For “Computers for the Rest of You” we had to read two texts about consciouness: What Consciousness is Not and Power of Now and comment on them.
Here are some excerpts that I found interesting:
“Consciousness actually reduces our earning abilities of this type, let alone not being necessary for them.”
“Members of a psychology class were asked to compliment any girl at the college wearing red. Within a week the cafeteria was a blaze of red (and friendliness), and none of the girls was aware of being influenced.”
“At this point, we can at least conclude that it is possible – possible I say – to conceive of human beings who are not conscious and yet can learn and solve problems.”
“And our memory fades as to what just happened even as we are trying to express it.”
“We often talk about the three B’s, the Bus, the Bath, and the Bed. That is where the great discoveries are made in our science.”
“Here it is only necessary to conclude that consciousness does not make all that much difference to a lot of our activities.”

Here are my comments on the readings:
a) What struck me the most is that learning does not seem to be a conscious process – we seem to just absorb things as they come, to be processed later – makes sense if you think of babies – they have no idea what school is or that they are learning by simply being around language. The collective consciousness also was very interesting (tell girls in red that they look great and in one week every girl is unknowingly wearing red) – which for me indicated the notion of God being a social/collective unconscious phenomena – you tell people every time something “miraculous” or disastrous happens that it was an act of God – sure enough, after a while, everyone is able to see and feel God as if it was real.
b) I agree with Caleb in the sense that there is no magic pill yet the if the methods of the book are taken seriously, I believe that they can truly work. In an interesting parallel to the previous reading, this book starts with the assumption that consciousness is not only real but that it affects your body. I remember not wanting to go to school when I was a kid because I had not done a homework, and sure enough I would wake up with a fever. I actually learned that behavior and repeated it a few times – though after the third time I realized that a fever hurt more than the teacher’s scorn or the bad grade. I guess the conclusion here is that there is mind over matter but there is also matter over mind (red is said to be cool, and suddenly everyone is wearing red – a thought is transposed to reality).

For “Inclusive Game Design” we had to improve on this Pong game in Flash… what I did was the following:

– score decreases instead of increasing
– added color to the ball so that it can be seen better
– added a pause between scoring points (click mouse to continue)
– added a game over state
– allow player to move stick around – actually makes game playing harder

Here it is: http://www.lucaslongo.com/itp/inclusive/pong1.swf

This is the 4th class I am taking – “Computational Forms” taught by Jared Schiffman – a class that will look at building and creating 3D forms programmatically using C and openGL… yikes! Should be very interesting. One of my goals in this class is to create more efficient code for the eye tracking/photo rating tool that I have been working on for the past year (SPiRT)- Java was great for the first prototypes but to really create an efficient display application that tracks the eyes, rates the pictures and creates a database/web site with the findings I will have to do it in C since I intend to create a dynamic 3D world with inputs from a camera, a pointing device (VR glove or a Wiimote like device), photos and game play.
On another note, while going through Amit Pitaru’s site I was amazed by his Sonic Wire Sculptor… check out the movie! Basically he created a rotating 3D space that allows the user to draw on. The lines drawn generate sounds. These lines remain in the 3D space so that you can draw multiple lines and create a sound space with your drawing. The sounds are also placed in 3D so that if you have a surround sound setup, you will actually hear the sounds in the 3D space according to where the lines are within the virtual 3D space. Wow….

For our first homework for “From Physical to Virtual Spaces and Back” taught by Jean-Marc Gauthier, we had to capture our first experience within a virtual world… I played around with Google Earth.
I went to São Paulo, NY, and Tokyo to compare the amount of information each city has within Google Earth.
I was actually surprised at the amount of information São Paulo has – I was expecting that of NY for obvious reasons – and then was surprised (ok – not so much) at how detailed the 3D buildings in Tokyo are.
At the end I played around with the flight simulator in Google Earth (ctrl+option+a) 🙂
Check it out:

For the class “Computers for the Rest of You” we have to come up with an idea and a device to log information of your day – could be something like looking at some kind of illusion you have about reality and try to break it or simply record it.
Looking through some examples from previous projects I found the following:

• Conscioiuness Field Resonator – a device that monitors random numbers generators and lights up if they behave strangely or less randomly – watch the video.
• WayMarkr – a camera phone you wear on your shirt continuously takes pictures and uploads them to a web page with location and time information – watch the video.
• BrainBall – a game where the most relaxed person wins
• Bio Mapping – measuring user’s Galvanic Skin Responses, the data is plotted on a map to attempt to correlate geographic location and emotional arousal.

Whenever I go out to photograph I always want to remember what music I was listening to at the moment of the click.
It would capture an additional element to that singular moment of the picture and provide an additional layer to the context of the picture when showing them.
I would additionally record the ambient sound and the location of the photo (GPS).
So, the product would be a picture slide show app that plays back the photos, the music the photographer was listening to at that moment, the sound of what was around him, and where exactly he was.
The Picture Echoes Viewer 🙂

Today I went to “From physical to virtual spaces and back” with Jean-Marc Gauthier.
The class will explore how to create virtual worlds in 3D and affect them using controls/sensors from the physical world and vice versa.
Our first assignment is to create a machinima video capture (record on video what your 3D character does inside the 3D world) using Second Life, Google Earth or any other virtual space thinking about the spectator in an attempt to show something interesting/funny/instructional within the 3D world.
One idea I had was to join some people within Second Life and do a competition or race to see who builds the coolest object for example – or who can build something faster.. . 🙂