Saturday, September 24, 2011

Movies of the mind



The idea of storing data in your mind like a mobile hard drive may not be far fetched.

In a fast approaching world where all data is being shared courtesy of the Facebook Internet by-law of 2018 - 'Share or we'll kick you offline", the only place to hide data may not even be a hole in your cranium.

Credit: Image courtesy of Freie Universitaet Berlin
If scientists can drive cars now purely through thought and electrode cables, then how far till we a) attempt to manifest these thoughts in a corporeal form e.g. movies, and then for someone to hack them anyway.

That's another discussion.

Movies of the mind already exist. Fictional Cinema. The illusion of the zoetrope - of flickering images that convince us of movement is a conscious aberration which we've shrugged off and accepted.

But creating films from the mind, well - that could involve a different sort of data excursion. Liquid films, altered realities.

This whole schema kicked at me this morning thinking about projects for the forthcoming festival of death at the Southbank.

Jude Kelly OBE, the Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre called us ( artists in residence) for a meeting about what we might have planned. I have got several, but one involves a taxonomy - which has emotional as well as business/ commercial values.

Language lives. We find new ways to express ourselves linguistically, though when was the last time you did this visually. Cinema linguist Christian Metz would have had something to say about this.

VideoJourney Beginning

 

Journey Beginning is an example of work which expresses transitions. In many way it represents the aestheticization of data again. By that I mean, we have become pre-occupied with making everything look appealing, as opposed to beautiful ( Kant), though I accept beautifying data is also on the rise.

Hans Rosling in this video on TED is beautfiying data

In the midst of writing this post, I went over to my tweet account and saw this:

Michael Zimbalist
by evanvucci
Scientists use brain imaging to reconstruct the movies in our minds. You've got to watch the video to believe it. Wow.
Amazing ! We're nearing the area of videojournalism transcendentalism or reverse psychoanalysis. 

where were you?

Another world's sun

Out there

Last remnants of the old world

The road of no return