We are driving out tomorrow in the early AM to make it to NYC in a two day drive. So see you in a bit....

Posted by YuryG at 05:50 AM | Permalink

We took the second half of the day off and ran around the awesome mega-sized water park, White Water, just outside of Atlanta. As the heart-rate shows, the last 20 minutes we ran from ride to ride [b/c there were finally no lines when the park was closing] to get on everything we missed before.... All the relative peaks in the heart-rate are probably us actually sliding down a ride.

Map

Posted by YuryG at 07:37 PM | Permalink

Posted by YuryG at 03:50 AM | Permalink

Well you knew it was only a matter of time before a post like this made it onto the site, a make-out session with my gf. : )

Posted by YuryG at 01:01 AM | Permalink

If you like My Beating Blog, you may also like the below projects.
But before you start looking at the other projects below, let me try to paint a picture for you about art movements. I think it's interesting to see, or even try to predict, movements in electronic art and emerging media. There is no doubt in my mind electronic art is getting physical and embodied in more ways then one. There are two reasons I think electronic art is getting embodied. The first is a technological-determinist argument the second a cultural argument.

Biotechnology and modern technology is migrating into and around the body like never before. We can see examples in the form of hi-tech pharmaceuticals, embedded microchips, robotic prosthetics, biological sensors and monitors, and nanotechnology. Artists who use emerging technology are using "today's" emerging technologies. The technological-determinists argument is that technology is the driving force in this art movement. Well if you add to the above list increasingly commonplace location and GPS technology, you get all types of new maps, map-making, and subjective space projects. Multiply all of this by the internet and you get networked versions of it all. It's exciting stuff, plenty of space for artists to play with unknowns, with new forms of expression, and chaos.

The second reason is a cultural argument. One of the dominant themes in the internet and computing technology since its widespread commercial use has been the notion of "disembodiment." Like "dismemberment" it means to take the corporal body out of the picture. You can actually track disembodiment and computing much farther, but I'm not writing a lecture here, I want to make some pithy points. Virtual Reality and the internet are all about disembodiment, about "destroying space and time," "shrinking the world," making location obsolete, making the body obsolete. Raymond Kurzweil is probably the biggest cheerleader for this, he wants to download his brain into a hard-drive and live forever.... I don't understand how Consciousness can be digitized, so that's a deal breaker for me. Kurzwell's and his supporters seem to me like dreamy Conquistadors hopelessly chasing a fabled "fountain of youth" in the swamps of Florida. But I digress. Even if your not a media scholar or in the field you've seen these themes in movies and popular culture. There are great things about the disembodying aspects of the internet and computing. And likewise there are things about it which just suck. The point is, disembodiment has been a dominate trend and goal underlining research in computing and technology. Now we are seeing a backlash. Or at least the pendulum is swinging in the other direction. Many who work with computing, myself whole-heartily included, want to move back into valuing the body and respecting the insights embodiment presents. There is a trend in art to humanize technology, to value the corporal over the virtual.

So what does this mean in art and technology? It means we'll have genres emerge, or grow, and groups of disconnected artist moving in similar directions. In concrete terms we'll increasingly see projects that interfaces with the body, or uses the body as an interface. We'll see even more projects that interface with our bodys' processes and systems, such as the nervous system, glandular system, heart-rate, breathing, and etc. They will in turn be used to control robotic movements, control animation or movement on screen-based works, and they will be used to build elaborate, insightful, and expressive databases. Mix all these things with one another. Then mix them with every Internet technology that exists, and you'll probably be able to see an area that artists and technologists will be increasingly working with.

My Beating Blog and the below works are but puzzle pieces. The big picture I think is a general movement to embodiment in electronic art. I think we are getting mature as a culture regarding our technology. We are less concerned with zip and bang and are looking for the more meaningful experiences from our technological ecology. The result is a portion of the population rejecting certain aims in computing technology (disembodiment) and trying to move the culture back into a focus on the physical, corporal, and cellular level.

