, you can set something up and take a picture of it, but then the picture isn't as much of your medium as whatever it was you built. But, I like this contrainst for it forces me to look and think and explore. I can't just make, I have to find. I like finding beauty much more than I like making it. It's too hard to make beautiful things! Everything I am interested in talking about is occuring in the world around me, thus, I should be able to find it and expose it.

Naive NAIVE thoughts from an engineer.

There are two ways of approaching this CAS <-> [Aa]rt thing.

Find CAS and expose them.
Interpret art as a CAS

The duck pond is sort of an example of the first.

For the second, I want to think about something like ideas. Ideas live in our minds, we meet someone with ideas, we talk to them, we produce idea offspring. Over time, the ideas evolve, become something else. Compatible ideas can be said to belong to the same species, incompatible ideas belong to different species. This is very rough, so don't think to much about this, i'm trying to give an idea, more, a feeling of something.

So, we can follow an idea from one point in time, look at the other ideas it has mated with and then see later what that idea became. What can we say about how ideas move through ideaspace. I guess this is really the same thing as talking about memes and looking at how they move through their environment. But, meme is such a loaded word, I suppose I want to stay away from it. I don't think using that word is important. In fact, it may be misleading because it has so much loaded meaning.

Anyway...

7th February 2003 (7pm)

Some people like me so much. I don't understand why. It's not that I don't think they should, but I don't see what they see when they think of me. In particular, if so many people like me so much, think I am such a wonderful a person, why is it so hard to win the heart of a woman I am so interested in.

Finding women who interest me seems an impossible task. If we count this most recent, then we would count two in total. The first being the girlfriend I once had. The most recent encounter has been exceptionally powerful, our aesthetic appears quite similar (particularly for such different life topologies). Aye, there is surely a lot of idealization going on. Who knows, this impression may be nothing more. The situation is unique, however, in many ways of which I could explain, but won't. Just know, there is an issue of forced exposure and the effect of deeply changing personal perspective.

6th November 2002 (4am)

some late night cyncism now that daylight savings is over. in a mail to rebecca:

yeah, that whole fall -> winter thing. Everyone starts nuzzling up for
the cold weather and those who don't will get to think about how cold
and dark it's gotten.

24th October 2002 (4:30am)

all of my theories, all of my philosophies, all of my views, all of my art, all of my ideas, all of my thoughts -- they are all bullshit, all contrived, all made up, all without reason, all devoid of that which makes them become part of this world that matters. the one that feeds and clothes and pays you. and that is all that matters, for that is where true misery will come from.

and if one subscribes to this theory of "reality" and does what is needed and puts in there time and this process itself makes them unhappy -- what then?

27th September 2002 (1am)

I just realized. One of the reasons I think teen-agers or young adults or anyone who hasn't accepted the popular constructs of "what is our society" is reluctant to accept and enter into society is that there is little proof that what society is at this moment will actually continue on. With images of nuclear destruction, general world wars and aggressions, the recent September 11th attack, it is little wonder why we (and I) question what reality is. How real, or how permanent is this reality? Why train myself for a world that can suddenly cease to exist in a form worthy of that training?

I'm sure the apocalyptic nature of our movies and the ever changing panaceas pushed to us by advertisement helps to create even more unrest of what even our very local future will be like and for.

Religion probably fills this widening gap of perceived consistency by filling it with an eternal Truth. Having a strong military also aids in comforting us. The gap of political perspective: us adapting to the world or adapting the world to us.

Could it be that as society continues to bombard us with an ever uncertain future we will cease to want to operate within that society for lack of faith in a purpose? Is a healthy society one the promises a purpose for life? A healthy human is one who finds purpose within themself.

10th September 2002

It's raining (AMAZING!) and these albums are just soo good in this wet, wonderfully dreary weather:

Dajuin Yao, Cinnabar Red Drizzle (hmm, i guess the name says it all)
Nurse With Wound, Homotopy to Marie

mmmm...

Last Edit: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 02:23:20 -0800
Revisions: 15