I think it’s a very handy way of getting to the core of something. When people go “Oh, that chair is beautiful,” or “That table is beautiful,” really what we are saying is, you imagine being happy around that chair. It’s a nicely psychological — and in a way — literary way of looking at the visual. It is making up little stories about it. I can imagine a happy little story. It’s what happens with people as well, when you see someone who looks attractive, very often you think, “This is someone I could be happy with.” You invent a short little story with what life could be like with that person. The same thing happens with visual objects: chairs, paintings, buildings…
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This notion of the role “fantasy” (or imagination) plays in creating an attitude capable of happiness is insightful and relevant to our project.

“The small hotel of Buergete is made of water. Outside, rain streams all night. Roofs pour, the gutters float with frogs and snails. You would not see me – I lie in the dark listening, swirling. Walls of the hotel are filled with water. Plumbing booms and sluices. A water clock, embedded in the heart of the building, measures out our hours in huge drops. Wheels and gears turn in the walls, the roaring of lovers washes over the ceiling, the staircase is an aqueduct of cries. From below I can hear a man dreaming. A deep ravine goes down to the sea, he calls out, rushes over the edge. The mechanisms that keep us from drowning are so fragile.”
Anne Carson

Shall we clarify the downpour? “Water” as dilemma, as the motif of our consultation, may be configured anew from this as-pect (as figure, distinct from both fact and value).

glue

1. All parties agree to be active participants in directing which way or what we pursue in this bootstrapping process.

2. Some quality f2f meetings a priority, such as the “Bhutan hour” (a nation with constitutional protections for happiness).
Such a meeting will be scheduled for early-ish May.

3. Diversification of inputs, not confined to Internet and digital, such as drawings, snapshots, (recipes?). Such presentations may be taped and streamed to the Web. (Waa that an iTouch Mike was wielding?)

4. Confirmation of local focus (Xanadu composite). A proposal to document a favorite local site on the blog.

5. Aesthetic/pleasure as a guiding feeling directing the nature of the collaboration. Justified by the value of “wellness,” “flourishing,” and the like as ethical and political goals motivating sustainability. Also justified by apparatus theory that predicts entertainment as the dominant educational institution in electracy.

6. Alright already we’ll visit the bloomin’ blog once a week or so.

7. The creation of an electrate mode of consultation is not primarily, or in the first instance, a problem of technology, even if ultimately it may only be realized within the capacities of new media (databases, social networking and the like).

8. Electrate metaphysics is holistic. No aspect of the researchers’ experience is irrelevant to the collaboration.

9. Some documentation of our process, including all of its zigs and zags, is important to achieving world peace in our time.

These come to mind. Perhaps more items to list.

glue

glue, remlu, ulmer has water as “number” — I’d prefer water as fact. Facts about water. Leads to expressing relationships between facts about water. Leads to inductionregarding facts togeneral principles about water. Etc.

My first post. New to WordPress.

Mike

Wow this is very exciting stuff. I will hold off on a more extended response until we get this posted, but I am very exited by the prospects of working together. Have you looked at the http://metaverse.sourceforge.net/? and

“New Media Consortium (NMC) announced a $250,000 two-year collaboration with Sun Microsystems to launch the Open Virtual Worlds Project, an effort that is aimed at making it even easier to learn, work, and exchange ideas in virtual space. The project will develop a range of standards-based, portable open-source educational spaces, content, and objects, and use them to extend Sun Microsystems’s open source Project Darkstar and Project Wonderland virtual world platforms.?

We do indeed have mutual interest using databases to drive 3D/VR sites. Lets start by moving the discussion up top to blog entries. This might better facilitate the others getting involved. Tell me a bit about your background and interest in data VR.

I hope we can get the rest of the group involved too, bit it occurs to me that you and I havn’t really had a good chat either. Where can we begin? I think we have a mutual interest in somehow using databases to drive 3D/VR sites? And maybe tools?

That link to the neh grant guidelines isn’t working, can you post the correct one?

I recommend the NEH Digital Start Up program to get the funding thing under way. http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/digitalhumanitiesstartup.html
Best