Pong was there knocking bricks out of a bridge.
Sure that wasn't "breakout"? A sort of single-player pong...
ç
There are two kinds facing each other across another divide: half the
world is digitizing everything while the other half is making it look
analog (graphic, visually stunning).
Yes... like that.
Robert C.
On 4/9/10 9:08 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
Doug is always invited to a friendly flame war, even if he was too busy
working or cleaning his ditch to start it. A good flame war with Doug
is often followed by lots of beers to put the flames out. Recycled
beer.
But I think what we have here is more (and less?) than that. And
following Nick's self-description and Lee's fitting into the same, I
stand firmly with my feet planted on both sides of the "cultural
divide" (separating Old F***s from the rest of the world?).
Like Lee, I have a very questionable internet connection so even 2:30
of video like this is an investment. Tory is an old friend so I make
the effort when she sends things. This one was definitely very
"clever" on several levels.
As an old hand at CGI, Visualization and VR, I am naturally fascinated
at the facility with which the producers managed to mix their
synthesized and real video. I can think of dozens of ways to
approach it, but none of them are easy and the results of this
particular exercise are (nearly) flawless. It gets high marks
technically.
I also came into my adult years as the classic video games referenced
were all the rage, Pac Man, BreakOut, Tetris, Space Invaders, Mario
Bros. I remember the feeling of these mini-worlds the video games
created had some kind of reality of their own... so to see their
reality invading ours resonated.
The notion of the pixelated (voxelated?) invaders pixelating the world
as they encountered it is actually "semiotically" relevant to Lee's
(and maybe Nick's) objections. Lee harps eloquently on "Moving
Pictures" and "Push Media" and I believe that "pixelated
attack-creatures" are a good signifier for all that is
bad/risky/dangerous/questionable about the "new media" that has arisen
in the time period roughly marked by the inception of video pong (where
was Pong and Asteroids and BattleZone in this clip?) The cautionary
tale in this clip is that our own digital media (e.g. Pushed Moving
Pictures) is in the process of eating our world.
In the spirit of McLuhan's "Medium is the Message", we are *becoming*
digital creatures ourselves, if not as abruptly and literally as the
animation clip we just saw would suggest, simply by consuming it in the
quantities that many of us do (especially our children/grandchildren
for the old F***s among us).
I think this stuff is rotting our brains... but most of it is rotgut
and I really appreciate the occasional draught of the well-crafted
stuff.
Lee's other point, about "everything" advertising itself is very
interesting as well. Obviously this movie clip is an advertisement for
the skills and cleverness of the producers, encouraging others to hire
them to do something similar for their own product.
We do a lot of contemplation/discussion on this list about "life
itself" and the recurring themes are phrases like "gradient descent"
and "self-organization" and "natural selection". This
"self-advertising" theme seems to be the natural result of "sexual
reproduction". "Look at Me!" seems to be a counter-productive
strategy (predator-prey) until you mix in sexual reproduction.
Just ask any of the Peacock's in Doug's backyard...
- Steve
I'm not sure it's fair to be having a flame war without
having invited me...
;-}
--Doug
On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 8:15 AM, Nicholas
Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net>
wrote:
Lee
> In this case, though, Nick, is it supposed to be
> "funny" or is it supposed to be "art"?
You know, now that you mention it, I wanted to ask that very question
but
was too shy.
Nick
> From: <lrudo...@meganet.net>
> To: <friam@redfish.com>;
<nickthomp...@earthlink.net>
> Date: 4/9/2010 4:48:30 AM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Note re Pixel video
>
> Nick to Vic:
>
> > 911 still too raw for me to take pancaking
> > buildings as any part of funny.
>
> I never follow up unexplained links to videos,
> partly because with my slow connection all videos
> load painfully slowly, mostly because I disapprove
> of moving pictures in general (1. push media::BAD;
> 2. we aren't evolved to resist videos' inevitable extra
> baggage, 3. if anything, we're evolved to far too
> easily be sucked in by their extra baggage, 4...
> I can rant on indefinitely, but won't now).
> So I'm always glad when someone, even if not
> the original poster, does explain--in words--
> WTF a profferred video link purports to be (other
> than, essentially always unstated by the poster
> even when smugly admitted by the videomaker [e.g.,
> in cases of explicit advertisements], some kind
> of mindfuck--oops, there I go ranting again).
>
> In this case, though, Nick, is it supposed to be
> "funny" or is it supposed to be "art"? Karl-Heinz
> Stockhausen voted "art" for the original show
> (specifically, I guess, "performance art"),
> remember? (If you don't remember, go look it up,
> it will be good for you, even if you didn't spend
> far too many hours in the late 1960s listening to
> Karl-Heinz's "Gesang Der Junglinge".)
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
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