A magic realism tangent

Because of my current state of mind, the idea of Saturn’s return makes me think about the (unrelated) war on Saturn that takes places in the amazing, surreal The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, which I am currently reading. People hide under the lead shells of mechanical tortoises to evade Saturn’s voyeuristic gaze!

For more fantastic works of magic realism, see the likes of Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Haruki Murakami and Aimee Bender (specifically the books above). I had the privilege of meeting Aimee Bender on November 11 (yes, on 11/11/11) on the Oregon State University campus as part of the 2011-12 OSU Visiting Writers Series. She read a chapter from her new book The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (which I love) and a fantastic short story about prosopagnosia (i.e., face illiteracy or face blindness) called Faces. Magic realism is currently my favorite genre of fiction. Note to self: remember to read more absurdity from Richard Brautigan.

Back to Saturn’s return

The Saturn return calculator revealed that my girlfriend’s Saturn return started on Halloween 2011 and it doesn’t end until July 2012. She deemed this a disturbingly long duration and shook her fist at Saturn for cursing her to suffer its trajectory-altering, life-changing transformations for longer than most. I’ve since learned that Saturn returns usually last about a month.

Being curious, I entered my birthday into the calculator and found that my first Saturn return was of normal length (one month), during which I bought my house and took a two-week trip to Hawai’i. Both of these events had great significance to me. Intrigued, I looked at other notable positions of Saturn throughout my life and immediately noticed a clear theme emerging: transformational travel.

Below is my Saturn return chart, which I’ve self-indulgently annotated.

So, was the schedule of all these transformational travel experiences coincidental, or were they somehow written in the stars (or dictated by a certain ringed planet)? I have no idea. I do find it fascinating that the three most significant eras of my life (so far) were captured by a random astrological calculator on the Internet.

Stop watching me Saturn!

The first two are out-of-print children’s books written in the 1970s by American author Tomie de Paola. I tracked down copies of these short stories after my dad visited Oregon in September and helped me remember a few books he used to read to my sister and me. When Everyone Was Fast Asleep (1976) and the more obscure Songs of the Fog Maiden (1979) both feature the magical, singing Fog Maiden and her blue cat Token. These two characters visit the children of Earth at night and bring them enchanting, fantastical experiences:

When everyone was fast asleep, the Fog Maiden sent Token to wake us up. And we slid through the curtains into the night. We floated across the grass, dancing on the dew, and met the elf horse. We all sang, “Tra la, tra la, too lay, too lay, hop-a-doodle, hip-a-doodle, flip-a-doodle day.” Down the road we went, counting moons until we came to the troll house, but we were not afraid. We ate hot buttered bread and drank warm milk with honey, and dressed for the ball at the palace. The crocodiles danced a quadrille and the peacocks waltzed with doves and we all sang, “Tra la, tra la, too lay, too lay, hop-a-doodle, hip-a-doodle, flip-a-doodle day.” When the king and queen arrived, the play began. The lion roared while the gypsy slept, and the princess was saved by the sand serpent. The night was over and the Fog Maiden came to cover everything with her dress. She picked us up and floated over the trees to our very own window, where she tucked us into our beds and kissed us asleep.

Now if that isn’t an alien abduction story, I don’t know what is. You miss some context without the illustrations, but the premise of When Everyone Was Fast Asleep is that a large-eyed animal (or therianthrope) peers into your bedroom window at night and whisks you away to an alternate, overwhelming realm of anthropomorphic entities.

(Note: I have illustrated the Fog Maiden and Token the Cat as 8-bit characters for Mascot Mashup, my daily pixel art project; they are scheduled to appear on November 10 and 11.)

The third book, Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind (2007) by Graham Hancock, is about the origins of art, religious ideas, consciousness-altering agents and consciousness itself (and ultimately how these might tie into modern conceptions of fairies, elves, angels, UFOs, alien abductions, DMT, DNA and the spirit world):

Less than 50,000 years ago mankind had no art, no religion, no sophisticated symbolism, no innovative thinking. Then, in a dramatic and electrifying change, described by scientists as “the greatest riddle in human history,” all the skills and qualities that we value most highly in ourselves appeared already fully formed, as though bestowed on us by hidden powers. In Supernatural Graham Hancock sets out to investigate this mysterious “before-and-after moment” and to discover the truth about the influences that gave birth to the modern human mind.

