Here is a Quartz Composer / Core Image port of the animated quasicrystals that have been going around recently.

It runs in realtime at 60fps at 1440×900 on my old Macbook Pro.

Unfortunately the video compression really kills this :’(

Here’s the source code for the Core Image kernel. It’s very simple!

Or download the Quartz Composer file.

If you see something, say something. This is the message of a nationwide campaign by Homeland Security to encourage citizens to report suspicious activity to authority figures. But it can also be seen as a call to action, to be conscious of what we see in the world and to share it with others.

I’d like to start a citizen’s photoessay platform to share what we see. If you see something, say something.

Here is something that I was seeing today, the toy section at KMart by Astor Place.

This weekend I hosted a sleepover hackathon at my apartment as hurricane Irene swept over New York City.

Scott, Bryan, and I participated in the Node.js Knockout, a 48-hour global competition to produce something cool with Node.js. Node.js is an up-and-coming web server which is particularly good at handling real-time interactivity. For example it’s very easy to make a web-based chat room or multiplayer game using Node.js.

Inspired by Carl Jung’s Man and His Symbols, we decided to make a collaborative environment for exploring the collective unconscious. We spent a few days before the competition and Friday night discussing how best to do this in a way that we could accomplish in 48 hours. We settled on a collaboratively edited web of images.

On Friday night we play-tested using Google Docs to make sure the concept would work.

Worried that we’d lose power by Sunday morning, we worked extra hard all day Saturday. This pushed us to finish a working prototype by Saturday night.

But with Irene causing us little disruption, we were able to play-test and further polish the site all day Sunday. We were pushing features right up until the deadline at 8pm EST but it wasn’t as much of a last-minute scramble as these hackathons usually are.

Psyche is a web of serendipitously inter-related images reflecting participants’ whims. Participants collaboratively explore the collective unconscious, adding images and drawing relations, creating symbolic and aesthetic clusters.

Check it out! If you enjoy it, please vote for us in the competition.

I recently returned from a ten day vipassana meditation retreat at a meditation center in rural Massachusetts. For ten days there was no speaking, reading, writing, physical exercise other than walking and stretching. Basically no activities other than meditation. Here was my daily schedule:

The meditation technique is called vipassana, where passana means “to see” and vipassana means “to see things as they really are”. It is a traditional Burmese technique with Buddhist origins. The center I went to was established in 1982 by S.N. Goenke and his followers. Goenke had previously achieved great success teaching vipassana in India. The Massachusetts center was the first center he established in North America and there are now about 100 centers worldwide.

The entire course is taught through audio and video recordings of Goenke. During group meditation sessions, Goenke’s audio track leads guided meditations, which progressively teach the vipassana technique over the ten days, the “how”. In the evenings, there are videotaped, hour-long discourses where Goenke discusses the theoretical underpinnings of the technique and its relationship to Buddhism, the “why”.

These recordings are both the strength and weakness of this course. Strength because Goenke is a gifted teacher who has designed a beautifully optimized curriculum. His instruction is perfectly delivered in a hypnotic tone with just the right amount of repetition. This instruction combined with the disciplined setting and schedule allows an extremely deep exploration of the meditative state, perhaps as deep as one can hope to achieve in ten days.

The weakness is that the recordings, especially the video discourses which were recorded in 1991, are fixed and due to the setup, dehumanizing. The teacher cannot cater his discourse to the audience and you cannot question the teacher because he isn’t present. There are assistant teachers whom you may ask clarifying questions (one of the only exceptions to no speaking), but I found this to be an inadequate. I felt that the pervasive recorded setup stripped the assistant teachers of any authority.

My experience over the ten days was all over the map. It included excruciating physical pain (sitting for ten hours a day leads to extreme back and leg pain) and frightening emotional confusion (from subconscious issues brought to the surface by the technique combined with not being able to structure my thoughts with conversation or writing). But it also included insight at the experiential level (as opposed to just intellectual insight) and a few profound experiences. I left the retreat feeling very balanced, very centered. By practicing patience and listening with such extreme discipline over these ten days, I feel that I have more capacity to connect with other people and with life.

