In this instance I probably worked on web2py the day before; the memorable collapsible car you will see later feels like a good metaphor for the back-end of a website, so I will go with it.

In my dream, a dear friend drives with me through a mountain pass, a place with a stunning view and winding roads. I made this stop-motion video that shows our walk through a forest of cameras, sets, and actors:

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After a day full of learning to use a slide-show Javascript library, (thank you deck.js), I had a dream that I was an undercover agent for the Chinese government in Beijing.  I was strolling in an open air market eyeballing someone who might expose me, knowing that I would need to do something terrible.

Impulsively, I rushed to the woman perpetrator, her gentleman friend, and the small child that was with them (not theirs), briefly confessed my situation to them, and let it be known that all of us must make a run for it.

We dashed into the underground rail system, which had open, roofless, rail-cars that would roll past slowly enough for a person to jump in uninjured. In retrospect the rail reminds me of Donkey Kong’s.



We jumped in, and I stared open-mouthed at the large doorways that snaked off on either side of us as we chugged past.  When we jumped out, it was because we smelled delicious cooking smells, and saw a large doorway that had a pleasant green-toned light filtering in.  Like many other people [in my dream city], this enterprising restaurant owner had dug his own subway entrance that led directly into his greenery-filled restaurant. (This picture from Open Source Ecology captures the moment.)



It was lovely.  I examined the walls, wondering if they were built up to code or were moments away from collapse.

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A young girl took a can of spray paint and sprayed it into a candle flame placed near a length of red cloth in an attempt to see a mix of colors. The orange flame engulfed the cloth and recoiled back to the can, startling the girl. She dropped the can and the entire table began flaming. I, the other person in the room ran to get water and blankets to put the flame out, feeling panic rising, but knowing that this situation would be quickly dealt with.  I woke up.

This dream happened after a day full of playing with Jquery and Javascript animations.  I was hoping to find just the right example so that I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel for the intro page of my website.  Recalling the dream, I felt a familiar discomfort when trying to recreate this sample: http://www.dhteumeuleu.com/home-again/.  Yesterday the flowing and responsive glow would not appear in my version.  My dream was an opposite scenario in which the glow was an out of control fire!

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On Friday September 7th 2012 watch “I Want You To Bite Me,” a curated screening at Oddball Films in San Francisco. For more information, go to: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com/2012/08/i-want-you-to-bite-me-fri-sept-7-8pm.html#more.

This is an evening that examines and celebrates those glorious shape-shifting bloodsuckers, Vampires; both the lore and the fearful psychological fascination. This screening lays the groundwork for the evolving sci-fi version of the beings that later showed themselves in True Blood, Shadowrun (the RPG) and God Save the Queen, a novel by Kate Locke. Enjoy this glimpse into the past that started it all!

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For a tour of mad science through film, come to Oddball Films on Fri. June 1st – 8PM. The program is packed with excerpts of films about time-travel, hideous experiments, and ultimately, the fine line between intelligence and folly in the lab.  For more information and a list of the films to be screened, go to: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com/2012/05/blind-reason-night-of-mad-and-bad.html

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I made a short giff animation for my website the other day using photoshop to make a series of images to create a moving shadow. After I loaded it up to the site, I felt elated about what a short and satisfying project that had been; I was bursting with ideas but had to go to bed to a restless night of sleep. Later, I managed a good deep nap were I revived myself more. . .

I was with a group of friends and we were wearing black clothes and hats, as though ready to break and enter (to get something important). We wanted some equipment for a project. We crept around some houses but couldn’t get to what we wanted, even by talking with and trying to persuade someone who lived in a certain familiar house. Myself and the gang hopefully crept around other buildings and ended up in a Catholic Church.

We looked around and realized that the church was having a “cult convention”. We saw one group of cultist martial arts-styled people standing in a circle. Next to them was a group wearing potato sacks and looking very dirty. On and on, these strange people everywhere — so much so that we couldn’t get to an exit . . . finally we found our way out, down a winding road with groups of people in grassy thickets here and there. Just before waking I came upon a group of people, each with a cat, a cat that they were attempting to kiss!

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Books:

Chadwick, Whitney and Isabelle de Courtivron. Significant Others; Creativity & Intimate Partnership. London: Thames and Hudson, 1993.

John-Steiner, Vera. Creative Collaboration. Oxford: University Press, 2000.

Johnstone, Keith. Impro For Storytellers. Routledge, New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1999.

Articles:

Hodge, Carroll. “Film Collaboration and Creative Conflict”. Journal of Film & Video. Spring 2009: Vol. 61, Issue 1, 18-30.

