Neoteny is the greatest state of mind (Part 1: Exploratorium)

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Photos galore now. I found myself pondering about how the scientific concepts are communicated and brought to life, rather than the concepts themselves. There are lots of exhibits about light, colors, acoustics, and meteorology, perhaps because the fundamental tenets can be experienced more easily by the layperson?

Just outside the Exploratorium

Bay Bridge and some sailboats

This reminds me of cross-sections of plant stems. Or views under an optical microscope. 

This I did not know! I did remember that thicker rods have higher spring constants and therefore wiggle faster. I pride myself on knowing most of the science behind these exhibits, but I'm always happy to learn new things :-)

Kaleidoscope your face!

Mirror mirror on the wall...

I did not want to use my camera flash as a courtesy to the other visitors :-P

Whoever thought of this has a slightly macabre and edgy sense of humor.

Clock tower. It has a neo-steampunk feel :-)

This made me nostalgic of my AP Physics C class activity of racing soup cans.  To my surprise, the chunky noodle soup beat the creamy peanut butter... I wonder if it's because all the chicken nuggets clumped in the middle?!

Nice glass display of the donors. Reminiscent of whimsical bubbles! More fun than the ol' engraved metal slabs.

Mmm the classic optical illusion.

Funny jokes. And puns.

More jokes.

I love these.

This is a curious exhibit on linguistics and psychology... sort of.

Another whimsical twist on the obvious.

I like this design.

This is one of the landmark exhibits that made the Exploratorium what it is today. Dr. Frank Oppenheimer is a fascinating character!

Cute note and worms.

Bubbly algae.

The columns represent the heights of SF Bay tide every hour.

Weather observatory.

This is a nice display of the water cycle that we don't usually think about.

Hilde Hein's book about the Exploratorium gives fascinating insights into how the museum came about, its founding philosophies, and how it has developed over the years. Perhaps this is the sort of thing I would enjoy doing for life... combining science and art and (helping to) inspire people about it?

Visitations: Theotokia and The War Reporter

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One of my recent conversations discussed the following proposition: when attending an avant-garde opera, instead of dressing up in the usual evening formal attire, one could don the hipster gear of thick-rimmed glasses, hoodie, brightly-colored pants, converse sneakers, and mismatched socks. I'm really milking my grad student status for all it's worth.

As quoted from the concert program:

Visitations presents a pair of tender and powerful dramas about individuals haunted by inner voices. The first, Theotokia, takes the audience inside the consciousness of a man who, beset by hallucinatory voices, is taunted and seduced by the mother of God. The work illuminates the experience of Leon, a schizophrenic who is possessed by ritualistic and religious hallucinatory delusions and suffers from obsessive, ritualistic behavior.  

The second opera of the set, The War Reporter, depicts the true story of the inner struggle of Paul Watson, a war reporter who believes he is being haunted by the spirit of the desecrated American soldier he photographed in the streets of Mogadishu in 1993 (a photograph that won Watson the Pulitzer Prize shortly thereafter). Although the libretto's narrative traverses six geographical locations, the actual drama is set entirely in the psyche of the reporter as he struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder. 

I was totally mesmerized by the juxtaposition of Gregorian chant (parallel fifths and octaves) with augmented/diminished fourth/fifths, major/minor seconds reminiscent of the soundtrack from North by Northwest and Inception. The St. Lawrence String Quartet really pulled out all the chords and shook them in pizzicatos. The texturing of various percussion instruments and the alto flute was particularly effective. Kudos to the composer and the entire "pit" orchestra! (There's no real pit on stage in this concert hall.)

The New York Polyphony gave a fantastic rendition of all the angst and nuances. The countertenor (who played Leon and one of Paul's inner voices) sang with the delicate tension of stretched pizza dough, constantly stringing my ears along with the anticipation of delicious harmonies and suspension chords. It was amazing how high his range can get! The baritone (as Paul) swept me away with all the power of crashing waves on a stormy shore. The soprano's singing (Theotokia: Mother Anne, Leon's mother, Yeti Mother; The War Reporter: Paul's boss, Paul's inner voice) soared like an albatross surfing in the mountain wind.

The set design once again evoked an abstract sense of unsettling, as per Rinde Eckert's signature in his works. The visualization in Theotokia reminded me of fertilized cells dividing...

... and ferrofluids morphing...