I will perhaps write a later post going into my experiences in detail, but for now I will give a few practical tips if you feel like this is a journey you would want to take.

1. Make it your own experience. Goenke talks about the experience being unique for each person, but not enough in my opinion. Some of his conclusions which he says are “clear” and “universal” I found not to be so. He’s the only source of intellectual input you have, other than your own thoughts, so this can be confusing. Just remember that you should listen for his wisdom but you do not have to frame your experience through his perspective.
2. Whenever possible, meditate in the meditation hall. My friend Charles, gave me this off-hand advice just before the course started and it made all the difference. When you’re in the hall, as opposed to meditating privately in your residence, you will get energy and inspiration from the other meditators. This is very helpful when you’re in pain or tired and you just want to give up and lie down. To get the most of your ten days, make a strong determination to always meditate in the hall.
3. Go ahead and fart in the meditation hall. Or burp, cough, sneeze, etc. It’s part of the detoxing process which your body will go through as you “untie knots” in your mind. Also, for this reason, bring a good water bottle and drink plenty of water throughout the day.
4. Keep in mind that you cannot seriously hurt yourself sitting. So do your best to keep a good, straight posture, then work through the pain. Sleep whenever possible. Sleep is when your muscles rebuild themselves and you will need strong core muscles to sit properly for ten hours a day. Goenke will talk about the pain being caused not just by the body but by the mind, which is more practical than it sounds. Much of my muscle tension I found to be connected with being antsy; only when I calmed my mind was I able to release these muscles. Finally, a technique that I used during breaks to release muscle tension is to lie flat on my back or my stomach, then imagine that I was a puddle getting flatter and wider, like a pancake when you pour it onto the pan.
5. Prepare mentally and physically a few days before. Shift to an earlier sleep schedule. Whatever your normal meditation practice time, double it. Quit alcohol, caffeine, etc. beforehand so you don’t have to deal with any withdrawal symptoms while you’re at the course. This is really serious work, make sure you are at the peak of your health, physically and mentally, before committing.
6. Stay the entire ten days. I wanted to leave at some point almost every day. The tenth day is especially important and cathartic, as you’re allowed to talk with fellow students and you find out that you’re not the only one who was in pain, or thought you were crazy, or disagreed with some teaching, or wanted to leave, etc.

I’m currently teaching a workshop at ITP called Psychedelic Video Manipulation in Quartz Composer. There’s a fantastic community of QC plug-in developers who are truly extending the functionality of QC. I’ve listed the developers I know of here. Please let me know if there’s anyone I should add to the list!

To install a QC plug-in, place the .plugin file in this location:

HD/Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Plug-Ins/xxx.plugin

CoGe

CoGe is an open source VJ application that uses Quartz Composer heavily. In addition, the CoGe developers publish some Quartz Composer plug-ins, including CoGeWebKit which lets you control a web browser and get its output as an image. I’d like to use this to create QC compositions which automatically load videos from Youtube.

Kineme

There are a bunch of useful plug-ins on this page. In particular, there are several plug-ins for integrating with hardware, including the Kinect, WiiMote, and Apple Multi-Touch devices. Also fun are Speech Synthesis (text to speech) and Freeboard (receive keyboard input as a string instead of lots of booleans). I also recommend Kineme’s QuartzCrystal, a $26 application that lets your render QC compositions as movies. You could alternately render movies using this technique if you have Quicktime Pro, but overall I like QuartzCrystal for the convenience.

