Yanni Kronenberg and Lucinda Schreiber took 6 months to produce this animation using only chalk and blackboards. The song is Autumn Story, by the Firekites.

Check it out: http://bookseer.com/

[Thanks to Travis for sending me this page]

So this summer has been a little hectic with class & moving apartments. I’m finally feeling organized enough to start posting again.

The following video was sent to me by my dearest friend Lauren (she is the same person who sent me the Travis Wall video I posted previously). It is beatiful choreography by Wade Robson… whether you are a dancer or not, whether you understand how brilliant the choreography is or can just connect to the emotion the dancers bring to the stage, you [should] enjoy it.

Before Wade Robson set this piece on Josh & Katee for SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE (Season 4), he created the original version on his beautiful dancers from his Cirque Du Soleil show. He then decided to shoot a short film of two of his dancers that really connected with the piece, Ben Susak & Pam Chu. This was Josh and Katee’s inspirational guide. Enjoy.

Sound plays constant roles in our lives. Loud noises capture your attention in an instant. We are able to tell location and direction based on what we hear & where it’s headed. Verbal communication relies on sound. Even if you are lip-reading, you’re basing the translation on the sounds someone is attempting to formulate.

Smells can bring us back to a moment, a feeling, a memory. Sense of smell is often discussed as the strongest memory trigger. Taste mainly has to do with food experiences. Your body tells you you’re thirsty and is affected by your health. It doesn’t play as big a ‘part’ in our constant experience of the world because we are not constantly eating. However, taste does affect smell.

While visual and auditory stimuli are recognized as examples of gestaltism (relational psychology), smell and taste recognition are much more discriminatory. However, all of our senses blend together and fade into ‘life’ when explicit attention is not being used–we are ‘desensitized’ to the backgrounds of our lives. So what are we letting fade into the background? What are our foregrounds made up of? For starters, one detail of life we often take for granted is the sense I feel is most overlooked–sense of touch.

You are always touching something. The keyboard your wrists and fingertips are resting on, the chair gravity is pulling you into, the clothes separating you from the chair (maybe), the floor/socks/shoes beneath your feet. Your tongue to the roof of your mouth, your arm against your side, etc. You don’t normally recognize these experiences unless you’re experiencing a drastic change of temperature/aggravation or explicitly directing your attention towards them–as I’m assuming you did while reading through the previous list.

We often use the terms “feel” and “touch” when talking about contact that is not only physical, but emotional, spiritual, etc. Nonetheless, it is used to translate many forms of sensory experience in a significant way. Our contact with life is something we rarely examine. We get caught up in the strong current of our busy lives and float along the surface in our inner tubes of habitual comfort (Did I take that metaphor too far? Haha).

So, in an effort to examine your life on a more delicate and beautiful level, I challenge you to spend a day actively thinking about what you come in contact with. It’s best to start out physically because your personal experience in life and your perception of the world is what the rest of your experiences are based on. If you have a hard time remembering, write “feel” or something of the sort on your hand to keep you with it throughout the day. You should be able to describe the textures of everything you touch, every bite of food you take (focus on the flavors too of course!),  and even try physically translating the textures you see or hear. Through this examination you’ll experience a deeper form of wonder. Don’t just touch, but feel the walls and trees you walk by, the counter tops you lean against. Feel the space and thickness of life it holds.

Even internally–feel your movements–stretch; dance; breathe. You ARE part of the world. You are not separate from it. Your skin is an organ, it is part of you–it is not a barrier. It is part of the world, constructed not around you but with you. You are in the world and the world is in you. No matter how abstract that sounds it’s TRUE. We are so caught up in the current/busy/norm experience we underestimate and overlook simplicities.

Our lives are filled with many so complexities we round off as single units/experiences because our minds like simplification and categorization. We simplify these complex experiences and objects through condensed labeling rather than in parts rather than breaking these complexities down through detail isolation and enjoying their details.

So I ask you, what textures does your life hold? Physically, personally, emotionally, spiritually.This challenge guarantees meaning. A new perspective of daily life; a new layer of wonder and admiration. One idea is to write it down. It may help you later with inspiration or reflection if you’re into that sort of thing (if you’re still reading this, I’m guessing you are). Above all, enjoy it–it’s your life & it is what you make it. Life is finite–experience as much of it as you can. When it comes down to it, we have little say in the quantity of life we are allotted. We do however, have a say in the qualities of our lives. How deep are you living?

Next challenge: COLOR. Once you feel you’ve mastered a day of texture observation. Try color. Look at something. Picture it as a black and white photograph. Notice the shadows and highlights. Let the color slowly fade back in certain areas of your ‘photograph’ and see how rich and unique the color you perceive truly is. Play with more than one color fading in at once. We see colors and their vibrancy is delegated by their surroundings. When a color is isolated or compared to others and examined for what it truly is without relation to another object, you see its truth. How does this relate to your life?

Overall, I hope you get a chance to enjoy the smaller things in life. The details that are so often overlooked. The beauty of it is astounding. I personally can’t get enough.

It’s called “kinetic sculpture,” a beautiful mix of art & physics/engineering. He did all of this with an art degree.

This is probably one of THE most amazing things I’ve seen.

Watch the whole thing–he tells you how he has built these “creatures” to sustain themselves on the beach–& don’t worry, he’ll answer all your questions!

[Well, we all know the first three (height, width & depth). The fourth is time, which we experience in one direction (forward).]

