In yesterdays D2 magazine there was an article on children, computer games (specifically fps’). Worries on the relationship between school shootings and (intensive) computer gaming was the central theme. Of course a worrying subject. Although I can’t find any scientifically founded “proofs” of this relationship, I strongly believe that a deeper understanding of it is of importance – primarily to avoid, well, killing. (Although removing physical weapons – i.e. limiting killing enabling devices to a digital world, could also prove to be of success to minimizing school shootings..)

Well, I’m no expert at either school shootings, killing or computer games. But what I found very pleasing is the Immersion project of Robbie Cooper which essentially records video of people (youth) “as seen by the screen” when playing games. I find the technique truly inspiring. The video is absurdly illustrating the games ability to pacify, but also their ability to engage the player, although an engagement that I would characterize as a bit disturbing – although context and design of the video obviously emphasize this intentionally. Well, enough blabbering, watch it for yourself (w/ audio) – it is worth it.

Yet, again, the title is somewhat misleading, well, but who cares:)

BMI, or Body Mass Index is quite a popular metric for defining what is “fit” (i.e. normal), unhealthy, morbidly obeses/slim etc. While mankind (almost) always have been obsessed by normality and especially fitness, the BMI may be a bit over-simplifying, but still, it’s gaining popularity. I’m going to let the discussion on whether it is a good metric or not be left aside, but personally find it incomprehensive.

Anyhow, being interested in formulas, and especially when quite complex formulas gain massive popularity (i.e. BMI), I came up with the idea of visualizing the BMI as a surface in 3 dimensions. I didn’t put a lot of effort into it, easy peasy Matlab crunching – and the result:

BMI surface in 3D. Height and weight at "ground" level (x/y axis)

I find the surface quite intriguing and immediately got the idea of taking this surface beyond the graphic visualization. How cool would it be to make a full scale version of this, for instance in some shiny metal, and place it in a right in the center of a “fashion capital”:) Then one could stroll along the coordinate system on the ground and look up to the sky to see there BMI. Artists out there – make this! :)

The inspiration may have come from the “bean” in Chicago (US), which I find very nice and it seems to be acting as a creativity center – look at the people acting like children, and how enjoyable it looks! (picture series at aftenposten.no)

(some after-thoughts/EULA, this post is mainly Sunday-morning rambling on different thoughts and is, off course, not necessarily a closed and perfect discussion:)

Earlier this week I attended the weekly drawing lecture. The field of art is not my primary field of study, however it is one of my interests. Anyhow, back to the lecture. The course is at a very basic stage and assignment is in the notion of; draw greyscale bars, combining as much material and tools as possible. Off course the motivation behind this is to get used to techniques, tools and materials and the possibilities provided by them. The teacher is almost obsessed in emphasizing this objective for the course. In one rambling on the reason for methodizing the figure/ground notion the teacher explained the reason with the phrase;

“Du må vite hvilke baller du sjonglerer med” (orig)
“You must know which balls you are juggling with” (translated)

I became struck by this metaphor and the thought of fields where this applies became a thought hanging with me for the rest of the week. I found the metaphor to be almost valid for any fields in off course varying degree. The main reason that started the thinking process around this is probably that I’m currently is beginning my master thesis where I write on the understanding of quality in maps, conceptual modeling and the combination of this. This quickly becomes a form of philosophical task where a categorization of quality is needed and thus a segmentation of the understanding of the real world is needed. So, after a day or two thinking on this and the metaphor from the drawing teacher I became to realize that the metaphor fits, like a glow, to the understanding of quality and the formalization of this.

To conclude, after several days of thinking and one blog post I have concluded that the objective for my work with the master thesis is to provide some guide into knowing which balls you have and how to juggle them.

Okey, so for the ones that thought this post was of sexual character, I’m sorry that I’m not able to fulfill your expectations:)