Breakdancing and Science - Parallels

Before reading this post, watch a little bit of this:

My fellow dancers from back in Australia

Breakdancing IS a science. It is a collection of physics problems waiting to be solved, each with a complex set of variables which your mind has to consider and then instruct the body to interpret. Its frustrating, haunting, joyful, scary, painful and addictive.

So why do it? 

The ‘error’ in the trial and error hurts; and I mean really hurts. Sometimes all we do is get up again so we can smash ourselves into the ground again!

However, with refinement and perseverance we discover ‘the equation’. I tell you - there is no other feeling like achieving the move we have set out for. Its probably how Einstein felt when he published his theory of relativity.

Foundations

In the same way we build on previous scientific findings to produce new bodies of work, so too in breakdancing is there a logical progression of moves which build upon other foundational moves:

The baby freeze -> the windmill -> flare -> the airflare -> ?

Serendipity

In the same Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, many of the moves that you breakdancers do are the result of accidental discovery.

Findings

Here are some facts that I can reveal from my own trial and error that might be interesting to you:

• Once we ‘get’ a move, you often lose it soon after, and then once you go back to square one and get it back - it stays. This is because we tend to cut corners and forget those ‘foundations’.
• Sleep, smoking (all the best korean bboys smoke like crazy), stress from work, eating junk food -> doesnt really impact on the quality of the session. But emotional stability does. Whether you are depressed or ‘feelin the music’ impacts the most.
• Even though they say training everyday makes you good, sometimes when you’re stuck on a move and come back to it in a few weeks - you have it! (the brain must work in the background).

I’ve set myself the challenge of achieving the ‘Air Flare’. It haunts me to the point

where I cant sleep sometimes.

I Love/Hate Breakdancing…

Quantifying myself

This month has been great for learning new terms. I remember the last great term that I really liked was ‘Design Wank’ which I use now and again to describe the sometimes condescending elitist wanky attitude that I sense from some self proclaimed ‘designers’, which can be usually characterised by use of wanky jargon, or some image of some ridiculously impractical greenwash ‘Eco building’ which is eco because its got solar panels on it and only 0.025% of the population can afford to live in. 

Eco pods - Design wank random case file #1

Hermes Green Yacht - Design wank random case file #2

Below is NOT design wank:

William Kamkwamba a.k.a (a modern day legend) - The african villager who went to the library, learned about electricity and built a wind generator out of spare parts for his village because of lack of infrastructure. 

Sorry, I got side totally tracked!

The new term I picked up is called ‘Self Hacking’. I picked it up from a really interesting bunch of people that I met through a meetup group called ‘The Quantified Self’. http://quantifiedself.com/ This group originally started in San Francisco but has since moved on to London amongst other cities.

As the name suggests, its a group of people who aim to improve their quality of life and understand themselves through self tracking. We probably all do it in some way or another ie. write a journal etc. But once we collect information, what do we do with it? Do we even think of it as a dataset that can be mined? 

‘Self Hackers’ track all sorts of things such as sleep patterns, heart rate etc. I used to track my breakdance training sessions in a bid to find the perfect training formula (I quit when I realised I was just rationalising my procrastination).  

These days in the 2.0 era, it makes sense though that people are empowered to experiment on themselves and share their findings. Given that many studies are carried out over society and groups as a whole, it makes sense too that people are design their own experiments, since there is a big difference if group psychology and the individual as well as the fact that we have our own intricacies.

Hack your mood

Present at this event was one of the creators of http://www.moodscope.com/ Jon Cousins, who has been tracking his and other people’s emotions everyday since 2004. He has found that the tracking and sharing of emotion data with friends leads to a longer term sustained improvement in emotion. One of the smart things about the approach is that it doesn’t ask you ‘How do you feel?’ directly. Instead your emotion is derived through a card game, which is much harder to lie to.

Moodscope happiness trend ticker

Moodscope cards

One of the things that I learned from this group was that for issues such as stress or depression - the act or tracking itself (and rationalising) leads to quantifiable positive change.

More questions?

As with most things, the more you learn, the more questions you have.

1. As I mentioned in a presentation once before about visualisation, collecting and presenting data for the sake of collecting and presenting data doesnt necessarily lead to any positive change. Maybe in the case of human psychology, I was wrong?
2. It takes a certain type of personal mindset to bother to self hack (seek answers through experimentation as opposed to external sources). Is the data reliable, given that those bothering to self hack are those who would typically be actively seeking (and on their way to) improvement anyways? ie: why would people who dont care about energy want energy meters?
3. Can the self-hacking (personalised self analysis- > positive personal change) way of thinking apply to achieve sustainable outcomes at the aggregate level?

