Hyperlinking Media: Research, Examples, and Digressions into Literature

Lately, I've been reading a lot of literature lately, from Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, a story about Oedpia Maas, whose ex-boyfriend has died and has now become sole executor of his estate, while along the way uncovers two mail distributions, Thurn and Taxis, an former mail distributor in 16th century Germany and Trystero, a fictional secret mail service company, to Consider the Lobster, a collection of essays that ranged from attending the AVN (Adult Video News) Awards, considered to be the pornographic Oscars to an essay about his experience on John McCain's 2000 presidential run for President of the United States and the state of disappointment in how political campaigns work, whether we like it or not.

Even before I started reading the book by getting a copy from the San Francisco Main Library, I found an interest in Pynchon's works when I was wondering about what the philosophical novel was by Googling the term philosophical novel. I then chose one of the top search results by clicking the link that I have also snapped a photo with the help of capturing a screenshot of my desktop, then opened up Paint.NET, a freeware version of Illustrator.

As I clicked the NYTimes.com article from thereon, I happened to stumble upon David Foster Wallace after watching the movie Tuesdays With Morrie on Youtube, which is in 11 parts. After getting myself acquainted with the movie, it was based on a bestselling nonfiction book. I checked out its wikipedia page. I got a bit curious when I saw Philosophical fiction as one of the Genre(s) of the book, mostly because when I thought of philosophy at the time, I was thinking about how we deal with problems and finding rational solutions to solve these problems that erupt our lives and the world that shapes us.

In short, one link leads to another and I happen to have a huge stack of books on my desk, some of which I have read and most I should be getting to:

From top to bottom:

-The Gangster We Are All Looking For (done)

-Consider the Lobster

-The Crying of Lot 49 (done)

-The Essential Writers Companion

-Infinite Jest

-Mason & Dixon

-South Wind Changing (done)

-This is All I Choose to Tell (done)

-Saving Fish From Drowning

-The Corrections

-Yellow Journal (Asian American Studies department)

-Crossing Three Wildernesses

-The Feeling Good Handbook

-The Pale King

-Inherent Vice

Examples of Literature turned into hypermedia/text

-Sun Tzu's "The Art of War"

-James Joyce's "Ulysses"

Final Project

First off, sorry if we couldn't do this project on the final day. I didn't expect time to be short and the fact that this journey might take a lot of time while everyone needed to present their work. To expand what my final project entails, the idea was to make the class create a small community work of art with the concept of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" game, or Gamebook which the player or reader makes choices that will affect the outcome of the projected Post-It "class art" piece.

And please, at least try to this adventure just so I can see how far one can go to reach one of the endings. Send your documentation and a quick survey about the experience (optional). Even if some of the choices sounds ridiculous, maybe use your imagination to conjure up the result of the journey.

Choose Your Own Outdoor Adventure (I.O.U. an Excuse)

You will be making choices that will determine your actions and outcome of the narrative, whether it follows it or not. A list of letters will be provided below which you can explore different narratives that deviate from the main story or goal of this game (which isn't the main point of the game, I prefer to explore without being constricted to the reader's interpretation of the adventure), although you can follow the goal of the game, which is this:

-Tyson Stupolini is running out of the outbound M-Line MUNI light rail and towards the campus in order to turn in his essay, which is due in two hours. Unfortunately, he hasn't written a single word of the essay and he needs to find a computer station that will give him time to complete his essay about the history of Communism and Sesame Street.

But another problem arises: he's only allowed to follow a set of directions followed by the Dominatino Manchino that frequently circles the San Francisco State campus to spy on Tyson. He was killed when he was on letter 'K'.

Now you have to make up his excuse by posting a Post-It on the right professors door, which will excuse Tyson for not completing his work and will be given another week to “make up” his work. (Hopefully this will be a confusing, yet interesting “adventure”).

If you happen to find a dead end or get to finish the game, please take documentation of your journey by snapping a photo of your current location, as well as the Post-It located, if the Post-It isn't used, just take a picture either way and you're done.

Your adventure will be followed with a set of choices that will correspond with the letter that will choose your next move. Imagination is needed for this game as well as a Batmobile that has six beverage cup holders, which I have in my garage (that's the sort of imagination you need for example, or a schizophrenic mind if you need to be in my head). I also don't want to responsible with any injures or damages that may occur during your adventure.

What a day! A group of people almost got hit by a three gray Prius while they were walking across the bus stop towards the campus at 19^th Avenue. Luckily, I wasn't in the crowd because I was grabbing a copy of the Examiner. A big and bold title in the middle of the front page says, “Miller Shows His Willer to Killer, Cuts His Willer to Eat More Diller Picklers.” I was pretty stupefied by the title, which saved by life because all I did was stare at the innuendo title.

START at A.

A. You're at the front of the campus and you see a man with a pony tail [B.], a guy wearing a leather jacket [C.], a person wearing a scarf [D.], or a person streaking and they run past by you [E.].

B. You walk behind the ponytail man and he's wearing a backpack [X.] or is holding a bag of some sort [Q.]

C. The man you see now is being taken away by two men in white. You try to help him by punching the guy in white [T.] or do nothing at all [K.]

D. You recognize the person wearing the scarf [F.] or not [L.].

E. That streaker reminds you that you need to get you tires check, but now you need to read this QR code on the last page that wouldn't read at all for some reason (Maybe try checking it on the mirror to read it's message). If you do that, read the QR code's message, if you can't find a mirror, give up on finding one, or want to go to [L.]

