Flagons Den

Kevin Warwick looks like he knows a thing or two about cyborgs.  He’s trying to become one.  So far he has RFID tags in him and chips which enable him to wirelessly connect to his wife.  And I thought Stelarc was pushing the body/machine crossover  - seems it’s becoming more and more popular.

mock up of night vision contact lenses

I found this article which is about night vision contact lenses. Seems plausible enough.

I would like to create some sort of cyborg - maybe by arguing we are already cyborgs through our adoption of technology to supplement our “meat” state. Our minds no longer wholly inhabit our brains as we have created cyberselves which extend our thoughts and personalities beyond the flesh. I am interested in the concept of emotion - the most human characteristic, and how this could be manipulated or interpreted by some sort of computer interface, trying to control a piece of software through emotive state? Or feeding emotive data into a program to create an interpretation by the computer?

Not sure, but sounds big and difficult.

paralysed man standing wearing robot legs

I found this
article which is about exoskeletons for paralysed people to enable them to walk.  Digital prosthetic anyone?

I also found a site about HAL a japanese robot suit. Very robocop.

Enrolled yesterday, did the whole induction thing and met up with all the Idat peeps after a long old year.  I really like Dan the new year tutor as he was straight up about everything - should be a good chap to work with.

We had a little meet and greet with the new Speedy - an Italian guy called Giovanni, very smiley and chirpy which is nice. Talked nonsense and metaphysics with Mike Phillips - so no change there.

Very much looking forwards to next week as it all gets going for the last push - 4th and final year.

Other than that had a gig in the THistle - not so great for me this time but the band sounded good and Rosco had a very interested fan… I was expecting his inner plumber to erupt as the urge to service a boiler became stronger, but no, he just admitted to the crowd that he was “very scared“. Sheesh.

So… did two more gigs last weekend each went better than the last, Sunday in Paignton was a small crowd but a fun gig.  During the week though I have been doing stacks of DIY and today was the last (almost) day of painting. woohoo.

Back to uni tomorrow for induction and enrolment…

Here we go then.

I just walked out on a gig… in the Millbrook football club.  Some geezer called Tony’s 50th, and my rap freestyle was barely recieved. Lets call it mutual numbness - neither of us, the crowd or me were feeling it.  I have been DIY-ing all afternoon with gripfill and so I think I’m a bit messed up from the fumes.  A gig wasn’t really the best cure.  Maybe better tomorrow - hopefully.

Been doing the dad thing all day - nice to have the time before new semester starts.  Goldie has a third tooth through today.  I have just had a band practice - needs some radical changes it seems.  But onwards and upwards - we have three gigs this weekend. should be dope, the brook, Annabels and the Spinning Wheel - just got to get rubber stamp on Sunday.

Loving the squib cakes tonight - we should play it.

I had a little time pondering the nature of music as an interpretive metaphor/conduit of a given persons mental/emotional state. Could you tap into someones biorhythms and convert that data into frquencies? Bass for the pulse - percussion for synaptic feed back - strings for alpha waves - etc.  If you could rig up some realtime feedback to perform it to an audience it would be cool - depending on the imposed environmental triggers, the soundtrack would change.  So with varied stimulus visual/physical the audio will reflect this.  Audience envoke the stimulus? Possibly.

I will think on it.

I have decided to restart my blog ( I let the other one wither and die like my office plant ) and my theme for the academic side of things will be: Post human civilisation; the use of cyber-technology as our collective prosthesis.

Sounds convoluted I know, but my aim is to see why we covet that touch screen iPhone, that bluetooth, GPS, RFID, internet, home servers, avatars, online worlds, etc etc. We are set on a evolutionary course which has extended us as a species beyond our mortal capabilities - see 2001 for the ultimate synopsis (monkey picks up stick = space flight).  Essentially we have become a cyborg race, beyond prosthetics, to online extensions of our cyber-selves.

Anyway - that’s the gist of it - stay tuned and enjoy