I also enjoyed how the vocalists took over the role of the stage crew, rearranging props while doing choreographed interpretive dance moves that illuminated plot elements. This aspect of the performance was implicit and understated, letting the audience make the conceptual leaps, a fresh contrast to the special effects overkill in contemporary cinema. :-P

At some point, I wondered about the anachronistic superstition that upon taking a shot, the camera would extract the subject's soul... or perhaps the photographer's?

Brain Pickings is the most intriguing and illuminating website I've visited in a while

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io9.com is a close second. Together this makes for my shortest blog entry with the most number of tags.

I particularly should check out these collections of books... on the left panel on the main page. I already read a few of them and heard about a few more, but hmm... haven't read real books in a while. Too many things are happening lately...

What the Hex?

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I came across this color guessing game via this blog. Most curious. I was able to get like five correct in a row for Level 10, but definitely failing at Level 48 ROFL. 

Bakemonogatari - 2 of ??

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[[My previous blog entry about this anime]] 

This series has such high re-watch value for me... because it encourages endless pondering and rumination about nuances and intentions and the like. It's interesting to entertain the connection between the seemingly random scene insertions and the plot elements, e.g. the characters' dialogues, actions, and thoughts.

The insertions are often highly geometric constructs of street scenes, i.e. residential areas inside a city. Examples include generic apartment windows, playground swings, light rail tracks, power line towers, etc.


I feel like these inserts help set the mood and stimulate the viewers' train of thoughts in various Brownian directions... just as the black and red screens that flash for only a fraction of a second and read "Black (or Red) scene: animation number 'none'"... I have not yet figured out what they mean...

Actually, I think it could be either (1) animators got lazy (2) they're trolling the audience (3) simulating the old flickering film reels (4) black scenes for -_- or @_@ or =_= or ._. moments, and red scenes for O_O or intense bloody moments...

FontForge looks like the answer to my restlessness... [NOT]

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Thanks to Fzz's link to a kerning game... that inspired this sudden concentrated exploration into typography :-P Tried my hands at the game and didn't do too badly I suppose.

Although the actual task of designing a font is rather involved!

I tried to install FontForge via Cygwin at first, then found it to be hopelessly and needlessly complicated. And then I realized, doh, I have Ubuntu. And then the installation was just one line -

    sudo apt-get install fontforge python-fontforge 

Admittedly, this is the first time I truly felt that my multi-OS machine has finally found its purpose... to be multi-OS... after the fiasco of trying to install Jacapo in Ubuntu (which is a lot more complicated than a single sudo command)

Maybe I can fiddle with the notion of my own usefulness for awhile. FontForge looks sufficiently complex to sustain my play for at least a few months.

[Edit] I impulsively upgraded my Ubuntu from 10.04 to 11.10 and now FontForge doesn't work anymore. Blerg! At least "Oneiric Ocelot" sounds cool. I wanted the next release to be called "Pensive Pelican" or "Pouncing Panther" or... "Peeing Poodle", which Fzz said was better than "Pooping Poodle" because it could be shortened to "PeePoo". The developers should make that an April Fool's joke or something...

[Fudgy Science Episode 003] A Markov chain of my daily activities

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Here's a diagram showing what I do on a high level.  

An arrow pointing from A to B, with a number N at the origin of the arrow, indicates that if I'm found in State A at a given time, there is a probability of N that I would be found in State B about 30 minutes later.

If you find a prettier Markov chain, please show me where it is.

More detailed description of the states, with steady states (expected time spent per day) according to Markov chain matrix calculations...

Biological housekeeping (~9.226 hrs)

• Sleeping
• Anything directly related to eating
• Grooming, e.g. showering (why yes)
• etc...

Work-related activities (~7.122 hrs)

• Setting up simulations and running them, i.e. babysitting
• Looking up papers and reading them
• Visualizing data
• Analyzing data
• Research meetings
• Making PowerPoint presentations
• Watching online lectures
• etc...

Intellectual entertainment (~3.428 hrs)

• Reading "layman" books about quantum physics, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, sociology, history, culture, religion, etc.
• Watching documentaries
• Writing nerdy poetry
• Writing sci-fi
• etc...

Instinctual entertainment (~2.519 hrs)

• Reading manga & watching anime 
• Reading sci-fi
• Hulu surfing
• Biking in quasi-Brownian motion
• Shooting darts
• Making (mostly) abstract art
• Fiddling with music synthesizer
• Listening to certain songs in loop
• etc...

Socialization (~ 1.705 hrs)

• Talking to people online or offline
• Hanging out, etc...