H. Now take a snapshot of where you placed the post-it that would be recognizable with your smartphone. It can be anywhere visible or hidden, as long as it sticks onto somewhere. If a Post-It isn't involved and an action is involved, please take a photo of your performed action (e.g. standing in a pose, lying on grass) with the help of your partner. Please send your pictures to  End of journey.

I. You just lay on the grass, motionless. Maybe you're dead or just taking a nap. Whether the matter is important, I suggest going back to [A.] to start all over or stop and take a photo of where you are now. Go to [H.].

J. You found a quick shortcut to the goal of the story, which is to put the Post-It on Paula's door with a note that you write down, saying:

Dear Paula,

I'm sorry if you haven't gotten my essay on time. I'll send it to you via email.

With regards,

Tyson Stupolini. Now go to [Y.]

K. You've been spotted by one of the men in white, which he chases you down towards a grassy area, which you run to. You get pinned down on the grass and are asked where Elmo's whereabouts are. You say that you have no idea [I.] or that he's atop of a building where he's close to the sky and clouds [M., for this situation, go to top of Caesar Chavez rooftop].

L. Now you're a little parched and you go to the nearest fountain to take a drink of water. While you're taking a drink, you see [a man in white and try to run away [K.]] or [run to the rooftop of the Caesar Chavez rooftop [M.]].

M. You are taken to the rooftop of the building [go to Caesar Chavez Center building]. Depending on the temperature, it's either very cold [U.] or hot [W.].

N. Now write down on the post-it note, with your own name if you wish or Tyson's name, as well as the person you are corresponding to, with the blanks that show:

Dear ______,

I have previously given you a hardcopy of my essay, which I believe was eaten by your dog, Snaufy. Please give my regards to him, as I recall stapling my essay too many times.

Signed,

_______ _______ Go to [Y.]

O. Now write down on the post-it note, with your own name and with the blanks that show:

Dear Paula,

I have solved the riddle of why Stalin and the Count can count to twenty million. The Big Bird is Stalin inside that yellow-feathered costume and I'm pretty sure there's a conspiracy around the death of Tyson. Please send cookies.

With regards,

_______ _______ Go to [Y.]

P. Please write on your Post-It note:

Dear Paula,

I'm sorry if I didn't turn in my essay. A clown ripped it in shreds, but made it in a dog instead. It looks cool.

With regards,

_______ _______ Go to [Y.]

Q. You're now reminded of the time when you lost your keys that fell somewhere around an area where trees dominate the area. Maybe you should sit on a bench somewhere close by to ponder that this is a dead end. Now write three things when you think about candy canes. Now go to [Y.]

U. Now take your Post-It note and write down this: _______ & _______ WAS here! Your journey ends here. Now go to [Y.]

W. Now take your Post-It note and write down this:

Dear Paula,

I have given the whereabouts of Elmo and his location to the man in white. Please send Abby Cadabby to send me back to the mental ward so that I can stop playing this stupid game.

Signed,

_______ _______ Go to [Y.]

X. Is there a Gymnasium building nearby? Maybe you forgot your paper in there. Go to the gym building and if you see someone holding a duffel bag, write a Post-It note that should say:

Missing an essay about the history of Sesame Street and the mass killings of Stalin. Please burn essay as soon as possible.

With regards,

_______ _______ Go to [Y.]

If you see at least one person sitting on the steps outside, please write down on the Post-It note:

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts
There they are standing in a row
Big ones small ones some as big as your head
Give 'em a twist
A flick of the wrist
That's what the show man said

Go to [Y.]

Y. Please go to the Fine Arts building 537 and place the post-it note on the door. Now go to [H.]

Z. Unfortunately, you're now in a pose where you're on one leg and form a circle with your arms in the sky. Now go to [H.]

Hyperland

Claustrophobia for Toddlers

"Claustrophobia for Toddlers", an experimental poem [Interweaving text and video, for one example, as a form of hypertext]

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

ABC-DEF-GHI-JKL-MNO-PQR-STU-VWX-YZ

a-b-c-d-e-f-g-h-i-j-k-l-m-n-o-p-q-r-s-t-u-v-w-x-y-z

A--B--C--D--E--F--G--H--I--J--K--L--M--N--O--P--Q--R--S--T--U--V--W--X--Y--Z

a--b--c--d--e--f--g--h--i--j--k--l--m--n--o--p--q--r--s--t--u--v--w--x--y--z

A---B---C---D---E---F---G---H---I---J---K---L---M---N---O---P---Q---R---S---T---U---V---W---X---Y---Z

a---b---c---d---e---f---g---h---i---j---k---l---m---n---o---p---q---r---s---t---u---v---w---x---y---z

December 8, 1995

I was working on the final edits of my first book of poems and short stories being published next year with my literary agent Emily. I was my agent's house for the night, making the finishing touches in her San Francisco apartment in Van Ness, which also had a nice view of the concrete buildings. It was a pretty swinging pad for a bachelorette, considering that she also lives with two other women, Lindsey and Keli, who seem to be lovers of their own dimension, despite having separate rooms.

I saw them kissing at one point when I walked in the kitchen to refill my glass with water when Lindsey finished straining the pasta before making a quick run towards Keli's red glossy lips and interlocking a kiss with lips puckered at the ready, showing the appreciation and mutual respect sharing cooking duties, creating an intimate environment of pleasure and calmness for tonight's dinner. They were cooking spaghetti and they asked Emily if I could be invited over for dinner, since she pays most of the rent.

Dinners were not like this before. Back then, the majority of the cooking was spent over fighting about which technique was best to cut the onions, for example. Keli would always cut her onions horziontally, but Lindsey preferred to cut it vertically because it was obviously a safer technique than Keli's.

Emily says yes and we both go back to her bedroom, where During the editing of the book, she made a comment on my poem that was posted on the world wide web. We always get into a conversation about my poem every time I'm with her.

