Archive: Author: wade tillett

maps

Posted on by wade tillett


earthview
this is my home.  viewed from a satellite above as i am writing this.  to view yourself from a satellite above you right now click the image and choose your city (or the city nearest you).

city scenes

what would a map look like today? it must be multi-dimensional. it must include width (x), height (y), depth (z), time (t), information (i), and the ability to choose to view these from any point on the map, i.e. choose a perspective, with the advent of ‘real-time’ technology which allows almost simultaneous feedback, we must have the ability to view multiple perspectives at the same time, which may include a time feedback sequence, a perspective difference, of only nano-seconds.
first of all, we need the traditional geographic maps. but this is not as simple as that. the vantage point can change this. we can view the region of middle east, but how do we view it? we could consider a photograph a map of reflected light at a certain place in time. in other words, a photograph can be considered a geographic record, a map. traditionally, we might think of a map as a representation of certain features or paths as viewed from a third perspective. but what we have to question is what is the third perspective? that is we can view the middle east as we believe it to be right now. but who is we? and what is right now? in a truly interactive map we could adjust the ‘we’ factor as well as the time factor. that is, we could view the middle east in 200 b.c. as it was known by a particular person living in what is now known as germany in 1893. and how do we view it? from what point in space? perhaps it is only a conceptual space, as with an automobile map. that is, a map which merges geographical and informational data.
the possibility of making a map which includes all of our knowledge and perspectives is impossible because of the size of the possible perspectives, in other words, we only have the possibility of viewing from a relatively few perspectives simultaneously – compared with the infinite possibilities of perspectives. we would better off abandoning the traditional idea of map and focusing on a map interface. a map interface would allow you to choose the coordinates from which you would like your perspective, and also choose which layers of information you would like to view.
for a couple of ideas that start down this path, check out these links:
electronic cultural atlas institute
an atlas of cyberspaces

Internet Cartographer, by Inventix Software, is an application that works alongside your Web browser to classify and map all pages you visit. The map can be interrogated to find Web sites.  (This and more images found at an atlas of cyberspaces)

a sophisticated objectification interface

coordinates (perspective) information interface (way of presenting information)
geographic (x,y,z) light rays photograph (aerial, satellite, ultra-violet, first person, depending on perspective picked)
time (‘live’ or particular point in past) paths conceptual
person (limit of information by consciousness) surface features elevation contours
scale (microscopic to macroscopic) trace artistic
orientation (direction of view) cultural history traceroute
enclosure traditional plan
space text
object graph
molecular sound
universe holographic
mathematic
physical architecture
commands (programs)
political
economic
ethnic
psychological
waves (frequency, cycle , type)
life forms
reactions (physical, chemical etc.)
changes

