Hey Ziggy, listen to this, it's music by Dr. L. Subramaniam I'll play it for you off my phone. Isn't it chill and amazing what a musician can do with a violin? Ziggy, is my friend's dog, he's staying with me for a few days and this is how he responds to Subramaniam.
This weeks post is going to be about THINGS; ones and zeros. 1's and 0's meant something very different when I was growing up. They were just numbers. Project 851 has opened my eyes to see how these things have changed and oh Mamma Mia have they ever!
Is it safe to say anyone 20 years old and younger are unaware of life before the shift? These humans have been exposed to personal computers their entire life. Life without a computer is to them what life without a car was for me.
It was grade 4 when our family took a trip, to then Yugoslavia, and I was exposed to life in a village; a simpler way of living. A life before the magical personal computer and it's speedy evolution of 1's and 0's that bounced us forward like a rocket ship heading into a neutrino. It was more relaxing, yet we were unaware of how charming that existence was. So where are we heading bouncing forward?
Check this out, there's even songs about the journey of these things!! I'm interested in celebrating that, as well as, celebrating the time before it's central relevance in society was directly connected to an electronic device for storing and processing data, typically in binary form, according to instructions given to it in a variable program.
Lovin' the combination of 1's and 0's that make it possible for posts like this, the pixelated images to be taken and shared, video posting etc... basically the excitement of sharing in this way!! Is it all thoughtful, this exciting new way of doing things?
The restrictions of programming, which are created by people by the way, can be a negative. For instance, it's disturbing when you talk to a person regarding something everyday, such as an account, and they can't implement a basic customer service request because the system restricts them from doing that; hmmm, so we adapt to this type of change and getting used to hearing "no, we can't do that" a lot more. One may want to ask what does that do to the human condition?
These "negatives" are very alive in our societies. A positive way to we move forward in our world is to take along those amazing 1's and 0's of today and align them to their less complex meaning of the past; a bit of back to basics dance with a progressive future.
Recently I read an article on Brad Pitt by Marlon James "5 or 6 things I didn't know about Brad Pitt" . (by the way, the magazine vs. online has the most beautiful visuals -- the photographer Craig McDean does an amazing job that's worth seeing on paper). It's the number 5. point that speaks to me when I write about simple 1's and 0's. This is the example of the basics I'm referring to:
“When I was making a World War II movie called ‘Fury,’ we did this boot camp for a week, and Logan Lerman, who was the youngest actor of the bunch — I think he was 21 — was given grunt detail. We gave him a watch and he had to keep track of how long it took us to eat and get in and out of our gear. One day he came to me and said the watch has stopped, and I said, ‘You’ve just got to wind it.’ He came back literally 15 minutes later and said, ‘Wait, how do you wind it?’ ”
So how to achieve balance becomes a fun question? The balance of celebrating what we can share with technology and which is the best way to use it, ie. print vs. online vs. verbal storytelling by a human or a vibrational audio recording through a machine is still evolving. Hope you see the balance below as I play with binary elements involved in capturing moment through images looking at the obvious and not so obvious abstractions (imagination) of 1's and 0's.
At this point in time the pendulum has swung waaaaaaaay over to the side of mass inundation of "stuff" leaving people only too often confused, overwhelmed, shutting down and narrowing his/her focus rather than expanding it: I call it getting stuck in "no" land. My outlook on these things is to question the tools we have and really think about how we use the new meaning of 1's and 0's to find the most effective personal way t to deliver the voice that is yours.
Come on Ziggy we're off for a walk to see, smell, taste and touch the things that are 1's and 0's in our world.