A majority of my poems were published in literary magazines, local and major newspapers, and even on the World Wide Web, which was pretty sweet cause I got a ton of phone calls from old college professors, friends, ex-boyfriends and girlfriends I dated in high school and college, something I didn't think would come back to haunt me, and even an employee from a publishing company that caught his interests in my work and through that connection, Emily heard about my poem after some gossip about Notorious B.I.G. and his acceptance speech while the employees ate their alphabet soup, which reminded Emily to seek me out.

It was so trippy to see one of my own works on the world wide web, especially when nobody other than my close friends and a couple of my family members read my work, especially my cousin Joey, who was one of the first people who called me about the poem he saw on the internet. He's a total nerd about everything that's technology based related, from repairing a Super Nintendo, which he spruced up the A/V input on my at one point, setting up the internet in my house, and even fixing my father's 27" Magnavox television screen that he won on a game show sometime in the 80s that broke during game 6 of the World Series when the crowd started booing at David Justice. My dad was the cause for breaking the television set when he threw an unopened beer can at the television set, causing the T.V. to break, thus blacking out the screen for about an hour or so. The living room became dead silent for a couple of seconds, until Joey got the television working and was treated to the 9th inning.

My phone number was posted on the website that featured my poem, which I was okay with that after I got the call from the publisher at first, but became a bit unease when the ex's started calling, but became a more paranoid when I was left with some disturbing calls on my answering machine saying that he knew the meaning of life and would precede to hang up immediately. I answered the unknown caller a couple of times, but was treated to the sounds of my dial-up modem while I was starting up AOL. I don't understand why this happens every time I try to phone someone up. Maybe I should cut my phone line and stick with email so I get creepers calling me anymore. Not sure if the Do Not Call list is working for me though.

At one point, I heard him crying while he was trying to give me a sequence of random letters, which after three minutes of hearing this, I wrote all of the letters down on my notepad, which I've been taking notes for anything obscure. For some weird reason, I also heard this song in another phone call after a couple seconds of silence. I recall hearing it on the radio at one point, but I forget the title of the song. But still, it was pretty eerie getting unwanted phone calls from some wacko who thinks it's appropriate to make phone calls on a stranger.

At some point during the editing, Emily brings up my poem, "Claustrophobia for Toddlers". She always brings up that title and tells me I have some hilarious titles for my other works. I make a grimace face every time someone tells me the titles I make up sound ridiculous. Then again, Pootie Tang sounds a bit silly for a story about four kids going on an adventure to find a dead body of some young kid in the summer of 1959. I just thought there should have been an alternative version of Stand by Me where the kid doesn't brandish a gun, but rather he pulls out a banana that has become so blacken, yet it does not yield any rotten smell. It's just black and nothing else.

"Now come on," with a sarcastic, child-like voice, "I don't understand what's your obsession with the alphabet and Sesame Street. They're like, so elementary--so grade school--so--"

"--educational, innocent, and fun," I say in a serious, rushing tone,"now can we just get done with damn editing and I'll be on my way." He knew what her rhetorical spout was gonna be when the poem was ever gonna be mentioned.

Emily stops, stares at the pages, her face looking a bit down with a pen in her hand between her index and middle finger like a seesaw and hitting the pages as she looks at me and says, "Okay, I'm sorry about poking at your work, it's just that . . ."

"What?" with a curious, yet suspicious gesture of voice.

"I honestly think that poem seems--weird and honestly, a bit stupid, in a way."

I pause for a few seconds, having the urge to punch her in the face. I start to bite my lower lip and make a fist with the my right hand, ready to punch her at anytime. I seriously don't give a shit anymore about whether or not I hit a girl, she's just getting on my nerves and I can't tolerate stupidity like this from her mouth. I mean seriously, what the hell has been going in life life lately? I'm about to have my first book published, I've been getting phone calls endlessly, from ex's to some stalker who won't stop bothering me, and now this?

I try my best to calm down as my face starts to turn red, sweat coming from my forehead, pouring down like tears of a baby whose face becomes red, crying profusely because his mother stopped holding him in her arms, rocking him his narcissistic crying attention to comfort. In my case, it was myself not trying to get angry at Emily, which reminded that I was a guest at her place and that their roommates invited me to dinner.

Bibliography

Okay, who needs a bibliography when I'm doing a research paper on hypertext. It's already intertextualized into this research paper. Like so what?

Well here's a video of a kitty being surprised by its owner to confuse you even more:

Final Proposal and Paper: Interactive Fiction

For my final project, I've been thinking of creating a a Choose Your Own Adventure/Gamebook novel in a physical format.

Examples:

Another idea somewhat deviates from the first idea, but the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' book would be in the form of a text adventure.

Little bonus:

Some inspiration from Kermit and Joey. Maybe I can bring in some--Cookie Monster--typography and locative--Cookie Monster--media into one. Or something else nice and green.

Progress of Final Projects: Interactive Fiction, Locative Arts, Etc.

So I'm getting started with my research by looking up articles about locative media on JSTOR. I pulled an article called Locative Arts by Drew Hemment, which details some of locative media works from 2003 to 2004, featuring the ideas of location based games from Blast Theory, GPS Drawing from Jeremy Wood, and other artists that involve using location, physical environment, and much more to the umbrella term of locative media.

From what I got out of this article, the basis of annotating space is the main function for locative media/art for what it is. It's the idea that artists create markings in physical or virtual space in order to comment about the functions of life, or whatever one wishes to believe in the paradigm of thinking about location-based arts.

Making a Toaster from Scratch

Something I found while watching the Colbert Report.