there are large implications for information gathering, information preservation, of the future.  all creations, all information, must have the identifying coordinates tied to it.  when we take a photograph, our position must be indicated.  with the use of GPS we could automatically save a coordinates stamp to all photographs.  when we take a photograph, it will automatically record the time, date, geographic position (x,y,z),  scale, orientation, method of photography, velocity, and photographer information.  the image is directly uplinked to your life’s database.  it is also immediately linked and categorized within the international historical database.  so that someone 40 years from now, researching that particular place on that particular day can see the hundreds or thousands of images taken from various people all over the world.  from this the information can be assimilated and interpolated into a total re-creation of that day.  and thus, for a fee, you can re-live that perfect day when you….
of course, information input can not be limited to only photography.  a complete ‘video’ of your life can be made as you go along.  recording all the information a processor can handle and store.  photometric, gravitational,  electromagnetic, sound, molecular, etc.  we can record more than we are aware of.  we could spend our whole life examining one particular second.  examining every piece of data in relation to every other piece of data.  creating an infinite number of relationships, viewed form an infinite number of perspectives.  we now have the ability to link lives and times and places.  to categorize and preserve an infinite history.  billions of lives, of perspectives, of information, all linked together to show relationships.  we can now examine the difference an event creates for each person who attends.  but who has time to examine all of these millions of life perspectives?  i mean, who watches the videos they make of the boat tour down the chicago river.  how dow you skip to the good parts?  give me the highlights.  as the person is constantly recording every second of their life, they can bookmark certain sections when they feel excited.  (much the same as photography, except that in photography you must anticipate the excitement).  that is one way.  but a better way is to record the human’s emotional indicators – such as “Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) Sensor, a Blood Volume Pulse (BVP) sensor, a Respiration sensor and an Electromyogram (EMG). ” (MIT affective computing)  then we have the computer compile the highlights.  we make a program which will search for various factors which we wish to enjoy.  we could say, for example, we would like a relaxing day in north-east ohio in june in 2002.  the computer could search the database for the most relaxing day in north-east ohio in june in 2002 by quickly examining the various factors of human response and learned associations (like sunny day – relaxing, rainy day – not relaxing unless…).  these would be overlapped with your personal preferences data to find the most relaxing day to you.  the comparison is made for you individually.  maybe you prefer a slight breeze, 74 degrees, a dog, a jeep, a girl, and you prefer to view it from an 18-year old’s perspective who is most like your self.  and voila, your own personalized ‘real’ movie is fed into your reality manufacturer.  a total objectification which leads to the complete death of the viewer.
in fact, the distinction between the coordinates and information category are only based on our traditional understanding of the limits of our self.  while it is true that traditionally we have experienced information within the limits of a first person, as one point at one place in time at a certain scale, there is no real separation between the information of the coordinates and the information found in the second category.  as viewers of information, we can vastly expand the possible realities we experience.  we can plot the change of velocity.  we can visualize acceleration by plotting time and space, movement over that space in time, change in movement over that space in time.
any way of displaying information could be included in this interface.  by mixing up traditional ways of displaying information we would discover new ways to see information.  we would discover relationships we never knew existed.  we could view a surface terrain at a certain time and place through a text interface while overlaying the elevation contours of people’s bodies alive there during that time period.  over the top of that we could overlay a tracing of the internet paths of the use of the word ‘scissors.’   we can program the computer to incessantly search for interesting relations and show them to us in new ways.  we can abandon the first person.  we can create our own information terrains which include our self.  our traditional perspective is only one of an infinite number of choices – of position, of scale, of time, of orientation, of interfaces, of limits.

These images show WebPath, “… a tool that unobtrusively visualises a user’s trail as they browse the Web”, developed by Emmanuel Frécon, a researcher in the Distributed Collaborative Environments group at SICS.  See this paper for more information, Frécon E. & Smith G., (1998), “WebPath – A three-dimensional Web History“, 1998 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis ’98), Chapel Hill. NC, USA.   (This and more images found at an atlas of cyberspaces)

 

west

Posted on by wade tillett

i need to start walking
west
fearlessly on water
and when my faith dies so will i

i will not return
this is the end
the rest is the end

no more fear of death
i am assured of death
welcome, beyond belief
no more staged and meager attempts to regain what we have conquered
we have conquered everything
abandon it all
look at me in the distance
fading to blue
from here it looks as if he is part of the sky
i am floating in an infinite void
i am not sure when my feet left the plane of blue reflection
i don’t need it anymore
this is how my journey will continue…
lighter and lighter shades
the borders, the beliefs hazing and fading
my limbs will become transparent and weightless
my thoughts will empty and shallow
a deeper and deeper blue

and on the horizon, above and below
fading shades of blue
and within and without
a vibrant shade of blue
there is nothing more beautiful than blue
there is nothing more than blue
there is nothing, only blue

sacrifice

Posted on by wade tillett

we are carnivores.
those of you who affect to have never eaten meat…
you have killed with the rest of us.
the sacrifice is hidden behind blank walls.
(men in yellow suits spray down the sidewalks)
bring forth the blood to the public altar
(how else can we know what we are eating.)
i will wield the knife.
i have killed the animals with my bare hands.
i have removed the entrails and planted them.
look at your teeth,
they are weapons which tear through flesh.
look at your birth,
an enlarged physical being expands.
parasites.
you will wield the knife for your dinner tonight.
you will kill your own today.
no more mercenaries, executioners, butchers,
it is you!
out from behind the hidden walls, the rooms without windows.
you who have never looked the animal in the eye as it breathes it last.
you hypocrite.
you will never know life until you know the blood that flows through
you.
the blood on your hands.

