OPENSOURCE LONDON

Flow and the feeling of being in the moment -

You know that moment when you sit in a chair and read a book for a while, the light changes and  the wind whips the trees against the window of your room. You however stay transfixed by the object in front of you. Flow is an interesting concept - apparently it is the space in which action and awareness merge and is a sign of the mind being ultra focussed.

I have been thinking about this concept over the last couple of days and it seems like an interesting space to inhabit. Flow theory was first introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, he describes it as like playing jazz. You can ceck out his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

"being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."

Looking at that quote I can begin to see times that I may be in flow. The most interesting flow for me is playing music. It just clicks and the world falls away - I know we are entering flow because John the bassist will generally turn the lights off and we just play - that is a nice feeling, being lost in sound. But I personally don't think flow exists just for the producers.

A lot of the characteristics of flow
- Concentrating and focus
- A loss of the feeling of self consciousness
- Distorted sense of time
- action awareness merging

Flow for me appears to have two sides - On one we have the producers, the creators and the doers and on the other we have the consumers, absorbers and the fascinated. Still thinking

In a way time is relative to the level of engagement and engagement is relative to the level of interestingness. Does concentration speed up or slow down our experience of time? I know this is probably all cod. I had it kicking around in my head and just wanted to write it down.

I guess we are speeding it up to slow it down - I guess we can just get into this flow....jazz!

A little musical project: EJECT EJECT EJECT tracks

I have been making some electro stuff for a while now and have never shown it to anyone, well, my Brother and he seemed to like it. I thought I should put something up on this blog. Here are two kind of tracks from my side project "Eject Eject Eject" - The first track is "34576" and the second track is "Poetry for the dead" (it has a vocal on it but I am not quite ready to put that up yet...Need more confidence.) -  I made these in Reason. Of which I am a big fan. Hope you like it - I do - Comments welcome. : )

"34576"

"Poetry for the dead"

The rank deluxe single art work

As you probably know I am in a band called The rank deluxe and we are signed to Fat-cat records. Anyway we have an album out soon and have so far put out one single. Here is the artwork for the first and second singles. The pictures were shot by the legendary Nic Shonfeld. I really like the way the images look...hope you like them too.
                                     

                                     

 

 

The sounds of nature

I was sitting at my computer and got the need for some birdsong, not enough of it these days. One things for sure it definitely takes me away from where ever I am. Well if you fancy getting away from it all for a bit then click here for some tunes....my favourite is the The Living Outback: Pied Butcherbird - really nice and chilled.

Media-defender hacking teenager...interesting story

Click here if you want learn about the company getting hacked by a teenager during his summer...

The flaming lips with all your power what would you do?

If you could blow up the world with the flick of a switch
Would you do it?
If you could make everyobody poor just so you could be rich
Would you do it?
If you could watch everybody work while you just lay on your back
Would you do it?
If you could take all the love without giving any back
Would you do it?
And so we cannot know ourselves or what we'd really do...

With all your power
With all your power
With all your power
What would you do?

The world of music in your hands...no excuses...

Now all we need is a record deal - Oh, well perhaps Apple could hook us up....In the words of Art Brut "We started a band"......Rock on! here are a couple of songs from two ibands.....Maybe got a way to go yet....but soon enough....soon enough!

Jay-Z, U2 and the live experience

When music makes money, it really makes money....Jay-Z, Gangster inspired business mogul has managed to secure a ten year deal with Live nation for $150 million. Now some would see this as quite excessive. I personally think that this is a very shrewd piece of business by the live nation crew. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to work out that an album sell for approx £9 on a good day and a ticket to a live show...well it has a value only the buyer can determine(just check out Ebay). The logic is simple - In a digital, networked economy people place a very low value on anything that can be copied. Albums can be downloaded for free and those numbers that do sell are seeing their album sales decline. The live side of the music business is a different story. As previously discussed "Reality is the new experience" and the live experience is one in which the band can sell an awful lot of merchandise and offer the fan a completely unique experience, not just musically but outside of mediocrity. So it seems the technology that spawned MTV and enabled bands to Virtually tour continuously anywhere at any time and sell millions of records has performed a 360 and now reduces the value of an album to zero. This Zero value for the actual product has led bands to now seek revenue from actually toruing and  playing shows. You can't copy the experience of a live show, hence its perceived value is higher. Being in a band myself, this non-stop touring lifestyle can seem intimidating and exciting. I gather from some of the recent articles about EMI, that they are looking to start tpuring their acts intensively. I am still intrigues to see what this will bring..Will the music get better? Will bands last longer? Will we see touring festivals? This deal, along with the U2 $100 million, will make the musicians rich and if technology doesn't change rapidly.....could make the companies wealthier...Only time will tell and one thing is for sure if it doesn't work out....Jay-Z will have the cash to sue.  Enjoy the Jay-Z classic.

snowing in London

Its snowing in london.....in April.....hmmmm....Well enjoy this classic Calvin and Hobbes.

MODE 2 @ lazarides inc gallery

So I was walking through Soho on my lunch break friday and noticed that one of my favourite artists, MODE 2, was showing as lazarides gallery....I dived straight in and was really pleased to see not only some amazing work by MODE 2, but also some work under construction - Oh and I also got to meet the artist too. Not bad considering.....So who is MODE 2. Well I first heard about mode 2 when I was a young whippersnapper growing up. I managed to get hold of a copy of a book called "spraycan art". I tried to graf a bit myself, but I wasn't a) good enough or b) a fast enough runner so I decided it would probably be best if I was just a spectator. I own a nice print by Mode 2, its the picture featured, title is "kneel". Well, if you get the chance go check out the show I think it is running for the whole of April and if your feeling flush, a spare few grand maybe you can pick up an original....or even better commission him to do an original.