Hancock’s quest takes him on a detective journey from the stunningly beautiful painted caves of prehistoric France, Spain, and Italy to rock shelters in the mountains of South Africa, where he finds extraordinary Stone Age art. He uncovers clues that lead him to the depths of the Amazon rainforest to drink the powerful hallucinogen Ayahuasca with shamans, whose paintings contain images of “supernatural beings” identical to the animal-human hybrids depicted in prehistoric caves. Hallucinogens such as mescaline also produce visionary encounters with exactly the same beings. Scientists at the cutting edge of consciousness research have begun to consider the possibility that such hallucinations may be real perceptions of other “dimensions.”

More than any other book I’ve read, Supernatural almost unifies (or, at least, neatly gathers) cross-cultural supernatural and paranormal experiences throughout human history. There is much to think about. You might have an existential crisis while reading this book. I highly recommend it.

The fourth book, Wildwood: The Wildwood Chronicles, Book I (2011), is “a spellbinding tale full of wonder, danger, and magic that juxtaposes the thrill of a secret world and modern city life. Original and fresh yet steeped in classic fantasy, this is a novel that could have only come from the imagination of Colin Meloy, celebrated for his inventive and fantastic storytelling as the lead singer of The Decemberists. With dozens of intricate and beautiful illustrations by award-winning artist Carson Ellis, Wildwood is truly a new classic for the twenty-first century.”

I’ll admit that I was first interested in Wildwood because I am a fan of The Decemberists—and because Colin Meloy and his wife Carson Ellis live in Portland, Oregon (which is also the geographic setting for the book). Despite being written for adolescent children, I quite enjoyed Meloy’s esoteric, archaic vocabulary and his antique-weaponry aesthetic (not unlike his quirky songs). Plus there are delightful warring factions of talking forest animals! With 560 sparse pages, it is a fast read (it only took me six hours or so to finish it). Definitely worth the time.

I need to remember to read bizarre children’s books more often. For now, it is time to appreciate the rest of the Day of the Dead. I will eat tamales and drink Mexican hot chocolate.

P.S. I visit How to be a Retronaut regularly and these are some recent posts that inspired me: Nuclear Bunker Mannequins (a secret bunker in England), The Invisible Mother (creepy moms hiding under blankets in old photos), Tunnels of the River Fleet (the largest of London’s subterranean rivers), Rephotographing Budapest (perfect overlay of modern color photos on black & white ones), Twin Peaks: The Last Days (I miss that show) and Video Games Then and Now (I prefer a primitive 8-bit aesthetic).

A few weeks ago, I received a DVD screener of their latest film, Glitch in the Grid. I recently posted my 15-word review to Filmometer.com, but I want to expand on my thoughts here.

Glitch in the Grid

Glitch in the Grid by Eric Leiser is a film about three artists—starring the filmmakers—trying to find themselves and understand the next phases of their lives. Acting quality was the main weakness of Imagination, but it is fairly solid in this film. It is apparent that these guys are basically playing themselves, which certainly lends believability to the endeavor and gives the film a documentary flavor.

However, as with any creation inherently about yourself, avoiding self-indulgence remains a challenge. By the end, this film is mired in heavy-handed religious imagery and a general lack of structure. I had wished for the film to illustrate a beautiful, spiritual transformation that would complement the charming animation—and I think it wanted to be such a work of art, but it is weighed down and muddied by a specific, contrived form of spiritual understanding.

The film progresses from an exploratory, open, allegorical animation of the struggles of modern life to what seems like a very narrow, Christian perspective of the infinite forms spirituality can take. I had been hoping for a more inclusive expression of how adults might stay in touch with their inner children and find both personal renewal and spiritual meaning. But the characters seem to believe that rejecting “our fast food society” in favor of accepting Jesus Christ as our personal savior is the only path to happiness and inner peace. Clearly, there are countless ways to leave “the grid” and rediscover childlike wonder and lighthearted humanity. I started to lose interest during the last third of the film because of the degree to which the filmmakers indulge their own personal beliefs and delusions, and aimlessly complain about being marginalized by modern society.