Yeah... C'est la vie. 

Adding a dash of imagination to photos

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Befunky is a neat web app that adds artistic effects to photos. I was playing around and it was pretty fun. All hail computer graphics and signal processing algorithms!

Gonna play with FotoSketcher too. This one needs an installation. (Don't we love obvious misspelling in product names...) The sample gallery doesn't have people, so I wonder how that might turn out.

Doink-it darts & Mighty Tyvek wallet

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Was wandering around the shops today... I guess now I feel restless if I'm indoor all day. Must still be in vacation mode :-P

Could not stop myself from getting a dart board anymore. These magnetic darts are cute with stentor-like tails. And they go DOINK when they hit the board. Right now I have the board mounted on my easel. Splendid multi-purpose use...

Also got the graph paper version of the Mighty wallet. Suits my techie and artsy temperament perfectly. I didn't know about this Tyvek material until today. Light and waterproof and tear-proof.. I should have gotten this a long time ago! Like in undergrad... 

I also got some other tidbits too...

Circular 180-degree rotational symmetry...

... is totally awesome. Wheeee!! And the crater-lake blue, ohhhh. Puurrrrrrr... I heart the rotational symmetry! Like a Julia set. Shiny.

What unspeakables happened to Douglas Coupland...

... that compelled him to write with such a giant psychedelic squirming teratoma of disdain for contemporary society? (Okay, I empathize)

He's a master of spinning absurdist scenarios into a coherent and dark lore of what is dysfunctional in the modern world. His metaphors are almost, dare I say, Picasso-like? I think that's the most refreshing aspect of his writing. It speaks to my stretched-over-the-elastic-limit pseudo-intellectual ethos. I can read his books when I'm anywhere from 30% to 80% awake, preferably in a shroud of disillusionment.


I read Player One, Generation A, and JPod (reverse chronological order of when he published them) In all three books, the story would center around a quintet or sextet of characters thrust into an epic adventure against their will. Despite seemingly very different from one another (different walks of life, different parts of the world, different upbringings), they are united first by their bizarre circumstances and gradually come to the realization that they are more alike than they have thought. That they are all equally screwed over, but somehow things work out. More or less.


There's a stronger autobiographical presence in JPod than in Player One or Generation A in that there is one main narrator and more of the characters are connected to him than others. Later in JPod, however, the narrator's work life and home life become unwittingly stirred into a peanut butter and wasabi mix. Perhaps Coupland has felt like that at some point in his life. I can only speculate...

There's also a lot of stream-of-consciousness in JPod which many other readers have found distracting, not to mention random typographical feats like the word "ramen" in size-7 (?) Helvetica repeated for one whole page, or the first ~50,000 digits of pi, or random Chinese characters. I personally loved the "ramen" page. Hit rather close to home.

Perhaps these are meant to be subliminal bombardment of modern culture? Or the author got lazy? In any event, I found this somewhat amusing. The digits of pi though is rather overdone and a waste of ink. ~200 digits would be adequate. :-P

I might give his earlier books a read, although I have gotten a pretty good idea what to expect. He seems to alternate between rambling stream-of-consciousness (JPod) and intricate story weaving (Player One) and somewhere in between (Generation A). I can empathize too, even though the longest (fan)fiction I've ever written is barely 6,000 words. Or was it less than that? Oh well. So I understand that everyone has more inspired days than others. I'm still a fan.

Exodus from the sensory-deprived suburbia (videos)

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An interesting kinetic sculpture (Double Excentric Gyratory) near the UN Plaza. It moves with the wind.

Panoramic view from the Yerba Buena Garden.

A bunch of random students dressed up in random costumes with a hodgepodge of marching band and orchestra instruments.

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Hairstyle of TV characters

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Some of the male characters have more hair in the beginning of the series, i.e. the shaggy look... like Charlie from Numb3rs, Dr. Chase from House, or Chuck/Morgan/Casey from Chuck.

This might be partially related to the fashion at that time, i.e. mid-2000's? Although that is debatable. Another factor might be character development, as the shaggy look (either straight or curly) conveys a more youthful and perhaps inexperienced vibe?