In the following video, Carl Sagan explains how the fourth spatial (not time) dimension works:

Tesseract

The book Flatland, by Edwin A. Abbott does a good job at describing a world with 2 dimensions (Full text available for download or HTML view here–if you were wondering, it’s a pretty short read).

I’m not sure how many of you read A Wrinkle In Time when you were a kid, but it’s definitely one of my all time favorites. In this novel, the 4th spatial dimension is used for “tesseracting” (bending the structure of space).  A similar worm-hole effect can be found in Frank Herbert’s Dune series. Mathematically, a tesseract is a figure used to describe the 4th spatial dimension, and can be seen in the picture to the left.

If you’re interested in a more “fictitious” (as in, unproven/not backed by quantum physics–but extremely interesting & mind bending) theory of spatial dimensions commonly found in science fiction novels/movies/ideas, the following video may be of interest to you:

If you’re interested in how string theory & superstring theory (backed by quantum physics) work and how they plan to test whether or not these extra dimensions are real, Brian Green discusses these topics in this video:

So, I guess the answer is however many dimensions it takes to make a theory work.

(Afterall, boson theory relies on 26…)

I registered for my summer and spring classes a few days ago. I realized when I had finished that I knew exactly what courses I have left to take next Spring, and then I graduate. I have felt how close I am to being out of school, but it’s kind of unreal. I know I am going to grad school after I graduate, but I think I’m going to take a year off to work and accomplish some things I haven’t had much time to between everything. I feel like I’m not organized enough in what I’d want to do to go straight into grad school–I would need to be applying for places in a matter of months–and I am still figuring out the details of exactly what I want to be doing with my life. I wouldn’t want to put myself in debt (student loans) over something I’m unsure of. Planning is good to an extent, I just don’t want to limit myself with my plans. I think it’s all the possibilities life holds vs. the concreteness of what graduate school means to a career (Unlike undergraduate degrees, masters are usually quite specific in how they contribute to your future/licenses/etc.), We get so used to confining ourselves. We base our capability on what we see around us. I just want to pull my head out of this shallow tidal pool and discover the ocean. Not just see it–I’m just beginning to see it–but swim in it.

I’ve recently noticed how many possibilities life holds and how little we actually identify as existing in our lives. We live in the comfort of our small bubble of habitual experiences, within another bubble of things we think we experience but really just label & push to the side, within another bubble we have vaguely seen, within another bubble we merely hear stories of. I don’t want bubbles in my life. I want a web. Some knots will be denser than others, and those at the heart of it will certainly be more closely strung. I want something that spreads and expands and weaves and attaches and feels. Not something that confines.

I know I sound like a hopeless dreamer. Someone who talks about doing great things and being capable of doing anything you wish for. The simplicity of this view creates a fantasy. It omits the work that will be involved & the human capability to do the work necessary to achieve these things. It is possible. It sounds out of reach & tired because it is quite often we do not get what we wish. If someone has been able to do it before, what is to keep you from doing it too? A lot of things may be based on luck, but this luck is set in motion with your life. You are lucky to meet some experience/person because you have made a decision about another experience. That’s the beauty of it. Its instability. Its uniqueness. Its possibilities.

Practicality is one thing, but I feel like I’m a cautious enough person that the bridge between my idealizations and realism is quite strong. Now don’t get me wrong, just because I’m speaking of great things doesn’t mean it is specifically about things large in physical size. I am one person, but there is something greater than tangibility. In my cognition class we learned that information theory (the old psychological theory that the mind worked like a computer) could never be correct because the mind has something a computer doesn’t have. The capability to feel. To love; to hurt; to empathize; to weigh  morals. There is something greater than physical size. The impact a person has on another–emotion, feeling, understanding, relatability, etc.–is something that can only be shared human to human. It is who we are.

This gift of life, this essence, is what I hope to extend. What I want to grow into and experience, like a searching vine. I want to communicate, spread, feel, SHARE. What kind of life do you live in isolation? We isolate ourselves from others even in their presence. We have the habit of creating a blockade between one another by assuming privacy and dividing ourselves by flesh. We create a comfortable home within ourselves and are unwilling to reach out of our haven of comfort. We fail to realize that our neighbor is made of the same ingredients as us, we just notice the differences that are merely their measurements.

The 2 criteria for what I want to do with my life are (1) help others/make a difference & (2) be happy/enjoy what I’m doing. These two things seem to go hand in hand. However life itself is made up of so many complex layers, our lives should be resemblant. If we are part of this world why shouldn’t the way we carry out somewhat match it? The world is configured in a naturally calm state yet its details and complexities are astounding. If we are creatures of this world it is only natural that our lives somewhat follow this bearing. While I hope to live a simple life, I also hope for it to be a complex one with great depth.

So that’s kind of where I’m at right now….

Only so much brightness
at once.

Light: paints,
stretches our world.
Without illumination
all would vanish.

As we know it.

Grasp it in gulps.
Taste it;
learn it’s texture.
Meet it.
Squeeze inside.

In sun’s absence
what floats?
Seventy-sextillion angels.

Yet,
we are not fazed
by brilliance.
We are merely captivated
by beauty
and abundance,
hypnotized by incredulity,
cold-shouldering limitless envelopes.

Serenity blankets perplexity.

We ignore.
We wait
for familiarity,
warm security,
to bask in.

Until we burn.

Too much
noise
overflows.
Listen for pale strings
of delicacy and wonder.

Experience
its faintest twinkles.
Pluck glitter of the upward depth,
expand it in your crown,
let it melt over you,
inside you.
Like warm honey,
in wonder…

Seventy-sextillion times anew.