Okay, this post is for William Gibson fans only. Specifically, fans of his novel, Pattern Recognition. Here’s a grossly over-simplified plot summary. Actually it’s not even that, but I had to provide some context, so…
“…a cult-like group of Internet obsessives strives to find meaning and patterns within a mysterious collection of video moments, merely called “the footage,” let loose onto the Internet by an unknown source.”
This morning on his Twitter feed, Gibson posted:
“That putative Lady Gaga virus is as seriously Footage-y as anything I’ve seen on YouTube.”
Curious, I found my way to two videos:
…and this one…
Again, this will mean nothing to those who have not read Pattern Recognition but is likely to intrigue those who have.
I don’t have a post to go with the quote above, but it’s so good I had to write down. I found it on William Gibson’s Twitter feed and he retweeted John Perry Barlow, who overheard it at at dinner party.
Alrighty then. And where will we watch this video?
“The idea was this, when you go up in the elevator the content goes down and when you go down it goes up. Not unlike a ride film this project was designed to be synced to the moving environment of the hotel elevators in New York. We wanted to synchronize the footage to the movement of the elevator as best as we could.”
You really need to watch the video to get the idea. I found the link on William Gibson’s blog where he observes: “Stuff’s finally starting to look like the 21st Century. Next, your shower curtain.”
Since installing Tweetie, I keep it running on the left side of my desktop. The clever folks who designed Tweetie must have anticipated this is how folks would use it. I can see at a glance when someone tweets; mentions @smaysdotcom or sends me a direct message.
Earlier tonight, William Gibson tweeted about a new movie coming out this summer, describing it as “must see” and included a link to the trailer. Well, when my favorite author says he “must see” the movie, you can bet I’ll see it, too.
When I saw his tweet, I thought: “Cool. William Gibson is online, at this moment, doing basically the same thing I’m doing.”
Now, I can’t direct message Mr. Gibson because he doesn’t follow me and I’d like to think I would not intrude if he did. But, with what other form of communication might I have such a real-time experience with one of my heros? Not email. Probably not a blog post. I’m not sure I can describe the feeling. Not quite personal, but almost.
In a day or two, I might read that this was a hoax. If not, this is… I don’t know. Amazing falls a little short. Emily is a computer graphic illustration produced using a new modeling technology that enables the minute details of a facial expression to be captured and recreated. For the first minute and a half of the video, before they revert back to the source (the real actress), Emily’s face is being simulated by the technology. [via Podcasting News]
I’m nearing the end of Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near and this bit of CGI magic brought the following paragraph to mind:
“The Web will provide a panoply of virtual environments to explore. Some will be re-creations of real places; others will be fanciful environments that have no counterpart in the physical world. Some, indeed, would be impossible, perhaps because the violate the laws of physics. We will be able to visit these virtual places and have any kind of interaction with other real, as well as simulated, people (of course, ultimately there won’t be a clear distinction between the two), ranging from business negotiations to sensual encounters. “Virtual-reality environment designer” will be a new job description and a new art form.” (pg.314)
And if you missed my chat with Michale Spooner, give it a listen and think about the job description, Virtual Reality Designer. [Michael, it's time to talk about your CGI work and what lies ahead.]
“Early in the next century, Lo/Rez is more than just the hottest rock band in the world, it’s a business. The enigmatic guru-like guitar hero Rez has announced that he will marry Rei Toei, the most popular musician in Japan. But she doesn’t exist. She’s an idoru, a massively-complex computer program designed to create and perform music in concerts.”
Combine the AI predicted by Kurzweil with CGI about 10,000 times better than the example above and… and I don’t know what. But Kurzweil thinks he does. I plan to live long enough to experience this. Whew! I’m all tingley.
We don’t think of what we do here as Writing. It feels more like assemblage. Pasting together the little bits and pieces of the web and life. An idea best captured in one of my favorite passages (pg. 274) from William Gibson’s Count Zero, originally published in 1986. It is the middle volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which includes Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive.
"She caught herself on the thing’s folded, jointed arms, pivoted and clung there, watching the swirl of debris. There were dozens of the arms, manipulators, tipped with pliers, hexdrivers, knives, a subminiature circular saw, a dentist’s drill … They bristled from the alloy thorax of what must once have been a construction remote, the sort of unmanned, semiautonomous device she knew from childhood videos of the high frontier. But this one was welded into the apex of the dome, its sides fused with the fabric of the Place, and hundred of cables and optic lines snaked across the geodesics to enter it. Two of the arms, tipped with delicate force-feedback devices, were extended; the soft pads cradled an unfinished box.
Eyes wide, Marly watched the uncounted things swing past.
A yellowing kid glove, the faceted crystal stopper from some vial of vanished perfume, an armless doll with a face of French porcelain, a fat, gold-fitted black fountain pen, rectangular segments of perf board, the crumpled red and green snake of a silk cravat … Endless, the slow swarm of spinning things…"
I love the image and I love the idea of an artificial intelligence creating art. In this story, futuristic Joseph Cornell style boxes.
Three reasons why I don’t own this steampunk gas mask: a) I can’t imagine where I’d wear it, b) It’s probably hot as hell, c) and damned expensive. But I’d be set for all Halloweens to come.
Like many others, I developed an appreciation for steampunk from the novels of William Gibson.
Wikipedia: "Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction which came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date."
My friend Chuck is in Washington D.C. at the National Association of Farm Broadcasters’ Washington Watch. A few days ago he was sitting with me in the Jefferson City Coffee Zone where I showed him how we had been playing with live video streaming with UStream.
As I write this, Chuck is streaming a news conference with the U. S. Secretary of Agriculture. No satellite truck. No cameraman. No sound man. Just Chuck and his MacBook Pro. I assume he’s recording and will post at AgWired.com.
Ag Secy is now praising "ag radio." How many of the reporters in the room are recording his remarks to chop up and put in a report they’ll feed back to their stations for later broadcast? While Chuck is streaming live video.
Secy just said something about "you radio guys need 30 second sound bites and I can’t do that." Uh, no Mr. Secretary, we’re live here at AgWired.com so you can go as long as you need. It’s not about sound bites anymore.
"The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet." — William Gibson
I loved the camera work. From the get-go, I was there. At the party. In the street. A little motion sickness but nothing I couldn’t live with.
Rating on IMDB is 8.1 (out of 10) and (so far) nobody has posted a plot synopsis (I was tempted but didn’t know what to say). I enjoyed this movie. Running time: 15 minutes.
Update: The story is supposed to have been shot with a cheapo handheld consumer camera. Convincing the audience of that point was one of the movie’s most successful angles. Here’s the camera they actually used.
Update: Here’s what William Gibson had to say about the movie:
“I saw Cloverfield last night, and nothing about it bugged me more than those quotes around “Central Park” on the DoD evidence tag that opens the film. It immediately tells us that this film has not been made by native science fiction minds. If Central Park is no longer called Central Park, but is officially referred to as “the area formerly known as ‘Central Park’”, but the DoD still exists, we know that this is not a *far-future* evidence tag. So if Central Park is now known as “The Killing Fields”, or “The Ghastly Black Glass Ocean”, then *tell* us. Those quotes are extraordinarily clumsy (and the card itself is typographically unconvincing). Very first thing in the film. Matters. Hugely.”
Mr. Gibson (my favorite author) obviously has a greater eye for detail than I. Would love to know what he thought of the rest of the movie.
Maybe it’s just my love of