Creative journeys to expand the mind

SMARTlab's ethos of practice-based learning is captured in Kate Sicchio's performance at Stratford, East London.
Here for her amazing showreel.

"What's it like?", he asked. There was a hesitant pause.

"No, really what's it like?"

In between the question and the actual answering, several contemplations computed, like the flapping time-change mechanism of a train station's timetable.

Either way you wouldn't understand was the final thudding-to-a-stop thought.

"It's OK!"

But that's such a cop-out, such a disinterested lie.

In the film The Matrix, Morpheus says to Neo: "Unfortunately no one can be told what The Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself".

That readily sums it up: "Unfortunately no one can be told what a PhD is. You have to experience it yourself".

Welcome to the house of pain you %$£!*&^$£@@!***!

Apologies!

There is no experience I can share with you that comes close to the emotional and physical ride of this study programme.

It does not discriminate. It does not favour. It hurts your sinuses as if you were tussling with nature's elements and it leaves you exhilarated when one of its several summits has been breached.

At this point there are two broad reactions to this description. This moment where you are in reading this text you can either say: stop whining or phew.

Frankly both work. That's why this programme is unique.

You hate it, love it, would quit, would push further, and those feelings are wrapped in a big ball of energy, that releases unpredictably. A Nova of sorts.


SMARTlab week

SMARTlab morning warm-up sessions. A stand-up massage on each other in the lab's space.

One giant step.. It's been a week of that. Small steps, and the one large one, working towards finding a new plateau for creativity.

For the last year and half we have gathered. Some have been gathering much longer, much much longer, but the motive is the same.

To scratch that itch. The question: Is what I'm doing, what I am about to tell you about, does it constitute new knowledge?

Can that knowledge, your epistemology, can it stand the rigorous bludgering of others - those with bigger shoes before you.

PhD student Will Pearson takes five, before the next programme.

The answer is not yet forthcoming, but the belief matched by physical work is what will provide a window of exploration.

No one can tell you what it's like.

There are many programmes, but I can tell you of only one, and draw on comparative hearsay and the grapevine: SMARTlab.

SMARTlab is The Matrix. It is the matrix of the most incredible people you will ever come across. Not just, as I'll explain in what they know, but, and this is crucial, in what they give.

SMARTlab is the gift lab, run and managed by extraordinary people, whose head Prof Liz Goodman, for the uneasiness of sycophancy I shall just nod and say enuff said.

The ethos draws people from different strides of life; many accomplished at something over many years, thirty is not unusual, at their peak.

And now they are trying to wrap that in theory. When we stand in a circle, it's very easy, as many have testified to say: "Frankly I don't know why I am here".

The Meaning of Life


Bruce Damer, like everyone else embodies this selfless learning, a figure whom on the other hand will leave you in awe and utterly breathless. His background includes NASA. His PhD addresses quite literally the meaning of life.

Bruce is creating the EVO grid which will simulate the beginning of life and how we came to be.

That line in the Matrix rings in my head when Cypher exclaims: "Jesus", after asking Neo if he knows why he is here.

Chrissie Poulter researching theatre games unpacks one of four bags replete with books to demonstrate the level of work involved in away weeks at the SMART lab

A glance to the left and there is award winning Cathy O'Kennedy, dancer and choreographer, researching The Devine Normal. I cried at her presentation this year.

It was so, so beautiful as she spoke about her influences, her own journey and read out her mission in what reached my ears in poetic verse.

Minutes earlier she had danced mellifluously. The dance alone I would have paid to watch in London's West End in the same frame of mind not to long ago I watched the acclaimed Sylvie Guillem & Russell Maliphant's PUSH at Sadler's Wells Theatre.

Steve Cooney's research in Melody and Rhythm eloquently deconstructs music, to show how he has devised teaching aids to understand scale, how the Beattles used chords to set the mood followed by those meaningful lyrics, where in Steve sighed to say that's the brilliance of song writing.

A day earlier Steve had been playing with Sinead O'connor . Here he is on the right in this video with Sinead.

"What was the set up like it Steve?" I asked.

"Oh there were three of us on stage playing to a big audience. I imagined big as an understatement, something more Glanstonburyish.

And it goes on forty to fiftish cohorts at full strength sharing this space, presenting to each other critiquing - all with the aim of adding something that little bit or lot more to what we know about what we know so far.

All the while we are guided by a team of experts.

Interactive videojournalism
And somewhere in there I'm wrestling with my demons, 25 years of media condensed into this singularity of studies aided by many extraordinary supervisors, particularly Dr Chris Hales and Dr Sher Doruff.

David Dunkley Gyimah my work) combining visualisation, narratology online with videojournalism.
Here for early cube IM6 Videojournalism

Can I show how video through various constructions induce different emotions? No that's not the PhD, but an aspect of solo videojournalism wrapped around an individual with the skill set of online innovative spatial production.