During the first half, I had been interested in, and excited by, the possibilities for cathartic human transformation the film seems to weave—especially as it is being deepened by magical animations of the natural environment. But I was disappointed that the conclusion—despite being one of hope and renewal—feels contrived, vain and strongly tied to conventional Christianity. This film could have held much more meaning for me if the profound power of faith supposedly being illustrated remained more allegorical, if they hadn’t unnecessarily (probably unintentionally) alienated those who might subscribe to a different form of spirituality.

I feel it is a sign of mature filmmakers (and, more broadly, human beings) to be able to move beyond their own worldviews and dogmas and reach for allegories that stretch across and illuminate all of humanity, regardless of their personal mythologies. I don’t feel these guys are quite there yet (are any of us?), but they’re trying hard—and I admire their passion and creativity, despite feeling alienated as a viewer. I also admire their desire to work on their own terms, outside of the Hollywood studio system.

Lastly, as I brought up in my review of Imagination, I selfishly wish Eric Leiser would more fully focus his filmmaking in the realm of stop-motion animation, along the lines of Jan Svankmajer or the Brothers Quay or Michel Gondry, because I feel his unique animation style is an obvious strength of both films and I would love to see more of it.

Thanks to the Leiser Brothers for the opportunity to watch their film. I look forward to their next project, as they continue to grow as people and artists. Theatrical screenings of Glitch in the Grid are coming soon to New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland and more. You can watch the Glitch in the Grid trailer at albinofawn.com.

Attention Oregonians: On Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 7 pm, there will be a Glitch in the Grid screening in Portland at the Hollywood Theatre.

No. 200 happens to be Johnny Cash (because he died on this day in 2003). Even though I attempt to tie my daily characters into birthdays, death days, holidays and historical events, arbitrariness often prevails.

See 12 example characters below. Their body proportions, pigeon-toed feet and poses are due to their direct stylistic relationship to the primitive QBasic Gorilla, which inspired this whole project.

Mascot Mashup was born in 2009, but was often on hiatus for the first year of its existence. In April 2011, the site became a daily blog of 8-bit characters designed by me to be used in an ongoing Flash remake of the classic QBasic Gorillas artillery game (and possibly other 1980s-era games). Each sprite has four animation states. The first sprites drawn were all NCAA Division I college mascots, but the characters have since branched into randomness.

I plan to continue this daily art project through at least the beginning of 2012, possibly indefinitely? To be determined. See all characters at mascotmashup.com.

Summer tennis tournament season is here again and I’ve been trying to figure out which weekends I will be on the courts. Most of my information comes from OregonTennis.com. I always try to play four or five tennis tournaments in the Mid-Willamette Valley over the summer. Here are the tournaments I plan to enter, in the USTA 4.0+ division (starting this weekend):

• Monmouth Independence Tennis Tournament: July 2-3, 2011
• McMinnville (MAC) Open Tennis Tournament: July 22-24, 2011
• Woodburn Open Tennis Tournament: July 29-31, 2011
• Albany All-City Tennis Tournament: August 5-7, 2011
• Dallas Community Tennis Tournament: September 30-October 2, 2011

Usually registration closes about a week before the start of each tournament. Each PDF entry form should show up at OregonTennis.com a few weeks in advance of each tournament. For Woodburn and Albany, you can also contact (or stop by) the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.

USTA tennis tournaments

I’ve yet to play in any of these, but summer USTA tournaments in Corvallis, Eugene, Ashland and elsewhere can be found at USTA TennisLink.

On Wednesday through Friday, May 25-27, I attended the WebVisions 2011 conference at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. Below is a quick overview of all sessions I attended on Friday, with links. Many of the slides from these sessions and others are available at SlideShare. See Twitter updates using #wv11.

Design Camp: What’s Next for Web Fonts in CSS3 – Thomas Phinney
(8:45 am to 9:30 am | session details)

• @font-face – choose whatever name you like: BodyFont
• Many font formats required, but converging on WOFF
• Self-hosting vs. web font services
• CSS3 typography:
• Text module: Hyphenation, Grid-based layout, various wrap options, handing punctuation, multiple columns
• Fonts Module: kerning and ligatures (turn on optimized legibility in CSS in Firefox), full OpenType features and alternates
• Firefox OpenType font feature support: mzl.la/ff4-ot
• OpenType in Action
• Ligatures: multiple letters colliding: f-i collision – use standard ligatures all the time – happens via alternate glyphs (built into many fonts)
• Tabular lining, proportional lining, proportional oldstyle, tabular oldstyle
• Stylistic sets for levels of swashiness (swashes)
• Contextual alternates of glyphs plus ligatures

Ambient Location and the Future of the Interface – Amber Case, Aaron Parecki
(9:15 am to 9:30 am)

• Geolocation: MapAttack!
• Invisible location-based where you can actually live; the best interface is invisible.
• See slides.