Posted in UncategorizedTagged

plato

Posted on by wade tillett

and this is what i propose

(are you with me)

that we tear it down before we build any further
you can’t travel with so much luggage

– and at first, in a barren sky larger than you,
you think that you have disappeared, a victim of your own search
blue in a field of blue.

but deep and below, you have not gone deep enough.
i see the light lined words wisping within you.
i see the pure and platonic forms you desire – you still believe in them!
constructs of the mind, chains with which we have built our souls

you – you are only physical possibility
“believe me, my brethren! it was the body which despaired of the body
– it groped with the fingers of the infatuated spirit at the ultimate walls.”*
at the edge of the platonic gorge
“how can i overcome the great divide?”
from a depth before you – “sacrifice.”
Fools! Not your body, your spirit.
taste the popped and hollow kernels
and now you are larger than them

expanse within the expanse
currents, liquid movements, in the silent and slow moving sea
life is eternal, we know not its limits

how will you know me
you will know me by my faith, a current below

 

*(Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, First Part, Backworldsmen)

Posted in UncategorizedTagged

hole

Posted on by wade tillett

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″>
<meta name=”GENERATOR” content=”KWrite 0.98 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.5 i586)”>
</head>
<title>
the_scheme
</title>
<body>
what if we were to put a hole in the screen. what if we were to break through
the fleeting glowing pixels hovering on a piece of glass. what if we were to
peek around the edges. what if we were to make the invisible and hidden
semi-transparent. what if we could be invisible and without scale and go
inside…<br>
the factories, behind the hopper windows opened a crack in a screened cage
protruding from the edge of a smooth brick facade, glimpses of enormous
man-eating machines which have, at their furthest extensions, humans under
their control, moving rhythmically. there are wires and steel protrusions and
thousands of crossing pipes.<br>
and on cline ave you are above the smooth brick wall you encounter on 12. the
beast has grown beyond roofs. it is an entire landscape. at night flames
shoot out from the top of the stacks. thousands of tiny lights shimmer in a
foreign land where there are no humans and no scale. this is a
semi-transparent landscape which attempts opacity with a single 10 foot
brick wall at the road. the structures inter-connections are all
visible. you can not separate the steel tower structures from the
pipes that intertwine them and run to other towers and tanks and
burning stacks. somewhere there is somebody who knows what all these
pipes do. they could identify them by their connection and relation
and position and size and shape and material within the process
landscape. there is nothing for show here. nothing to make it
consumer-ready. nothing is hidden in the name of ease of use or
‘freedom from choice.’ there is no graphical user interface. there is
no map. the landscape is the map. the physical manifestation is not
the representation of the process, it IS the process. this is not a
symbolic objectification of the process. the actual process is
objectified. there is no referent outside of its self. this is
a rational thought process objectified which takes on a life, a
function of its own. process diagrams are abstract – lines and
symbols. they do not anticipate the <i>physical</i> form that they
will take on. the actual physical building process is the
objectification of the production process. the production process does
not exist until the time-space deficit is overcome through a direct
physical interaction. this direct physical interaction does not
stem from its anticipation – every detail of construction is not worked
out. it is ad-hoc and individual builder specific. there is an infinite
number of ways to objectify the process, but it is the actual construction
which determines its form. after the process is objectified the diagram is
obsolete because the physical form IS the diagram. the process has taken on a
life of its own. the thought and materialization are one and the same. all
relations are shown physically as they exist physically. every link is shown
as a link – not as the representation, map, or diagram of the link – but as
the physical link which it is.<br>
what if we were to do better. like an inventor who builds through trial and
error. like a mechanic who tests machines and thoughts by running them. that
is – there is no diagram to start with. there is only the physical object
which exists as thought. the object and the thought can not be separated.
they are made in the same instance. they are always separate – at any time