We've just completed our annual retreat, one of three in the year at UEL, living off 4 hours sleep for the last five days - 6 hours the previous weeks prepping thesis chapters and the rest.

So this is in way an introduction to the group, and a journey,and something I intend to come back to again and again in the hope of continuing that ethos that drives us all; creative journey's that expand the mind.

Time now to sleep. Bliss a full generous 6 hours.

Computing's meaning of life - AI

Video courtesy of the Internet archive and thanks to Bruce Damer. For more go to the Internet archive

Yesterday I was treated to one of the most enlightening lectures I have heard in a long while from Bruce Damer talking at the Computer Society, Covent Garden, whom posited a powerful argument, which is also at the heart of his Phd.

His multifarious sources include the work of Karl Sims a computer whizkid at the time in 1994 at MIT who conducted a unique experiment which would simulate Darwin's theory of evolution.

Sims created virtual blocks and a soup of code which the blocks used to 'evolve'. Their task was to first swim through virtual water and then walk on land.

At each moment of their cycle they would run through a matrix of code and create a new virtual being, which would adapt to its surroundings, eventually learning how to paddle successfully through water and then adapt to mobility on land.

If that was 1994, what might be capable now in 2008 is in part Bruce's line of thinking.

Could we from nothing see how a virtual world evolves?

Bruce's quest
Bruce's work in what he's termed the evo grid is of such computing magnificence as well as so deeply philosophically penetrating that you need to be at one of his lectures to capture its essence.

I did however VJ his seminar and will be dropping him some mail both to say thank you and how I might be able to develop a film of sorts.

His previous works have included developing AIs/landing capabilites for NASA, physically collecting and documenting for his digibarn collection every computer ever made, and genesis Avatar development from the 90s.

There are some brilliant developments from virtual reality and AI, that almost appear astonishingly unreal, such as printing live tissues, using a 3d printer from a virtual scan, according to Dr Rachel Armstrong.

As a footnote, a couple of us had our own eureka moments thinking our own PhDs could raise their game, and that's one of the fascinating things about the Smart Lab.

It's eclecticism is also one of its strengths, giving people like me access to hear someone like Bruce both in lectures and within the smart lab environment, that I can't think how else I might ever have come by that opportunity.

Performance -story telling

The week that was and so many performance to top of Phd week.

I'm currently down at the South Bank [free wifi access], London's creative arts hub, where African footprints -extraordinary drama - drum troupe are playing.

They'd earlier treated Smart lab to one of their many repertoires - impromptu live theatre and dance.

At one point I was holding my breadth. Their drums are sooo loud that I thought any moment security would walk into our space and demand they stop playing.

African footprints are from Ghana so I had the chance to speak to them in their native tongue. Yep surprised me as well.

In half an hour, Bruce Damer gives a talk on computing on the Euro Grid to the British Computer Society, which I'm going along to with some smart labbers.

Earlier on in the day Galen, a technologist, artist, poet and partner of Bruce gave the most extraordinary presentation of story telling and technology.

There were few dry eyes when she finished. I'll post some film for you to make your mind up.

So that was the week that was. Traditional service on the VJ world commences next week and I'm looking forward to doing something with Bruce already. Bruce is wired into Adobe Air and a number of incredible things.

Bob Stein at SMARTLab - For me ignorance is not bliss

SMARTLab Wednesday * LIVE BLOG * 5ish

Listening to Bob Stein, the director of the Future of the Book - who is demoing sophie -an application that he says makes it easier for people to say/publish books without having having to learn complicated programmes - assembling media rich doc.

There is a simplicity that he highlights about the programme thus making it easy for anyone to publish, wthout say knowledge of Flash.

Bob has an extensive rich past in innovation.

He founded a company called Voyager Company, which Wiki says was the first commercial CD Rom publisher.

He's worked with ther noticeabe figures e.g. Alan Kay at the atari resarch group.

He started off showing us images of how they imagined accessing info from a database back in 1981, effectively the wireless network we see today.

He said they hadn't imagined that you'd put things in ie. the database future web was more about content taking out and not the conversation of people, or people being the content.

He showed a page from *Sleepwalker, and how he was influenced by Carla Hesse, that showed huge margins where the author had put into comments. Also referred to a book called The book that nobody read

Made me think once again how the future really was invented in the past.

He showed a couple of books of people they're working with or have been associated with

http://www.googlizationofeverything.com/

Bob said the future of books worked with one author to research and create his book in public using blogs etc rather than the traditional route e.g. bury your head in the library.

The outcome he says was universal comments back that: It's no longer the author speaking its the book speaking.

Rather reminds me of a something I read of Chris Anderson, The Long Tail, who says his book was developed through reader comments.

What Bob says they're trying to do is expand the boundaries of the book.

Paraphrasing he says books hide the social realations that underpin the book. ie social network is hidden and that means something which adds to the books essence.