Two people talking at a party.
"Wow, this is some really good video-game music."
Any music with no lyrics sounds like video-game music,
... maybe I've played too many video-games.
some guy at party
"great video game music"
oh, too much gaming
some guy at a desk,
video game this and that,
think he wants to play.
Would you rather be a bird in a cage or a fish in a tank?
A fish tank, I observe, is a microcosm of what we humans consider to be a tranquil, simple way of living, projected onto aquatic gill-bearing animals in glass boxes. They have food, they have little plants, and sometimes they have miniature houses placed at the bottom, among the pebbles. The rectangular box becomes a perfect landscape, a moving picture, a model existence, containing an idyllic life rather than just picturing one.
To have such a life. To eat, sleep, swim about, free from the burdens of human responsibility. blissful ignorance of the beyond.
But I cannot ignore the bias that comes with knowing what I know and being what I am. I can see the tank, circle it, I know that it's an enclosure even if the fish does not. I know of the sea. I know of the beyond. I know what I see in the existence of the fish but I don't know the life and the mind of it.
The bird in a cage; beautiful, intelligent, responsive, constricted, flightless, sad. It is certainly true that comparing the measurable intelligence of "fish" and "birds", the winged would come out on top. The bird will comprehend it's imprisonment even if it feels loved from beyond the bars of its cage. It is sadness that comes from the unfulfillment of true potential, stretching wings and gliding through air.
I'm sure the fish is "happier" than the bird. But that happiness comes from a cost of it's inability to comprehend it's restricted reality. As a bird I would be able to think, and in some way I will understand my own existence and my relation to the rest of the world. I think the knowledge of freedom beyond the cage would make me sad, but at least I can think about it.
It could come down to whether you want to know you are a prisoner or not. The fish does have it's full ability. It can swim and somewhat exist just as it would in the open sea, but it does not have access to knowledge of the sea. The bird knows, but it does not have it's full ability.
Perhaps this means I want to be the closest form, between the two options, to a human. In our current society, humans are taught that they can do anything they set their minds to. Everyone has the potential to be what they want, and have what they want, if they work hard enough. This perception is integral to the ethic of now, justifying the powerful as having met their true potential. Maybe the bird is a good analogy.
Perhaps the tranquil life of the fish is what all we humans crave. Perhaps dependable routine is worth the cost of true freedom. In our world, humans don't have tanks. There is no spoon feeding, no filtered, temperature-controlled water. There is an ocean, and we are all swimming about in it.
I think I want to have knowledge of my own potential, even without being able to manifest it, It's what I'm used to. I'll be able to think, be sad. I would be beautiful with bright coloured feathers and a long proud beak. I'd speak, swearing loudly at my captures whenever the walk by my cage, and I'll observe the beyond, knowing and not flying.
Reflection/noitcelfeR
I really hate my reaction video. Really, really hate it. I don't hate Nick Papadimitrou, hence why I would bother to honour him with a mock of him slapping a bollard next to a road. He'd probably love it. But I hate it. Mainly the way I said writer at the beginning, like some a posh twat.
There are some interesting observations to come from my video, attempts and failures. At first, I was trying to re-create the new year video, earily named "Do You Love Me?", by Boston Dynamics. This was unsuccessful due to a mix of problems such as an inability to remember the routine(leading to an appreciation of Matt's references to movement notation), and perhaps, maybe, I was... um... embarassed by my awkward dancing? I have now disponsed of, and erased, all footage and evidence of this event having happened, apart from these words, and I am strategically elluding to it never having happened when it comes up, or comes close to coming up in conversations. (The moment did not go to waste, however. I assure you Lucas enjoyed to performance.)
But my inability, I suppose, proves some point, or whatever, about how all the that robots need to do to learn a dance is have some file dragged and a button pushed. While I had to sweat and start and stop for 45min and eventually give up.
On the flip side, the reaction I went with is interesting because the routine I needed to learn was a script, so it was easy. Language is so ready and easy to be read and consumed, translated into speech, while movement must be recorded and rewatched, subtlties are hard to read.
I gave up dancing, decided to do this video of Nick Papadimitrou slapping a bollard, read through, a few times, a transcript I'd typed up in my first year, and film two takes. Done in 20min.
Post-week 3, I followed up on my mockery of the metropolitan lifestyle with my event scores. Combining them into a bingo sheet which I then left 40 copies of, spread across underground trains etc.
I've had one sent back with a 5 streak, only response so far.
I could send my coffee cup trophy to anyone who gets a full house.
I would source bedwyr_williams on instagram for my tone and angle on the idea of a metropolitan streotype and for the absurd specificity of the captions.
Maybe I'm becoming something I don't like.
Maybe I should make starterpacks
Maybe also Darren Cullen.