Maybe with all of the unrecycled electronic material we have piling in landfills in foreign countries like the Philippines, India, or China for example, there's a possibility to create any sort of common household product found in an American home.

The Sun Shines West on My Mark

Listening to shuffled music on BART

November 10, 2011

BART has its destination planned for me and everyone else, where everyone and I didn't need to move in order to drift to our destination, rather the train makes planned stops only this 710 foot snake can.[1] Whenever I get on the train, I usually take the end cars, which are either the A2, C1, or C2 vehicles. They're the cars that likely have the hard ground floors and visually appealing seats compared to the ones with the black streaks on the top of the seats. They are also the vehicles that operate as leader and trail cars, however the way the consist is in or outbound.

On this commute, I prepared my experiment and journey by putting on my headphones without starting the music player. I recorded a portion of my journey, although I didn't actually record the whole trip because recording time was limited, including battery life, I started recording when I was coming up to the Pleasant Hill BART station and going from thereon. I recorded the video with my Black Flip UltraHD video camera and in order to get the audio, I placed the left side of my headphone onto the microphone receiver, giving some feedback on what I'm currently listening to. In theory, I thought the microphone would perfectly pick up what's being outputted in the headphones and nothing else. Stupid me, the amplitude is much higher and expanded than my headphones.

The first song is an intelligible titled song, as punctuations translated the Japanese characters that the computer from the movie soundtrack to Ponyo. As the first song began, I pressed the shuffle button, leading to the random play of other songs. An audiobook of David Foster Wallace's The Broom of the System comes next. Out of lite bewilderment, I forgot that the majority of the music I put in my smartphone is filled with the whole DFW audiobook. It's rewarding to hear the book, but not in this particular fashion. I stopped recording, but I kept the audio playing, hoping to hear an actual song, but I was pretty disappointed in not making an appropriate playlist excluding non-music audio.

I'm starting to love riding the BART train every chance I get because it helps me relax and think before I go out in the world, where I begin my daily regimen of school lectures, buying lunch with whatever money I have in my wallet, walking around campus, drifting, or just relaxing in the lounge, especially when no one is taking space on the couch[2]. I thank Yellow BART Snake whenever I get off at Daly City, knowing that I'll be traveling with Mr. Snake back to where I start my commute every morning[3].

Marking my Territory
Another mini-experiment I took on was to mark my territory everywhere I walked for every minute that passed. The basic premise is that I walked around a certain location, (this time, it was around the SF campus) and for every minute that passed, I would write the time, with chalk on the outside pavement (or anything writable on chalk). One exception where I didn't write was when I was inside the building or near by the side of them. I didn't want to vandalize buildings that was owned by the state. And as for the last project, I simply did not want to get caught, basically going incognito in a public environment, which is certainly why some minutes I skipped through.

I had no principle in direction, but rather it was the familiarity of my surroundings and the playfulness of tagging your mark with the box of colorful chalk I had in my left hand and pulling my phone out of my right rocket to check whether a minute has passed.
Michael was here at 12:53, this is where I started drifting around the campus.
M was here at 12:54, I started to walk down the stairs, leading to the Humanities building.
Michael was here at 12:55, I walked up towards the path of the Humanities building.
Michael was here at 12:56Michael was here at 12:57, the ground didn't seem to be writable with my chalk, so I wrote on the bench instead. It was petty tough to write the letters as fast as possible. I believe it took me an estimated 55 seconds before another minute passed. As my hands became more chalkier, the screen as well.12:58, as I finished writing on the bench at 12:57, another minute passed by, so I immediately wrote to the nearest concrete ground that looked writable.Michael was here at 12:59; I had an urge to walk up the long concrete stairs leading to the exits of the third floor, but I also knew there would be writable walls on the side of the stairs. Now I skipped two minutes because I was in the Student Union, finding my way out and hopefully finding a seclusive spot to write the next time, which can be seen below. Michael was here at 1:02; I always came to this spot hidden behind trees and bushes that's near the GYM and right across the ATM machines. This area includes a water/bird? fountain, carved wooden benches without removing its bark, and a chair that looks fit for a king. Michael was here at 1:03
Michael stops at 1:06 :). Now the fun part started where I traced all of my marks, starting from the 1:05 mark and going backwards to the start. It felt like a scavenger hunt, trying to remember back my past footsteps.

And a little bonus...

I honestly had no idea what I was going to do after I drew what is now a grid. Something in my mind wondered if this looks like a game of 5x5 Tic-Tac-Toe or Dots and Boxes, which unfortunately, should not have its lines drawn. Maybe I'm used to seeing the checkerboard pattern whenever I enter one of the school buildings and I tend to think I'm playing the horse in chess, making 'L' patterns whenever I'm walking over the tiles.

Something in me always wanted to skip and hop on tile flooring, especially ones designed to form check board patterns. For many years, I've always been conscious of never stepping on the cracks of pavements because I feel like the cracks will open up and eat me alive; only to bring myself back to reality, that I'm walking on nothing else than concrete, nothing is going to eat me alive, and the only thing I need to worry about is finding time to think about how to present my work orally.

Footnotes:

[1] - This is according to Wikipedia, where the longest BART trains stretches to 710 feet on the 700 foot platform(s), giving people seconds to welcome themselves into the void of empty seats that one can choose to sit or to a plethora of the deadpan to sleepy faces of rush hour morning, filling most of the seating and you, the commuter have to find a seat before you have to suffer the consequences of standing for almost an hour, while you try to hold onto railing that you can't reach for an hour's sake until the Embarcadero station comes and the masses of East Bay commuters trample on the streets of downtown San Francisco. I just lay in wait, until its my turn to stomp on San Francisco concrete, as my shoes nap on the hard ground or soft, yet dirty-looking carpet and wake up when I get up.