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BodyDaemon:
A fully-functional bio-responsive web server, of which the configuration is determined in real time by a participant's physical states as measured by custom bio-feedback sensors. And it's open source. See it at ZeroOne/ISEA2006, Festival of Art and Technology, August 7th-13th.
[ Helpfully more people will use this platform. I haven't seen it in person or anything, but I think this could be the seed for a whole genre or art and technology. Basically I can say enough about this project. ]

Bio Mapping

Bio Mapping is a research project which explores new ways that we as individuals can make use of the information we can gather about our own bodies. Instead of security technologies that are designed to control our behaviour, this project envisages new tools that allows people to selectively share and interpret their own bio data.

The Bio Mapping tool allows the wearer to record their Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is a simple indicator of emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location. This can be used to plot a map that highlights point of high and low arousal. By sharing this data we can construct maps that visualise where we as a community feel stressed and excited.
[ Great project, making subjective maps based on how the body reacts to the environment, every city should have one.]

Pimp My Heart

Pimp my Heart is a performance/vehicle intervention that uses a HBBB (HeartBeat Bass Booster) system to amplify the heartbeat of a car driver in real time through an interface with a beefed up car audio aftermarket system.
[ Bling Bling, a fun project ]

Wild Divine

A commercially available biofeedback game.
http://www.wilddivine.com/Affiliate2/
[ I've never played this game. Have come close to buying it many times. The website documentation makes their graphics look kinda campy. But still they've taken a lot of initiative an that can only be commended. Basically they have a simple and market ready versions of their own BodyDaemon and put a marcormedia or flash type game on top of it. WE NEED MORE OF LIKE THIS STUFF. That's why I love the BodyDaemon, b/c it could open up this area to more people.

Posted by YuryG at 10:27 PM | Permalink

Last night I tried recording my heart-rate while sleeping. And I had a nightmare.
It was eerie. It probably has something to do with the juice fast. The first night of the fast my dreams were very vivid. But last night I (thankfully) woke up from a nightmare. It was also very cool in the room, so maybe that makes for bad dreams.

The Dream:
I was working as a video editor (which I indeed did when I lived in Atlanta, before moving to New York). My boss (who didn't resemble anyone I can recall from my life) had befriended a very strange "artist family." They basically made their own "Bodies" exhibits. They dried humans and then took photos of them and then made posters and postcards. It seems strange but harmless at first. I was suppose to do a documentary on them. They came to our offices to show us their work. I met them and got really grossed out, b/c I do have a weak stomach when it comes to blood and flesh and stuff like that. [ I never ever watch horror movies ] Throughout our talk it came out that the subjects in their art work where their friends, who had willingly agreed to be killed, dried, skinned, and photographed. They were a calm family [father, mother, and daughter] and said they were just misunderstood, and that the documentary would set things straight. I lost my cool at that point and told them I'm not working on the project, and then told my boss I'm not working on this.

Then the music started. The scariest music I ever heard. I was basically transported into a horror movie in my dream. I kept thinking, who the hell composed this music, it's sick, it makes everything seem so scary. My mind was of-course the composer. The music didn't stop, it got more insanely wicked. In the dream, my boss tried to back out of the project with the family. But they had already become friends and the family was feeling personally offended, and misunderstood. The father could only talk about the subjects in the artwork, when we tried to tell him we can't do this project. They were also blocking the doorway, so we had no way physically out of the building. It was a bad scene with even worse music.

I finally woke up sweaty. I took off my heart-rate monitor off and turned it off.
The data is below. It didn't really turn out, unfortunately. This technology is still imperfect... : (. But that comes with the territory I guess of working with new technology--you lose data left and right. Will have to try again.

Posted by YuryG at 01:40 PM | Permalink

Just a little photo of tonight's dinner.