the creator can abandon the project and the thought and object creation exists
in its own right. if it ‘works’ it takes on a life of its own – it gains an
autonomy of process, as well as the autonomy it has as a physical object. we
judge objects by their autonomy, by their separation from our thoughts, as
physical manifestations. we judge life by its autonomy of process, by its
ability to change and construct its self.<br>
so how can we create process and thought simultaneously? intuitively?
we have now entered a meta-world in which we utilize processes,
objects, as we create a meta-process. we manipulate life to create
meta-life. as before we manipulated objects to create meta-objects –
the ‘process.’ the process was the objectification of objects
manipulated in order to create an object manipulator. we form iron to
create a factory process which will form oil. we utilize certain
ready-made objects, such as pipes (the derivative of another process)
to construct our own meta-object, process, life. now we utilize ready-made
process meta-objects to create our own meta-process, our own meta-life.<br>
<b>form follows function.</b> this was a pretty good idea, but the fact is:
<i>form IS function</i>. ‘form follows function’ always begged the question
– ‘<i>which</i> function?’ the statement was usually applied to buildings.
but buildings are a collection of functions. (enclosing, heating, cooling,
light production, noise removal, circulation, waste removal, water supply,
privacy, ownership, control, production of other processes, etc.) they do
not really have one controlling function. what is the function of a house?
perhaps we could say life. but this brings us to a much larger question, what
is the function of life? life is a collection of processes which has no
product. the process of life is life. there is no end result, no product –
there is only the objectification of process. life is process. form is
function. (we are what we eat.)<br>
these are the beautiful possibilities of our new meta-life creations – the
ability to see our life as process. the ability to see the processes which
make us what we are. the construction of a semi-transparent image which
simultaneously is us. now we are without scale. now we are without limits.
now we can not be separated from our connections and relations. we <i>are</i>
these connections and relations. now we have made meta-life. now we
can see our genetic code, its interaction with environments. now we
can manipulate the processes of our own lives. now our own lives are
objects with which we create larger processes. (hasn’t this always
been the case?) the ability to see our life as process will not answer
the question ‘what is the function of life?’ this is an un-answerable
question. that it is un-answerable suggests life has no
function – it is meaningless except that it <i>exists</i>. that is, we
exist as a process without end or meaning. it is only our death that
ensures our individuality. within a meta-life, a process which spans
and consumes lives as building blocks, there can be no individuality. there
are no limits, life is only a part of the process. the information network is
its own entity, its own meta-life which consumes lives as its raw power and
building block. process consumes.<br>
and we, as ‘smart’ parts of the process, get feedback. our individuality, our
ability to create change, rests on the fact that we are limited – in the time
that we live, in the knowledge that we can know, in the change that we can
influence, in the perspectives we can view. we are the mutation producers of
the process’ evolution by virtue of our limits.<br>
we can never understand wholly the process of life which we are. there is
always a time-space gap between your self and the mirror, without it no light
is let in and we feel in darkness.
there exists the possibility to cut a cross-section. to punch a hole
through our understanding. to <i>see</i> all the processes at once, but not
know all of their meanings – that’s ok, they are meaningless anyway.
this is true information overload – to see all the infinite processes of life
extending infinitely in time space and scale and to understand that ‘you’ are
a certain position and collection of processes – a meta-process. there is an
infinite void beyond meaning. beyond belief. we can understand our self as a
meta-process within a meta-meta-process of evolution. we can see the
functions of our self as they function. we can feel the resistance as we
move. the reaction of our action. we can build our processes like an
inventor. the thought and object are the same. we test through
trial and error. we <i>do</i> build as inventors our life, our process, with
every second. there is no separation of process and its physical
objectification. life is materialization as conceptualization. life is
process. life is now. <br>
</body>
</html>