[2] - Thank goodness there's a couch in the CIA lounge. It's nice that I can walk in, simply crash and take a quick nap if I only slept for three or four hours in bed or an hour, when I rarely sleep on the floor in my computer room because I'm procrastinating on my essay. I'm hoping this won't happen again when I do my final essay for this class.

[3] - Although the train is not yellow nor it's not an actual snake as I like to NOT imagine,. It's that I associate the trains in-name-only due to the BART maps showing the Pittsburg/Bay Point line being that color. If you check the map with the colorful lines connecting and bending around cities and towns densely populated above this footnote, it's the trail that snakes go back and forth to pick up and drop off people.

As for giving the train a personal name (Yellow BART Snake), it's just a pun of identifying intimate objects as people. Yellow being the first name, BART is the middle, and Snake is its last name. I might even go a bit far as to say that they are like my transitional objects, or security blankets whenever I come to the drudgery of what is commuting to the shuttle or bus in order to get on campus. I'm glad that commuters can at least get comfortable to experience the trauma of commuting to work and doing what is essentially nothing pleasing in your own blue/white collar jobs, something I will have to face when I graduate school.

I had this dream where psychogeography was dogging me and I flew up in the air in my car, looking down on Interstate 80, but man, that pizza is whack!

Every time I get into a discussion with someone at SF State about why I need to get home as soon as possible whenever it dawns or I look at the clock behind the room, with a worried face, turning my head back and forth, I always tell them I live in Martinez. If they don't know where Martinez is, I tell them it's in the East Bay. When one person I spoke to didn't know where the East Bay was, I told him it was on the eastern side of San Francisco, but then again, he was from New York and never ventured out of SF. Well I can't blame the kid, since he moved out from the Midwest and wanted to study in New York. He did like the SFSU website compared to the one he was applying for.

There are times when I'm not aware of the time that passes by when I start my commute from the North Concord/Martinez BART station and end at Daly City station. I pass the time by reading any textbooks or novels at my leisure, but recently, I've been carrying headphones with me, since I'm utilizing the MP3 feature on my smartphone, listening to list of songs multiple hours, it's fun. Whenever a sun refracts on the window across the seat adjacent to the doors, I quickly scroll the list to a cello piece that represents a soothing start to my day, waiting patiently to get out of the train and into my mediated life.

I recall my first time ever[1] taking BART to get to school. I was so nervous of riding alone, that having no one else watch you, instead of watching yourself from child nappers or people who are thinking of stealing your backpack, started to make my stomach churn, especially when I didn't eat breakfast at all. I would do that every morning, but that time, it got much worse as the day went by.

The only thing I did to entertain myself was looking outside of the window. Cars and a multitude of foliage and shrubs whiz pass the speed of the train, making our surroundings like peering inside a paper green snake lantern, the sun trying to make its way to shine out of the tunnel that goes to the underground railroad to San Francisco.

Urban Dreamscape: SF

Footnotes

[1] - It was also my first time ever being all alone taking BART. It would usually be my family or rarely, a friend taking BART with me because when I was 19, my mom would be very cautious of my safety whenever I'm outside the house without being with her. Hearing experiences from my mom about taking BART, she told stories about her sitting next to a bum who probably was digging in a trash can, looking for food, with the likely chance of using the BART ride as an excuse to take a long nap. I'm hoping that she didn't encounter the guy/girl leaning her head on her shoulder, as she would probably be weirded out and getting out of her seat that's stained as a shade of gray according to the average curvature of a person's body in the San Francisco Bay Area, which they should be considering replacing the seats as soon as possible, for the fact some fecal matter and skin-borne bacteria is on those cloth seats.

Added Reality Interface in real life?

[To set up the scene here]: Norman Jayden, an FBI agent is sent to investigate a string of murders of young children, all of them drowned in rainwater. Jayden here is using Added Reality Interface (ARI) glasses, which uses physical space (i.e. the real world) and augmented space (within it's technological boundaries that's inside the glasses and ARI). What appears to be that he's outside atop of the high mountain, his actual spaces are within a small, somewhat unused desk room, with his desk coming along in the AR space, without any of the file cabinets, posters, or window in the physical office.

ARI (Added Reality Interface)

My inquiry into virtual reality is that whether or not this type of technology is possible in terms of virtual reality creating synthetic environments within my years of existence. How can certain cues in physical space activate augments in virtual space in relation to our limiting senses and technology?

Could I use my ARI glasses, take them outside public space and use it as a means of being socially aware of other people combining social networking and electronic devices (e.g. Facebook connected to your phone with the ARI glasses).

[From 11-2-11] Maybe something like this, but in the form of a phone:

Something like this, without the usage of a phone because holding a phone up to your face[1] would be grievous to your wrists, as you hold the phone steady for long periods of time.

Footnote:

[1] - You probably would look like a weirdo if an app like that exists and as you walk past by strangers, holding your phone as if you're video recording because you have a lens at the back, a sign to others to believe that you're recording them. This would cause people to look at you weirdly, but rather the glasses would give you a form of disguise that you're not in a way, looking at their augmented profiles while they whiz by you, some may be holding their [boy/girl]friend's hand.

Just be careful when the other person looks at you weirdly. If they do, just look straight forward, since the augment will probably be visible of range, like a comment bubble on a Youtube video.

Layar, Hoppala, and What Else...

On October 25, our class took a small walk around the campus to check out all of our augments coming from physical space within our electronic devices (e.g. smartphones). Here are some pics from our walk.

