roku

  


I'm so jealous! I want to know how she prints them on. This is more professional than the hand-painted, normal-oven-baked stuff I do.. maybe she has a kiln?
She has other fantastic work too, did  I mention I'm jealous?

www.kimwelling.com/

Have you noticed that all around you, magazines and TV-shows etc. keep reiterating that the borders between 'the real world'  and 'the virtual world' are slowly fading? It's so hip. Lord knows it's hot to do in movies and has been for at least what, twenty years... ? Ever since people got a little used to computers.

But really, is my reality unclear to me? Do I ever get confused about what's 'real' -or in this context, what is tangible and three-dimensional, like my cat or the controllers of my bubblegum-pink Playstation? Versus what is only virtually real, like my spending hours on internet or playing a game having real human experiences?

Because to me, to an extent, it's like the boundaries are still very clearly designed in most cases. Back to the Future proves to us that we can't time travel (yet)*. The Matrix makes clear that we do need years of discipline and practice to actually know Kung Fu (although a good question right there is, did they only know Kung Fu when they were in the program or could they practice it in their 'real' world too?) I haven't seen Tron yet, but as far as people getting sucked into the computer... Ghost in the Shell goes there, and any mecha anime has interesting views on man/machine integration. Even at home on my computer, I feel my body complaining if I sit for too long in the same position. I can't pick up my email in my brain- I have to walk to a terminal, turn it on, wait and then log in -all very physical.

Alright. But what I've been saying up to now is, I imagine Virtual Reality to be very exciting and dramatic like in the movies. But come on, the most exciting my life gets is when we do Indian food take-out. Moving on- what I mean to say is, if Virtual Reality really does seep into our lives and take part, without being obtrusively 'other,' it is going to do so in the banal everyday bits. I'm not talking about email rather than snail mail. I mean, when you really lose sight of the difference.

I can name two instances for myself. The first is, and people might recognize this, when you're doing something on the computer, Ctrl+Z will generally undo this. It's the undo combo and we need it and love it. As a digital artist I know it very well- but what happens when I've been drawing digitally, and then sit and draw on paper for a change? Every line I disagree with, every mistake, my body's response is to hit Ctrl+Z. A single instant of confusion, before I realize that's not possible because I'm not at my computer.

The second instance, something that happened the other day for the first time- at my computer again. I was talking about images with a friend (who was physically next to me) and we had been looking at images online (yeah don't get me started). I am wont to pointing out things on my screen with the mouse, and the mouse was in my hand as we were talking (not even about any images at that point). Then the conversation shifted to the Batman Motivational Poster I have on my wall, right next to my screen. And to point out something about Batman, I actually tried to drag my mouse over to it, in my mind extending the screen to comprise the (physical) Batman poster next to it. An instant of confusion before I realized my mouse cursor could not reach any farther than the limits of the screen.

So maybe that's what I'm interested in- when we say boundaries are vanishing, does it mean maybe that we no longer realize certain boundaries are in place? So-- the only place that the boundaries are possibly fading, is in our mind?

I think it'd be interesting to consider other instances of boundaries or realities blurring in people's minds. Think of religious worship -if a fervent believer says he sees angels or God in his mind, it's easy to dismiss this as lunacy -but the counterpart to his experience is an enormous culture of religion with which he identifies and in which he is well-versed, to the point of experiencing this spirituality in a physical way.

(Think also of hysterical pregnancies- when a woman wants so badly to be pregnant that her body is fooled by the mind into believing it is pregnant, and thus shows all the symptoms of pregnancy. Except for the baby.)

In conclusion, I guess there are questions to be asked about the connection between mind and body, how we perceive them to be different or separate to an extent. The fantasy of the mind coming apart from the body in Virtual Reality is an amazing fantasy- because in the end, we are entirely physical creatures, right? Our consciousness may feel weightless or bodiless, but none of us are here without a body. The body being influenced by the mind's convictions proves all the more that there is no actual separation.. so the next question is, are we living in a culture that doesn't quite know how to deal with the body? Think of how the bodies of handicapped people or old people are treated, or of how many women want their bodies to adhere to one fetishized form, dictated by media.

Alright, I hope people will share their thoughts on this! I'm sure there are many concepts or ideas I haven't considered, or have considered erroneously. Please let me know!

* Arguably time travel could have nothing to do with VR, but to me, it is in its classic form a displacement of the physical human body through use of a computer, so there is a cross-over area; maybe we could argue that some sort of VR state is necessary to re-place the physical body somewhere.

Half of this post is stuff Ming told me about but I suppose internet is all about stealing :D


The poster for the Gala. I was all happy with it until my dear friend Joe pointed out the bits I had overlooked (thanks Joe. :P) Now I am only reasonably satisfied with it, but for something on which I have spent more than a day's work without pay I'll have to accept it is what it is.

( More Design & Eames Design & True Grit & Kraken Rum )

the book images are: Color by Overprinting by Donald E. Cooke (1955)

I was pretty happy with this (partly illegible) cover I designed for some random book cover contest we had to participate in for school. I uploaded it but it never showed up on the site. Figures...
( see moar. )

** Voor de Nederlanders: een gedeelte van de tekst die ik schreef voor Nishiko's project 'The Best Person of the World' is geciteerd in een review van de show. (De Nederlandse tekst werd wel, nadat ik het schreef, een beetje herschreven door Mejuffrouw M. en daarna weer bewerkt door iemand aan wie Nishiko het had laten lezen. Maar het was wel wat ik bedoelde hahaha.) Enkele foto's kunnen nog hier bekeken worden.

I'm feeling a little upside-down lately, and very disorganized. Maybe if I list my to-dos, they will like me and become to-dones.

+ complete the html newsletter (which, come on, really shouldn't be so hard). -> meeting today.

+ paint some mugs for CC! (yep) ten down, six to go!

+ find paintbrushes. They've gotta be in one of these boxes.

+ go to Ams and Utr to deliver flyers. (well, sort of.)

+ go to the dentist because my tooth BROKE. -> tonight at seven (and I just won't eat in the meantime).

+ complete that one drawing that just won't work.

+ lose weight (this isn't happening when you start your day with banana chocolate bread).

+ clean up the new house forever, ever, after.

+ read up on the uSIS system myself because work has no one to train me.

+ buy awesome clothes and pretend I can afford it right now.

+ ... write out the rest of Parts 1, 2, and 3. Like ASAP.

+ figure out the overlap of school and work, somehow. Help.

+ shower.