a walk

Posted on by wade tillett

and YOU! you would not believe…
those stone houses, with dimly lit trees slowly passing
in a yellow light
cast from porches
from that alley, the sound of a generator or some other device
rows of telephone poles and dumpsters underneath the halide
children run just before dawn
“dawn i missed you
you have no idea”
where is she
where’s she gone?
and the black and white dog, a shaggy collie
looks back to the child
the sky is blue and then black.
sometimes, like tonight
a giant ceiling of clouds ready to break
i felt rain
i contemplated returning
i turned
i will just walk by
it was cool when it hit my skin
once in a while.
the bricks, the light, the shadows
they look so terribly real
so terribly slow
so terribly conforming
to all those laws
nothing i can not capture
this is the end
“i try to grab on to reality but its so fleeting
i used to have no doubts”
“what good news do i have for you?
some guys from bering springs, just outside grand rapids
they killed a girl and fried her up in a bbbq.”
the leaves are rendered to perfection
the little iron rings on top of the fence
an endless sidewalk
just beneath the canopy of trees
that brush your cheeks every then and again
and the windows with yellow light
dogs watch out the windows
i see it ahead
it is so real
a corner apartment
the center window is open
a tv is framed so perfectly it must be staged
who is pulling my strings
it flashes “morality”
and a blue light
as i walk toward
who is this
“reality”
what is this
“get real”
“so did they eat her or not”
“no, they were just trying to get rid of the body.
something straight out of fargo, eh?”
the sidewalk
i can feel it through my shoes.
and the cigarette.
it burnt my finger
when i went past the hospital
perched in the lights of a parking lot
a remnant of death
much too surreal
too dramatic
when i flicked my cigarette…
i didn’t see it fly
they would have never thought of that..
NOT seeing it fly.
its the end of the world
the rain hits my skin every once in a while
there are brick buildings
with square porches stacked three or four stories
and dimly lit yellow light windows
and there at the stop light
a limestone church against a deep blue sky
a spotlit stone jesus with arms outstretched like he’s saying,
“what, what do you want from me?”

window fluid

Posted on by wade tillett

my modified version of the article below.

—–

Daniela Deane, Washington Post
Monday, January 27, 2003
…
Andersen’s new entrant, which isn’t for sale yet, is a bay window that doubles as a home entertainment center. A low-voltage current runs through the window. When the current is on, the window is clear. Turn the current off and the glass goes opaque for use as a projection screen for television or DVDs. Flanking casement windows become the speakers.
…
The transformation is….

imperceptible

said Sandy Isenstadt, a professor of architecture at Yale University. “One minute you’re looking out your bay window at your neighbor’s backyard, and the next you’re watching …

a real-time image of your neighbor’s backyard with an image of a murder spliced in. Utilizing previously developed advertising technology – such as that developed to present personalized advertisements on blank walls in sports arenas, spliced in by computers in the studio, and recast with the updated image to specific areas or audiences. By utilizing the home computer, the internet, this new window technology and each individual’s profile (profile assimilated by credit reports, credit cards, school records, medical and psychological records, criminal and employment records, etc.), produces an individualized image for each family based on who is viewing. For a fee, you can watch as your backyard turns into a playground of nudes. Or, for a fee-less system, small advertisement chunks will be inserted into your backyard seamlessly. A truck with FEDEX is parked in back. The label on your neighbor’s beer is replaced by Budweiser. Anti-drug messages are inserted via conversations that people in the alley are having, courtesy of the
government and the anti-drug message credits for ads program (as exposed on salon on network television a few years ago).

‘Really, this is only the beginning of augmented reality – a reality controlled both by corporations and the government, personalized to get you to act in an appropriate (profit and product bearing) manner. Imagine once eyeglasses and hearing aids are modified, and beyond this, the actual eye and ears. The point is that reality is no longer something that exists exterior to the media. You can no longer trust your senses. The division between real and virtual is one that is clearly manipulated to profit those in power. Baudrillard once said that disneyland exists to make us believe the rest is real. Thus, traditionally, modes of virtual are clearly demarcated, so that the subtle (virtual) manipulations of reality are not distrusted.’

