“Want to make people run? Don’t give them a badge for running. Give them a ball and shove four sticks in the ground. They’ll run around the field chasing the ball (and each other) for ages. The experience is intrinsically challenging and amusing, and the running is a by-product. Games rely on dynamics like these and rules to generate the conditions for positive engagement.”
IMAGINED
IMAGINED-SPACES: (/ɪˈmadʒɪn/) (speɪs/) (noun)
Autodesk Maya, Arnold, Unity, virtual realities, imagined realities, 360 Video, computer graphics, rendering, augmented environments, realtime processing.
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity… and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”
– William Blake
‘A Synopsis of the Universe, or, the Visible World Epitomiz’d’
Jim Henson on Making Puppets
“I wrote this, it was difficult, and I am proud of it”
“At 15, in an adult ward on constant observation, at lunch I hid a metal knife up my sleeve. I carried it around for a time waiting not to be watched in the bathroom, the toilet, the shower; a flat metal bar against the tendons on the inside of my right wrist. At 23 I was Altair, an assassin with a blade strapped hidden to my arm, springloaded. I hid from the guards. I took wound after wound but did not stop fighting. I regenerated. I lept wildly from towers and did not die. In real life I moved out of the house I shared with my boyfriend, had shared for more than a year, to sleep on the sofas of friends. I snuck back in to take my Xbox 360 so I could carry on climbing impossible buildings to gain new sight and falling from great heights and landing safely, while I jumped from a long relationship into a new house, a new job, a new life.”
(website)
the task of the modern writer
“The role of the imaginative writer has flipped in our time.
Previously the imaginative writer was supposed to produce fictions; however, we are now completely surrounded by fictions. We’re surrounded by advertisements, by artificial environments.
The role of the author now is to create realities, to discover realities perhaps.”
London 2012: opening ceremony saw all our mad dreams come true
“With reality comes responsibility. Pretty well everyone feels some reservation about the Games – the money, the missiles, the McDonald’s. For me, the issue was Dow’s sponsorship of the stadium wrap. Dow are – to use a value-neutral word – connected to the terrible Bhopal disaster. Whatever the legal position, it was insensitive and tawdry to take their money. This isn’t the place or the day – given the gorgeous experience we’ve been through – to go into the details of why this seemed so very wrong. You can look it up.
Danny set a meeting with Sebastian Coe, who graciously fixed up for Amnesty to speak to Locog’s lawyers. But time was accelerating, and everyone was busy. Besides, something else was happening now: the volunteers.
Back in our studio, we had imagined flying bikes and rocketing chimneys. We never imagined the power of the volunteers. They were creative, courageous, convivial, generous. The press was full of stories of the greed and incompetence of our leaders, but our studio was full of people doing things brilliantly for nothing – for the hell of it, for London, for their country, for each other.”
vis jnbrssndn
“When they ran into each other while doing their respective make-up tests, McDiarmid asked what he was doing there,”
“I don’t know, Ian. I think it’s something to do with science fiction.”
— Sebastian Shaw to Ian McDiarmid on the set of Return of the Jedi
“URGENT SUBTLE CONCISE ROBUST” – Paintings (1987)
“I always felt that my work hadn’t much to do with art; my admirations for other art had very little room to show themselves in my work because I hoped that if I concentrated enough the intensity of scrutiny alone would force life into the pictures. I ignored the fact that art, after all, derives from art. Now I realize that this is the case.”
Detailed Cross-section of the Kowloon Walled City by Japanese researchers led by anthropologist Kani Hioraki
“Kowloon Walled City was a largely ungoverned, densely populated settlement in Kowloon City in Hong Kong. Originally a Chinese military fort, the Walled City became an enclave after the New Territories were leased to Britain by China in 1898. Its population increased dramatically following the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II. By 1990, the Walled City contained 50,000 residents[1][2] within its 2.6-hectare (6.4-acre) borders. From the 1950s to the 1970s, it was controlled by local triads and had high rates of prostitution, gambling and drug abuse.”
“The Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong was once the most densely populated place on earth. And without a single architect or any oversight whatsoever, the ungoverned hive of interlinking buildings became a haven for drugs, crime and prostitution. This is perhaps why the surreal, M.C. Escher-like structure, where one couldn’t even begin to imagine what life was like, captured the interest of the Japanese.”
(link fixed 2014)
Paul Greer 