Then I had a rainbow following me everywhere. Maybe it's telling me something...

So from our walk, I had trouble with my phone uploading all of the augments that were posted on one layer, which as you can see in the last photo, a majority of spinning loading circles surrounded my phone screen and the only image (for some reason likes me), is the rainbow. My speculation is that the rest of the images were the size of 400[+]x400[+].

I'm in hope that there is a ton of potential in augmented reality where the possibilities of physically interacting with augmented objects within the GPS-controlled application.

Intro to Layar+Psychogeography

First off, I'm not sure whether we have discussed about psychogeography in class, which according to Guy Debord, a founding member of Situtationist International, is "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals."

Now the task of the activity of the map is to imagine that you are running with an unlit Olympic torch at the start [1]. You then run to some fire [2], which leads you to a lit Olympic torch [3], and finally, you must make your way to the grass area within the concave boundaries of the outside Burk Hall building. You are running on a track [4] and you have to reach the rock, which you will stand up and bestow upon your torch with your phone.

It's an experiment within virtual space and psychogeography, to which your imagination will be dependent upon something that doesn't exist in a physical context, rather virtual.

My funny, yet subtle tale of my GoCar experience

October 13, 2011 was the day when our class (although it was an option for anyone to have a chance at the GoCar) got the chance to drive around the GoCars for our locative media class. I was pretty excited, but nervous at the fact that it was gonna be my first time driving around San Francisco, considering the fact that I was a bit paranoid of traffic over there (or overall paranoid of everything) but then again, it seemed like a great chance to experience the other parts of the city I have yet to explore. There were a couple of locations and attractions that I've always wanted to explore, like Ocean Beach, the windmills in Golden Gate Park, and most of SF that tourists don't frequent, or places that doesn't smell or look like downtown. It's quite a tale, with some antics and quirks that went along and a bit of incompetency, so here's my journey:

First up, I decided to ride a cable car, which was my first time riding in one. It was a sunny, hot day and I wanted to become a tourist for a day. The line got pretty long, where the line started close by the ticket booth. I got to ride on the cable car by hopping onto the side, which was a bit fun, but quite expensive ($6.00 for a one-way trip). I pulled out my Android phone to check out Google Maps and found the location of the GoCars station, to which the address I typed in was '2175 Hyde St.', according to the schedule posted on the class website. Now this is where some things went a bit wrong that day.

Now I thought the cable car would take me directly or close by the GoCars station, where our class was meeting, but I actually took the cable car that was going to Powell & Mason. I panicked for a bit, but didn't worry as much to see that according to my GPS, the address wasn't far from where the cable car took it's last stop. The consequence for that was that I had to walk up some steep hills to get to Hyde St.. It was a brutal walk, because for one, I was going to be late, since the time was around 2:10 and we were suppose to meet at 2:30, and two, I was carrying a heavy bag on my shoulder. So yeah, think about that and always remember to bring a water bottle with you.

I finally got up the hill and was on Hyde St.. Now all I had to do was simply find '2175 Hyde St.' and starting riding around SF. But there was just one strange thing about the address that I took from the website; when I got to the 2100 Hyde street sign, '2175' doesn't exist. So that was when I called Paula and told her that I was lost, but never questioned the fact that the number might have been wrong or not, but I didn't fret, only to walk back and forth for almost 30 minutes, until I did something else that changed my perspective on where the station was: I googled GoCars and saw that the address number was 2715, not 2175. Oops.

All of sudden, I put my phone in my bag and ran for it. I almost rolled down the hill when I got to 2300 because of the sudden incline. I became a bit haughty, after seeing that I was getting closer to 2700, where we were suppose to meet up, to the fact that I was starting to have this manic laugh, like when Dr. Evil laughs when he wants to rule the world by holding the world ransom world for a billion dollars, only that I was gonna rule the streets of San Francisco for one or two hours.

So forward to testing the car, I finally got on the road with the GoCar. It was a thrill to drive on a not-so-busy Beach St., which was fantastic to see tourists and locations that I've never been to before. The audio navigator was pretty good in giving me a historical tour of the places I was driving on and to my destination. What was exciting about the navigation was that it gave a choice to go to certain locations, like whether I wanted to check out the recreational areas, the restaurants, or simply go back to where I started and finish my tour immediately (no way I would do that, yet).

My first major drive was going through Beach St., then I made my way by going to Bay St., which I came to see Fort Mason Green, a park that is part of Fort Mason Center. I then took a turn at Laguana St. in order to drive through Marina Blvd. I then took Mason St., to which I was led to one of the panoramic views of the Golden Gate Bridge. The tour guide gave me an option to park my car to check out the Farallones Marine Sanctuary, or take a stroll around the Golden Gate Promenade and its beach. I had to take all of my stuff with me everywhere whenever I would park my car because the trunk didn't have a proper key to lock my stuff, so I couldn't frolic around the beach, playing in the sand or run around and the fact that I had class at around 5:00, I needed to limit my time with the tour.

On my trip to the beach, I found these strange, geometric bedrocks, spread with seaweed on it. Every time the waves would recede back to the sea, the water that is engulfed into the spacing of the rocks was a beauty to look at.

I got back on my car, but had a bit of trouble getting the car started, not knowing where to start the engine at all. It was troubling for me because cars were coming and going, delaying their parking time and my useful incompetence, which will be explained later on. I was then told to go to Crissy Field Ave., make my way towards Long Ave, and then drive to Marine Dr, which headed towards Fort Point and a much closer view of the bridge. I got to the location, only to sit in my car, as if I was watching a drive-in move, at the same time, looking at the back of my trunk because there was no lock to it.