30-Minute Prototyping – Brad Nunnally
(9:30 am to 10:00 am)

• Sketching starts out with defining the real estate of your site. 70% of my design is done on paper before I start using software.
• Protyping software: Axure
• Define the visual hierarchies; define the location of the navigation bar
• Can turn it into a navigable prototype and can user feedback on how the navigation is behaving
• Annotate placeholders (or representative content) to then hand over to a visual designer to fill in
• Gray-box aspects of the design out
• Lorem ipsum is a technique I try to avoid as much as possible
• [skipping the rest of this Axure demo for the sci-fi/interface design presentation]

Make it So: The Uncanny Relationship Between Science Fiction and Interface Design – Nathan Shedroff | session details)
(9:30 am to 10:00 am)

• Science fiction television shows and films yield practical lessons that apply to online, social, mobile and other media interfaces.
• Sci-fi interfaces allow us to see current issues from fresh perspectives.
• Sci-fi is a good and legitimate way to prototype and design.
• “Businesspeople are fiction writers.”
• “R2-D2 is probably the best-acted character in Star Wars.” Simple beeps and buzzes carry the anthropomorphic effect.

The Mobile Frontier – Rachel Hinman
(10:30 am to 11:00 am)

• Summary coming soon.
• See slides.

Experience Design: Getting a Seat at the Strategy Table – Samantha Starmer
(11:00 am to 11:15 am)

• Business/marketing speak: Pre-sell, pick your battles, offer solutions, talk the talk, walk the walk
• See slides.

Deep Tissue Massage: 6 Tips for Alignment Across Device Form Factors & Input Models – Nate Koechley
(11:15 am to 11:30 pm)

• Yahoo (design prototypers and design architects)
• 6. Balance: Device vs. brand; custom vs. native
• 5. Create familiar experiences: familiar ≠ same; experience = familiar; platform = natural
• 4. Balance your research: understand your medium (learn your medium); conventions
• 3. Align your designs over time: prototypes feed architectures feed prototypes
• 2. Quest for magic: in different devices; newer web standards for gloss, transitions, skew
• 1. Generous hit areas (for mobile)

On-Demand User Research – Nate Bolt
(11:30 am to 11:45 am)

• See slides.

Superconsumers – Michael Claypool
(11:45 am to 12:00 pm)

• Huge digital marketing agency: “Design with the intern in mind.”
• The “superconsumer” demographic creates and consumes an enormous amount of content
• Email is waning in its power from a social standpoint
• Digitally dependent: life is “unbearable” without
• Their brains are literally wired differently
• Daily documentation is the norm
• How to earn the superconsumer’s very short attention span?
• Gaming mechanics: make the product extremely addictive
• Be authentic; don’t bullshit them; they can see through marketing ploys
• They’re looking for genuine; be careful about stock photography (skeptical)
• Design. Fail. Evolve.
• Follow on Twitter: @m_claypool

From Muppets to Mastery: Core UX Principles from Mr. Jim Henson – Ross Unger
(1:30 pm to 1:45 pm)

• Jim Henson’s Wilkins Coffee commercials
• A good experience is invisible – give the audience enough to work with and they’ll do the rest for you. (Suspension of disbelief.)
• Visual thinking book: Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers
• Storyboarding and sketches as applied to UX design.
• UX is a very young field. We are just making this shit up as we go along.
• See slides and follow on Twitter: @russu.

