Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

A recent New Yorker book review of Robert Greenfield‘s biography of Timothy Leary, aptly titled, Timothy Leary: A Biography, got me thinking about when I saw Leary speak at a computer graphics conference.

SIGGRAPH 1990 could have been virtually anywhere. As the primary conference for computer graphics and interactive techniques, since its first meeting in Boulder, CO, 1974, it’s a pixel pow-wow, a gathering of minds comparing their renderings and notes. My first SIGGRAPH was 1983 in Detroit, not long after the movie TRON was released. I had worked in traditional animation in the 70’s with Steven Lisberger and Eric Ladd in Boston. Taking breaks from tedious hand rendered in-betweening, inking and painting chores, we wondered when computers might come to our rescue. SIGGRAPH was the tribe with the best possible solutions.

So, SIGGRAPH90 was pretty amazing, because computer graphics had advanced into Hollywood’s visual effects, and the world was buzzing about the potential of a big new mind blowing idea: Virtual Reality. VR promised to take elements of what SIGGRAPH CSE’s did best: 3D graphics and intractivity, and enable “realities built for two.” But the truly amazing part was a panel session including Timothy Leary, “Hip, Hype and Hope: The Three Faces of Virtual Worlds.” This link provides a PDF of the entire transcript and some slides from that exciting event.

Even though Timothy Leary had been far ahead of the curve in his explorations of expanded consciousness through LSD, it was refreshing to me as a graphic designer and devotee of Marshall McLuhan to hear Leary speak this way…

“I’d like to make a comment about SIGGRAPH. I’ve not been a regular visitor to these conferences. To tell you the truth, I’m such a slow learner, it took me a long time to figure out that graphics are the key to the whole communications business. The key to the new global language.

Then I recalled the advice of a great prophet who had been babbling to me for years about graphics! Graphics! Graphics!

I am talking about Ted Nelson who patiently tutored me about the importance of eye-balling and rendering and optical realities. I thank you for that, Ted.

During that talk, Leary nearly coined the name iPod:

“But the eye is the pod of the naked brain. It’s spooky when you think of it. We walk around with our moist binocular brains bulging out of our faces.”

Because Leary was not a computer graphics geek or a VR advocate, he added a charming simplicity and unpretentiousness to the panel of sophisticates. Professional turf wars arose during the Q & A session, when Myron Kruger and one of his buddies pitched their pioneering ownership of VR under the name artificial reality. The incident is included in the panel PDF transcription, and is one of those cases of a disgruntled creative coming to grips with what might be called traction. Myron’s term artificial reality did not catch on, and virtual reality somehow captured the zeitgeist of the idea. Imagine the frustration of someone claiming to have invented Google 15 years ago, but gave it an unattractive name like fistulinks or altavista. Ew!

The New Yorker article is an excellent read, and is a fine reminder of Leary’s trippy times, in which he hoped to solve the world’s problems by coaxing our leaders to drop acid. Perhaps today they could fight out their conflicts through a VR interface into a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game (MMORPG). Far out man!

Additional related readings and listenings:
Erowid Timothy Leary Vault
A recent article by Jaron Lanier
The RU Sirius Show, If You Meet Timothy Leary by the Side of the Road
Timothy Leary: A Biography

I remember checking out Amanda Congdon and those clever daily online videos on Rocketboom, but I’m a busy dude, and I just kinda forgot about all that cleverness going on with them. The blogs are buzzing today that Amanda is departing from New York to pursue new opportunities in Los Angeles. Hey, if Stuttering John from the old Howard Stern FM radio show can become Jay Leno’s Ed McMahon announcer, then it’s just a no brainer, the next logical step.

True, Rocketboom can be seen as a “bellweather for homebrew media success.” Back in my days of making public access cable television shows in Madcity, we would have loved to have the distribution reach of today’s Internet, and yes, perhaps we too would have become little stars, and then big stars. Actually, I learned that I needed a better acting coach, and we needed better writers and directors.

Rocketboom’s main page message is bound to change, so for archival purposes germane to this story, here is what it states:

ROCKETBOOM ANNOUNCEMENT:

Amanda Congdon has decided to move to L.A. to pursue opportunities that have arisen for her in Hollywood.

We wanted to meet her demands to move production out to L.A., however, we are a small company and have not been able to figure out a way to make it work, financially and in many other ways at this time. While we continue to remain with open arms, Amanda has in fact quit and left Rocketboom. So sadly, we bid Amanda adieu and wish her all the best.

Rocketboom goes on.

Andrew Baron, the founder and creator of Rocketboom, will stay with the company in New York and will continue to produce and direct the show. We are in the daunting process of recruiting a replacement for Amanda.

While Amanda will be sorely missed, we have big plans for Rocketboom and are determined to make the show better than ever.

After Field Week and a week on hiatus, we know that you are hungry for the news! Rocketboom will be back with a news episode and an interim host this MONDAY, JULY 10.

Stay tuned for Amanda’s replacement.  To learn more, go ask a ninja.

While the government is busy stripping you of your Constitutional rights, wildly spending your money in Iraq, and monitoring your private banking, telephone and internet activity, you may as well be a good American and distract yourself. If you complain, you’re just the enemy. Run along and play, Dorothy. Don’t pay attention to that man behind the curtain.
Silly things done in Flash:

• oooooouch.com: Here’s a virtual xylophone of sunbathing girls moaning out your own tune or a jukebox of tunes, such as Beethoven’s Ode To Joy.
• Treasure Box: a strange little puzzle with Rube Goldberg interactivity.
• Online Doodling

Funny Amusing Videos:

• Futurama’s Terrifying Message From Al Gore
• Star Wars and The Holy Grail
• Animusic – Pipe Dream
  
• Diet Coke and Mentos reaction
  
• More Mentos + Diet Coke videos

Art and Photography:

• Cool Text: create a logo online in a variety of graphics styles
• Mikons: create little black and white icons and share them.
  
