No Click Interface

I was browsing around on del.icio.us and found Dontclick.it. It is a no click interface for web pages. It reminded me of this game for Windows 3.1 that I had when I was a kid, Jewel Thief. In the game the goal was to collect jewels without being touched by a variety of other objects moving across the screen. The user's avatar follows the mouse exactly.
In the web page and the game, annoyance follows when one mouses over the wrong object: the "enemy" avatars or an unintended menu.

Art is for Eating

Browsing Jen Dunlap's site last night I refound pictures of her wonderful cakes.
They are like little colorful islands of sweets

• Funlap dot com
  
• Art is for Eating
  
• More cakes for Fischerspooner
  

4chan Pavillion in Second Life

Current Favorite Wikipedia Entries and Reading

• Microexpression
  
• Invisible Wall
  
• Perfect Information
  

Responsibility to Symmetry

I was in Jon's class the other day for our final critique. This gentleman was up to bat. He demoed a Python program he had written for real time video manipulation. What was interesting about it was, that during the demo he played a sound file in the background. At each kick in the audio, he would alter the image.
I know alot of that has to do with traditions of VJing, but at the same time it made me wonder (probably because he described the program to be a video game) if there was a responsibility to symmetry in interactions normally.
Ofcourse this could be the result of watching too much Fischinger, but maybe not.
I was also playing with Leversgame.com, by Vectorpark yesterday and I noticed the same thing.

This may be only because the fiction of the game and the stigma of scales, but they do have that stigma for a reason.
I haven't found any info on it yet. Who knows.

del.icio.us

I was talking to Chris a few days ago and he thought it was strange that I didn't really use del.icio.us. So I decided to give it another chance, I even installed the Firefox plug-in, maybe I will update it this time.

here is the link, http://del.icio.us/natehitchcock

I just threw up a bunch of stuff that I had saved, so I guess there is new content there.

Also, I am getting rid of my Myspace account, it is only for music now. Talk to me on Facebook instead.

New Chicago People

I have found two new good people in Chicago recently.

• Chris Collins
  Chris work primarily with the Internet and technology. Here is a piece of his that was recently featured at VVORK: "Tribute to Nam June Paik (w/ Default Apple Screensaver)", 2007.
  
  
• Dain Oh
  I recently saw Dain's realtime performance at En3my here in Chicago. It made me think her computer had synesthesia. It was nice and simple display of sentiment. I think there are some videos running around of the performance, but I don't know where right now.
  Dain understands Occam's Razor.
  

::edit::

I also forgot, that Rowynn Michelle has started a blog. She is not new, that is that I have known her for a while now. but now she is online. Rowynn does Voodoo anthropology in Hatti, and is working now on a show about alchemy and magic for the Meat Factory Gallery in Prague. Row knows where real magic is.

On the Denial of Code: Video Games versus JODI

"The denial of code becomes self-justifying by its own inherent creative properties"

Three Illustrations

Juul_Sartre Mash-up


Liminal Until I Feel Like It

LOOk the Movie and Soft Cinema

Look Trailer

I just have watched the trailer for this movie Look. I don't know if it was actually shot with surveillance cameras, I think that the quality would be alot worse, and the issue of having all of those cameras with mics..
But it seems like a good idea to me, though the trailer dosn't make me want to go see the movie really.

When I first got a copy of Lev Manovich's Soft Cinema, this is what ran through my head. I was thinking though that the scripts and screen plays would be computer generated and that a room full of computers would just data mine all of the footage. That would be cool, anyone could star in a movie and not even know. It would be a great surprise to go to a theater one day and see that you've become a star!

I hung up Euler's Identity in our living room

Here it is: Euler's Identity in Payne's Gray



"'It is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means, but we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth.'" (Wikipedia)

Video Games with Emergent Goals

Video Games with Emergent Goals
(I must be into lists this week :-P)

• Endless Forest, by Tale of Tales. It is supposed to be an art work, but it seems like a video game to me. Also, it is nice that you can run it as a screen saver. I just tried it for the first time the other day because I haven't had a Windows machine in a while. It reminded me of a work that Eduardo Kac had made in 1996, titled Rare Avis. The eyes of the bird are positioned like human eyes because it was built after a mythical bird from Brazilian folklore. I have heard also that the text The Animal Therefore I Am by Jacques Derrida was half-way based on Eduardo's piece. It is interesting because the deer avatars in Endless Forest have eyes which are positioned on the front of their faces, and the only way to communicate in the game is to use predetermined animalesque movements.
  
  
• flOw, by Jenova Chen. There is also a Play Station 3 version, but I don't think that it qualifies for this list because when you reach a certain level you return and unlock other avatars. I don't actually know if this is not the case in the Flash version, but because it is a Flash game, I don't play it long enough to find out (and that is story for another post). Also, Jenova's game Cloud may qualify for this list, but every machine I have tried to run it on has frozen.
  
  
• The Sims, ofcourse, by Will Wright. I have only played this game a couple of times, but I do identify with in at the level of a toy, which is what Will calls it. Interestingly enough, I think that this is a border line case, and for different reasons than Jesper Juul (and to borrow his term :-) thx!) does. I think this because there are certain social limitations that the gamer brings to the table during play. It is easy to think that there are more in-game goals in The Sims because there are social ideals that relate to real life, and to the players.
  

More on this topic later I think.