Posted by YuryG at 09:43 AM | Permalink

I just started a 7 day juice fast. Yesterday was day one of juice de-tox cleanser diet fast week.
So that means 7 days of only fruit and veggie juice. It feels like quitting food, cold turkey. But when you fast and live an otherwise normal lifestyle you start to notice how much we are encouraged to mindlessly eat basically whatever.
To keep my mind off of food I went to see Richard Linklater's tribute to Philp K Dick's novel of the same name, A Scanner Darkly.
The the movie was visually beautiful, the plot was interesting, but I don't really know what to make of it overall.... It definitely had an anti-drug addict message. I was fairly light-headed while watching it so I kept fantasizing to myself that the plot revolved around eating all the greasy fried food I adore instead of drugs. It made things feel mildly relevant to my life. And also, while I watched the 1 1/2 hour movie, I scanned my heart-rate, giving me an ambiguous relationship to the characters.

Map

Posted by YuryG at 03:25 AM | Permalink

When you travel to a foreign country for a long time you eventually begin to miss things. Food. Not food, but certain foods. Everyone has their certain ones. When you immigrate the same thing happens. You miss and crave certain foods--but its for the rest of your life.

I have such a food, a certain love, it's a particular sun-dried salty fish called Vobla. Any russian knows what Vobla is. I would describe it as resembling American Beef Jerky, but made from fish rather then beef.... Asian cultures have similar snacks made from dried seafood of every kind. I know this b/c I've tried them all, looking for my "Rosebud" as Citizen Kane looked for his childhood sled. But the particular taste is not the same. Like wine, and grapes from which it's made, a salt fish's taste depends on where on the planet it lives and what species it is. So in the States, this fish can only be found in a rare Russian deli.

So all this is fine and dandy. I've found a deli that has it. But the thing is this guy smells strong. Like garlic, its scent dies your hands and everything it touches. And like the finest French cheeses, the stinkier it is the more the French love it. Except I'm not in France, or in Russia. So everyone within ear-shoot of my indulgence files their complaint with me about the fine smelling delicacy. It's the story of many immigrants, far from their birthplace, defending their chance to eat a meal which lives so vividly in their memory but so rarely graces their palette.
On a different set of shores, certain foods become a sharp and spiney relic to be eaten in haste and solitude, so as not to smear the cultural fabric on which you sit.

Posted by YuryG at 09:33 PM | Permalink

Map
It's funny how nature calms you down. We went camping at Lake Conasauga, located at 3,150 feet, near the summit of Grassy Mountain. It's the highest lake in Georgia. The name "Conasauga" is derived from the Cherokee word kahnasagah, meaning "grass," "sparkling water," or "strong horse," according to various sources. It is one of the best camp sites i've seen in the US. I'd go back there before exploring other campsites in Georgia. I logged a nice strole around the lake.

I read the famous [or infamous, depending on your political bent and according to wikipedia] Tom Wolfe's little not-so-well-known book, "From Bauhaus to Our House." I haven't been able to finnish any of his other books, in print form or in audiobook form, so I can't really speak about his work in general. But this little book should be required reading for architects, art students, and the general public who takes an interest in design and art history. It's a very smart book examining some of the rarely scrutinized origins of modern taste and style. Basically, he took a nice long poop on European and American art snobbery and all the unspoken premises it employs to bulldoze its opinion into an accepted aesthetic. He doesn't exactly make an 'emperor has no clothing'' argument. It's more like a well researched and witty poop.

So while reading it, on our little campsite picnic table, i started seeing where some of my misgiving comes from towards high fashion and some of the culture around contemporary art. His thesis in a sound bite is that Modern art tries to code itself out of reach of middle class' comprehension. In fact, it busies itself at insulting middle class ideals and world-views. [Think of Joe Shmoe saying "I can do that, this is art?" to an abstract Picasso or to a Pollack paint-splatter painting.] Read his book for more details, it's far better worded then anything I can do on my blog. But if you like things like multicolored plastic thumb-tacks, Ben Franklin postage stamps, car camping, air mattresses, and wrapping things in aluminum foil you may not like the thrust of a lot of contemporary art and fashion.

But the take-away isn't any of this. Well, there probably isn't a take-away, just a handful of observations. Its difficult to look at something with fresh eyes. My cellphone had to be out of range and discharged before I could get relaxed enough to just let inspiration seep in. The art of wrapping sweet potatoes in foil and then cooking them on the campfire coals should not be lost to time.