Does Facebook addiction make you "feel" lonelier?

Having survived the natural dangers of hunter/gather, the intellectual difficulties of tribal, the exploitation and world wars of hierarchical. We find ourselves amidst the the network society. Could the connectivity of the 21st century actually harbor a hidden social danger? could it actually be a paradise lost?

On reading Talebs "fooled by randomness" page 65, I may have found a connnection between his ideas on exposure to the volatility of markets, noise and information and the emotional effects exposure to a social networks such as facebook might have on individual psychology. Taleb argues that the closer you get to perfect information, noise increases more than proportionately then signal. He outlines the idea that the narrower the time scale of observation the lower the probability of success.

Talebs optimistic example also emphasises the idea that negative feelings are amplified(more-so than the positive) when there is a loss. If we now flip this optimistic example over to Facebook replacing the "payoff" with attention and "loss" with (no activity or lower attention to the user) an interesting picture of perceived loneliness emerges. Could it be that the send/receive button email addiction has evolved into a monster that encompass our entire social sphere? by constantly pressing the "pay me some attention" button we are digging an emotional hole for ourselves, diluting our social "Ribena" more than we need too? Just as a watched pot never boils, does a watched social network creates anxiety, attention deficit and emotional longing. This raises some interesting questions. Firstly, How does this affect our outer social activity? does it enhance it or reduce it? Secondly, do we become more confident or less confident as individuals in actual social interaction from prolonged exposure to Social networks? If anyone knows of any thinking around this it would be great hear what you think/know/disagree with. I don't really check my Facebook that often....I think I'll keep it that way or even less from now on.

If you are addicted to clicking the email/facebook button - Here's some understanding from the guys at mind hacks http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2006/09/why_email_is_addicti.html

I guess loneliness is relative to the opportunity you have to prove how popular or unpopular you are. thus like the concept of ignorance being learned. Can it be that we also learn to be lonely?

eidolonTLP: The mystery continues...

This is developing at a rate of knots.....real or unreal. I find it to be a nice diversion from my day. Here is the latest installment of eidolonTLP

Embrace uncertainty indeed!

I was recently invited by a friend to attend a lecture by the author Nassim Nicholas Taleb author of "fooled by randomness" and "The Black swan" of course I agree with his premise whole heartedly. Nothing is certain and the only guarantee is change. Thus I subscribe. It seems to me that many of people in the audience at the LSE public lecture were quite insulted by the idea that most people are successful through luck. In fact one guy shouted from the balcony that his ideas were pointless and pretty much absurd.....and that its easy to say that there will be another market crash and professed the next one was a certainty. I found to be quite funny, he obviously didn't understand the premise....Taleb is interested in the reasons behind black swans as much as that fact that they will exist. We say, "confusion makes you smarter". So embrace uncertainty because everyone is ignorant...the more you know the less you understand. Once you think you've got the sphere of knowledge licked you are heading for a fall. Stay stupid, stay confused and be ignorant.

Cymatics and the generation of hydrogen!!

Once again I think I am mad as a hatter: I have a crux with the generation of hydrogen and the use of hydrogen in vehicles. I know what you are going to say..."your bonkers! Why do you care about this stuff?". For some reason as a younger man I was obsessed and I mean obsessed with using hydrogen as a means of fuel. This was about 7 or 8 years ago and the shelves of bookstores carried probably about two titles on the subject of "peak oil" and "hydrogen energy". So fast forwards to the present day and the dream of hydrogen as a clean fuel is being marred by many issues, two in particular. Firstly is the extracting hydrogen from gas and the second is using hydrogen in a car the same way you would use petrol. Which to me is very dumb indeed.

Firstly, I was reading an article about a top bio-chemist. obviously on the payroll of some energy company talking about the fact that the most efficient way to extract hydrogen is from gas. I don't mean to point this out to the guy. But isn't that like the opposite of what we are trying to achieve. What's the point of taking hydrogen from natural gas? I mean its smacks of cronyism to me. BIG TIME. So this brings me onto my second crux which is a direct result of the first point. Creating hydrogen en masse makes it a danger to society, hard to move, store, dangerous in cars, ect ect. But we all know many probelms require many solutions and thats the reason companies stay in business. THE USE OF A FUEL TANK seems to be very very combustion engine and shows a lack of innovation.

This idea is in no way developed, it is an idea. Thats all. So I was watching a video on youtube about the effects of sound on matter, Cymatics. You can watch some great movies about it here. Resonance it seems is a wonderful way to effect the state of matter. Different frequencies can excite the state of sand, water. So I got to thinking....If resonance can break a wine glass, why can it break a water molecule. A google search later and it turns out that John Kanzius has invented a way to split water into hydrogen and oxygen with a radio frequency.

Hmmm....I mean how much energy does a radio frequency use? I will hazard a guess that it is a lot less than the extraction natural gas. Assuming this information is true(it could be false). Doesn't the concept of a fuel tank seem a little wierd? Why not just have a tank of water and split it out when neccesary, burn it and then re-use the water again? I don' know maybe I am being an idealist again! Problems are created so that they can be solved. I mean surely we have the technology to do this...I mean surely!

If you love puzzles you will love this!

Untangle the knot-- easy peasy right?! Not  click here for a headache

- thanks zefrank