Or just for the sake of variety. Although I have never seen it go the other way, i.e. the character having more hair as the series progresses. :-P






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"Music between nature and architecture"

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Being the pan-aesthetics enthusiast that I am, I went to this talk (blog title) by Leon Botstein. I can see why he gets to be the president of a preeminent liberal arts college... I can almost imagine him in a Count Dracula cape, working semantic and symbolic abstraction magic with his dramatic intonations and lexicons. He would have made a terrific orator in the Greek tradition. :-P

This is his ongoing project, and not so surprisingly, he started with mostly German composers and architects, stemming from his German-Hungarian (Jewish) background. Here are the main associations he made -

(1) Architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel :||: Composer Felix Mendelssohn, based on their style that is evocative of 19th Century pastoral Romanticism. Schinkel did paint some rather magical Gothic cathedrals nestled in beautiful forests (below), and Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture is demonstrative of the spirit of nature (I played this with an orchestra and also happen to really like this piece).

(2) Architects Otto Wagner & Joseph Maria Olbrich :||: Composer Gustav Mahler... Initially ornate, Baroque, rectilinear and true to traditional form, later on more subtle and philosophical. I'm not as familiar with Mahler's music (will listen to his symphonies at some point). The Vienna Secession movement seems interesting to look into...

(3) Architect Eero Saarinen :||: Composer Jean Sibelius ... The connection is fairly obvious here because these two were good friends, and their styles influenced each other -- with organic, iteratively evolving themes. I could hear this in Sibelius's violin concerto. I like Saarinen's buildings, especially the staircase. I am drawn to staircase designs...

(4) Architects Le Corbusier & Frank Lloyd Wright :||: Composers Edgard Varèse & Igor Stravinsky ... Neo-Classical, functionally aesthetic/ aesthetically functional :-P Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring was definitely a neo-shock at the time. And Varèse wrote this wicked difficult piece "Density 21.5"... One of Le Corbusier's buildings reminded me of Simmons Hall and another of the Green Building, huh. I didn't know he also designed the Carpenter Arts Center @ Harvard, which Botstein said was "hard to find an angle that actually looked attractive".

The Q&A session was illuminating as well. It gives a window that glimpses into Botstein's persona (at least in public...) which I find to be cogent, eloquent, uncompromising, territorial, and domineering. :-P

The first question was how did Botstein made the associations he did, i.e. what basis, and whether other scholars in the field would make the same associations. Botstein replied that these connections are not arbitrary as he approached these from a historical point of view, based on actual contacts between the architects and the composers. Since they were contemporaries, they were therefore subjected to similar social influences and Zeitgeist of the time. (Thank you, GRE vocab list...)

The second question was from another musical scholar, who asked about the influences of the French Revolution on the arts/architecture, i.e. pre-revolution being more formulaic and post-revolution being less so... Botstein said that he didn't quite agree with this, although I don't recall the details of what he said after that...

The third question was from an architect, who wondered about how to reconcile the improvisatory nature of some music with architecture, which is very planned. Botstein answered that these architects were also very much painters and sculptors, so their creative process involved lots of sketching in the beginning. The editing part was what he drew parallels to.

He also commented on concert halls and how their design influence the sound, which reminds me of David Byrne's TED about music and the architecture of concert halls. Botstein quipped that it's much harder to build a concert hall in a rural area, e.g. Bard College than in an urban area... hence Carnegie Hall is "unremarkable" and Lincoln Center is "an abomination"... har har har...

Well, it was a great talk for sure. I look forward to see how he'll continue this project.

Sprinklers

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Shortly after sunset, the sprinklers near White Plaza synchronize their parabolic sprays in a misty, mystic dance. Very contemplative. Meditative. Dangerous for bikers with tendency to stare at such.

While I was admiring this choreography, I noted the streams of water running on the pavement. I'll bet if there's a way to not waste water like this, the university would save a good amount of money.

How about sensors that can adjust spray rate according to... say relative humidity?

Awesome retro inkjet printer

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Fzz gave me the link - I was like, this makes a totally awesome 6.115 project.

Visit to local elementary school

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For our project #2, we're designing a hands-on education experience for 4th/5th graders. This time I'm teaming with a 2nd-year business school student and a d.school architecture student. This project is sponsored by RAFFFFT, and we'll talk to their staff tomorrow too.

We visited a local elementary school to talk with one of the teachers and her class. She gave us an overview about the kids' curricula and also told specific stories. There's a strong emphasis on environmentalism, such as the part about John Muir, field trips, and a small farm right on school grounds. There were goats, sheep, many chickens, and a garden filled with many crops! O_O Obviously I've been a city and suburbs person most of my life...