Posted by YuryG at 11:36 PM | Permalink

A wet experiment in the pool. Well, it didn't turn out so hot, the gps and heartrate came out a little funny. Will try again later.

Posted by YuryG at 11:28 PM | Permalink

Not too much to say. Had a good time with the family. My sister made grilled fish taco and then we lit some fireworks. Playing with fire, always a personal favorite. Video at the bottom....

Posted by YuryG at 06:21 PM | Permalink

Last night we went to the Stone Mountain Laser Show. If you are from Georgia you know what this is. If not it's one of the largest laser shows, shot on a large mountain side. It's huge. Did I mention this mountain has a Mount Rushmore style carving on it of important leaders. And that these leaders are three important men from the Confederacy. Oh, and this carving is actually larger than the carving on Mount Rushmore. It's true. Yes, there is a story to this carving. The unofficial story is far more interesting and accurate then the official one.
But none the less, it's all relatively benign now. The show was a tour of patriotic imagery and animation, which everyone seemed to welcome. My photo doesn't really show much of anything, but you can faintly make out the line animation produced by the laser. The map shows us trying to get a better and better seat for the show, b/c it was crazy crowded. The heartrate readout shows how we found a spot to sit, then scouted another spot, sat there are a bit, then scouted another. My heartrate changed about 20 beats per minute between siting and walking. Everyone sat in an open field facing the mountain. We could only only find spots on the fringes. Tonight's July 4th show I'm sure will be even more crowded, it's one of those things you do down here. My boyish nostalgia from years ago brought us here last night. But I'd still recommend it like I'd recommend a ride in a slow moving classic car on historic Route 66.
P.S. play with the google map, it shows a satellite photo of the mountain.

Map

Posted by YuryG at 06:14 PM | Permalink

Its a safe place. As long as u swim within the buoy. Outside of that "there are water moccasins", a little girl warns us, poisonous water snakes native to here.
It happens to be july 4th weekend, a celebration of the nations bday, but that's just a tangent. It's times like these that I can't help but feel something is different. The last place I want to swim is inside the buoy. It's not swimming, to stay inside the buoy that outlines the little beach on this lake. That is just floating and splashing. And so in short, it leaves me to wonder: Is it my immigrant old world sensibilities that make me not fear life beyond the buoy? Am I on the wrong coast? Would west coasters swim differently, build their state parks differently? Was I born in the wrong generation, where people fear the natural world?
We are at Indian Springs State Park. This is one of the countries oldest state parks. That's not the reason that anyone comes here. FDR (who was confined to a wheelchair due to polio) would come here, to this lake and to the natural springs to vacation, relax, and for spring therapy. The Creek indians used these springs " to treat the sick and invigorate the healthy." Hence the name and age of the park and FDR's (locally) famous retreats here. U can visit his cabin and compound and the little museum built to commemorate him, but like everyone here, we came for the beach. And to swim the lake. It's beautiful here, once u swim out in the lake and put some distance between u and the buoy.

map

Watch my little movie, shot on my cellphone.

Posted by YuryG at 10:20 PM | Permalink

My Beating Blog is an attempt to take the journaling aspect of blogging into a surrealistic future, in which the blog author literally and metaphorically bares his heart. The artist-blogger wears a GPS-enabled Heart-rate monitor throughout parts of the day, then blogs the data along with matching personal experiences, events, and musings.
For three weeks, the site will blog a series of posts contextualizing heart-rate visualizations, GPS-maps, and personal journal entries. Online users are given a rare entrance into personal medical-grade statistics, stalker-level location tracking, and the private thoughts of the blogger. Inevitably, issues regarding privacy, exhibitionism, and voyeurism playfully emerge as the blogosphere is infused with biofeedback and location technology. Rather then play into a dystopian or Orwellian future, blogs and biofeedback are given a poetic license, reframing our awareness of our own and each others' beating hearts.

Posted by YuryG at 04:40 AM | Permalink