Maeda's SIMPLICITY

Sparkling or Still?

Petrification of a dandelion top.

In Europe when ordering water, I am always petrified when the waiter pauses for me to tell them the particular type of water that I wish. In the States we get tap water served to our table without any hesitation by the waitress. The moment of choice is always a moment of stress for me. I feel like carrying a coin around in my pocket with one side marked "still" and the other marked "sparkling" so I don't have to make a selection. In case we have a meal together in Europe today you should know that I'm impartial to either type of water. My only goal in life is hydration ... bubbles or no bubbles.

Something absolutely still can be unnerving. Like when you are in a forest and don't hear a sound and everything around you is completely still. Perhaps because we have an innate mechanism that makes us fear that which is non-moving as we equate the state with death. On the brighter sided of things, when we see objects move around we perceive them to be alive. This phenomenon is brought up by Valentino Braitenberg in his eminently accessible book Vehicles. Anyone who makes things move around the screen for a living should read this book (it is a very slim book so it won't take long).

My fascination with moving things began with a classmate at MIT named Bob Sabiston. There really is no more talented person in the world than Bob. Anywow, inspired by his early work I wrote my own animation system shortly after I dropped out of grad school at MIT. Writing this system changed me immensely. I realized that I didn't like to express myself by making tools for expression, and preferred the act of expression itself. Tools all too often get in the way of expression. How to create new digital work without the stench of existing digital tools is the challenge for this century.

Posted by maeda at February 15, 2005 08:59 AM