Kozlowski, Steve W.J. & Daniel R. Ilgen. “Enhancing the Effectiveness of Work Groups and Teams”. Association for Psychological Science. December 2006: Vol. 7, Num. 3. 77-124.

Mnif, M. & Muller-Schloer, C. “Quantitative Emergence.” Adaptive and Learning Systems. 24 July 2006: 78-84.

Nemeth, Charlan Jeanne & Margaret Ormiston. “Creative idea generation: Harmony versus stimulation”. European Journal of Social Psychology. 23 August 2006: 524-535.

Prins, Silvia. “The psychodynamic perspective in organizational research: Making sense of the dynamics of direction setting in emergent collaborative processes”. The British Psychological Society. 2006: Issue 79, 335-355.

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Yesterday I spent the day moving a work table and chairs into my modest new art studio space in downtown Davis; this was a satisfying but tiring activity.  Moving in has cheered me immensely because it has been a challenge for me to keep up a steady art practice since completing my graduate studies several months ago.   With the help of a kindly delivery man I wheeled my unfinished rectangular table to the front of the building.  Next, I caused a commotion amongst the nearby office workers by spray-painting my table top white, thereby causing fumes to form a toxic cloud.  Thankfully, after some discussion with my fellow tenants they conceded that I should finish my paint job.  This object is now a glorious and sturdy white slab of a table to work on.  I am sitting at the table right now as I write…

Last night I dreamed that I was two people in a couple, a late forties or early fifties man and woman who were on a journey.

At first I had the perspective of the round brunette woman: we had a daughter together, a daughter who was very sick.  In order to save her life, we had to go on a search to find a cure.  The dream begins with me looking at my husband, a small bookish man with very large glasses.   We are scaling a glacial cliff together and the wind is whistling through our ears.  Glistening blue and white ice crystals are all around us looking mystical and as we round a corner, we can see an airplane parked down in a nearby valley, waiting for us.  Getting to the plane is urgent and we hop in just as it is taking off.

Once inside the plane I (the woman) spoke with a woman who seemed to be a healer of some kind.  She talked and seemed to be glowing but her words are not in my memory anymore.  I (the man) was stuck in the front portion of the aircraft.  I tried to get back to where my wife was because I sensed that something important was happening, but I instead found my way blocked and soon became preoccupied with finding a safe seat and looking at the flight deck.  I woke up.

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While looking at Michael Hohl’s website (announcing a conference), I saw this project with a particular angle on humans’ relationship with technology: that technology is a medium for the living world. This page shows video of a website that causes a curtain to blow gently: http://www.hohlwelt.com/en/presenceweb.html

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C++ is essentially applied-math . . . and I would take a class in this as an elective during the boot-camp period of my first semester of my new schizophrenic, collaboration-focused art and technology graduate program in 2008.  My theory and culture-focused / art-education-trained-brain thus far hadn’t felt the hard limits of math, logic, or anything of the like, since astronomy and micro-economics several years before.

Sometime around the 6th week of class, I stayed up until 3 in the morning working on the chapter on functions.  In previous weeks I’d accidentally created a loop that printed an unending list figures and would only stop if I closed the program.  This was like turning on a faucet without being able to turn it off; unleashing an endless little flood of sorts.

On this night I had a break-through.  A major portion of my program was working.

I suddenly felt that math, in a general way, was cracking open for me; it seemed to be illuminating something about  existence . . . that physics, and much of science can be broken into these abstract digits such that we can see a constant exchange of material going on.  (Except of course for breakthroughs related to quantum physics, etc. . . .)  Anyway, this was an exciting moment.

I had an unforgetable dream that night: my housemate and I made our way through a forest and approached a dilapidated castle wall (kind of like the faux castle wall in the animated movie Spirited Away).  We went through the doors and found a wide lake, smooth with a blue sky overhead.  In front of us a log foot bridge extended forward across the lake and we naturally stepped onto it, talking and making our way to the other side.

Gradually, we began to notice that the water was acting strangely.  It appeared to be responding to our movements, even our voices.

When I would move my arm this way, the water would flutter this way.  And as we began to move around with increasingly complex movements, changing the pitches of our voices, and then making dramatic jumping dance moves, the water became increasingly volatile, splashing us, and threatening to overturn our little footbridge.  This was not a game; there was a sense of presence here, and that feeling was ominous.

We hurried the rest of the way across, keeping our movements to a minimum, and went up a hill to the walls of a castle town with turrets and shops. Tourists gaped at the sights, and, seeing our approach, asked in excited voices, “where is the lake?”  We exchanged looks, unsure whether to explain the possible danger to them.  We said: “it’s over there,” and pointed.

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