Urban Informatics - Tracing the City

While I was in San Francisco it just happened to be Architecture week. I popped into the office to take part in an event run by a good colleague of mine, Engin Ayaz called ‘Tracing the City’. Literally we traced over images of The SF Mid Market District. It did help that I happened to ride my rent-a-bike past there the day before as part of my big trek to get across the bridge. (definitely better than going on a bus tour if you are in town)

Objective of the workshop:

Understand the potential for information to improve the lives of citizens. (Improvement in terms of economic, social and aesthetic)

Summary of the workshop:

1. Assume a role of a local in the area
2. Understand his/her needs and interests
3. Take tracing paper and trace over photos of the local area with an aim to ‘augment’ with information.

Workshop Photos

Workshop Slides

Start at slide 43

Arup Urban Informatics Workshop Sep 2010

View more presentations from enginayaz.

Visualisation for Sustainable Cities PechaKucha Vol.20 

On the 9th of December I presented at PechaKucha Vol.20 on the topic of sustainable cities and how data driven visualisation has an impact on triggering behavioural change for sustainability. On the 10th of December I delivered a similar but more detailed presentation to the International Conference on Smart Meters, Networks and Information Processing.

During this speech I played two videos to illustrate the point. They are below

(click menu on the bottom left to view full screen)

Sustainable Cities - The importance of visualisation

The Green Cloud Project, Helsinki

An artist’s projection of the energy consumption data of a local community over the smoke stack of its local power station. This led to an immediate sense of ownership and reductions in consumption. While we cant put a green laser light on every smoke stack, I invite people from all backgrounds to think of how we can borrow this concept in our own cities. How can we bridge the ‘knowing’ and ‘feeling’ gap?

Nuage Vert à Ivry from HeHe on Vimeo.

Ecological Age - City of Manchester Retrofit, Arup

This video shows the potential vision for the City of Manchester, UK after an extensive retrofitting program. You will notice that the technologies are currently available (although the algae system may be a while off). Notice also how there are no new ‘green buildings’. While improved standards in new build are certainly important, the future of our cities depends on our ability to improve the performance of our existing stock. This video was shown as it highlighted two aspects of visualisation that I think are important:

1. When giving someone a vision of something, make it realistic and achievable.

2. Using positive reinforcement to affect change (in this case inspiration) is potentially more effective than negative reinforcement.

3. Show it and not just say it. The concepts in this video are not new, and are often suggested in studies. 

At ISSNIP I spoke a bit about the Slim City initiative where Arup partnered with the world economic forum to produce a set of research cards. You can find them here:

http://www.driversofchange.com/slimcity/

Enjoy :)

My experience at Design School Americas 2010

In September 2010, I was sent to the USA to represent Australia at the annual Arup design school. This year’s theme was Oceans, and in particular applying design thinking to solve its related Climate Change issues. In a room full of engineers I felt a bit out of place however, I did manage to learn some really valuable lessons. I hope you enjoy it and learn something too!

(click menu on the bottom left to view full screen)

Arup design school  

So begins the 1 week no web challenge!

Rules:

No internet for a week! Can YOU do it?

Wanna research something? Read a book!

Wanna chat to someone? Pick up the phone!

Want directions? Get a compass!

Want entertainment? Go to the park!

Want news? Read the paper!

*Exception is research for work purposes and work email.

My pledge: Midnight 9 November to 16th November 

Make your 1 week pledge and write a short note about what you did in that week!

Maybe I’ll have a chance of getting things done for a change…wish me luck!

I believe “a load of bullshit”

A while ago I shared my gripes in relation to the following clean coal advertisement. Now this isn’t a criticism of the technology of clean coal, but I HATED this ad by(a strong word, yes) for the following reasons:

• Its so damn cheesy
• I HATE the fakeness of ‘stock actors’ arranged in politically correct sterile formation (that goes for stock photograph models used widely in business too)
• Its over use of repetition of an empty message.  (Lenin said “A lie told often enough becomes truth”)
• What have we learned from this ad other than a bunch of actors “believe” in clean coal?

Bullshit version:

The guys at http://freeloveforum.com have done a great job of highlighting exactly that better than I could have ever done. Good use of humour to highlight how absurd marketing really is.

Better version:

In summary, coal is dirty and will continue to be. Don’t pretend to be something you’re not.

I refer you to a post I made earlier: the amazing energy cube