Looking at the waves with the cool, breezy wind and city buildings in the background made the viewing almost movie-like, where the static buildings and movement in the area was a canvas, already painted by architects, but is continued by the inhabitants of the city. I move on to Lincoln Blvd and led on get up and close to the toll booth of the bridge via parking lot. I thought I was going to be led to drive on the bridge a couple of times during the whole trip, but nevertheless, it was quite a sight to be near the bridge without paying a toll. I quickly drove around the lot and as I about to head back on the road, a couple was dancing to some swing music, people were viewing the spectacle, I was slowly driving to check out the scene, only because there was a police car in front of me. I yelled out for an encore, but never got one.

I went back on the road, heading towards the Presidio. I come towards Baker Beach, my second stop to another beach area. I recall that this was a nude beach, but luckily, none were to be found. I remember seeing this beach on television a couple of times, where most of the time, the beach was used as a background drop for nude models to pose for a calendar being sold for AIDS or cancer charities.

I carry on my destination back to the road and head onto El Camino Del Mar for a while, leading me to a location where I recall coming to a couple of times. It's one of the most beautiful spots to look upon that I have become fond of. I come across Lincoln Park, an 18-hole golf course and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, one of my favorite that houses classical works of art, from Monet (Water Lilies) to El Greco (St. John the Baptist). I had a bit of fun driving around the fountain twice, which almost made me a bit dizzy after the second time.

I made my way back on to El Camino Del Mar and continued to explore the richness of the forestry, taking a break from the concrete and buildings that flood people's minds when they think of SF man-made buildings/structures (Transamerica Pyramid, Bank of America Center, City Hall, Fisherman's Wharf). I make my way to Point Lobos Ave and head on to the Great Highway, leading to one of the most longest beaches I've seen so far in my life, Ocean Beach. I've always wanted to check out the place before, but never got to because it always started to turn to dusk when the bus would reach my would-be destination.

I then head towards to Golden Gate Park, which lead me to see the two Dutch Windmills. As I go through the park, I keep on driving in John F. Kennedy Drive, where I saw the Bison Paddock (unfortunately, all of the Bison were in their cages by then), a somewhat hidden, beautiful, small waterfall situated around Lloyd Lake (if I recall). I made a turn at Transverse Dr. and was told to keep driving towards Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, but another part of that road was closed, so I made a turn to Crossover Dr and that's where I get lost at one point of the trip.

After some confusion, I made my way back to the "right" streets when the navigator finally speaks up and tells me that I'm at the Haight-Asbury district, a street well known for it's upbringing on hippie culture. After leaving the Haight, I got caught up in traffic. This is where my trip started to get much worse. At one point, while sitting on a red light, having a bunch of cars right behind me, I thought to myself, "I wonder what this switch does...". 

The engine stops. The light turns to green. Why was I such a dope to follow my impulses? I was so terrified, that I got out of my car immediately, pushed my car to the side and tired to start the engine again. As I got it to work, I get closer to a fire hydrant, which I lost my grip with the hand brakes, twisting the engine throttle forward, thus crashing into the hydrant. Fortunately, the crash created a dent in the middle of the car; I'm just reluctant that it wasn't my first time crashing a vehicle (my first time crashing a car that I drove was the first time I ever drove a car myself; my Nissan Xterra. I was trying to clean the garage one summer day and I happen to hit one of the pillars on the front of the house. It made a huger dent on the side of the SUV, but was fixed later on.)

As time was passing by, I got more bored and worrisome that I was going to be late for my class that already started. I was waiting for the navigation to speak up to where I was going, but I just drove endlessly around random streets that I tried to correlate the street names I recognized that was likely close to downtown. But after ten or so minutes, I finally found Hyde St., and that's where my haptic trip ended.

So that was my experience with the GoCar Tours. I had the most fun exploring San Francisco this way and would genuinely love to have a friend join the ride with me, only on the condition that he/she share driving privileges. I would have never seen another part of the city that didn't look like old buildings, only to believe that there is a part of SF that doesn't look like downtown at all. If I was given the chance to go another go at Cocarting, I would absolutely do it. I thank Paula for giving us a chance to taking a test drive on the GoCars. It gave me a chance to explore SF like I never did before. The experience of sightseeing in an open space without the hassle of a personal motor vehicle is fantastic in that you do not have to maintain it yourself. I didn't tell the guys about the dent though, but hopefully they'll bill me for that.

Sorry guys.

Street Art: From Textiles to Not Getting Arrested For It

I really admire artists taking their work outside rather than an art gallery or museum, although some of the work featured here are contained in galleries. I'm a bit apathetic in doing public art interventions, but considering that San Francisco hosts a wide variety of artists, I, a little 21-year old East Bay kid, shouldn't be scared of spreading my artwork around this beautiful, but egregious city.

Yeah, Screw the Fax Machine!!!

I find this video to be pretty funny, in terms of making a satirical eulogy to old electronics.

Slice the Orange, Cut the Pastry, Anarchy is for Beginners

So as for our reading assignment, I chose to read the Headmap Manifesto, a pretty long, but worthy read because it gets a lot of it's points straight and to the point, considering the massive material that is complied.

Here are a couple of ideas that stood out as I drudged through this art manifesto:

-Locative media tries to distance itself from net art

-We are using mobile devices to coordinate places itself from net art

[From our eye, we can only see limited space around us, not what the mobile can function as an aerial eye of the land surrounding us.]

-"We make money, not art."

[I've heard of this quote before somewhere. If the possibility of researching new technologies in order to further advances to faster labor, thinking, etc., then we could find quicker ways of making works of art. We can build machines that are more efficient and quicker than a labor's/artist's hand.]