Said a crazed prophetic street walking messenger.

‘For now, trust only what you can touch and feel, and who knows how much longer we can trust that.’

posted to design-l

Objectification: Architecture Thesis Project

Posted on by wade tillett

Color PDF version, minus appendix (~4Mb): Tillett-ArchThesis-1998-no-appendix

Online version: https://281c9c.org/2003/12/06/abstract/

Version of record from Ball State University Library: Objectification : CAP undergraduate thesis / Wade Tillett

Abstract:

Objectification is our ability to control reality, to place images of ourselves within reality which are independent from ourselves.  This is what objectification is about, at the root, is seeing ourselves.  Within the void, standing on the infinite beach staring out at the infinite sea, we see only our temporality, our inability to change, to make consequence, to conquer death.  And it is by placing within this void images of ourselves that we attempt to assure our own existence.

But it is our ability to control reality, to design, which objectifies our existence, strips our humanity from within us, and fills the void around us, drowning us within our own attempt to see ourselves.  We no longer inhabit the void, but rather a void filled with images of ourselves, with markers of existence, with tombstones, churches and photographs.  And as we fill this void, as we extract from ourselves our perceptions and our humanity, our life and our beliefs, the only implication can be that we have less within ourselves, that we become void within our objects, spaces between our images of ourselves.

 

In order to continue our belief that we are non-void, we must inhabit the void.   For to be the void inhabiting the non-void is to be nothing; no room is left for humanity and for existence.  This thesis builds from the belief that we are non-void inhabiting the void.  That by not objectifying ourselves, by not filling the void with non-void, we allow ourselves to exist within the void.  By not creating reality we assure our own. By not objectifying our thesis, we leave ourselves with our thesis.

 

By objectifying our anti-thesis exterior to ourselves, we create the thesis within ourselves.  Thus we want to create a world without belief so that we can believe.  We want to construct a world of nihilism fulfilled so that we can revel in the fulfillment of our own belief within ourselves.

It is the blank canvas and cold hard examination room, which cause in us the urge of life, the artistic impulse, the kinetic potential. The feeling in the viewer is active and induced rather than empathetic and distant. It is in the coldest and most comfortless rooms that we feel ourselves most. By not imbedding the object with emotion, we leave those unspeakables unspoken, and those undescribables undescribed. The void is more saturated with kinetic potential the more the potential energy is intentionally left untapped.

It is by objectifying as little as needed that we achieve the greatest benefit to ourselves.  It is less systems, smaller systems, invisible systems which allow us to achieve the greatest effect while giving up the smallest piece of ourselves. Satellites, radio towers, microwaves, light, sound, these give us the desired effect without clogging our reality with objects.  These are the most efficient systems. These utilize the void as a medium, rather than carving out their own chunk of it.  They are, in essence, pure effect:  the nullification of architecture.

The object must abandon style and embrace the fluid effect. Physical objects can not change fluidly. They leave us with archaic and stagnant images of ourselves. Architecture is obsolete before it is built. Objects must be a system that supports effect. The effect must be total and all encompassing. Minimal design allows for total immersion of a fluid effect. It does not imbed our thoughts within the object.

Objectification produces something that is no longer dependent on our thoughts about it. In fact, it is through their independence from our thoughts about them that real things distinguish themselves from the contents of our minds.12 Reality is the difference between the object and our thoughts about it. Reality is the difference between our thoughts and the objectification of our thoughts. This is the inherent flaw of objectification, of architecture’s thesis:  reality is independent of the mind. It is the difference between our designs and the objectification of our designs that allows us to distinguish reality. Reality is the failure of design.

Minimal design makes its own failure extremely evident. It makes the viewer aware of themselves. The person within the room of nothing becomes the difference, the failure, the reality within the design.