Tom / bangnoise

Some really fun plug-ins here. My favorite is datamosh, which lets you manipulate video compression artifacts. I recommend getting the recent beta version of datamosh, at it has features like bloom and support for up to 10 videos (in Settings in the Inspector). To run datamosh, you will have to tell QC to run in “32 bit mode”. Select the QC application itself in the Finder (in HD > Developer > Applications), run File > Get Info, and check the box “Open in 32-bit mode”. Also Tom’s video delay plug-in is useful for experimenting with slit scan effects.

v002

A project of vade and bangnoise, several useful plug-ins here. Of note is the screen capture plug-in which lets you select an arbitrary region of your screen and use this live as an image in QC, which is useful for piping in graphics from another application (if the application doesn’t support Syphon).

Syphon

Syphon is a technology that lets applications share images with each other with high performance. It is supported by many VJ applications as well as Jitter, OpenFrameworks, Unity, and QC. The QC plug-ins let you serve images from QC to use in other applications, or take images in to QC from other applications. If you need to capture video in real-time from QC, serving the video through Syphon and capturing with the Syphon Recorder is probably your best bet performance wise.

Open Emu

Open Emu is a console game emulator that supports NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, etc. It has a QC plug-in which lets you emulate these games within QC, sending input in and getting out an image. In addition the NES emulator has some extra inputs that let you glitch out the game in various ways.

openFrameworks / Quartz Composer bridge

Lets you write QC plug-ins using openFrameworks. Useful for post-processing your existing oF projects, or writing new plug-ins. (Haven’t tried.)

1024

Box2D physics engine plug-in and some Kinect and computer vision plug-ins among others. (Haven’t tried.)

Quartz plug-ins from Google

Plug-ins for interacting with the ambient light sensor and motion sensor built in to the MacBook Pro. (Haven’t tried.)

Climb App

Extra image window plug-in, CSV importer plug-in.

I love chapter 4 of Michael Leyton’s Symmetry Causality Mind, titled Representation is Explanation.

The premise of this entire book is that we only have access to the present. Our experience of the past is constructed by our minds based on shapes in the present which we can use to causally infer the past. These shapes range from graffiti on the wall which we infer was the trace of the artist’s hand movement to arrangements of neuronal matter (memories) which we infer were caused by an episode in the past.

Note the distinction: we do not have access to the past, we only have access to a shape in the present (a memory) which we use to infer the past.

Our behavior co-opts this property of the universe. It’s useful for me to have a model of the past, so I habitually create shapes to represent my experience, recording memories in my mind, in writing, etc. so that in the future I can look at these shapes to infer the past. In Leyton’s words, “the writing of memory alters an object in order to determine the past that will be inferred from it.”

This process is beautifully illustrated in the movie Memento. The main character, due to a mental condition, can’t create long-term internal memories so he needs to create all of his memories externally by taking polaroids, writing constantly, and storing memories in other people, for example the clerk at his motel who tells him his room number (and has rented him several rooms).

Our model of our self is often as a contained entity which has persisted through time, apart from the world. But taking Leyton’s perspective, I see myself as a “pattern integrity”, newly existing at every instant of the present, which reads from memory within my body but also smeared across external space, to determine its co-evolution with the world.

This morning I was reading The Quantum Biologist’s post on peacocks and peacock spiders. I was struck by the existence of higher-level pattern integrities which use memory in the same way. As argued above, a human only has access to the present, so we set up systems (e.g. memory recording) by which a model of the past can be inferred, so that we are more adept at steering our path in the world. Likewise, the evolution of a species only has access to present. It has no direct access to what has worked or not worked in the world. So when it makes decisions, i.e. when mates are chosen, it uses features of the present to infer the past.

Evolutionary biologists argue that a peacock has huge feathers for the sake of having huge feathers. That is, the peacock’s huge feathers impress peahens because they show that they are successful enough to grow and carry around huge feathers, an otherwise useless feature.

In this way, the peacock’s feathers are a memory by which the peahen can infer the peacock’s past. This behavior is self-reinforcing. By mating with a peacock with impressive feathers, it is likely that the peahen’s chicks will also develop impressive feathers and have a better chance of finding a mate. The feathers serve as a memory for the entire lineage of peacocks.

This memory system is not just a crude “I made it” signal, but has evolved into its own elaborate language.