-Locative media is either annotative (virtually tagging the world) or phenomenological (tracing the action of the subject of the world.)

-It's a social knowledge on a landscape. Audiowalks, space is agitated, history of the place played back to them (alive without unseen history, stones, layers).

[Hearing someone's voice through these audiowalks gives you a sense of perspective of history, a sense of visuals that are stuck within the location's past, but time changes, people shift, but the voice telling it's history will be stuck, reliving the past.]

-Web lacks concept of identity. You may have an address (email, phone #, function as a persistent extension, of you, collecting and facilitating the exchange of messages), but they don't facilitate more sophisticated transactions on your behalf. Webpage is state entity, a symbol, rather, than a transaction mediating entity.

[I feel that this is a pretty good description of the web, which describes that the web doesn't have a brain, it cannot function as a full human being, but it can replicate it. A human being grows, thinks for itself, shares ideas; the web does all of the same things, expect we're the ones making it function. It lacks depth in human emotion and voice. It does not sympathize or empathize. It's function is to give a stifle of external communication that we could not otherwise get when communicating with an international audience. The web is a rational being, not a romantic being.]

-Leave a note at a geographic location.

[There are certain things that we psychologically leave traces of ourselves geographically in terms of one's memories, but physically, we input a memory into a human being, thus leaving a "note" on the person's life. Sometimes the note, whether it be a sticky note or a permanent scar to name a few, it can stick with us for long periods of time or not much.

In terms of geographic location, as populations change, buildings rise up or blown away for any reason, the only thing that is left of the "note" is how we interpret it in terms of size, event, or meaning of loss or gain (Holocaust museums, concentration camps, World Trade Center, hospital where a birth of a newborn was).]

I also read Locative Media in Brazil by Andres Lemos, which focuses on how location-based technologies could improve social networking, shifting towards to a industrial labor economy, and spreading ideas in a now, newly industrialized country. Compared to the reading of the Headmap Manifesto, seemed to be quite engaged in the reading because of it's discussion on how a developing country is expanding its technological endeavors. Here again, are some points that I found interesting in this article:

-Place is no longer a problem of accessing and exchanging information in cyberspace "up there", but an opportunity to see things "down there".

-Public interventions could occupy advertising panels, creating tension between the market and the "world of life."

-Electronic annotation is like electronic graffiti that allows people to speak about their urban environment.

-Locative media could generate forms of social appropriation, citizenship, and sociability through locative media.

-The desire to find and locate everything is a way to rationalize space and to shut down the possibility of surprises. It's technical way to fight the fear of the stranger and the imponderable.

QR Code Culture Jamming

I've always wanted to continue my Culture Jamming project from ART 410: Conceptual Strategies in some form or another, but I couldn't find the right means to do so. Now with the concept and idea of QR codes, I feel that this would be a better way to express my creativity and dissatisfaction over certain corporate entities by making my work more of a mystery to the public eye, without the exact reason as to what the QR code would turn out to be.

Placing QR codes in public space gives me a sense of security, compared to placing an actual logo close by (see blog post), mostly because the public (and probably the authorities) won't get to see me posting questionable logos on the spot. Instead, it gives me more leverage of anonymity to simply places the QR logos or better yet, sneak in the codes around the possible perimeters (stores, etc.). It would be a bit more easier to make multiple copies of the codes and distribute them easily (I won't say how; maybe for morally good reasons).

The question to this is whether the public that have smartphones, who also have barcode scanning apps on their phone, are willing to point their cameras to the code.

I have created a new logo just recently, which is a modified Gamestop logo:

When a video game screenshot was posted, one poster decided to troll and ask "is this Battletoads?"

The game is considered one of the hardest of all time, often causing players to quit within the first three levels. The story concerns a woman dressed in leather known as the "Dark Queen" kidnapping a princess as well as one of the Battletoads known as "Pimple". It is up to Rash and Zitz to save them.

The meme took on a new life in 2007 when /b/ decided to call over 40 Gamestops asking to preorder Battletoads for Wii. Unfortunately for the employees within, there had not been a Battletoads game since the mid 1990's. This caused confusion to employees. This confusion would turn to rage as btards kept calling. Gamestop eventually told employees at a conference to handle the calls politely so as to protect the image of the chain. This came after some employees had yelling fits over the phone. [1]

For years, I've heard about this certain meme around the internet and on cable television, mostly on shows that feature video games (e.g. G4, Spike). It was sort of funny to hear about how people were calling Gamestop to pre-order a game that never existed, or the fact that the meme was mostly done to create self-gratification over oneself, as the origins of the meme came from 4chan, a well-known image chatboard, known for its anonymity, an advantage which internet users use to make deviant attacks online, as well as in real life.

I honestly feel sad that there seems to be less of a political or good purpose to specifically call people endlessly to create misfortunes for others just because it sounds fun. That's probably my inquiry about culture jamming: is the purpose of culture jamming to question our sense of space and mind in today's world, where consumption has been a factor in our lives; that U.S. corporations have dominated our ways of thinking in terms of symbols (McDonald's Arch's), places (DisneyLand), people (Michael Jordan), thing (Paris Hilton), etc.? Do we, as consumers, have to question or just simply be fed, question less and less, and that would be our meaning of life?

Reference

[1] http://ohinternet.com/Is_this_Battletoads%3F

And here are the QR codes from my previous project and current:

Abercrombie & Fitch

A & F Kids

Hollister

Diesel Clothing

Old Navy

Gamestop

UPDATE [10-3-11]:

So I finally got the chance to post some of the QR codes in public. From the first two photos, I posted the 'Diesel' and 'Abercrombie & Fitch' on October 2, 2011.