The kids do lots of hands-on stuff, which is really nice. Activities like role-playing, reenactments of historical events, "lab" stuff like basic E&M and circuits. I get the sense that the science and math components are kind of weak, but I'm biased :-P They have many books about art and Shakespeare (!) and some exploratory science subjects.

I chatted with Jamie (sp?), who seemed on the quiet side (though from personal experience, 90% of quiet people I've met turned out to the most interesting). She likes to draw and showed me one of her artworks -- a hummingbird (which was for some reason black, but it was nicely-drawn.) I learned that Jamie's dad works at DreamWorks after one of her friends mentioned their show-and-tell from the other day.

She showed me the cube clock that her teacher randomly found in her closet. The clock tells time by rotation of various slices of a truncated corner. Quite fascinating...

Jamie has two cats, one named Mystery (4-year-old) and one named Bobo (9-month old). Bobo roams around a lot while Mystery just likes to be petted :-)

From what I gather, she would probably enjoy some type of artistic design toy. She was subtly more excited when talking about art class and the activities involved. Watercolor and some kind of marble-textured painting with floating a piece of paper over the medium.

Hmmm... maybe I should read up a little on developmental psychology too, about how children's mind at this stage is like. My own childhood is hardly a typical example...

Miracle fruit birthday party

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A friend in my major (will call her K) had a birthday party where we tried out various food -- after tasting a sample of the miracle fruit. It came in raisin form and was packaged like a pill! And indeed, for the first 10 minutes or so, everything tasted sweet. Or sweeter. Lemon, lime, vinegar, grapefruit, raw rhubarb, even cupcakes with goat cheese on top. Brussels sprouts... not so much. :-P The effect seems to have a half-life of about 20 minutes or so, for me at least.

Someone was talking about a MySQL class that she was taking in order to know exactly what she's selling to the software engineers... since she's in management science. Apparently people who have servers in their rooms are also taking this intro class too... why? lol.

A bunch of us were also talking about photography because there were a couple of enthusiasts. One person had a serious Canon camera. She was taking many pictures of the artfully arranged and carved food... like the citrus slices in their glorious 4-point symmetry, as well as the apples cut in a geometrically fascinating manner. The red pepper sticks formed a tepee. I thought that was cute. K and her bf were quite the food architects, haha.

The cake that was semi-spherical and apple green with purple flowers. The candles spelled the birthday girl's name. "You should spell it wrong," said a funny dude, as K's bf was sticking the candles into the cake.

There were three of us who went to the same undergrad institution. Apparently there was an article on CNN (video link here) about how many (rather, some) of the students don't bathe regularly. How embarrassing!!

On the other hand, I mentioned how one of my high school summer camp counselors is totally awesome, to reverse that impression of Institvvvte nerdism! He biked cross-country with his wife on their honeymoon -- pretty intense but awesome :-) I think I can bike twice as fast now as last September, but not for very long. Will have to work on that...

K told me that she got her 10-year-old girl cousin the Snap Circuits as a present a month ago. She originally didn't like it but now plays with it very often, hahaha. Another potential recruit? :-)

Meow, I wish Fzz Fzz were there...

Bakemonogatari

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= Bakemono (化物) + monogatari (物語)

I should have already blogged about this when I watched it w/ S.O. in... January? So this is a belated entry :-P I just felt an irresistible urge to watch some of it again...

Such charm in the exercises of reductio ad absurdum, non sequitur, and subtly blatant -- blatantly subtle -- parodies of anime antics.

The unique factors are (1) the text on bright backgrounds that flashes in accelerated pace until abrupt stop, (2) camera angles and zooms reminiscent of Michel Gondry's films, (3) minimalist visual design and music - Philip Glass style or jazz accompaniment riffs, and (4) absurdist meta-humor.

(1) Typographical, almost subliminal messages really hammer it in... the identical replicas of characters that fill up the screen remind me of Andy Warhol soup cans.

(2) Frequent close-ups of eyes and eye movements, bird's-eye view, up-the-skirt view, spherical projection...

(3) Sometimes it seems neo-noir with the bleached coloring, even more faded-out than that in Minority Report. Almost Impressionistic. However, certain objects are emphasized with bright colors. The music induces a trance, a hypnotic state that juxtaposes with said bright colors (e.g. blue, yellow, and red establishments in the park scene, episodes 3-5).

(4) ROFL... one has to watch the episodes to understand.

Ridiculous prototypes of bouncy chairs

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Um, ROFL... The blue balls are all exercise balls...