A footprint in the sand and a word written in the sand are both memories that allow us to infer the past. The difference is that the causal processes leading to the footprint are much more intrinsic to the world, depending on things like feet and gravity. The word, on the other hand, draws on a specific causal history that has been propagated and elaborated by a rich history of causal feedback loops, the evolution of the language.

The peahen’s aesthetic value system, which involves the patterns of “eyes” on the feathers and the way the feathers move, is likewise not intrinsic to the world. It is a specific language that the evolution of the species, when seen as a pattern integrity, has developed to store memory.

The idea that art is about self-expression is relatively modern.

I found a delightful story in the book I’m currently reading in a chapter about spontaneity and creativity.

In some older cultures, artists create sculptures by carving them out of bones. Except the artist is not seen as the creator in our modern sense. Rather, the final form is already in the bone and the artist just carves away the excess to reveal that form.

People don’t blame the artist if the sculpture doesn’t turn out well. Instead they say things like, “Sure have been some strange bones lately.”

Video I took on Scholes St in East Williamsburg last Christmas. Playing with selectively defocusing certain colors in the video (via Core Image filter in QC).

Audio captured raw, on site.

The New York Times reports on a study which concludes that moderate exercise, especially running, makes mice resistant to stress.

Here is my own theory, based on my own experience and some pop-sci tidbits.

The neural circuitry for fear, stress, and anxiety are tightly connected to the muscular system, particularly the large muscles in the legs. Excepting for modern humans, when these emotions kick in, it usually means you need to get ready to run very fast.

So by keeping these muscles in shape, stress is more easily dissipated. This is why I find capoeira to be one of the most beneficial physical exercises I’ve ever practiced. The training involves lots of squats to build endurance in the leg muscles. When you play capoeira, you need to keep your legs, glutes, and core tensed while you keep your mind and breathing calm. This is the polar opposite of most people’s day, keeping their legs exceptionally inactive while their mind and breathing are tensed.

I’ve been practicing regular meditation for the past few months. I try to do a 15 minute session in the morning and evening each day.

I got started by teaching myself Natural Stress Relief (NSR). NSR is a spin-off of Transcendental Meditation (TM), of David Lynch fame. TM is one of the most studied forms of meditation. Unfortunately, TM courses are expensive and its organizational structure is questionable. NSR does away with the organization and some of the dubious claims of TM, offering simply a manual for self study and claiming only that it will effectively reduce stress levels.

In the first few weeks, the most pronounced effect I had was the elimination of grogginess. Even though I wasn’t getting much sleep at the time, I felt the meditation sessions helped me stay clear headed throughout the day.

The NSR manual is quite good and I would recommend it to beginners. In addition to describing the practice, which in this case consists of repeating a one syllable mantra in your head, the NSR manual gives useful tips about approaching the meditation session with the right attitude. For example, don’t get discouraged if you get bored while meditating. This is a sign of stress. When stressed, it’s harder to keep the mind still, but when you do it will be especially beneficial. There’s no such thing as a good or bad meditation session.

I’ve recently been experimenting with points of focus other than the NSR mantra. For me, meditation is about keeping the conscious mind still. That is, not following trains of thought but instead just watching them go by. So it doesn’t matter where I settle my attention so much as that I keep it still. Focusing on my breathing, or the sounds I hear without interpretation (deep listening), or the point of contact in contact improvisation are each worthwhile meditative focal points.

A good physical analogy for meditation is practicing balance. When you stand on one leg you need to constantly make adjustments to keep from falling over. You need to be aware of when you’re tilting and consciously return to center. I have this same experience while meditating except I am balancing on a single point in mental space.

Like physical balance, mental balance is not a specifically useful skill so much as a fundamental ability. Having good mental balance helps me calmly react to situations that are thrown at me. And in the same way that a figure skater uses physical balance to contort her body without being reprimanded by gravity, mental balance allows me to make mental leaps and stretches while remaining perceptive of the constraints of the external world.