• Elvis Visits Nixon: In case you feel that you are escaping too far from whatever reality may be, check out the National Security Archive and their collection on Nixon-Presley meeting documents. It is enough to convince you that Presidents do not live in reality either.

OK, I accept that for awhile now the USA has been a country on steroids, no matter how much in denial we might be about it. Look no further than the rise of Rockstar, Red Bull and Monster energy drinks. A nation of pumped up mutants worshiping bigger pumped up mutants.

So, it is no surprise that the mini-mutants must check out the top professional mutants in X-Men 3: The Last Stand. Setting a Memorial Day Weekend record of $120 Million X-Men 3 has some mutant legs. Here’s what our mutant reviewers have to say:

“OMG X3 AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

*falls over, dies of the absolute awesomeness of the movie and the anticipation for the next one*” – gooshgoo

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“And Angel. Oh Angel – he who only had 5 lines. I was expecting much, much more from this movie. I was expecting a love triangle damnit! Between Iceman/Kitty/Angel. And what did we get? Angel…just there, almost useless. An even softer Iceman. Kitty was fine, I did like her. Especially her scene with Juggernaut.

And the ending! This really can’t be the last in the trilogy. Damnit, I hate open endings.

Hate to compare but MI:3 was so much better than X-Men: The Last Stand. And I don’t *even* like Tom “Cuckoo” Cruise.” – _generik

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“in other news.. I have seen the greatest. fucking. movie. ever.

And that is X-Men 3. I KID YOU NOT. This movie will change your life. Or at least, it did mine. It was so much different than the first two. If anyone of you other nerds out there have read the comic books, it’s more like them. It was dark, and a shit load of people died. Yeah, I mean died. As in, not in the soap-opera way in which they magically come back to life. I mean, they’re dead as a damn door nail. You’ll see.

YOU’LL ALL SEE.” – Cogitation

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“To rant a tiny bit more… what was up with the love triangle sub-plot and the lesson it teaches? If your boyfriend is attracted to someone who posesses an attribute you don’t… get it fixed and he’ll love you again! I know there was some attempt to say that she did it for herself, but that’s not at all how it appeared when all was said and done.” – daemonwolf

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“Just about every acting job by the mutant bad guys sucked. The throw away mutant characters were lame and felt just like “filler”.

But I was surprised at the language in the movie. There were a few “shits” at least one “bullshit” a couple “bitches” and one “Dickhead” — and THAT is where I sort of have a problem with the movie.” – Yirmumah

You see? People do have minds of their own!

Looks like something different from DreamWorks. Shrek was born from a strong counter-culture bent, and Over The Hedge appears to follow this spirit too.

The Medical Illustrations CD-ROM which I had worked on for 6 months last year has recently been published by Purestock, a division of SuperStock. The CD-ROM contains 200 images that were rendered in 3-D using Maya software. The high resolution still images are based in part on previous 3-D bio-medical animation.

Listener sponsored radio is one of the few mass media outlets remaining that resembles democracy in America. Corporate advertising driven TV, radio and newspapers are full of fluff and omissions and are products of professional entertainers, posers and profiteers. Let us not forget our basic freedoms of speech and the press, unless we lose them.

The San Francisco Bay Area is home to a number of outstanding public radio stations that are frequently in need of support, listed below. Please do what you can, and preserve human sanity. Thank you.

KPFA 94.1 FM: Founded in 1949 by Lewis Hill, a pacifist, poet, and journalist, KPFA was the first community supported radio station in the USA. Much of KPFA’s programming is local, original and eclectic, with a well produced mix of news and in depth public affairs, an ongoing drama, literature and performance series, interviews, and reviews. My personal favorite programs are Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, Sunday Salon with Larry Bensky, and Flashpoints with Dennis BernStein.

KQED Public Radio: NPR and local programming, such as Forum with Michael Krasny.

KCSM The Bay Area’s Jazz Station. KCSM Jazz 91 FM houses one of the USA’s largest collections of jazz recordings, and plays a wide variety of commercially uninterupted jazz music. This station is a great treasure with a lot of heart and soul.

KXPR 90.9 FM is part of Sacramento’s Capital Public Radio and plays a steady stream of fine classical music.

The howling idiot wind of the Republican noise machine is in danger of drowning itself out. With so many lies and explanations for poor intelligence swirling around, how’s a hysterical shrieking banshee to distinguish herself and make a living here? You produce a provocative title such as Ann Coulter’s upchucking, I mean upcoming, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Holy Cow, are we back on the first grade playground again? I had been musing that some creative events might be planned for 6-6-6 day, but the June 6th release of a template for condemning millions of souls was beyond my sweet little imagination. She really must be nuts.

To cast out the demons from Ms. Coulter’s troubled mind, I recommend religious scholar Garry Willis’s book, What Jesus Meant. On a recent radio interview Willis placed Jesus above politics and systems of justice. He quotes Jesus as saying, “What you do to the least of these, you do to me.” This should be enough warning to the intolerant, holier than thou, would-be Christians.

But listen up people, when a Conservative says it’s true, it’s just true. Believe it, or else you have no faith and are Godless.