Hacking RSS: Filtering & Processing Obscene Amounts of Information – Dawn Foster
(1:45 pm to 2:00 pm)

• The real magic is in filtering RSS
• RSS filtering tools: Yahoo Pipes (my favorite). Others like FeedRinse. Many RSS filtering services have gone out of business
• Hacking RSS using Yahoo Pipes, Twitter API and BackType.
• Nice Yahoo Pipes article.
• See slides and follow on Twitter: @geekygirldawn

Crafting Rich Experiences with Progressive Enhancement – Aaron Gustafson
(2:00 pm to 2:30 pm)

• Relating finch evolution on the Galapagos Islands
• HTML and CSS designed to be forward and backward compatible—the perfect finch: take advantage of whatever situation they’re placed in
• Fault tolerance: the ability to adapt
• Browsers ignore what they don’t understand
• Graceful degradation actually undermines the accessibility of content. Progressive enhancement instead.
• Progressive enhancement is focused on creating a positive, useful experience regardless of device or browser.
• All progressive enhancement is graceful degradation, but not all graceful degradation is progressive enhancement.
• Progressive enhancement isn’t about browsers. It’s about crafting the experience—working from the content and moving out. Improve the overall user experience based on the advanced features of browsers.
• Start with content, layer on semantics (plus optional microformats), then design (HTML/CSS), JavaScript and accessibility.
• Text/HTTP → HTML → CSS → JavaScript → ARIA (accessibility)
• See slides and follow on Twitter: @AaronGustafson.

Can Media Queries Save Us All? – Tim Kadlec
(3:00 pm to 3:30 pm)

• 35 billion devices connected to the Internet
• Mobile device vs. context. Small screen vs. out and about.
• Defining a device as mobile had become very difficult. Mobile location vs. mobile usage.
• Form does not equal function.
• The device doesn’t necessary equal the function anymore.
• Make separate sites or adapt.
• The three things in this “Responsive Web Design” article are not enough anymore: Fluid girds, flexible images, media queries
• Device classification: by device type, capabilities, UI mode (touch, pointer), etc.
• Slides by Bryan Rieger: rethinking-the-mobile-web-by-yiibu
• Respond.js – fixes IE’s lack of support for @media queries
• Article by Jason Grigsby: css-media-query-for-mobile-is-fools-gold
• Use responsive images, not flexible images. One way: use Sench.io
• Another way: Responsive images script: filamentgroup/Responsive-Images
• Responsive assets (not images)
• By Media jQuery: paulirish/matchMedia.js
• Device Detection vs. Responsive Approach – do a little UA sniffing, then use progressive enhancement, use feature detection to build on
• Summary: Start with Device Classification; Mobile First; Resize Images – don’t just scale; Responsive assets; Pair with device detection; Challenge traditional assumptions
• See slides and follow on Twitter: @tkadlec.

Progressive Enhancement with ARIA – Aaron Gustafson
(3:30 pm to 3:45 pm)

• Accessibility on the web – three blind men and the elephant fable
• Semantics not be followed
• Accessible Rich Internet Applications spec
• How does ARIA work?
• ARIA landmarks are a way to tell assistive technology what a region of the page is for
• Define roles: <nav role=”navigation”>
• Redundancy in HTML5 is necessary at this point because not all assistive tech understand HTML5 semantics
• ARIA live regions – notify user of frequently updated parts of page: <span aria-live=”polite”>
• See slides and follow on Twitter: @AaronGustafson.

“Portlandia”: The Story Behind the Series – Marie Moore, Andrew Singer, Colin Moore, Carrie Brownstein
(3:45 pm to 4:30 pm)

• Interesting panel discussion with the @ifcportlandia team on the origin and marketing strategy for IFC’s “Portlandia” television show. Lots of clips. #putabirdonit

Thinking Visually – David Armano
(4:30 pm to 5:30 pm)

• Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand – Chinese proverb
• His blog: darmano.typepad.com
• Awesome graphic: Wheel of Marketing Misfortune
• The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.
• 1957: when computer era began; video: History of the Internet (PICOL)
• The 4 M’s: metaphor, model (metaphor & model), mind maps, manifest (make obvious)
• Six steps to getting visual:
  1. Empathize: See the world as a child
  2. Memorize: Commit thoughts to memory
  3. Analyze: Take a step back
  4. Synthesize: Filter signal from noise
  5. Visualize: See it, then do it
  6. Materialize: Make it tangible, make it stick
• The 4 C’s of community
• Tools/software don’t matter as much as ideas.
• Flowtown infographic: What is the ROI of your Mom?
• Venn diagram: Skate & Fall on Ass (can’t skate without falling on ass)
• Resources:
  • Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte
  • Selling To the VP of No by David Gray
  • The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam
  • Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
• See slides and follow on Twitter: @armano.

That is all. Time to bring some Voodoo Doughnuts up to my sister who is currently visiting Seattle.